Last Friday the S.Korean "left"-liberal daily newspaper Hankyoreh published following article:
The “human hunting” of undocumented migrant workers is off and running again. Each Ministry of Justice immigration office around the country has reportedly set goals for the number of people they are going to deport. This month alone, the goal for deportations is 3,000; among these, there is a goal of 600 deportations for Seoul and 250 for Busan.
We are obviously going to see arrest teams going to unreasonable extremes to chase people down and fill their quotas, while desperate migrant workers are going to do anything they can to avoid them. Expect civil rights infringements and unfortunate accidents as this unfolds. In January an ethnic Korean from China fell to her death from eight stories high while running from an arrest team, and last month a laborer from Bangladesh was seriously injured in a similar incident after falling from a building’s third floor.
The government justifies the crackdown by saying these are illegal aliens, but the biggest reason there are undocumented migrant workers is because of the government’s discriminatory “hiring permit program.” It forces these individuals to accept pay far lower than that of Korean workers, prevents them from changing their place of employment, then forces them to leave right about the time they really get to know the work they’re doing, giving migrant workers who came here embracing the Korean Dream few options. Before it goes on its excessive and inhumane crackdown, the Justice Ministry should make changes to this “hiring permit program” that sometimes gets called a “slavery permit program,” and eliminate the basic discrimination faced by migrant workers.
A typical example of the government’s suppression of the basic rights of migrant workers was the recent deportation of Torna Limbu and Abdus Sabur, the president and vice president of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants’ Trade Union. As noted by Korean and international human rights organizations, the fact that these two men, who were elected to their respective positions just last month, were arrested on the very same day and at the very same time makes it plenty clear enough that they were targeted in an attempt to suppress the migrant workers’ union activities. The deportation of these two men has already marked the third time the union’s leadership has been arrested and deported. The Ministry of Justice also ignored the National Human Rights Commission’s formal recommendation that it not deport them until there had been resolution to a complaint filed in the case, about allegations their rights had been denied. So, in other words, the bare minimum of legal procedures were thrown to the wayside. How can Korea still call itself a country that respects civil rights?
The “three basic rights of labor” as guaranteed in the Constitution should be applied to migrant workers, too, and not just Korean nationals. We are still awaiting a final decision by the Supreme Court, but a high court has already decided that the migrant union itself is legal. The government must stop the discrimination and persecution of migrant workers immediately and make the country’s regulations and procedures meet with international standards.
Civil rights for migrant workers!
The “human hunting” of undocumented migrant workers is off and running again. Each Ministry of Justice immigration office around the country has reportedly set goals for the number of people they are going to deport. This month alone, the goal for deportations is 3,000; among these, there is a goal of 600 deportations for Seoul and 250 for Busan.
We are obviously going to see arrest teams going to unreasonable extremes to chase people down and fill their quotas, while desperate migrant workers are going to do anything they can to avoid them. Expect civil rights infringements and unfortunate accidents as this unfolds. In January an ethnic Korean from China fell to her death from eight stories high while running from an arrest team, and last month a laborer from Bangladesh was seriously injured in a similar incident after falling from a building’s third floor.
The government justifies the crackdown by saying these are illegal aliens, but the biggest reason there are undocumented migrant workers is because of the government’s discriminatory “hiring permit program.” It forces these individuals to accept pay far lower than that of Korean workers, prevents them from changing their place of employment, then forces them to leave right about the time they really get to know the work they’re doing, giving migrant workers who came here embracing the Korean Dream few options. Before it goes on its excessive and inhumane crackdown, the Justice Ministry should make changes to this “hiring permit program” that sometimes gets called a “slavery permit program,” and eliminate the basic discrimination faced by migrant workers.
A typical example of the government’s suppression of the basic rights of migrant workers was the recent deportation of Torna Limbu and Abdus Sabur, the president and vice president of the Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants’ Trade Union. As noted by Korean and international human rights organizations, the fact that these two men, who were elected to their respective positions just last month, were arrested on the very same day and at the very same time makes it plenty clear enough that they were targeted in an attempt to suppress the migrant workers’ union activities. The deportation of these two men has already marked the third time the union’s leadership has been arrested and deported. The Ministry of Justice also ignored the National Human Rights Commission’s formal recommendation that it not deport them until there had been resolution to a complaint filed in the case, about allegations their rights had been denied. So, in other words, the bare minimum of legal procedures were thrown to the wayside. How can Korea still call itself a country that respects civil rights?
The “three basic rights of labor” as guaranteed in the Constitution should be applied to migrant workers, too, and not just Korean nationals. We are still awaiting a final decision by the Supreme Court, but a high court has already decided that the migrant union itself is legal. The government must stop the discrimination and persecution of migrant workers immediately and make the country’s regulations and procedures meet with international standards.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/288956.html
