L OOTE D L A N D ,
P ROUD P E OPL E :
The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
A Report by Canadian Friends of Burma
“We must persevere in the struggle
…and learn to liberate our minds
from apathy and fear.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy
w w w. c fob. org
I SBN # 0-9731702-0-4
L O OT E D L A N D , P R O U D P E O P L E :
The Case for Canadi an Action in Burm a
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
FACTS ABOUT BURMA
BURMA: A CHRONOLOGY
CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND TO 1988
Rise of Nationalism
Ne Win and Isolationism
Growth of Heroin Industry
CHAPTER 2: THE MEN BEHIND THE MASSACRES
The Ordeal of Aung San Suu Kyi
04
04
07
08
10
14
CHAPTER 3: THE HUMAN COSTS OF MILITARY RULE
018
Refugees
Political Prisoners
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Forced Relocation
Forced Labour
Students and Education
Political Prisoners
Freedom of the Press
The Militarization of Society
Women Living under a Military Dictatorship
Political Prisoners
CHAPTER 4: THE CRIMINAL ECOMONY
Sectors Complicit with Forced Labour
Opium,Heroin and a Drug Economy
CHAPTER 5: FORCED LABOUR AND THE ILO
ILO Commission of Inquiry 1998 Report
Follow-up to the 1998 Report
CHAPTER 6: GEOPOLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES
Neighbouring Countries
Malaysia,Singapore and ASEAN
Canada and Other International Influences
The United Nations
Other National Governments
How Does Canada Measure Up?
Civil Society
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS
Canada’s Role
Development Assistance
Trade and Investment
FURTHER READING
WEB CONNECTIONS
25
30
34
44
47
50
This dossier on Burma was written by Clyde Sanger and commissioned by Canadian Friends of Burma.
It is primarily intended for the information of Canadian Members of Parliament,
particularly those who travel to Southeast Asia and those who are looking for stronger ways
to assist the return of democracy to Burma. It is hoped that many others — travellers,students
and human rights activists — will r ead it, raise their voices and take action
on behalf of the millions of people in Burma who need their help.
Acknowledgement s
Quite a number of people played a role in the development and editorial process of this document.
Thanks to Corinne Baumgarten, Peter Gillespie,Shareef Korah, Mika Levesque,
Rita Morbia, Gary Rozema, Penny Sanger, and Harn Yawnghwe.
P R E FAC E
A MILITARY DICTATORSHIP FIRST TOOK ROOT IN BURMA IN 1962 WITH THE SEIZURE OF POWER IN A MILITARY COUP
by General Ne Win. Ne Win resigned in 1988 but, at the age of 91, was still believed to be wielding influence
behind the scenes in 2002. Ne Win took over a country that, since 1948 when it achieved independence from
Britain, had struggled to implement the democratic ideals inspired by its national hero General Aung San. Aung
San, father of National League for Democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was assassinated with most of his
4
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
cabinet by a rival only five months before independence. Nevertheless, during the first decade of their independence,
citizens of Burma elected their own government, debated its policies freely and read independent newspapers. But
World War II had left a trail of poverty, destruction and a widespread use of firearms throughout the once rich
and peaceful country. The difficulties raised by strong ethnic aspirations for autonomy within the country had not
been addressed. When the new democratic leaders — well-intentioned and neutralist but inexperienced — failed
to deal effectively with these issues the army stepped in, initially as a caretaker government. Almost immediately
university students reacted angrily to the severe new restrictions imposed by the soldiers. The stage was set for
tragedy. Since then, and especially since the military re-asserted its control after the 1988 uprising, Burma has
suffered from an ugly increase in abuse of human rights, as well as a massive increase in heroin production and a
further deterioration in the country’s once rich and stable economy.
This dossier will give many details of these crimes: thousands of political prisoners; massacres of unarmed and
peaceful protesters; forced relocation of hundreds of thousands o f villagers which has resulted in at least one
million internally displaced; untold numbers compelled to do forced labour ; hundreds of thousands of others
living as refugees or illegal immigrants in neighbouring countries. It will tell of the massive growth of the
Burmese army, the once respected Tatmadaw, its documented participation in the illegal drug industry, and
routine rape of women and girls, especially among the ethnic nationalities. It will describe how the governing
council of generals, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (now renamed the State Peace and Development
Council, SPDC) promised to respect the multi-party elections in 1990, and betrayed that promise behind the
armour of tanks and brutality.
My hope is that by reading this document, Members of Parliament and the Canadian people will stir the
Canadian Government to review its policy toward Burma. For some ten years Canada has spoken strong words
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
5
in criticism of the Burmese regime but has not taken effective economic action to curb the Canadian investment
and trade that help underpin that regime. One consequence is that many Canadian investors and tax-payers are
unwittingly benefiting from indirect participation in the economy of a country described by human rights
groups as one of the world’s most brutal regimes. Another is that Canadian trade and investment with Burma
has increased greatly in the past decade. Imports from Burma have risen from $14.5 million in 1996 to $60.97
million in 2000, more than three-quarters of that from the garment industry. Canadian investment, much of it
in mining enterprises, includes Ivanhoe Mines, a 50-50 partnership with the regime which runs Burma’s largest
mining complex.
The story of modern Burma is an example of the dilemma facing those which were first overrun by colonialism
and then, upon independence, were wracked by insurgency — due in part to the after-effects brought on by the
colonizer’s divide-and-rule tactics. Thus,a situation of instability was created that was easily exploited by powerseeking military leaders. While castigating western culture and influence, however, this military régime has
joined hands with powerful corporate partners who are helping them to exploit the country’s abundant natural
resources. For example, Ivanhoe Mines, one of the oldest foreign partners of the military rulers, contributes to
the régime’s idea of economic development, but in doing so it helps to drive out some of the country’s most
precious asset — its people.
Among the thousands who have fled the military over Burma’s b orders into Thailand, India, Bangladesh and
China, Canadian policies are at work assisting these refugees. Several Canadians work here, alongside exiled
Burmese and others, to help train and build the capacity and skills of refugees, to document human rights violations inside Burma for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and the International
Labour Organization, and to combat the menace of poverty, illness, drugs and despair.
These Canadians are helping the Burmese prepare for the return of a democratic government to Burma.
Meanwhile, Canadian mining investors are helping to prop up a regime that can only exist by driving such
activists out of the country. And the Canadian government, its taxpayers and investors are operating in contradictory ways: on the one hand, by allowing Ivanhoe to help maintain Burma’s military régime, and offering tax
benefits for its work; and, on the other, by helping pay to alleviate the human tragedy the régime has created
among its own citizens.
Perhaps this is an example of Canada’s penchant for compromise. But still it raises the deeper question about
Burma in the context of corporate globalization. The last 10 years of engagement with Burma clearly illustrate the
failure of business to heal the ills of the people of Burma. Investment and trade have not trickled down to the poor,
or created real economic or social growth. Canadians who are grappling with the contradictions of globalization
— especially in a militarized economy under the control of a regime which holds onto power by the use of force —
should find Burma an educational case.
There is also a question for Burmese and foreign human rights and democracy activists. Burma is much more
than a test of patience for them. They do not trust in weapons or violence, like the well-armed Tatmadaw.
They acknowledge that the complexities of cultural differences and economics are barriers to reconciliation. What
reasonable concessions will the activists make, acceptable to all sides, in order to achieve a peaceful transition to a
democracy that includes a role for all the peoples of Burma? What help will they and the international community
offer to the task of rebuilding this once proud and wealthy country?
Clyde Sanger
Ottawa,2002
6
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
FAC TS
A BO U T
BURMA
(RELIABLE
AND
OT H E RW I S E )
MOST STATISTICS ABOUT BURMA ARE NOTORIOUSLY UNRELIABLE IN THIS COUNTRY THAT WAS ISOLATED FOR MANY YEARS
and is now so politically divided. Some figures, particularly in the Human Development Repoort (HDR) of the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP), may not adequately reflect estimates from the ethnic areas.
The United Nations and the United Nations Development Program must rely on national estimates for the
statistics given below (see especially figures for adult literacy and military expenditures).
Land Area
676,552 square km (261,218 square miles) or twice the size
of Italy and slightly larger than Manitoba.
Population
(the last census was held in 1983, current estimates vary)
Official figure 52 million, but 48 million is often cited,
with 2.2 percent annual growth. In 1998 the UNDP Human
Development Report (HDR) cited national estimates of
44.5 million projected to 53.5 million in 2015.
with an index of 0.935. The HDI measures three dimensions:
life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted per capita
income. The HDI was refined in 1999 with a new formula on
income,which lifted Burma from the “low human development”
category.
Major Ethnic Groups
Burman 68%, Shan 9%, Karen 7%, Rakhine 3%, Rohingya 1%,
Mon 4%, Chin 3%, Kachin 2%, Karenni 1%, Other 2%.
Religion
Life Expectancy at Birth (UNDP HDR, 2000)
Buddhist 89%, Muslim 5%, Christian 4%, Animist 2%.
60.6 (female 62.3 years,male 59 years).
Agriculture
Adult Literacy (UNDP HDR, 2000)
The Agriculture Ministry says 12 million hectares are cultivated
and agriculture provides 37 percent of GDP.
