RIGHTS-BURMA: Latest Crackdown Boosts Pressure on Investors

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Aug 13 1998 (IPS) - A renewed crackdown by the Burmese government on the country’s pro-democracy movement and its international supporters has added to the woes of business concerns already enduring criticism and local sanctions for their trade ties with Rangoon.

The arrest this week of 18 foreigners working for a pro- democracy group, the Alternative ASEAN Network, is the latest embarrassment for U.S. and Western companies that have maintained trade with the military-led Burmese regime. In a further development, Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi again has confronted authorities by attempting to meet her supporters in Rangoon.

The Free Burma Coalition, a US-based group whose members include six American citizens and two Filipinos among those detained this week, argued that all companies doing business in Burma – including the Union Oil of California (UNOCAL), France’s Total and Japan’s Mitsubishi, should get out.

“These companies pretend not to notice the appalling behaviour of their military partners,” said Dan Orzech, a corporate campaign leader for the Coalition. “But their silence implies consent, and that must change, starting now.”

According to the Coalition, the 18 activists, many of them college students, were charged by the regime with “incitement to riot with street violence (and) bloodshed”, simply after handng out cards in Rangoon that said, “We have not forgotten you. We support your hopes for human rights and democracy.”

A Burmese government spokesman in Rangoon told reporters the activists had been detained Sunday after handing out thousands of small pamphlets bearing the number ‘8888’ – a reference to Aug. 8, 1988, when student protests against the junta were brutally quashed. “At this moment, I can’t say the extent of legal action that will be taken against them,” the spokesman added.

“We want to see them released,” responded Jeremy Woodrum of the Free Burma Coalition. “We are concerned that they may be mistreated … The Burmese military justice system is recognised internationally as a farce.”

The new confrontation with Suu Kyi, meanwhile, follows a six- day standoff with the junta last month. On Wednesday military officers for the second time put up roadblocks in order to prevent her from meeting members of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in Rangoon. Suu Kyi reportedly plans to travel into Rangoon anyway, although her previous trip resulted in her staying six days at a roadblock until police removed the hunger-stricken leader from her car.

Reports from Rangoon say this time she is travelling in a minivan which is believed to be loaded with food and water.

The junta believes that the NLD plans demonstrations throughout the month, not only to honour the tenth anniversary of the Aug. 8 massacre but to mark the Aug. 21 deadline the opposition has set for the regime to convene a parliament. The government is unwilling to allow parliamentarians to meet, since that would essentially force the regime to recognise 1990 elections which Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly and which the junta never honoured.

As the junta cracks down on its domestic opposition, however, pressure is growing from outside Burma.

Next month, the state of Massachusetts will go to federal court to defend its sanctions policy, which penalises firms that invest in Burma in their efforts to win state contracts. They are opposed by the National Foreign Trade Council, a coalition of some 600 US businesses – as well as by the European Union, which has filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the case.

The businesses contend that the local sanctions violate the U.S. Constitution by contradicting federal foreign policy – including President Bill Clinton’s decision last year to bar new U.S. investments in Burma without prohibiting existing deals. But Simon Billenness, senior analyst at the Franklin Research and Development investment firm in Boston, countered that “local laws actually supplement sanctions at the federal level”.

In any case, the sanctions drives – as well as consumer boycotts directed at firms that deal with Rangoon – have largely succeeded at pushing companies to end their work in Burma.

This week, the Atlantic-Richfield Company (ARCO), which had invested in two gas projects that provided more than 55 million dollars to Burma, announced it would not renew its remaining exploration lease for offshore oil there. The decision occurred nearly a year after ARCO board member John Slaughter said he wanted the company to end the offshore oil leases in Burma’s Andaman Sea.

“We welcome ARCO’s withdrawal from operations in Burma and are encouraged that companies like ARCO and Texaco have followed the spirit of the US sanctions against Burma,” said Sein Win, the US- based opposition leader recognised by the NLD as Burma’s prime minister. “We hope that ARCO’s withdrawal will influence UNOCAL to follow suit, as they now remain the sole U.S. oil company funding the junta.”

UNOCAL, however, has been adamant in maintaining its 1.2- billion-dollar joint venture with the French Total oil company to build the Yadana gas pipeline in southern Burma.

“We have seen some progress in the creation of jobs and income, not only in our project but in general,” UNOCAL chief executive officer John Imle told Asiaweek last year. “I see that as positive, and I would like for that to accelerate. Sanctions would inhibit it … (Sanctions) hurt people and do not change the leadership.”

Still, following the retreat from Burma by Texaco, PepsiCo, Amoco, and other major US companies – now to include ARCO – UNOCAL is the largest target for the US sanctions campaign. “UNOCAL has to get with the programme and stop supporting repression,” Free Burma Coalition acitivst Kevin Rudiger said.