Retaliation on Unionists in Southeast Asia Shows ‘Worrying Corporate Backslide on Human Rights’

Chea Chan and Myo Myo Aye hail from different countries—Cambodia in the former and Myanmar in the latter—yet the difficult predicaments both union leaders currently face signal a marked deterioration in the ability of workers to organize in Southeast Asia’s garment industries, where freedom of association has become increasingly elusive despite the manifold constitutional safeguards and corporate codes of conduct that are meant to protect it.

On July 25, Myo Myo Aye, leader of the Solidarity Trade Union of Myanmar, or STUM, was detained on what union members say were unknown charges and without being given the benefit of due process. The arrest happened under distressing circumstances, they said. Authorities had forced Myo Myo Aye’s son to kneel at gunpoint to demand that she hand over her digital devices before hauling her away in handcuffs. At a concurrent raid at the STUM’s headquarters, a dozen people in plain clothes, including the Shwe Pyi Thar ward administrator, were described as forcibly entering the office to confiscate laptops and cellphones. Chue Thwel, Myo Myo Aye’s daughter, was present at the second raid. A few days later, after she mentioned her mother’s arrest on social media, she and three other STUM staffers, too, were arrested.

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“To date, we do not know where human rights defender Myo Myo Aye, her daughter and the other detainees are being illegally held, or the reasons for their detention,” wrote organizations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign and Human Rights Watch in a joint statement. “We are, however, concerned that they may be held at the interrogation center at Shwe Pyi Thar, which is notorious for its use of torture and degrading treatment against detainees. Myo Myo Aye also urgently needs access to her regular medication for her pre-existing medical conditions. However, it has been impossible to deliver the medication to her, and we are thus concerned for her well-being and safety, as well as that of the other detainees.”

It was only in January that Honeys Garment Industry Limited, a Burmese subsidiary of Japanese retailer Honeys Holdings, dropped a longstanding lawsuit against Myo Myo Aye that accused the leader of defamation following the firing of nearly 450 workers who had been protesting the factory’s excessive production quotas. HGIL blamed Myo Myo Aye for rousing employees to strike by “guiding workers through Facebook and other social network pages with flattery and motivational activities,” disrupting factory production and smearing the company’s reputation through newspaper articles and messages shared in a workers’ group chat.

“Honeys withdrew the lawsuit, but there was no recognition of the mental and physical hardship done to Myo Myo Aye over the last seven-plus years, and there was no apology,” said Roy Ngerng, regional urgent appeal coordinator for East Asia at the Clean Clothes Campaign. “Myo Myo Aye also spent an amount of money on the legal fees and other costs, and there was no recognition of it by Honeys, or compensation. Honeys has still not acknowledged the violations committed against the 448 workers, and to provide remedy or compensate them, so we will continue to demand from Honeys an apology and compensation.”

While its unclear what links, if any, connect Myo Myo Aye’s arrest with the Honeys lawsuit—the company has declined to comment—Johnson Yeung, international urgent appeal coordinator at the Clean Clothes Campaign, said that factory owners have weaponized the systemic repression in Myanmar against STUM’s organizing work, and that brands have the power to use their influence to rewrite the narrative.

“Brands and multi-stakesholder initiatives that are operating in Myanmar have the leverage to get STUM activists out, and they should collectively exert pressure against the suppliers and the junta,” he said.

Chea Chan, a Cambodian mechanic who attempted to form Wing Star Shoes’ first independent union, was arrested without a warrant and subsequently imprisoned for six months in early 2024. He was later released after the charges were ruled baseless by the Cambodian appeals court, which concluded that the factory’s management had filed a police complaint without tangible evidence, making it a cut-and-dry case of retaliation.

Organizations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign and the Worker Rights Consortium have hit out at Asics and Muji, two of Wing Star Shoes’ buyers, for failing to provide the father of three with compensation for his and his family’s financial losses, including the loss of their home, a year after his release. While Wing Star Shoes has rehired Chan, he works in an outbuilding alone and far away from his co-workers, contrary to earlier claims by Asics that he would be reinstated.

“He previously supervised all the mechanics and accessed both main factory buildings to do so, and is not basically in solitary confinement doing things that aren’t really of any use as a very obvious way to wear him down and crush his spirit after he was already in jail for six months on charges they completely fabricated,” said Thulsi Narayanasamy, director of international advocacy at the Worker Rights Consortium.

On Wednesday, Wing Star Shoes offered less than one-third of the compensation required by Chan, plus assurances that he would return to his original position and retain his right to organize. Chan, with the support of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions, or CATU, has rejected the offer as inadequate, both to recover his land and pay for medical treatment for health issues he sustained during his time behind bars.

The Worker Rights Consortium has also poked holes in Asics’s Aug. 28 statement to defend its response after a “rejoinder” by CATU. The organization said that while Asics conveys concern and reports supplier engagement, its insistence that “further investigation” is needed, plus “false” claims regarding the origins of the criminal complaint and promises of engagement with grassroots stakeholders, shows an approach the remains “procedural and insulated” and “used as a pretext to avoid delivering meaningful remediation or genuine respect for freedom of association.”

Narayansamy said she found it difficult to understand why Asics, which did not respond to a request for comment, is “so reluctant to do the right thing,” particularly given its significant leverage over Wing Star Shoes, including the ability to withdraw business. She said that Asics’s failure to remedy its supplier’s retaliatory criminal complaint against Chan is part of a “worrying corporate backslide on human rights” that dismisses the use of criminalization to silence unionists in the region, compounding workers’ hardships.

“Asics’s failure to ensure compliance with a longstanding supplier with a long track record of rights abuses exposes an alarming gap in the company’s ability to uphold the human rights commitments it makes to consumers,” she added. “Asics has both the responsibility and the means to resolve this ongoing violation right now. Its stated commitments to respect workers’ rights can only be met by securing reasonable compensation for Chan’s horrific ordeal and ensuring its supplier upholds freedom of association so that 20,000 workers have a chance at improving their conditions.”