GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
December 19th, 2009[Update -- 20 December @ 1351: From The Nation:
Some 2,000 Burmese female workers ended their strike and resumed works Sunday morning after the authorities located a relative of a worker, who was earlier thought be killed by security officers of the factory.
This still does not clear up what Radio Free Asia was reporting.]
There are worker protests and large involvement of security forces in Yangon sometime Friday. That much the two stories I’m reading agree on. After that, the reasons, locations and size of the protest, or protests, gets murky. I’ve done a check around the web, but found no additional information as of Sunday afternoon.
From The Nation:
Some 2,000 Burmese workers protested in a bra factory in this northern province late Friday night.
Some 300 police and military officers and defence volunteers were deployed to control the situation inside the Top From Brassiere Mae Sot Factory in Mae Sot district.
The workers became angry that two security officers of the factory injured two female workers.
The protesters demanded to see one of the injured female workers because they heard rumours that she had been killed.
The Radio Free Asia story seems,at first glance, to be reporting the same protests, but too many details are different.
Burmese authorities sent a large number of security personnel into a western suburb of the former capital, Rangoon, after rare protests by more than 1,000 workers in a dispute with management at a Malaysian-owned garment factory, protesters said.
Workers who took part said deputy labor minister U Tin Tun Aung and deputy military divisional commander Brigadier Kyaw Kyaw Htoon visited the factory, along with northern divisional deputy inspector-general of police Ko Ko Aung.
“Police Inspector-General Khin Zaw Oo from the 7th police battalion came with his troops to maintain security in the area,” said one worker, who declined to be named.
“In the end, [management] agreed to our demands. They signed an agreement today that they will accede to our demands.”
Another protester said the deputy minister met with factory manager Ma Soe Soe and 28 representatives of the workers and their leader, Ma Khin Thandar Oo.
Workers at the Wong Houng Hand factory say foreign supervisors have been mistreating workers and forcing them to sign “confessions” of alleged wrongdoing.
More than 1,000 (later reported as 1,300) rather than 2,000 workers, foreign supervisors mistreating workers and forcing them to sign “confessions” of alleged wrongdoing rather than injured female workers with on possibly murdered, and finally The Nation places the protest at the Top From Brassiere Mae Sot Factory in Mae Sot district and RFA puts it at Wong Houng Hand factory.
The story smells of managed faux news.
From Radio Free Asia:
[...] I read about this protest, the more I have to believe that news reports are actually describing separate incidents. More than 3,000 female Burmese workers at a bra factory in Tak’s Mae Sot district again went [...]