Tagged: #unitedagainstthejunta

Side by side with FGWM in Myanmar (fundraising)
Goal: 15 000 EUR by August 31st 2023 to enable comrades of the Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM) to continue their work!
Below you will find more details on the FGWM itself as well as a message from a garment factory worker.
fundraising page: firefund.net ☆ website: fgwm-solidarity.org ☆ solidarity shirts: dnamerch.de
worker message (ဗမာ) ☆ background info ☆ what can I do?
contact: info@fgwm-solidarity.org
Message from a garment factory worker organised with FGWM:
Hello, Mingalarbar. I’m reaching out to seek assistance from fellow members of international unions. I work in the garment industry and hold a leadership role within the union. I’m a part of both the Federation of General Workers (FGWM) and a leading position in a garment factory’s union. These unions have been actively combating labor exploitation and advocating for workers’ rights through united efforts. The recent military coup has turned our workplaces into unbearable environments.
message by a factory worker shared on August 23rd, 2023
Under the leadership of FGWM, our trade unions initiated campaigns (inside factories) against the military dictatorship on February 5, 2021, immediately after the coup. On February 6, our union federation, FGWM became the pioneering group to voice opposition against the military rule in Yangon. Unfortunately, this led to their identification and subsequent capture by the military. Many workers have also become jobless as they fled their workplaces to escape danger. Some have been imprisoned due to the military’s arrests.
At present, amidst extreme challenges and the oppressive actions of employers within the workplace, we are seeking aid for fellow workers. These individuals include those spearheading the movement for labor rights and federal democracy, as well as those imprisoned for advocating human and women’s rights in the workplace. We earnestly request support from our international unions and comrades to help with solidarity.
We have only a limited time left to participate in the fundraising campaign aimed at supporting our comrades inside factories.
Original message in Burmese:
မင်္ဂလာပါ
နိုင်ငံတကာမှာ ရှိနေတဲ့ သမဂ္ဂညီအကို မောင်နှမများကို ကျွန်မအနေနဲ့ အကူအညီတောင်းချင်ပါတယ်။ ကျွန်မသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအထည်ချုပ်လုပ်ငန်းခွင်ထဲက အလုပ်သမားတစ်ဦးဖြစ်ပြီးတော့ အလုပ်သမား သမဂ္ဂခေါင်းဆောင်တစ်ဦးလည်းဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ကျွန်မတို့ အလုပ်သမား သမဂ္ဂဟာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအထွေထွေအလုပ်သမား သမဂ္ဂများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် ရဲ့ အဖွဲ့ဝင်သမဂ္ဂတစ်ခုလည်း ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ စစ်အာဏာမသိမ်းခင်ကဆိုရင် ကျွန်မတို့ အလုပ်သမားတွေဟာ လုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေထဲက အလုပ်ရှင်တွေရဲ့ ဖိနှိပ်မှုတွေ၊ လုပ်အား ခေါင်းပုံဖြတ်မှုတွေ၊ အလုပ်သမားအခွင့်အရေးတွေကို သမဂ္ဂအင်အားနဲ့ တိုက်ယူခဲ့ကြရပါတယ်။ လက်ရှိမှာလည်း စက်ရုံလုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေဟာ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုကြောင့် ငရဲခန်းနဲ့ မခြားတဲ့ လုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေဖြစ်နေပါတယ်။ သပိတ်တိုက်ပွဲတွေနဲ့ မစိမ်းတဲ့ ကျွန်မတို့ အလုပ်သမားတွေဟာ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းအပြီး ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ (၅) ရက်နေ့မှာတော့ စက်ရုံတွင်း စစ်အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင်ရေး လှုပ်ရှားမှုတွေ စတင်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ နောက်တရက် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ (၆) ရက်နေ့မှာ စစ်အာဏာရှင် ဆန့်ကျင်ရေး လမ်းပေါ်ထွက်ချီတက် လှုပ်ရှားမှုကို သမဂ္ဂခေါင်းဆောင်များအပါအဝင် စက်ရုံအလုပ်သမားထုနဲ့အတူ ချီတက်ခဲ့ကြပြီးတော့ အဆိုပါလှုပ်ရှားမှုဟာ ရန်ကုန်မြို့မှာ အစောဆုံး စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ဆန့်ကျင်ရေး လှုပ်ရှားမှုဖြစ်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။
ဒီနောက်ပိုင်းမှာတော့ ကျွန်မတို့ အလုပ်သမားသမဂ္ဂတွေကို မလိုလားတဲ့ အလုပ်ရှင်တွေဟာ စစ်တပ်နဲ့ပူးပေါင်းပြီးတော့ စက်ရုံလုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေအထိ အလုပ်သမားသမဂ္ဂခေါင်းဆောင်တွေ၊ အဖွဲ့ဝင်တွေကို ဝင်ရောက်ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့ပါတယ်။ လုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေကနေ ထွက်ပြေးတိမ်းရှောင်ရလို့ အလုပ်လက်မဲ့ ဖြစ်နေရတဲ့အလုပ်သမားတွေများစွာရှိပါတယ်။ စစ်တပ်ရဲ့ ဖမ်းစီးမှုကြောင့် ထောင်ကျနေတဲ့ အလုပ်သမားတွေလည်း ရှိနေပါတယ်။ လက်ရှိအချိန်မှာတော့ လုပ်ငန်းခွင်တွေထဲမှာ အလုပ်ရှင်တွေရဲ့ဖိနှိပ်မှု အခက်ခဲများစွာကြားကနေ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို တော်လှန်နေတဲ့ အလုပ်သမားရဲဘော်တွေ၊ ထောင်ကျနေတဲ့ အလုပ်သမားရဲဘော်တွေ၊ လုပ်ငန်းခွင်အတွင်းက လူ့အခွင့်အရေး၊အမျိုးသမီးအခွင့်အရေး၊ အလုပ်သမားအခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်ခံနေကြရတဲ့ သမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ဝင်အလုပ်သမားများစွာအတွက် အကူအညီများလိုအပ်နေပါတယ်။နိုင်ငံတကာမှာရှိနေသည့် သမဂ္ဂညီအကို မောင်နှမများအနေဖြင့် သွေးစည်းညီညွှတ်မှုဖြင့်ကူညီပေးကြဖို့ မေတ္တာရပ်ခံအပ်ပါတယ်။
