They're still cracking migrants down!

STATEMENT ON MASSIVE CRACKDOWN OF MIGRANT WORKERS
IN SOUTH KOREA
July 07, 2008

We member organizations of the Katipunan ng mga Samahan ng Migranteng Manggagawa sa Korea (KASAMMAKO) or the Unity of Filipino Migrant Workers Associations in Korea, with clenched fists calls for a stop to the massive crackdown on migrant workers in South Korea especially Filipino migrant workers, respect and protect their human rights.

The Korean government under President Lee Myung Bak has intensified the crackdown on undocumented migrant workers for the last few months and remains unabated up to this day. This systematic and calculated crackdown under a conservative government is a contradiction between its neo-liberal capitalist priorities and the need for cheap labour force. This is also a contradiction to the well publicized notion that South Korean society is becoming a humane multi-cultural society. This intensive crackdown has forcibly deported thousands of migrant workers in spite of their health and family conditions just to accomplish the immigration quota of arrest and deportation of undocumented migrant workers. There are migrant pregnant women even bleeding badly and men who are so ill yet arrested, incarcerated and consequently deported. Recently, immigration police are tucked with tasers or electric stand guns in arresting migrant workers, a threatening method which can be used in case of resistance to arrest. We vehemently condemn this treacherous crackdown.

The economic slowdown due to various capitalist market schemes and the looming economic recession in the U.S. which affects other economies has been used as justification for flushing out undocumented migrant workers in many countries particularly in South Korea. This should never be an alibi for the inability of the government to design mechanisms that will integrate migrant workers into the regular work force. The government has been stuck in recycled and obsolete means of labour outsourcing that exploits and maims the lives of migrant workers. Migrant workers have contributed to the industrialization and wealth of South Korea and should not be blamed for the economic downturn.

Migrant workers’ basic labour rights are protected in the South Korean constitution, including the right to freedom of association. The South Korea’s 1948 Constitution mentions in its preamble that the state is ‘determined to consolidate national unity with justice, humanitarianism and brotherly love and to destroy all social vices and injustice’. More so in Article 6 under Treaties, Foreigners, it stipulates that: (1) Treaties duly concluded and promulgated under the Constitution and the generally recognized rule of international law have the same effect as the domestic laws of the Republic of Korea. (2) The status of foreigners is guaranteed as prescribed by international law and treaties.

It is unthinkable that for several decades South Korean society has benefited from the labours of migrant workers that have supplied cheap labour for the small and medium scale industries, but the human rights of migrant workers are violated. While only a handful of Korean citizens would take on the difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers spend their lives in these jobs, but often ill-treated and maligned by their employers and worse still, not paying the salaries and suffer many other sub-human conditions in their work places. Many have languished in detention centers waiting for their unpaid salaries to be paid by their delinquent employers. Worst of all many migrant workers have to endure the anxiety of the continuing crackdown some have even died or were hurt escaping arrest and deportation.

Finally, labour exporting or sending countries like the Philippines ought to develop its economy based on agriculture and move towards national industrialization which when realized will put a halt to forced migration which at present Filipinos working abroad has reached up to nine million. We reiterate our vision for the Filipinos and all migrant workers that we look forward to the day when families are no longer separated, that they don’t have to migrate in order to find decent jobs, that each person and family are able to provide adequately for their basic needs and each person will have meaningful life—a life lived in justice and peace. Once again in one voice, we call: STOP CRACKDOWN! LEGALIZE UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANT WORKERS!

CALLS FOR ACTION:
 For the Philippine government:a) Make immediate diplomatic and legal intervention on the plight of not less than 30,000 migrant workers in South Korea who face imminent deportation due to intensified crackdown.
b) The Philippine Labor Office (POLO) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in South Korea should inform and make written recommendations to the Philippine Senate and Office of the President how to avert intensive crackdown, and how Filipino undocumented /irregular migrant workers can become legal, regular, or integrated into the regular work force, that is, outside of the framework of deportation and the Employment Permit System (EPS).

 For South Korean government:
a) Stop crackdown and protect human rights and migrant workers;
b) Legalize and integrate all migrant workers regardless of visa status into the regular work force
c) Ratify the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

 For other governments:
a) All labour sending and labour receiving countries should devise and work out means and strategies to protect human rights of migrant workers;
b) Evolve just and sustainable economic system that will eliminate forced migration and enhance international solidarity and peace among nations.

 For all migrant workers and the general public:a)
All migrant workers should unite against the commodification of human labour in the neo-liberal market globalization;
b) Condemn and put a stop to crackdown as a strategy to flush out migrant workers from labour receiving countries.
c) Know that crackdown is being used not just in South Korea but also in other parts of the world and therefore unite against it.
d) All people should help protect human rights of migrant workers because in terms of peoples’ economic survival and more importantly in having a just economic order in the world, nobody is “illegal” or “undocumented”.