International Workers Memorial Day on the 28 of April was marked all around the world by actions and ceremonies to remember those workers who have died at work and to fight for safe and health workplaces. Places as diverse as Melbourne-Australia, Hong Kong, Manila-Philippines, and Jakarta-Indonesia. In the same week, […]
Daily Archives: May 2, 2016
7 posts
In a long expected verdict, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea, this week declared the Australian refugee detention centre in Manus Island as illegal. It ordered its immediate closure, a direction that the PNG Government said it will implement as soon as possible. This has once again highlighted the […]
This week, Rezaul Karim Siddique, an English professor, and Julhas Mannan and Tanay Mojumdar, two gay rights activists, were murdered in Dhaka in targeted political killings. These three murders are just the latest of a series of attacks on secular and human rights activists in the last few years, (see […]
Last week, Sol Pillas, the Secretary General of the Migrante International died following complications from a heart attack. Sol had been a domestic worker in Hong Kong for 25 years. Through her work in Hong Kong and seeing the exploitation that Filipino migrant workers were subjected to, Sol became more […]
Earlier this month, over ten thousands garment workers in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, paralysed large sections of the city by holding a snap demonstration in some of the city’s busiest roads. The workers were angry about a planned change to their Employee Provident Fund. While this threat to […]
This week the military arrested another 10 anti-dictatorship activists as well as breaking up anti-government demonstrations. Some of those arrested have now been accused of ‘crimes’ under the Sedition Act or the Lese Majeste Act. These are both draconian laws that carry long jail sentences. In a separate incident, an […]
The globalisation of the world economy and the increase use of temporary migrant labour has also seen a rise in the numbers of workers being grossly exploited. In mid-April, in the north eastern city of Brisbane, 50 workers from Taiwan were discovered being kept as virtual slaves and forced to […]