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’ group has [...]

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 ((US $30.30) [...]

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 based [...]

Thai soldiers have shot and killed three Burmese migrant children and wounded five more when they opened fire on a pick-up truck that sped through a border checkpoint. 
The incident occurred yesterday in Ranong province, southwestern Thailand. Like all of Thailand’s border regions, Ranong is under martial law, and acts as a major crossing-point for Burmese [...]

Horrifying abuses heaped on ethnic Karen women in Burma, who became village chiefs because male village heads were at greater risk of being killed, has been revealed by an ethnic women’s organization in its latest report “Walking Amongst Sharp Knives” released on Thursday.
The Karen Women’s Organization’s (KWO) latest report “Walking Amongst Sharp Knives” is based on [...]

In a sign of growing labor unrest, garment factory workers in Rangoon launched a sit-in strike on Wednesday evening to call for a pay increase and better working conditions. Security has been tightened around the affected factory area, with about 15 riot police trucks deployed.
The strike started around 4 pm yesterday at the Sky garment [...]

The Philippine military presented 43 people it says are communist rebels to a Manila court Monday for a hearing on allegations the detainees are actually health workers who were falsely charged and tortured in detention.
The detainees were brought to the Court of Appeals on army buses and handcuffed to military escorts for the hearing, which [...]

Dear Friends and Comrades,
The Committee for Asian Women would like to send its deeply concerns regarding the illegal arrest and detention of more than 40 health workers in Bgy. Maybangkal Morong Rizal on February 06 2010, on suspicion of being members of the New People’s Army.  The arrested individuals are undertaking a training on emergency [...]

Hundreds of armed police in Burma were yesterday told to monitor closely a protest by some 2000 female Rangoon factory workers demanding a pay rise and better workplace conditions. 
One eye witness said that “there are about 40 riot police trucks, six lockup trucks and four fire engines at the scene” before the strike finished at [...]

The Armed Forces of the Philippines arrested on Saturday February 6 what it claimed were 43 suspected New People’s Army guerillas who were purportedly holding a training on how to produce bombs.
But Dr. Melecia Velmonte, the owner of the resthouse in Morong, Rizal where the 43 persons, has denied the military claims and assailed the [...]