The world’s peoples rallied in support of the failed Burmese people’s uprising in 2007. Footage of dignified, serious-faced burgundy-clad monks taking to the streets in a peaceful protest against the increasingly untenable living conditions in Burma captured the world’s imagination and sympathy. People were increasingly angered as the images changed to those of the ruling junta beating and arresting hundreds of protesters, monks included.
The Philippines is Southeast Asia’s industrial sick man (barely any transformation since the 1970s) and agricultural failure (a major net importer of agricultural products since 1995). The country’s weak agro-industrial growth is the primary reason for the rapid expansion of the informal economy (employing as much as 2/3 of the labour force) and the country’s continuing dependence on the remittances of its 10 million or so migrant workers, roughly a tenth of the population.
The worldwide financial crisis has caused huge damage to Cambodia’s tourism, garment manufacturing and construction sectors. Those sectors comprise three of the Southeast Asian kingdom’s four economic pillars (besides agriculture) and the bulk of its economic growth over the past decade. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the past 16 months or are earning less than before.
The ‘labour movement’ may be something unfamiliar or weird for the majority of Taiwanese people in their everyday life, especially for the young people. If we would like to have a ‘youth labour movement’, what is to be done?