84.1%, female 79.5%, male 88.7% (the military claimed that
adult literacy was 18.7% in order to get the UN’s Least Developed
Country status and qualify for debt relief, which highlights the
unreliability of statistics in Burma.)
Infant Mortality Rate
73.71 deaths/1,000 live births (2001 est.).
Human Development Index HDI (UNDP HDR, 2002)
0.585 in 1999, or 125th among 174 countries, near the bottom of
“medium human development”. By comparison, Canada was first
Allocation of Government Resources (UNDP HDR, 2000)
for public education (1995-97) 1.2% of GNP; for public health
(1996-98) 0.2% of GDP; *for military expenditures (1998) 3.0% of
GDP. (comparative figures for Canada:6.9%, 6.4% and 1.3%).
*the allocation for military expenditures,as given here, is less
than that for either Botswana or Lesotho and must be treated
with some disbelief. Defense spending is generally believed to
make up at least 40% of the regime’s national budget.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
7
B U R M A : A C H RO N O LOG Y
1820 British move into Burma and begin annexing the former
1948 Union of Burma achieves independence. U Nu heads
Arakan and Mon kingdoms as well as Karen areas that were
under the sovereignty of the Burman king.
democratic government. Armed opposition by Communist
factions. Negotiations with Arakan, Karen, Karennis and
Mons break down leading to armed conflict. Nationalist
Chinese fleeing Mao Tse Tung’s troops, invade Shan State.
1885 British occupation of Mandalay, abolition of Burman
monarchy.
1886 Burma is incorporated into British Empire as a province of
India. Pacification of the independent Karenni and Shan
states as well as the Chin and Kachin hills begin.The Karenni
territory is recognized as a sovereign nation.
1922 The independent Shan states are incorporated into a
Federated Shan States under British protection.
1937 Britain implements 1935 Government of Burma Act and
separates Burma from India.
1942 Japanese invade with help from Burma Independence
Army (BIA).
1958-1960 Ne Win leads caretaker military government to
restore order and prevent the Shan State from exercising its
constitutional right to secede from the Union.
1960 U Nu wins multiparty elections, with pledge to make
Buddhism the state religion; but ruling party fractures.
Constitutional conference in Taunggyi calls for the amendment of the 1947 constitution. The “Federal Movement” to
rebuild Burma as a federation of equal states as originally
intended in the Panglong Conference, was founded.
1962 Ne Win heads military coup, imposes one-party rule and
isolates the nation.
1945 BIA leads liberation,British return and institute home rule.
1976 Leaders of nine ethnic-minority groups form National
1947 Panglong Conference — Chin, Kachin and Shan leaders
Democratic Front (NDF) to forge united resistance and call
for “genuine federalism”.
agree to join their homelands with“Burma Proper”as equal
partners, and seek independence from Britain. Aung San
assassinated.
8
1988 Ne Win resigns. Non-violent uprising led by students
follows. Military responds by massacring more than 3,000
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
peaceful protesters on August 8. In September the military
form State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).
Canada along with other Western countries suspends bilateral aid. To appease domestic upheaval and international
condemnation, SLORC announces it will hold multiparty
elections.Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK),daughter of Aung San,
enters politics.The National League for Democracy (NLD)
is formed.
1989 Aung San Suu Kyi placed under house arrest after a triumphant campaign in many parts of Burma.In June SLORC
announces country’s name is to be changed from Burma to
Myanmar. Desperate for foreign currency after decades of
isolation, SLORC opens doors to foreign enterprise. First
cease-fire agreements made with Wa and Kokang armies,
which had served under Communist Party of Burma.Truces
lead to permitted growth of heroin industry.
1990 NLD wins landslide election (over 81 percent of parliamentary seats) against military’s party in May, but is denied
power. National Coalition Government of the Union of
Burma (NCGUB) is formed in December.
1991 Burma a rmy begin campaign against Muslims in Arakan
State and 300,000 refugees flee to Bangladesh. Aung San
Suu Kyi wins Nobel Peace Prize.
1998 NLD holds party conference on eighth anniversary of election, May 27. When junta rejects call to convene parliament
by August, the Committee Representing the People’s
Parliament (CRPP) is established in Rangoon, composed of
MPs, 9 from the NLD and one representing four ethnic
national parties.
2000 November. In an unprecedented resolution, International
Labour Organization (ILO) delegates call on membership
and other international organizations to act against forced
labour practices in Burma. In October there begins a series
of secret talks between SPDC’s Secretary (1) Lt.-Gen. Khin
Nyunt and Aung San Suu Kyi. The outcome of these is
still unclear.
2001 The United Nationalities League for Democracy (UNLD),
an umbrella organization for non-Burman political parties
formed in the wake of the 1988 uprising was revived by
exiled politicians. Official refugee figures of Burmese in
Thailand rise to 136,000, not including one million “illegal
Burmese migrants”.Mizoram state in India shelters at least
50,000, mostly Chin people, from Burma. Ethnic leaders
appeal to the military and Aung San Suu Kyi to return to the
spirit of Panglong and offer to work together with them to
rebuild the nation.
1993 First meeting of SLORC’s National Convention to draft new
constitution.
1994 Intense Tatmadaw (army) offensives in Karen, Karenni and
Mon states leads to flight of some 110,000 refugees over
Thai border. UN General Assembly calls for tripartite dialogue — the military, democracy forces and ethnic nationalities — in order to restore democracy.
1995 Aung San Suu Kyi is released in July from house arrest, but
still closely confined. In November NLD withdraws from
military-controlled National Convention.Aung San Suu Kyi’s
meeting with Senior General Than Shwe and Lt-General
Khin Nyunt is televised nation-wide.
1996 “Visit Myanmar Year” campaign to boost tourism leads to
major increase in forced labour at temples, airports, hotels
and other tourist sites.
1997 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) admits
Burma to membership in July. SLORC in November alters
its name, but little else, to State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC).
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
9
C H A P T E R O N E : B AC KG RO U N D
TO
1988
HALF
A CENTURY AFTER BURMA’S INDEPENDENCE THE DIVISIVE EFFECTS OF ITS OCCUPATION BY THE BRITISH
during the colonial period were still obvious — and growing. As Martin Smith writes in his seminal book Burma:
Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity: “Nation building was never a British priority”. Burma was then, and is now,
“one of the most complex ethnic mixes in the world” with some 100 languages identified. Burmans (those living
in and around the central plain) make up a majority; but even under the 1974 constitution which emphasized
centralism, the map showed seven ethnic minority states — the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah (Karenni), Mon,
Rakhine (or Arakan) and Shan — as well as seven divisions where Burmans predominated.
The key division was between what the British called “Burma Proper” and the “Frontier Areas.” These frontier areas,
comprising some 90,000 square miles, or more than one-third the land of British Burma, included Karen, Karenni
and Shan states, the Salween district and parts of Arakan, Chin, Kachin and the Naga hills.
The British occupation was piecemeal and haphazard. They moved into Arakan and Tenasserim on the coast in
the 1820s after disputes along the frontier with India. In 1885 they carried off the last Burman king, Thebaw, and
his queen Supayalat from Mandalay to exile near Goa. In doing so, they st ruck at the heart of a cultured and
sophisticated society. The monarchy having been abolished, they devolved authority to village headmen and
introduced a limited form of local democracy into the central plains and the delta area. In the frontier areas
hereditary rulers and chiefs were left in charge. American Baptist missionaries set out to convert the Karen
villagers, while British missionaries ventured into Kachin and other states. But on the whole, the British ignored
the social and economic needs of the people of the frontier areas and failed to develop their resources.
In contrast, they cleared the swamps of the lower Irrawaddy delta and British companies made large profits as
Burma became the world’s largest exporter of rice – 3 million tons in 1920. The British moved many Indian businessmen and workers of oil fields and timber plantations into Burma. Britain originally incorporated Burma into
its Empire as part of India in 1886, eventually employing many Indians as colonial administrators. By the 1930s,
Indians formed about seven per cent of the population and their dominance was so strongly resented that it provoked urban riots and a rural rebellion.Finally, in 1937, the British separated Burma from India and introduced
10
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
home rule. Anti-Chinese resentment and riots also sprung up around this time as China, Burma’s other big
neighbour, laid claim to much of the north and western frontier area during the period of British rule, and
Chinese migrated freely across the unmarked border.
By 1937, the year home rule was achieved, it was too late for nation building. Martin Smith concludes: “Clearly
colonialism did immense damage to inter-communal relations.” The Burmans, the majority people, were pushing
for independence from Britain, while the frontier peoples enjoyed their autonomy under the British. Thus, when
the Japanese army invaded in 1942, promising to create an independent country, Burman nationalists like Aung
San marched beside them for a time, while many of the ethnic minorities resisted alongside the British in the hills.
Rise of Nationalism
Aung San was the father of Aung San Suu Kyi. In 1936 he was a
20-year old student at Rangoon University when he was expelled for
writing anti-British articles. His classmate, U Nu, was also expelled
for anti-British speeches and a three-month student strike followed.
In 1930 they had formed the Thakin movement with a long-term aim
of Burma’s independence. To that end the two worked to bring peasants, workers and students together. As the strikes and demonstrations mounted during 1938, “the year of strife”, the movement
became more radicalized.