အလုပ်သမားရဲဘော်တွေအတွက် ရန်ပုံငွေရှာတဲ့ ကမ်ပိန်းမှာ ပါဝင်ပေးကြဖို့ ရက်အနည်းငယ်သာကျန်ပါတော့တယ်။ အဲ့ဒါကြောင့်မို့ အမြန်ဆုံး ကူညီပေးကြဖို့ တိုက်တွန်းနှိုးဆော်ပါရစေ။
Some background info:
The FGWM consists of 40 (factory) labour unions and keeps uniting thousands of members. It is one of the very few labour federations known to us in Asia, which follows a grassroots approach. The FGWM has its roots in the textile factories of the industrial zones in Myanmar. The vast majority of secretaries had to flee to escape pocecution by the military junta and now operates from a house in exile. Some of the comrades who initiated this fundraising met them at their house last year. They emphasized they some of them only managed to escape with the support provided by the previous fundraising done last year.
Despite the military dictatorship they continue with their efforts. The FGWM supports workers to get organised, follows labour fights (like the recent strike at Sun Apparel), which still take place under great danger, and also tries to support members facing state repression, for example seeking refuge or supporting them in prison as far as this is possible. Another focal point is to provide training opportunities for factory workers in regards to organising and labour struggles. All of this can’t be upheld without external support. Due to the extremely precarious living conditions, which evolved especially after the military coup in February 2021, the income of membership fees collapsed. Their supportive partners on the international level are the ICL Working Group Asia as well as the Solidarity Center.
For more information: fgwm-solidarity.org
Who is behind the fundraising?
It was initiated by the Free Workers’ Union (FAU) Hamburg together with the FGWM. And by now it is being also supported and conducted by comrades of other FAU syndicates, the IWW WISE-RA as well as Earth Strike UK.
Great! So what can I do?
First of all, you can support the work of FGWM by simply contributing to the fundraising. You can do so with a credit card using the firefund page or by transfering to the account of FAU Hamburg.
Account name: AS FAU Hamburg
IBAN: DE43 4306 0967 2070 7898 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank name: GLS Bank
Purpose: FGWM solidarity
In the end all contributions will be added to the firefund page. The amounts submitted via firefund will only be deducted from your account, if the fundraising is successful, i.e. in case the goal of 15 000 EUR is reached.
Furthermore you can help to inform many others about this effort by spreading the links listed at the beginning. Furthermore you can order a stylish solidarity shirt at DNA Merch. They will take orders until August 31st 2023 and then ask a textile/ printing collective in Croatia to make them.

#UnitedAgainstTheJunta – Support our Comrades in Myanmar!
The ICL (International Confederation of Labour) together with the grassroot unions of the Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM) initiated a fundraising to support the resistance movement against the military junta in Myanmar.
Even after the coup in February 2021, FGWM is still active in some factories, but the majority of activists joined the resistance movement and went underground or already fled to the border region of Thailand. Many lost their jobs und now depend on support to organize safe-houses, groceries, as well as materials for acts of protest and resistance.
Therefore this fundraising page was created: firefund.net/unitedagainstthejunta
Comrades of the FAU (Free Workers’ Union) and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in Hamburg created 5mins clips in English and German feat. comrades in Myanmar.
Consider to contribute and discuss how you can support this fundraising effort in your syndicates and unions. The target is set at 10,000 EUR and has to be reached within two months! Only if the goal is reached, the funds will be paid out.
Firefund was chosen as a platform on purpose, because it is being run by fellow comrades and charges no additional fees. You can only contribute directly through this page with a credit card. In case that’s a problem, the account details of the ICL are added too:
Name: Unione Sindacale Italiana – CIT
Bank: Banca Popolare Etica
IBAN: IT54I0501802400000016796849
BIC/SWIFT: CCRTIT2T84A
Reference: Myanmar Fundraising
All incoming contributions will also be added to the firefund page with a slight delay.
In case you decide to transfer money to the bank account or have any questions/ suggestions, please drop a short line at asia@icl-cit.org.
#UnitedAgainstTheJunta