The Karen National Union (KNU) has released a press statement “Pre-Election Military Operation by SPDC” on 27th July 2010. In the statement, it is said that SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) has started pre-election miliary operations, targeting the innocent Karen civilians in the Karen State and other KNU areas. Fifty seven houses, one Christian church, one [...]

The government calls it “sealed management.” China’s capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control. It’s Beijing’s latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating [...]

Ma Xiangqian, a 19-year-old migrant from the eastern Chinese province of Henan, worked the 11-hour night shift, seven days a week, putting together electronic parts for Foxconn Technology, the world’s biggest contract maker of information technology goods. By all accounts, he hated his job. In the month before his death in January, Ma worked 286 [...]

On May 1, 2009, while other women labourers availed their holiday after finishing their respective chores, 35-year-old Nasim spent her day travelling from her abode in Baldia Town, Karachi, to a government hospital in Saddar Town. Naseem is being treated for a respiratory disorder that she developed while working in a garment factory last year. [...]

On the 4th of May, the Triumph workers in the Philippines were violently evicted from their picket line. More than 200 security forces invaded the former factory grounds, removed the protesting workers and destroyed their action camp. Take action now to support these workers! The workers have set up another picket line further down the [...]

Thousands of women in the Irrawaddy delta, most victims of Cyclone Nargis who still face enormous hardships two years after the storm ravaged the region, have been targeted by human traffickers, according to social workers. “Many of them [young women in the Irrawaddy delta] don’t want to stay in a place that has no job [...]

Ms Jansila Majeed, the Chief Trustee of Community Trust Fund, one of CAW member groups in Sri Lanka was awarded the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award 2010. The award was presented by the secretariat of the United States Hillary Clinton and the First Lady Michelle Obana on 10th March 2010 in Washington [...]

Two more workers’ strikes are set to take place in Rangoon as calls for the legal formation of labour unions in Burma gather momentum. Despite a media blackout on the protests, the latest of which took place last week at a major Rangoon brewery, unrest appears to have spread around Burma’s former capital. A strikers’ [...]

Workers in a clothing factory near Rangoon went on strike on Wednesday to support demands for more pay. The 20 workers are employed by the “Super” factory in Shwe Pyi Thar Industrial Zone, north of Rangoon.  One source told The Irrawaddy the workers were demanding an increase in their salaries, which currently average 30,000 kyat [...]

Women who fled conflict and oppression in military-ruled Burma have become a potent political force during their lives in exile, says a leading women’s rights activist from the South-east Asian country’s Shan ethnic minority. Nothing confirms this more than the fact that, the Women’s League of Burma, a network of 13 women’s groups in exile [...]