In 1939, six members of the Thakin movement, including Aung San,
founded the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). He also helped form
the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP), which by stages became his
political home. To support a nationalist uprising, they made links with
the Japanese and in June 1941 Aung San left for military training in
Japan with a group of his colleagues calling themselves the Thirty
Comrades. These included Ne Win, who had been a low-wage postal
clerk but who was to become the head of Burma’s dictatorship in 1962.
The Japanese Fifteenth Army invaded Burma in January 1942, mainly
to cut the Burma Road, the supply route to Chinese Nationalists
fighting against the Japanese in Yunnan province. With the Japanese
marched a 3,500-strong Burmese contingent under Aung San’s
command. But by 1944,the Burmese nationalists secretly formed the
Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) and in March 1945 the Burma National Army (BNA) rose against
the Japanese and entered Rangoon ahead of the Allies. Within a year, a split opened within the army leadership
between the PRP Socialists and the CPB when Aung San accepted seats on the British Governor’s Executive
Council. In January 1947 as a civilian he led a delegation to London and negotiated with British Prime Minister
Clement Attlee a course to independence.
Back in Burma, Aung San opened talks with some ethnic leaders who had fought the Japanese and who wanted a
loose form of union with the Burmans. At the second Panglong Conference in February 1947, several different deals
were made and adopted into the Constitution: The Federated Shan States were amalgamated with the independent
Wa States into a single Shan State, with the right of secession after a 10-year trial period. Karenni State was also
annexed to the Union with the right of secession. Bahmo district was amalgamated with the Kachin Hills to form a
Kachin State on the condition that it gave up its right to secede. The Chin Hills were given the status of “Chin Special
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
11
Division”. But the Karen, Arakanese and Mon, being part of Burma proper, were represented by Aung San and therefore could not speak for themselves. After independence, they tried to negotiate equal status like the Shan, Kachin
and Karenni States but when attempts failed, they moved into open rebellion. Later, the Karen, Arakan and Mon
States were recognized but it was too late to stop the fighting. Meanwhile, in March, the British launched ’Operation
Flush’ against the CPB, and Ne Wi n ,t h en a colonel,led a counter-insurgency unit of the Burma Army against them.
In July 1947 hopes of reaching independence with a strong and experienced leadership were shattered when a rival
assassinated Aung San and five Cabinet colleagues. Six months later, in January 1948, the Union of Burma came
into existence, outside the British Commonwealth but with independence, and with Aung San’s colleague U Nu
as its first prime minister.
Meanwhile Ne Win was making his way up the army’s structure. He watched from the barracks as U Nu’s
attempts to run a democratic government (1948-58) faltered, and as the ruling coalition split ranks.
A “Federal Movement” whose aim was to head off armed rebellion and try to solve Burma’s problems
constitutionally, had started in Shan State under Sao Shwe Thaike, first president of Burma 1948-1952. When, in
1958, several resistance groups surrendered to the U Nu government in order to swell the legal opposition coalescing around the “Federal Movement”, Ne Win stepped in at the head of a ’caretaker government’ of soldiers –
ostensibly to preserve national unity. Four years later, during his armed seizure of full government control, Ne Win’s
forces arrested Shwe Thaike and killed one of his sons. Shwe Thaike himself later died in custody. His widow and
surviving children eventually escaped to Thailand. Three sons, one daughter and his widow now live in Canada.
Ne Win and Isolationism
In 1960, U Nu’s ’clean’ faction of the AFPFL coalition had swept the elections, but it alienated all non-Buddhist
peoples by promoting Buddhism as the official state religion. As well, there were disastrous floods and oil
production slumped. When U Nu agreed to limited autonomy for Arakan and Mon states and to hold talks with
the Federal Movement leaders in 1962, General Ne Win with the backing of military commanders took power
again, this time to stay.
In the 26 years Ne Win ruled Burma after his 1962 coup he kept the country almost hermetically closed. He
preached “the Burmese Way to Socialism” with his Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) as the only legal
political party. But the BSPP was closer to the national socialism that Ne Win experienced in imperialist Japan
of 1941 than to any program of social democracy.
Ne Win’s personal motto was “One Blood, One Voice, One Command.” From his earliest days of soldiering, his
main adversary was the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), insurgents he never managed to quell. Their original
base in the Pegu Yomas was abandoned in the late 1960s and they relocated to the Shan and Kachin states, bordering on Yunnan province in China. Meanwhile, large remnants of the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang, actively
backed by the CIA, also marauded around Shan State. Ne Win’s answer was the ’Four Cuts’ campaign – cutting off
food and money, as well as intelligence and recruits for the rebels. Its methods were scorched earth, displacement
of peasants into ’strategic villages’, and a government defense militia, the KKY or Ka Kwe Ye, which he allowed to
control the opium trade in order to be self-supporting.
He expelled missionaries and international foundations and nationalized all industries and schools. An uneducated
autocrat, he closed most daily newspapers: in 1962 there were 30, by 1988 there were two. Licences to print Indian
and Chinese-language papers were discontinued. When Rangoon University students protested against new campus
regulations in July 1962, he sent in troops who shot demonstrators at close range. More than 300 were killed and
the union building was blown up with students inside.
12
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
Ne Win did enormous damage to the economy. Three times – in 1964, 1985 and 1987 – he implemented currency
devaluations, which made all the larger bills in circulation immediately worthless. His aim was to bankrupt the
black-market economy, but its effect was to rob everyone, from hill farmers to the urban poor, of their life savings.
His heartland was central Burma, and little development took place in the hill country and frontier areas.
Growth of Heroin Industry
The impoverishment of these frontier areas, the devastation of parts of Shan State by military-backed units, and
Ne Win’s destructive campaigns against the ethnic armies all contributed to the rapid growth of the heroin
industry. Peasants driven from rice-g rowing valleys cultivated poppies in the hills. To fight the growing Shan
nationalist movement in the 1960s, the Burma army formed a government defense militia, the KKY, whose
loyalty it secured by allowing the militia unfettered trade of goods including opium.
Under these conditions, Khun Sa and Lo Hsing-han were two militia leaders who soon became drug lords. And
in 1989, fearing that some ethnic armies — especially the United Wa State Army, the backbone of the collapsed
CPB — would join the democracy forces, the military signed cease-fires with them. In exchange, the military
granted these ethnic armies the right to freely trade opium without any restrictions. The drug industry grew
further as opium, which had been mainly destined for domestic smokers, was refined to morphine and then to
heroin (the drug of choice in the rich West) for a world market. Drug-smuggling, combined with insurgency,
made a very few people rich and brought hunger, addiction and ruin to most farmers and their families.
As the economy stagnated, educational standards plummeted under the BSPP government. In 1987 it announced
that the literacy rate, previously reported at 78.6 percent,was actually 18.7 percent. This unbelievable change was
an obvious manipulation of statistics, so that Burma could qualify for Least Developed Country status and special
consideration at the UN; but it was also admission of extraordinary neglect. The country was plunging into ruin
while its élite class of military officers,insulated from the country’s deterioration, ran the government and plundered
the country’s remaining riches.
Martin Smith has called the period of Ne Win’s rule “a 26-year sleep walk”. In truth, it was more like a nightmare.
The nightmare continues. The military officers who in 1988 accepted his resignation — and who as the State Law
and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) rejected the overwhelming victory of the National League for Democracy
and the democratic movement in the 1990 elections — are his political children.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
13
C HAPTER T WO : THE MEN BEHIND THE M ASSACRES
IRONICALLY
THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP WHICH
NE WIN
INITIATED IN
1962
DID NOT REACH ITS FULL
horror until after his resignation in July 1988. Student protests that had started in March were suppressed with
astonishing severity. Tanks roared through city streets and, in one horrifying incident, 41 students suffocated to
death in a prison van deliberately driven round Rangoon for hours. In his resignation speech, Ne Win warned:
“When the army shoots, it shoots to hit.”
But in the same speech he also proposed a national referendum on the question of a return to a multi-party system
of government. That proposal became a rallying cry for the democracy movement. When the BSSP’s old guard
rejected it and proclaimed martial law, mass demonstrations were called for 8 August (the auspicious date 8-8-88).
The army blo cked many streets, cutting off protesters, and shot students, workers and monks. The people of
Rangoon witnessed a massacre that day whose death toll, by a conservative estimate, was 3,000. In Mandalay and
elsewhere troops broke up nation-wide student-led protests with the same savagery.
The protests continued through August and September. A democracy movement began to coalesce around the All
Burma Federation of Students’ Union (ABFSU), set up under the leadership of Min Ko Naing, the assumed name
of zoology student, Paw U Tun, meaning Conqueror of Kings, and his two friends. Old politicians reappeared ,a n d
Aung San Suu Kyi became an immediate sensation when she addressed an estimated half million people in a huge
rally near Rangoon’s landmark Shwedagon pagoda. If the democracy movement was relying on ‘people power’ it
became clear they had it. Negotiations between the government and opposition figures about democratic reform
led to an emergency BSPP party congress which promptly abandoned Ne Win’s notion of a referendum. Instead
it promised a multi-party election.
As peaceful demonstrations continued — and included for the first time young military personnel — army violence escalated. In a shocking scene caught on video and shown around the world, infantry shot at hundreds of
students gathered outside the U.S. Embassy. Then, one week after the BSPP congress, on 18 September, the mil14
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
itary pushed aside the civilian leader they had been parading and formed the State Law and Order Restoration
Council. General Maung Aye was chairman, but the brains behind him was, and remains, Lt. General Khin
Nyunt, chief of military intelligence.
