Bangkok: Ignoring warnings of “far-reaching and extremely serious consequences”, Myanmar’s military rulers have told the International Labor Organization (ILO) the country will be quitting the United Nations organization.

Myanmar’s Labor Ministry told Francis Maupain, special adviser to the ILO, during a visit to Yangon earlier this month that the government had decided to leave the ILO, and notice has been prepared and was waiting to be sent.

“From the ILO viewpoint, the decision of any member to withdraw is always to be regretted, irrespective of the circumstances,” Maupain told Inter Press Service in a weekend interview. “However, it has to be remembered that such a decision only becomes irreversible when the two-year notice period expires, assuming the authorities do not change their mind in the meantime.

“During that period, the country remains a member with all rights and obligations. This is why the most recent mission to Yangon expressed the hope that cooperation could be maintained in an appropriate way during the notice period, if the authorities remained committed, as they claim and have always claimed, to the eradication of forced labor.”

The notice period starts from when ILO Director General Juan Somavia receives the letter, according to a spokesman. As yet, no formal notification has been received at ILO headquarters in Geneva.

Nevertheless, the government’s statement of intent does cast a shadow over the future of the ILO in Myanmar and runs in the face of Somavia’s insistence that the ILO had no intentions of closing its office in Yangon.

“Much may now depend on whether the Burmese regime decides to leave the door open to resolving the problems with the ILO during the two-year notice period,” said a source in the UN body.

In recent times, only three countries have quit the ILO - South Africa, under the apartheid regime, the United States in the late 1970s, and Vietnam in 1985.

Maupain, a renowned French lawyer with long experience in ILO affairs, visited Yangon in October with an open mind, according to ILO insiders. The fact Myanmar’s authorities agreed to the visit was seen as a good sign, considering the persistent attacks on the ILO for most of this year and restriction to the capital city of Yangon of the ILO representative.

This was the first ILO mission to Myanmar since the independent high-level delegation’s abortive trip to Yangon in February. The three members of the team left Yangon empty-handed. The team included the former Australian governor-general, Sir Ninian Stephen, the former Swiss president, Ruth Dreifuss, and Chung Eui-yong, a former ILO governing body chairman and former South Korean ambassador to Geneva now chairman of the ruling party’s Foreign Relations Committee.

They had hoped to get a concrete commitment from Myanmar’s military leaders that they would continue to cooperate with the ILO to stamp out forced labor and the ILO representative would be allowed to travel freely in the country. But, instead, the situation deteriorated.

Myanmar has found particularly unacceptable the creation of a mechanism by the ILO to help victims of forced labor and regarded this as an invasion of the country’s jealously guarded sovereignty.

Maupain’s lower-level mission was intended to clarify the situation before the ILO governing body met in Geneva next month. The ILO was hoping to secure a sincere commitment from the regime to make a concerted effort to eliminate forced labor and to improve the situation of the ILO representative in Yangon. Instead, the mission was told Myanmar intended to leave the ILO.

For months there has been an active public campaign throughout the country to throw out the ILO. The pro-government mass organizations - the Veteran Soldiers Organization, the Union Solidarity and Development Association, and the Women’s Association - have held mass rallies condemning the ILO and urging the authorities to kick out the ILO.

The ILO representative in Yangon recently has received more than 20 lurid death threats, according to an ILO statement. “They threatened to cut off his head and to poison him,” an ILO spokesman said. These threats have since ceased, but no action has been taken by the authorities to investigate who was responsible.

Now that Myanmar’s decision is on the record, the generals can continue to cooperate with the ILO during the two-year notice period and possibly withdraw their notice later if the current problems are resolved.

Or, as is more likely, they may decide to stop immediately all cooperation with the ILO and close down the Yangon office. Whichever option Myanmar decides on, the ILO governing body is likely to press for increased international sanctions when it meets next month.

In recent months, the regime has also stepped up its crackdown on workers, especially those who have had contact with the ILO. Earlier this year, the labor minister said it was illegal for villagers and workers to report cases of forced labor to the ILO.

Ten workers were arrested earlier this year because they sent evidence of forced labor to the ILO, according to Ko Ko Naing, an activist with the Federation of Trade Unions, Myanmar (FTUB). They were sentenced to several years in jail earlier this month by a special court in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison.

A few days later, a young National League for Democracy leader, Su Su Nway, was sentenced by a court in Insein prison to 18 months for allegedly swearing at and threatening local authorities.

Earlier this year, Su Su Nway successfully sued the local authorities for using forced labor. They were given prison sentences. But the authorities counter-sued the activist. “Su Su Nway did not receive a fair trial and was unjustly sentenced,” said Ko Tate Naing, secretary of the Burmese Association for Political Prisoners.

“The authorities clearly intended to punish Su Su Nway for her bravery, and in doing so intimidate other villagers into not speaking out against the practice of forced labor,” he said.

In this growing atmosphere of intimidation and harassment, many labor activists in Myanmar believe the presence of the ILO in Yangon is essential if they are to have any measure of protection.

“There are already hundreds of labor activists and workers wrongfully locked up in the military’s prisons throughout the country,” Ko Ko Naing told IPS.