Australia Asia Worker Links

Our regular weekly mini news email will take a summer break. We will be back with our regular weekly updates in February 2016. We would like to wish all our working class sisters and brothers a safe end of the year. In struggle and solidarity, AAWL.

With the recent upsurge of workers’ activity against worsening economic conditions, the Chinese government has also increased its repression against labour activists. This month 21 labour activists were arrested in the southern province of Guangdong. While some have been released, a number of them remain in jail. A growing international solidarity movement has called for a global day of action for 21 December. There is also a petition to sign.

On Wednesday 16 December, tens of thousands of Korean workers staged a general strike to protest against the ongoing repression of the labour movement. Workers from a number of different sectors took action for varying lengths of time in 16 provinces. In addition, the South Korean government stopped international unionists from visiting the imprisoned KCTU leader, Hang Sang Kyun. Hang Sang has now being charged with sedition. More protest demonstrations are occurring.

Mahmoud Beheshti Langroodi was released last Tuesday after judicial authorities at Evin prison agreed to temporarily release him on condition he terminate his hunger strike. Mahmoud had been in prison since mid-October and had been on a hunger strike for 21 days. The situation for workers in Iran is very bad with many workers facing insecure work, poverty wages and the repressive apparatus of the state if they organise to improve their conditions. Labour activists, like Shahrokh Zamani earlier this year, also face the real danger of dying in prison.

The uprising and subsequent civil war in Syria has not only devastated that country but has become a theatre of war for competing local, regional and imperialist powers. The recent direct military intervention of Russia has led to a realignment of some of these forces. The losers of this war have been working class people in Syria whose society has been devastated. This crisis is also having increasing internal effects in Turkey where repression against workers and activists keeps increasing. Workers around the world need to organise and fight against repression, imperialist wars and the War on Terror.

The last few years has seen an increasing number of workers coming to Australia on a number of different visa status. The increasing use of temporary workers has also led to an increase in the exploitation of these workers (see here, here and here). The most recent example to come to light has been the six Fijian workers under the Seasonal Worker Program who were paid as little as AUS $1.20/h. The best way to end this exploitation is by organising into unions and to fight for permanent visa status so as to remove the threat of deportation.

Despite the continued and ongoing repression by the Israeli army and police forces, widespread resistance by Palestinians against the Occupation continues. Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails, while every day more are targeted for detention. In the last couple of days of this week, another three Palestinians were killed with many more injured. These three dead are just the latest in an ever growing tally of victims. Meanwhile, the Israeli state continues to steal more Palestinian land.

While a recent report has put the number of refugees and displaced people in the world at 60 million, the highest ever, the Australian government continues to implement its draconian and cruel anti-refugee policies. For International Human Rights Day on 10 December, a series of protests were held around Australia, including actions co-ordinated by the teacher’s union. Eighteen asylum seekers from Bangladesh are currently on hunger strike to protest against their ongoing imprisonment. Australia’s policies have directly resulted in a number of deaths of asylum seekers.

In an escalation of the ongoing targeting of unions in Australia via a Royal Commission (see here and here), this week two leaders, John Setka and Shaun Reardon, of the powerful Construction union (CFMEU) in the southern state of Victoria were arrested. They were charged with blackmail in relation to a dispute with the Grocon and Boral companies over Health and Safety issues. This development is clearly an attempt to criminalise what are normal industrial and organising activities of any union. The CFMEU staged a mass solidarity protest to support their leaders (see here and here).