Maung Aye continued to assert that elections would go ahead, and on 24 September the National Union Party
(NUP) was formed. It was, quite clearly, the former BSPP in disguise and it soon inherited all the assets and the
registration lists of Ne Win’s old party. But this time the military were forbidden to join the NUP – they would,
the general maintained, stand above politics as an arbiter.
The opposition’s quick response included creating the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi
and two former generals. Other groups led by former politicians flourished only briefly. The protests continued
for weeks, but the heavily armed troops unhesitating used force, targeting especially the students who were leading
the protests. A common estimate of the death toll in 1988 exceeds 10,000. A similar number of students and
activists fled to Burma’s bordering countries, the largest number finding refuge along the Thailand border.
In July 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been energetically touring the country on behalf of the NLD and reaching
mass audiences including ethnic nationalities, was put under house arrest. The same month, according to figures
given by diplomats, 7,000 criminals were unexpectedly released from jail and in their place some 6,000 activists
were arrested, of whom at least 2,000 were NLD members. Another NLD leader, ex-General Tin Oo, was sentenced
to three years in jail with hard labour. U Nu, who had emerged to form his own party, was also arrested. “Ye s ,t h ere
will be elections – but only when all the opposition leaders are in jail,” predicted one ambassador in Rangoon.
SLORC leader General Maung Aye’s promise that the army would stand by the result of the May elections, and would
then hand over to the elected government, was based on the widespread belief that the opposition was poorly organized. Having taken the precaution of arresting its charismatic leader Aung San Suu Kyi and imposing martial law that
included a ban on public meetings, strict censorship and an election commission under SLORC’s control, the
National Union Party (NUP) would be the easy winner it was thought. Instead, the NLD won resoundingly, taking
392 seats in the 485-seat Assembly with 80 percent of the total vote. (The party contested only 425 seats.) An alliance
of representatives of ethnic peoples, who combined under the name of the United Nationalities League for
Democracy (UNLD), won 65 seats. The NUP came a distant third, with 10 seats. Shell-shocked, the SLORC
generals and colonels squirmed and clutched at every weapon to delay a hand-over. They took six weeks to
announce the full results, and allowed two more months for defeated candidates to lodge appeals.
Then the Defence Ministry announced that a National Convention would be established to draw up guidelines
for a new constitution. Its Assembly would work on a draft that would have to be approved by the military and
then put to the people in a referendum – and so on, into the distant future. They added that each of the 27 parties
which had won seats in the election would have a single, equal vote in convention proceedings. The UNLD made
a political pact with the NLD and demanded a hand-over of government by mid-September 1990. This blocked
SLORC’s divide-and-rule tactics. Significantly, the armed resistance groups, which had in 1988 formed the
Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB) under the Karen leader General Bo Mya,announced they agreed in principle
to recognize the NLD as Burma’s government.
SLORC had no tactics left but the use of terror. Ahead of the deadline of mid-September, they arrested the NLD’s
acting leader, Kyi Maung, and his deputy, Chit Khaing. Though they were former colonels and senior comrades
of Ne Wi n ,t h ey were tried on treason charges and jailed for ten years. Soon afterwards, 40 more MPs were arrested,
two of whom died in prison. Eight other MPs, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s cousin Dr. Sein Win, found their
way through the mountains to the Karen National Union headquarters at Mannerplaw (Karen-controlled territory
in Burma) with the full support of the ethnic alliance and the mandate given by the majority (250) of elected
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
15
MPs. Dr. Sein Win, whose own father had been assassinated with Aung San in 1947, was sele cted to become
prime minister of Burma’s government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma
(NCGUB), now based in Washington D.C.
And what happened to the National Convention? The tale is simply told. It began work in January 1993, with the
regime insisting from the outset that the final constitution must ensure a formal role in the political process for the
army. Only 15 percent of its members were deputies elected in 1990, and all the other members underwent thorough
vetting before being accepted by the authorities. By the end of 1995 the NLD had withdrawn, claiming that it was
not a genuinely representative process. The regime said the convention would continue. In early 2002, a government
spokesman said it was working on “power sharing” but the going was slow because of the need for consensus.
The Ordeal of Aung San Suu Kyi
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father was assassinated in 1948. Prime Minister U Nu made
Aung San’s widow, Khin Kyi, ambassador to India in 1960, and 15-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi accompanied her
to New Delhi. Later, Aung San Suu Kyi went to study at Oxford where she married Himalayan scholar Michael
Aris. She was 42 and living in Oxford with Michael and their two sons, when in March 1988 she learnt her mother
had suffered a severe stroke.
She flew to Rangoon and was caring privately for her mother when on August 8 the army massacred thousands
of peaceful demonstrators in a bloodbath. Two weeks later, she announced her decision to enter the struggle for
democracy, telling a rally attended by an estimated 500,000 people near Rangoon’s Shwedagon Pagoda:“I could
not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on.”
She then toured the whole country for the newly formed National League for Democracy (NLD) in an inspired
campaign that mobilized the ethnic minorities who had seldom, if ever, been visited by someone who wanted
16
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
their support. Terrified, the generals openly threatened her, and then put her under house arrest in July 1989, ten
months before elections were held. After the NLD’s overwhelming victory, SLORC leaders said she would only
be freed if she abandoned politics and left Burma, promising never to return. She refused and remained under
strict house arrest for six years.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s remarkable book Freedom from Fearis a set of essays full of quietly powerful statements
about fear, corruption, perseverance and the revolution of the spirit. Edited by her husband Michael it was published in 1991, the year she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Michael and her sons were allowed to visit her
fairly regularly in the early part of her detention. Later, Michael’s applications for a visa were regularly turned
down. Her only regular visitor was a brigadier-jailer, checking on her needs. Dr. Aris came on two official trips
to Canada, to accept honorary degrees on her behalf at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University.
There were brief hopes, after her release from house arrest in July 1995, that there might be a steady and
reasonably swift transition to a democratic government. The SLORC leaders allowed her to hold weekly public
talks from a makeshift platform at the bottom of her driveway that became wildly popular. The large crowds
gathered in the road on University Drive alternatively laughed at her jokes and double entendres and listened to
serious proposals: especially a call for tripartite talks — among the elected parliamentarians, the ethnic leaders
and the army brass — and a continuing role for the army in national affairs. The generals forbade these weekly
gatherings in 1996.
Journalists, nevertheless, were still allowed to visit her; and many smuggled out tapes and videos of their
conversations, to spread her declarations around the world. The most comprehensive of these were the talks she
had during 1996 with an American Buddhist scholar, Alan Clements, who edited and published their conversations in a book, The Voice of Hope.
In 1998, the NLD demanded that the SLORC respect the results of the 1990 elections and convene parliament by
August that year, the tenth anniversary of the massacre. In response, the regime intensified its crackdown. It
decreed that NLD MPs sign pledges restricting their movements to their respective townships and report to the
nearest police station twice a day. The state-run paper, New Light of Myanmar, reported mass resignations of NLD
MPs, omitting to note these were forced by threatening visits of members of the new state run Union Solidarity
and Development Association. The New Light stepped up its scurrilous printed abuse of Aung San Suu Kyi, bluntly
warning that she could end up like Vietnamese and Nigerian leaders who were murdered. Military blockades
prevented her travelling outside Rangoon, and during several stand-offs she spent days in her car in protest.
In early 1999, when it became known that Dr. Aris was dying of prostate cancer, the SLORC régime was
unmoved. He and his wife had not seen each other since 1995, the last time the junta permitted him a visa. Once
again it refused the dying man’s request for a visa, adding that Aung San Suu Kyi was free to travel to England to
see him. Aung San Suu Kyi refused this trap, knowing that she would never have been allowed back into Burma,
and repeated what she had often said: her personal plight was insignificant compared with that of others in her
country who were languishing in state jails or were forced to labour for the generals. He died without ever seeing
her again.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation has eased somewhat. Since those days, diplomats from the United Nations and the
European Union have been allowed to visit her; and the Canadian ambassadors to Thailand have over the years
been allowed to see her on visits to Rangoon. The conversations she has had since October 2000 with Lt.-Gen. Khin
Nyunt have sparked worldwide speculation. Is the State Peace and Development Council (SLORC’s new name)
looking for a negotiated transition — or does it believe she and the NLD are about to abandon their demands? Her
record is clear, though, and won’t be broken. After surviving this appalling treatment for so long, Aung San Suu Kyi
will not bend from working to achieve what she considers to be the best outcome for her country.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
17
C H A P T E R T H R E E : T H E H U M A N C O S TS
O F M I L I TA RY R U L E
THE OVERWHELMING TRAGEDY IN BURMA IS THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF A ONCE RICH COUNTRY, IN BOTH HUMAN
and economic terms. The damage will take years to repair, long after the tired incompetence of the
ruling bunch of SPDC generals has faded into an ugly memory. Economic mismanagement and an appalling
record of violations of human rights by the military régime have turned a proud and prosperous people into one
of Asia’s poorest.
