(Hong Kong, September 3, 2004) The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) has urged the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to find new strategies to help end the practices of forced labour in Burma that have been bred and sustained due to the absence of the rule of law.

The Hong Kong-based ALRC calls on the international body to take up two cases in particular, in which the victims have been jailed or threatened with legal action by the authorities for failing to comply with forced labour orders and seeking redress.

"The real problem relates not to narrow questions of what constitutes forced labour and how a mechanism for complaints may be established to deal with it, but more broadly, to the non-existence of the rule of law in Myanmar (Burma)," ALRC executive director Basil Fernando said.

In a letter to the ILO Committee of Experts, Fernando said victims in Burma could be turned into the accused through the manipulations of the authorities and be punished for trying to assert their rights.

He pointed to difficulties in establishing an effective regime for making complaints about forced labour in the absence of the rule of law in the country.

The ALRC, which promotes human rights and the rule of law in the region, drew the attention of the ILO to the case of Ko Khin Zaw and U Ohn Myint, in which both victims were sentenced to jail for failing to serve as sentries at the Buddhist monastery in their village in Henzada Township last year.

Ko Khin Zaw was imprisoned for a month for "omitting to assist a public servant when bound by the law to give assistance", while U Ohn Myint was given a six-month jail term for the same charge and for threatening to injure a public servant.

The two have been accused of defaming the village tract peace and development council and its chairman after they filed a complaint to court that their punishment was in violation of government orders issued in 1999 and 2000.

The court is understood to have summarily dismissed their complaint and action is now pending against the two for defamation, the ALRC said.

In another case, a 34-year-old woman Ma Su Su Nwe made a complaint in court that she and other villagers of Tanmanaing in Kawmhu Township were told to work on a road construction, or else would be fined or put in detention.

The village authorities denied her accusation and insisted that the labour was a voluntary undertaking.

The ALRC said there were well-founded fears that the case would be ruled against Ma Su Su Nwe and subsequently she would face legal action similar to that of Ko Khin Zaw and U Ohn Myint.

"When any allegation about wrongdoing by a government officer is aggressively used against the complainant without regard to the validity of the complaint, how can an effective or independent complaint mechanism be properly established?" Fernando asked.

Those people who complain about state authorities through the courts in Burma, whether for forced labour or other rights violations, cannot expect any kind of independent review of their cases, he said.

"That a victim of a rights violation has no channel for effective redress is in itself a major problem; that in Myanmar this situation is compounded by punitive action against persons attempting to exercise their rights is of extreme concern," Fernando said.

"The evidence that exists at present is of a growing trend towards such practices, and one that the ILO must properly account for if it is to have any effect in bringing about change to forced labour practices in Myanmar, and offer genuine protection to victims," he noted.