Welcome to BASE21

By Cho Soong-ho
Staff Reporter

The Common Committee for Elimination of Discrimination against Migrant Workers and Promoting their Basic Rights (CEDMW) on December 17 with the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), People’s Solidarity for Participation and Democracy (PSPD), officers of migrant support centers, dissident group leaders, and some 500 citizens and students held a rally asserting to adopt the work permit system for foreign migrant workers.
Despite thhe suddeen cold weather on the day, hundreds of participants denounced both the Korea Federation of Small Business (KFSB), who want to keep the trainee system, and the government and ruling party as having a lukewarm attitude toward migrant policy, and argued for adopting the work permit system (WPS) immediately. The rally was particularly meaningful as the UN had officially designated December 18 as International Migrant Day this year.
This year is the first time the event will be celebrated internationally, with an official number of some100,000,000 migrants in the world. Even though JCMK has held similar events on December 18 since 1998 with other migrant support organizations in Asia. December 18 was also the date that the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families was submitted to the UN in 1990.

-JCMK, KCTU Call for Adopting WPS-

At the event presided by Rev. Park Chon-ung, head of the Ansan Migrant Shelter, Professor Moon Dong-hwan from Hanshin University said in his supporting speech, “Let's make this land where everybody over different nationalities will enjoy humane lives”.
Tan Byong-ho, chairperson of KCTU, a member organization of CEDMW, and Professor Cho Hee-yon, the chief executive members on the council of PSPD apologized that Korean labor camp and NGOs have not positively protected migrant workers so far, and promised to enforce solidarity with migrants and their struggle in the future. It seems that the states were encouraging to show their will for solidarity with workers of all races.
Some 60 students from the Korea Democratic Labor Party
also joined the rally; adding their voices to those of migrant workers' to abolish the trainee system and adopt the employment permit system.
Ben Magundayao from The Philippines, appealing about his unpaid salary of 1.3 million won, asked Koreans to help them so that migrant workers who are working under inhumane conditions, would come to be valued the same as regular workers. Migrant workers from Nepal, Sril Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China, shouted slogans in their own languages, determined to struggle for obtaining their human rights.
After a simple introduction to International Migrant Day by Rev. Kim Hae-sung, Lee Kun-won, Chair of the Organization and
Struggle Department of KCTU delivered the ‘Korea Statement for the International Migrant Day’, stating that for the common and basic human rights of migrant workers, the government should enforce the following policies; 1. abolition of thhe trainee system; 2. enactment of the work/employment permit system; 3. amnesty for undocumented workers and endowing work right to them; 4. ratification of the UN Migrant Convention.