The social infrastructure is in a state of collapse, health care in particular having broken down. In August 2001, nine
United Nations agencies operating in Burma produced shocking figures on mother and child health. They placed
maternal mortality as high as 580 per 100,000 live births. Only 16 countri e s ,a ll in Africa, have a higher infant mortality rate. There are 1.1 million pregnant Burmese women in high-risk areas for malaria transmission. Less than
2 percent of rural households have access to piped water. More than 40 percent of children under five are
chronically malnourished. In addition HIV/AIDS is rampant, infecting an estimated 500,000 younger people.
UN agencies have called for more humanitarian aid, pointing out how much more assistance Laos and Cambodia
are receiving. But the root cause of distress is the wilful disregard of the people’s welfare by the SPDC. In a
response to the UN agencies, the Bangkok-based Federation of Trade Unions of Burma showed how SPDC’s
budget allocations had changed in the dozen years since it took power. Military expenditures had risen from
22.35 percent in 1988 to 49.93 in 2000; health care expenditures had declined from 4.71 to 2.53 percent, and
spending on education from 12.9 to 6.98 percent. These figures may well understate the real gap. The recent purchase of MIG-29 fighter aircraft from Russia at a cost of US$150 million has boosted military spending. In addition, in early 2002, the SPDC also purchased from Russia a 10 megawatt nuclear reactor, to be used for medical
and research purposes according to a regime spokesperson. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) —
the world regulatory agency — assessed that Burma’s preparedness to use and maintain a reactor safely was well
below the minimum standard. According to the UN Human Development Report, the growing imbalance in
Burma between military and combined health and education expenditures is only surpassed by two other countries,
Oman and Syria.
18
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
It is impossible to quantify the gross and widespread violations of human rights by the SPDC regime. The reports
of the Special Rapporteurs appointed by the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), have contained a
catalogue of violations by the army, from arbitrary executions, torture and rape to forced relocations and forced
labour. Kevin Heppner, a young Canadian,has worked to spread world awareness of this through detailed reports
of the Karen Human Rights Group. Local observers, mainly in Karen villages, document how individual and
group violations of human rights really happen — the killings, relocations, rape and forced labour inflicted on
named villagers by named soldiers. These are dated, compiled and delivered to the UNCHR, where they add
weight to the evidence of massive violations. Here are some examples of human costs and suffering:
Refugees
Refugees continue to flee the country to Thailand, India, Bangladesh and China.Some 136,000 refugees —Karen,
Karenni, Mon and others, now survive in border refugee camps and towns in Thailand, administered by the
Burmese Border Consortium. In addition, there are probably more than one million Burmese migrants in
Thailand, including about 150,000 Shan refugees who are not allowed to have camps. Some 260,000 Muslims
(mostly Rohingyas) from Arakan state fled to Bangladesh in 1991-92 and, when they were repatriated, about
20,000 fled back again to Bangladesh for safety. At least 50,000 Chins and others have fled to Mizoram, India
where they live as “illegals”.
Political Prisoner s
Amnesty International estimated in 2001 that there were still more than 2,000 political prisoners in Burmese jails.
The régime, exercising its new public relations skills, maximized media coverage of the 170 NLD prisoners it
released in the first seven months of 2001 by freeing a few at a time. Most had been arrested only the previous
fall. Others had long served their full sentences. In August the well-known journalist and NLD activist, San San
Nweh,was released.She had been arrested with her young daughter in 1994. But the activist Min Ko Naing, who
in 1988 founded the student federation ABFSU, which emphasized peaceful struggle, and was arrested in 1989,
is still being held in solitary confinement even after he has served a full 10-year sentence. He is known to have
been tortured in the early days of detention, and he was recently moved far from his family, on whom he relied
for food and medication. Torture and neglect of prisoners’ needs are common. On Human Rights Day in
December 1999, Min Ko Naing was co-awarded the John Humphrey Freedom Award in Montreal along with
Burmese doctor, Cynthia Maung. Canadian students have since carried on a postcard-writing campaign for his
release supported by Canadian Friends of Burma, Rights and Democracy and Amnesty International.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
19
Internal ly Displaced Per sons (IDPs) and Forced Relocation
Estimates of IDPs can only be very approximate, varying from 1 million to 3 million. These are mainly rural people
who have been forcibly relocated from their farms and villages to camps where they become a source of forced
labour, though they receive little food and cannot grow crops. Desperate, many flee to the jungle and forage for
food. Ne Win’s ‘Four Cuts’ strategy of forced relocation was propounded in order to cut off the main links —
food, finance, intelligence and recruits — between civilians and armed resistance groups in conflict areas. It
declared large areas in ethnic minority regions ‘free-fire zones’ and expelled people en masse into governmentcontrolled territory. The SLORC regime has adopted this strategy “with devastating results”, says Article 19 in its
booklet Burma beyond the Law, estimating that as many as 1.5 million people have been f orcibly moved sinc e
1988. This has taken pla ce mainly in ethnic minority areas. “At least 1,300 ethnic minority villages” have been
forcibly relocated since 1988, particularly in the Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Mon and Karen States.
Here are two examples of forced relocation. In March 1996, SLORC troops turned 21,980 households — some
100,000 people — out of 604 villages in thriving farming communities in central Shan State. The object was to
create a “free-fire” zone covering about 5,000 square miles, and to contain members of the Shan State Army to the
south. The farmers had to leave behind their animals and crops, and nothing was provided at the relocation sites.
Some were then used as forced labour, to work at military camps and on building roads.
The second example, also in Shan State, began in 1999 when troops started moving Wa farmers away from the
border with China down to the south-eastern corner of the state opposite Thailand. The régime’s explanation was
that it intended to end the Wa people’s involvement with the heroin industry and to persuade their farmers to
grow other crops in a fertile new area. The result has been that Shan farmers have been displaced by the Wa and
some have fled into Thailand. Critics say the real reason is to use the Wa people – whose leaders signed a ceasefire with the regime – as a buffer between Shan State Army fighters and a refuge in Thailand. So far, some 100,000
Wa have been relocated, and the final number may rise to 250,000.
20
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
Forced Labour
Human Rights Watch has calculated that in the years 1992-96 at least two million people were used as forced
labourers. The conscription of civilians for labour duties and porterage by the military is a major concern to
human rights monitors. The practice violates the 1930 ILO Convention on Forced or Compulsory Labour, which
Burma ratified in 1955.
Some well-documented examples of forced labour are the construction of the Kalay-Gangaw railway in Sagaing
division, and the Kabaw valley development in Chin State along the India border, where prisoners from Mandalay
Prison as well as local villagers were conscripted to clear land and build roads. In this last case, some 200 local
families were moved to open up areas for resettlement by Burman farmers from the central plains. They were
thought to be a more reliable buffer against ethnic forces on the border. A state-run shrimp industry in Lauglon
township in southern Burma employs Mon, Karen and Tavoyan forced labourers. Shrimps are one of Canada’s
largest imports from Burma, valued at Can$11.1 million in 2000.
Students and Education
Since students played a prominent role in the 1988 Democracy Movement and many were killed in the uprising,
SLORC leaders have treated students as enemies. They determined to tightly control the education system, particularly at university level. Lt.- Gen. Khin Nyunt chaired a national education committee, which transformed
the system, downgrading educational levels and violated other student rights in ways such as censoring seminar
papers, and directing what courses a high school graduate might follow. The universities were closed intermittently for 9 of the 12 years following the 1988 military take-over. High fences and strong gates have been built to
separate different faculties and prevent students from organizing mass meetings. When they re-opened in 2000,
undergraduate arts faculties were moved outside Rangoon,a long bus ride away for city dwellers. The new facilities were located near army bases and the campuses were divided into small components. The military, medical
and engineering universities have however remained open in the cities, and receive special aid.
In ethnic minority areas where SLORC negotiated cease-fires, local language schools have been closed. Reduced
budgets have meant scarce equipment, and high school teachers have resorted to selling everything from postcards to school bags to raise funds. Teachers also take on extra jobs to supplement poor pay. Another example of
scarcity: a university medical class of 30 students had to use a single text-book – which had been published in
1960. Nor are there many jobs, outside the military, for university students whose courses were cut short. As a
result, frustrated university graduates along with high school students have fled the country in large numbers.
Add to this the collapse of schooling in the areas of forced relocation and continuing conflict, and the education
picture is desperately bleak.
Freedom of the Press
According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (in a March 2001 report) press conditions in
Burma “remain among the worst in the world”. All media outlets are either owned or controlled by the SPDC, which
arrests its citizens for “crimes” that include listening to foreign short-wave radio broadcasts and using an unlicensed
fax machine. Internet use is strictly limited. Unauthorized use of a modem is punishable by 7 to 15 years in jail.
PEN Canada has listed three Burmese writers as “prisoners of special concern”. The well-known woman journalist
San San Nweh was recently released after seven years imprisonment for “spreading information injurious to the
state”. The other two writers had set out to compile a history of the student movement. Ko Aung Tun was accused
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
21
of “collaborating with terrorist groups” and given a 17-year prison sentence in 1998, while his assistant U Myo Htun
was sent to prison for 10 years. According to the latest report received at PEN Canada they had been subjected to
torture and prison conditions were “extremely bad”.
The only independent news available in Burmese comes via short-wave broadcasts from Radio Free Asia, Voice of
America (VOA), the BBC, and the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition station based in Norway. But it is
illegal in Burma to tune in. The NLD reported in January 2001 that a 70-year-old man was sentenced to two years
in prison after being caught listening to a VOA broadcast in a public coffee shop.
The Militari z ation of Soc iety
The presence in each village of township and village Law and Order Restoration Councils, responsible for forming a people’s militia, is insidious and permeating. They deliver forced labour, sometimes fight alongside
Burmese army (Tatmadaw) units,and keep opposition groups out of villages. Teachers,among others,are forced
to become members of the state-sponsored Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA) and to attend
military-like training. This has nothing to do with professional development, the courses being aimed at instilling
discipline and solidarity with the régime. According to an ABFSU paper on the education system, “at such
training courses the teachers have to wear military uniform and study military maneuvers and sing military
songs that arouse patriotism.” Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary 1 and Chief of Military Intelligence, has during
the 1990s chaired important government committees covering health, education, foreign affairs, border
development and tourism.
When SLORC reinvented itself as SPDC in December 1997, not only did the top generals remain in charge but they
also promoted to its governing council the regional military commanders. These major-generals are (in the words
of David Steinberg) “virtual warlords over their regional areas [and] now also have authority in the critical areas of
decision-making”. In particular, the military brass controls activities, including drug running, in the border areas
where ethnic minorities live. Both the Border Areas Development Program and the Ministry for the Development
of Border Areas and the National Races are run entirely by military men.
But after some high-level firings and a significant military shake-up at the end of 2001 the regime clearly was
trying to regain control of the regions again. It brought ten regional military commanders back to Rangoon,
making clear that their regional replacements would no longer be members of the SPDC governing council.
Though the top leadership remained the same, with General Than Shwe as chairman of the SPDC, Maung Aye as
commander-in-chief of the army and Khin Nyunt Chief of Military Intelligence and Secretary 1, observers judged
the shakeup a victory for Khin Nyunt, who is now director general of the Directorate of Defense Services
Intelligence. He and Than Shwe are generally believed to be more outward looking than Maung Aye, seeing the
critical need for more international investment and aid.
The Tatmadaw leadership is inextricably entwined with commerce and the country’s economy. It became
further involved in the business world in 1990 when the generals set up the Union of Myanmar Economic
Holdings (UMEH), which controls much of the investment in the industrial sector, including road and airport
construction as well as factory building. Forty per cent of UMEH is owned by the Defense Ministry’s agency for
importing weapons, the Directorate of Procurement. Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprises (MOGE), another
military-run state organization which oversees the new natural gas pipeline built from the Andaman Sea to
Thailand, is considered the country’s main channel for drug money laundering. The Paris-based Geopolitical
DrugWatch makes note of the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to MOGE’s Singapore bank account
which probably underwrite the regime’s large expenditures on military hardware, its embassies in Europe and
industrial investment at home.
22
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
Although the country faces no external threats, numbers in the army have climbed steeply since the military
grabbed power – rising from 125,000 in 1962 to 186,000 at the time of the 1988 massacre, and now to about
450,000. In relative numbers, this is five times the size of the Canadian armed forces. The Tatmadaw claims to
be the force for social cohesion in Burma, keeping it intact from both foreign enemies and internal insurgents.
While not monolithic, its hard-liners are a major force resisting democratic change. Socially, the military has
always been a desired career, as the route to advancement and privilege, with special rations and access to the
better schools and medical facilities. With these, as well as the perks described in the paragraph above, it is not
surprising that many citizens consider that their only chance to live a secure and comfortable life is to join
the military.
Women Living Under a Military Dictatorship
Women in Burma bear especially heavy costs, ranging from their vulnerability to violence and rape, to the effects
of poverty and dislocation on their dependent children, and their loss of community and ability to provide for
their families. They are the main victims of the military’s negligence in health care spending, which comprises
only 2.5 percent of the budget. In Burma’s many conflict areas they face armed warfare, forced relocation, impassable roads and high costs of health care when it is available. (Only about 60 percent of the population of Burma
has access to hospitals or clinics.) Family planning services have had a negligible impact, even in urban areas. Both
UNICEF and the Health Ministry agree that, although abortion carries a theoretical penalty of up to 10 years in
prison,half the maternal deaths in Burma result from illegal abortion. About 500,000 Burmese, of whom 40 percent are women, have been infected with HIV, according to a UN official.
The CEDAW Shadow Report, compiled in mid-2000 by five women’s organizations based along the Thai border,
is a detailed account of the present condition of women inside Burma. It focuses on education, health,state-perpetrated violence against women, and poverty, particularly as these issues relate to women in Burma’s rural conflict areas. It says that the hundreds of incidents of rape committed with impunity by SPDC officers and soldiers
have targeted women from the ethnic nationalities (especially the Karen, Karenni and Shan) at war with the
SPDC: “The rape is purposeful [and] intended to send a signal that the SPDC is more powerful than the ethnic
peoples. These rapes must be perceived as more than random acts perpetrated by rogue soldiers. By committing
such acts regularly, the SPDC army instills fear in all ethnic communities where women might be raped.”
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
23
Earthrights International in its 1998 report School for Rape similarly described rape as an institutional practice,
gratifying the soldiers’ desire for revenge against the ethnic fighters. Also reported by Earthrights International
as a common practice is military sexual slavery which occurs when the SPDC soldiers rape women who are
detained as forced labourers. This practice constitutes a violation of the slavery convention to which Burma
became a party in June 1927.
Some 40,000 Burmese women, most of them from ethnic groups, are believed to be working in Thai brothels.
Army personnel are either indirectly involved in, or turn a blind eye to, the procurement and trafficking of
women into prostitution across the Thai, Chinese and Indian borders. Poverty and the demand for virgin girls –
which has increased because of the threat of AIDS - means that more families are willing to sell young daughters
to agents, who often trick parents by saying their daughters will find work in restaurants. The CEDAW Shadow
Report says: “Violence against the women of Burma in the form of military rape and trafficking has reached
epidemic proportions. This violence will not abate until the conditions enabling it, namely, the high degree of
militarization in Burmese society, change significantly.”
There is no government body in Burma dedicated to achieving gender equality. The Myanmar National
Committee for Women’s Affairs is largely comprised of military men and their wives. Like the state-run USDA,
it acts as a vehicle for inculcating patriotic values rather than empowering women. The CEDAW Shadow Report
makes this general conclusion: “The barriers to women’s equality in Burma are directly linked to the ongoing civil
war and the allocation of national resources predominantly to military interests… Effective work towards the
genuine empowerment of women is not possible under the cur rent conditions in Burma. Therefore, the SPDC
must cease armed conflict and engage in tripartite dialogue with the legitimately elected government and the
ethnic groups in preparation for the transfer of political power. Until such time,appropriate measures to address
women’s fundamental health, education and economic needs will be empty gestures.”
24
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
C H A P T E R F O U R : T H E C R I M I NA L E CO N O M Y
THE SPDC MUST HAVE FOREIGN EXCHANGE IN ORDER TO BUY THE ARMS THAT KEEP IT IN POWER. ONCE KNOWN
as the rice-bowl of Asia, Burma has been so badly run that its economy is now on the ropes. The generals must
import food into this fertile land. Yet a 1991-1993 arms deal with China, estimated at US$1.2 billion (some say
up to US$3 billion), was made at a time when, according to an IMF study, Burma had foreign exchange reserves
of only $300 million. In mid-2001 the generals negotiated to buy 12 Mig-29 fighter jets from Russia for US$150
million. The army itself has more than doubled since 1988. Soldiers may be forced to grow their own food crops
or — more likely — to live off intimidation and villagers’ crops in ethnic areas — but they still need to be paid.
Where is money for all this military expenditure coming from? There is tourism, which the junta tried to popularize by launching “Visit Myanmar Year”in 1996-97. There are mining revenues, including key money from foreign companies,the biggest of them being Canadian. There are exports including shrimp and the growing sweatshop industry in cheap cotton goods – and Canada’s top imports have been clothing and shrimp. Most profitably,
there are drugs.
Sectors Complic it with Forced Labour
Tourism: The main problem the junta had in promoting “Visit Myanmar Year” and the tourism it sought in
1996-1997 was that much of the country — which could indeed be a beautiful and exotic holiday destination —
was off-limits because of military operations. This includes the security zone around the gas pipeline across
southern Burma from the Andaman Sea to Thailand and the wild and ruggedly beautiful frontier areas. Another
problem was forced labour. Travellers in and around Rangoon were not likely to see labourers in shackles any
more, but the sight of small children and their mothers breaking rocks by the side of the road was shocking. Aung
San Suu Kyi said:“It’s this ‘Visit Myanmar Year’ which is responsible for a lot of forced labour.” She asked tourists
not to visit Burma until democratic rule is restored. It seems holidaymakers are taking note: in the first quar ter
of 2001, only 43,000 tourists came — a 37 percent drop from the corresponding months of 2000.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
25
Examples of reported forced labour in tourism projects include: upgrading airports to accommodate passenger
jets carrying tour groups; building a railway line near Pagan’s temple complex; rebuilding the moat around the
Golden Palace in Mandalay. A 1995 UN report on Burma’s human rights situation stated “Many of the measures
the government has taken to prepare the country for foreign tourists reportedly constitute violations of human
rights.” Building new tourist facilities at famous sites meant the forced relocation of many Burmese families, for
instance in Mandalay, Pagan and other cities.
Clothing Exports: The garment industry works in complicity with the Burmese military, either through the
generals’ joint ventures with foreign companies or by being directly owned by units of the Union of Myanmar
Economic Holdings. This sector is repeatedly linked with allegations of forced labour, including child labour. It
has grown briskly in the last few years, and with it the volume and value of direct garment imports into Canada.
In 1998, Burma-made garments imported to Canada was valued at Can$8.0 million. A year later that figure
almost doubled, to $15.8 million, and by 2000 it had leapt to $47.5 million. Seen as a percentage of all imports
from Burma, garments grew from 57 percent of a total of $27.4 million in 1999, to no less than 78 percent of the
much larger total of $60.8 million in 2000. Garment imports (including men’s heavy winter parkas, 4,000 of
which were cleared through Vancouver in a single day!) are leading the way in a North American consumer trade
that grows in spite of spreading knowledge about the low-wage conditions and unsavory ownership behind the
Made in Myanmar label. In 2000, Walmart Canada was caught importing 60 tons of Burma-made clothes with
a value of US$1.2 million through the port of Vancouver. The company, whose boss had just won an award from
the Retail Council of Canada, and had repeatedly denied it was still importing from Burma, remains under
scrutiny by activists in Canada and the US.
Although several well-known American clothing corporations (eg. Levi, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne) have
refused to accept imports from Burma because of the human rights and harsh working conditions there, recent
figures of clothing exports to the United States have also risen sharply. The 1999 figure of US$168 million had
shot to $403.7 million in 2000. Both Democrats and Republicans called for a ban on Burma-made apparel in
early 2001.
26
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
Mining Revenues: A Canadian mining company, Ivanhoe Mines headed by financier Robert Friedland, holds the
single largest foreign mining investment in Burma, and most foreign-owned mines in Burma are Canadian.
Friedland began investing in Burma in 1994 with profits from the sale of the nickel ore discovery at Voisey Bay,
Labrador. He invested heavily — and jointly with the military — in an open-pit copper mining venture known
as S and K at Monywa, 100 km west of Mandalay in central Burma. This venture is reportedly linked to forced
labour practices: nearly 1 million workers toiled on the building of a railway line from Monywa to the district
centre of Pakokku, while another 5,000 villagers had to contribute their labour to the irrigation development
around the Thazi dam near Monywa. As the mining complex has grown, so has the forced relocation of villages.
The Monywa mine began production in November 1998 at an annual rate of 25,000 tonnes of refined copper.
Myanmar Ivanhoe Copper’s corporate projections suggest production could reach five times that figure if a total
of $400 million were invested in the nearby Letpadaung deposit. Ivanhoe is aiming to raise this amount on
international money markets although Chinese and Korean prospects drew back from involvement. It is also
drilling in a gold field at Moditaung, southeast of Mandalay. Ivanhoe pays a 2 to 4 percent royalty (at present
about $1.2 million a year) directly to the military regime and, says Roger Moody in his study Grave Diggers: a
report on mining in Burma, this mine complex “is destined to be one of the country’s biggest single foreign
exchange earners.” A personal Ivanhoe link to the ruling regime is made through one of its directors, Tun Maung,
whose son is married to the daughter of SPDC Deputy Prime Minister Vice-Admiral Maung Maung Khin.
Ken Ge orgetti, president o f the Canadian Labour Congress, together with Fred Higgs, general secretary of the
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mines and General Workers Unions (ICEM), wrote to Robert
Friedland before Ivanhoe Mines 2001 annual meeting in Vancouver. They expressed their “grave concern over
Ivanhoe Mines’s operations in Burma, which are enriching a military dictatorship whose disregard for basic
human rights has ostracized that country from the community of nations.” Referring to the Monywa copper mine
joint venture with the military, they added:
“The mine is providing funds for the coffers of a régime that has been irrefutably linked to forced
labour and narcotics trafficking. The mine is also linked to mass conscription of involuntary labour:
according to the International Labour Organization, 921,753 were forced to build the railway
connecting Monywa to the town of Pakokku. The Thazi dam hydroelectric plant, which is cited in
Ivanhoe’s report to shareholders as the mine’s power source, was built using 3,000 to 5,000 forced
labourers. Two adults and a child died building the dam.”
They urged Mr. Friedland to “re-evaluate your direct business relations with the Burmese military” and to consider
“the damage Ivanhoe may sustain, should it remain a backer of the Burmese government.” In a response to the letter
(and presumably to the crowd of protestors outside their meeting) Ivanhoe argued the prosperity it was bringing
to Burma would help lead to democratic change.
The régime also gains foreign exchange by charging foreign companies for rights to explore its rich resources.
In the early 1990s the Crown corporation Petro-Canada International paid SLORC a non-refundable $6 million
“signing bonus” fee in cash before being allowed to explore for oil near Mandalay. PetroCan spent a further
$28 million before abandoning the project in the face of public pressure and Parliamentary protests in Canada.
In 1988 more than half of the world’s mining finance was raised on Canada’s stock exchanges and Canadian companies are estimated to control one-third of exploration expenditures world-wide. So Canadians, especially
investors, are involved at least indirectly in many ventures in Burma beyond those companies actually registered
in Canada. In Gravediggers Roger Moody lists, beyond Ivanhoe, several Canadian companies with mineral concessions in Burma: Palmer Resources of Vancouver has been exploring for copper, while International Panorama
Resources has prospected for gold. The heavyweight Canadian mining company Teck has invested in Indochina
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
27
Goldfields Ltd., Friedland’s holding company. Although the United States, under the Clinton administration,
banned all new investment in Burma in 1997, Canada has made no such move. The Department of Foreign Affairs
says Canada cannot ban investment in Burma, although it does not encourage it. In fact, by providing tax incentives to mining companies registered in Canada with overseas holdings, the Canadian government is encouraging mining in Burma and benefiting its investors.
Opium , Heroin and A Drug Economy
‘The Golden Triangle’ — the north-east corner of Burma, bordering parts of Laos, China and Thailand — is infamous as a key heroin producing area. Poppies there have supplied opium,said to be of especially high quality, to
smokers for generations which remains the case. Since the SLORC seized power in 1988, opium production has
more than doubled and the regime has integrated its value into the country’s economy. It has created legislation
that helps launder the proceeds of drugs: it levies a 40 percent tax rate on declared assets (other than real property)
making no inquiry into the source of the assets, and banks will launder dubious money for a fee of 25 to 40 percent.
In 1996 this laundering scheme attracted some $250 million of unexplained investment. Jane’s Intelligence Review
calculated in March 1998 that at least 60 percent of all private investment in Burma is drug-related
— the re-investment of proceeds laundered in various parts of Asia. In 1999 (when production was down) a US
Government report indicated that the value of narcotics then coming out of Burma, was US$600 million
— or more than half the country’s total exports of such legal items as rice, timber and precious stones.
“Clearly narcotics are among the country’s largest exports,” writes the Southeast Asian Information Network (SAIN),
“and of great benefit to the SPDC.” Its report “Out of Control 2: The Current Status of the HIV/AIDS and Heroin
Epidemics” estimates the opium yield from Burma in 1998 was 2,500 metric tonnes from more than 200,000 hectares
of poppy. This would produce more than 200 metric tonnes of heroin. Until recently this accounted for about 60 per
cent of the world’s supply of heroin. The RCMP estimated in the mid-1990s that 70 to 75 percent of the illicit heroin entering Canada originated in Burma. But in 1999 and 2000 the yield was sharply reduced largely due to severe
drought affecting the poppy harvest. Afghanistan, which also produces raw opium, stepped into the gap, providing
75 percent of the world’s supply in 2000, until the Taliban forbade poppy growing. Since the chaos in that country,
Burma is leading world sales once again, and is reported to be introducing new technology to the illegal business.
Burma’s opium is grown and refined to heroin in the ethnic states of the Wa, Shan, Chin and Kachin
peoples of Burma. In these regions SLORC negotiated cease-fires with local armies which they secured by deliberately allowing some local commanders to take control of drug routes and to supervise heroin production.
These cease-fires in turn also served to legitimize SLORC’s long-standing argument that they are the only force
that can bring peace to Burma. The UWSA (United Wa State Army) in particular are reported to have become
prominent drug smugglers. They are heavily dependent on imported foodstuffs,and had no other cash crop with
which to stay solvent until the UN Drug Control Program began a modest program of crop substitution in their
region. The cease-fires clearly had not produced the promised economic development or crop substitution
programs. In September 2001 the currently dominant Wa drug lord, Wei Hsueh Kang, was said to have opened
a new overseas route through the southern port of Myawaddy and across the Andaman Sea to countries
further offshore.
The long-time drug-lord Khun Sa made his first fortune in Ne Win’s time by creating a local pro-government
militia in Shan state and controlling the distribution of opium. After surrendering to SLORC in 1996, he has
continued in this trade and also diversified into ownership of a tourist casino, a bus company and Rangoon real
estate. Another militia warlord, Lo Hsing-han, who has acted as advisor on minorities to Lt.- Gen. Khin Nyunt,head
of military intelligence, remains active in the drug trade and is a leading businessman.
28
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
The present military involvement with the narcotics industry is widely documented. SAIN has listed five
Tatmadaw regiments with headquarters or outposts alongside heroin refineries. It reports that bulk heroin
exports from the refinery at Paletwa in north-west Burma were carried by army helicopter into Bangladesh,there
being no roads for transportation. In 1999, Australian researcher Dr. Desmond Ball identified three infantry battalions that, between them, were maintaining six heroin refineries along the drug routes in north-eastern Burma.
In November 1997 the Shan State Army overran a heroin refinery guarded by government troops and found that
Lt.-Gen. Tin Oo (the late deputy chief of army staff, who was killed in February 2001) was a joint owner.
Clearly, Burma’s economic dependence on drugs is so closely tied to its dependence on the army and militarization
that ridding the country of one will never be achieved without ridding it of both. Complicating the scene is the
recent manufacture, use and export from Burma of synthetic drugs,particularly methamphetamines known at yaa
baa and yaa ee. This has turned the drug economy on its ear. For example, the heroin export networks controlled
by ethnic Chinese crime syndicates are losing some of their former profits and more drug money stays in Burma.
In the first seven months of 2001, Thai officials at Chiang Rai — a main route for the pro-regime Wa army —
seized 4.6 million yaa baa tablets, indicating a doubling of this trade over last year. Thailand, the main market
for these synthetics, now has more yaa baa users than heroin addicts. They are now also flooding into western
China. And in September 2001 a seizure of methamphetamines in Switzerland was the first evidence of the much
broader trade extending from Burma.
Yaa baa (“madness medicine”) and yaa ee (the designer drug ecstasy) are easily and cheaply produced almost
anywhere. In a March 2000 overview paper “The Golden Triangle Opium Trade”, Bertil Lintner wrote about the
advantages for traffickers that methamphetamines have over heroin. “Laboratories can be smaller and more
mobile than heroin factories. The manufacturing procedure is also much more flexible. While heroin requires
large quantities of raw opium, yaa baa is derived from ephedrine, which can be produced synthetically or by
extraction from the ephedra plant, which grows wild all over southern China and the Yunnan frontier.” There has
been a dramatic rise in drug addiction — including yaa baa addiction — particularly in Kachin state. He cites
another advantage: methamphetamines are sold in the region, cutting out the need for extensive smuggling
networks and thus bringing quick returns on investment.
Bertil Lintner concludes: “The Burmese economy has become totally dependent on the drug trade, and economic collapse would probably follow any attempt to wipe it out.” Conversely, it is clear that the only way to start
eradicating the illegal drug industry is to rid Burma of its military control and build a stable economy based on
the country’s other ample natural resources.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
29
C H A P T E R F I V E : F O RC E D L A BO U R
AND THE
I LO
“This report reveals a saga of untold misery and suffering, oppression and exploitation
of large sections of the population of Myanmar by the Government, military and other public officers.
It is a story of gross denial of human rights to which the people of Myanmar have been subjected
particularly since 1988, and from which they find no escape except fleeing from the country.
The government, the military and the administration seem oblivious to the human rights of
the people and are trampling upon them with impunity. Their actions gravely offend human dignity
and have a debasing effect on the civil society.”
— Concluding paragraph of “Forced labour in Myanmar (Burma)”,
the report of the ILO Commission of Inquiry, July 1998.
I LO Commission of Inquiry 1998 Report
The July 1998 report of the International Labour Organization, Forced Labour in Myanmar (Burma), is 392 pages
of authoritative and devastating material collected by the ILO Commission of Inquiry. It was set up by the ILO’s
56-member Governing Body, comprising government, employers and worker representatives, “to examine the
observance by Burma of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930”. The report will undoubtedly have continuing
political consequences for its content alone and also as an unprecedented international rationale for urgent
reform by the SPDC.
Workers’ delegates from 25 countries filed a complaint against the Burmese government in June 1996 for
non-observance of the 1930 Convention, which Burma had ratified in 1957. The Burmese régime made a lengthy
refutation in February 1998, arguing that “a nation has its own significant characteristics” and that “active participation of people is very important for a nation in the making”. It condemned “biased and specious allegations
made by expatriates living outside Myanmar” and claimed (for example) that wages for porters were always
agreed before recruitment, that no women were ever recruited, and that the use of labour on construction projects was “purely voluntary and remunerated equitably”.
30
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
The ILO Governing Body, faced with these contradictions, left aside any discussion and appointed an impressive
trio as Commission of Inquiry. Two of them had been chief justices — Sir William Douglas of Barbados and
Mr. P.N. Bhagwati of India — while the third member, Ms. Robyn Layton, was an Australian barrister with a
string of important posts concerned with civil liberties and aboriginal lands.
The Commission had wanted to tour Burma, but were denied entry, and the Burmese régime did not see fit to
take any further part in the inquiry. They invited 20 countries, including all those in the region, to offer information — as well as many labour unions and NGOs at hearings in Geneva. They spent five weeks in travels to
India, Bangladesh and Thailand and heard testimony there from over 250 eyewitnesses. About half of these were
refugees from ethnic groups, whom the commissioners met in towns near the Thailand-Burma border. Another
70 testimonies came from interviews with people of Rohingya origin living near Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh.
The examples of forced labour the report cites embrace almost every type of manual work. They range from clearing ground and building helipads for the Yadana pipeline to work on irrigation dams, railways and a hotel, as well
as beautifying places ahead of visits by high officials. (In doing so, the report refutes the Burmese régime’s claim
that the allegation that the American and French firms, UNOCAL and TOTAL,had benefited from forced labour
on the Yadana natural gas pipeline “is totally unfounded”.) Christians in Chin State were forced to take down
their churches, and use the materials to build pagodas. Among grisly examples of the abuse of conscripted
porters was a description of the Tatmadaw’s habit, when in action against ethnic forces, of deflecting enemy fire
away from themselves by forcing porters to change their clothes with soldiers. Portering apart, the ILO report
says, women and children were used as unarmed sentries around camps, and as human shields and minesweepers,
using a broom or branch to detect or detonate mines along roads. Many were killed.
The commissioners’ recommendations were threefold. They were: 1) that legislation, in particular the colonial
Village and Towns Acts of 1907, be brought into line with the terms of the ILO Forced Labour Convention of
1939; 2) that no more forced or compulsory labour be imposed by the authorities, particularly by the military;
3) and that penalties imposed for the exaction of forced labour be strictly enforced, with thorough investigation,
prosecution and punishment of those found guilty. They concluded that these recommendations required action
without delay.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
31
Fol low - up to the 1998 Report
The Burmese senior officials’ committee dealing with the report sent word in September that it considered the
testimony of some organizations “politically motivated, highly biased and without any goodwill.” It pleaded that
the government had “always been working at its utmost and in good faith for the cause of the country”. It let the
commissioners’ deadline of May 1, 1999 for compliance pass and then issued a directive to village heads to limit
their powers under those 1907 acts to emergencies and paid community work. The ILO director-general pointed
out loop-holes in this directive to his Governing Body, adding “wider concrete action needs to be taken”.
This earned the régime’s rebuke that his report was “full of unfounded and biased charges”.
The argument rumbled on through 1999. The annual International Labour Conference (ILC) resolved that
Burma should receive no further technical assistance and no invitations to meetings, except those aimed at securing compliance. The régime in the meanwhile asked for an ILO technical team to visit and “discuss matters of
mutual interest”. In March 2000 the director-general said it would field a team — but with the sole object of helping implement the inquiry’s recommendations. The technical mission did visit Burma for five days in May 2000,
without agreement on its terms of reference. It talked to the NLD, diplomats and religious leaders as well as to
the régime. It found all officials denying the occurrence of any forced labour, except for Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt
who said it had existed, but stopped before 1998.
Events were close to a showdown. In June 2000, the Governing Body invoked for the first time in the history of
the ILO Article 33 of its constitution inviting its members to impose wide-ranging sanctions against Burma to
eradicate “widespread and systematic” use of forced labour.
“review...the relations that they may have with Burma and take appropriate measures to ensure that
[Burma] cannot take advantage of such relations to perpetuate or extend the system of forced or
compulsory labour.”
An overwhelming majority approved the resolution (257 to 41 with 31 abstentions) with an additional five
months for the junta to fully comply with the recommendations of the ILO Commission of Inquiry. Canada in
its statement said the lack of concrete response and the continuance of forced labour “fully justify the invoking
of [Article 33]”.
32
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
By November the regime had still made no substantial response. Four years and five months after the first
warnings about forced labour, the ILO’s Governing Body voted on the ILC’s ground-breaking decision,this time
with only four negative votes — from Malaysia, India, China and Russia. Other Asian countries abstained.
This decision places the question of isolating the Burmese régime on the agenda of other international bodies.
The International Confederation of Free Trades Unions (ICFTU) was swift to give full support and to plan a
solidarity conference in strategically important Tokyo in February 2001. It called for a ban on new investment
and for disinvestment, but not for a full trade boycott. Labour ministries around the world were being asked for
lists of enterprises doing business in Burma and for full trade and investment figures. The subject of forced
labour was not going to be buried under vague talk of co-operation.
Another mission visited Burma on behalf of the ILO in September 2001. It was headed by a former GovernorGeneral of Australia, and included a former chief justice of Sri Lanka, a Polish judge on the European Court of
Human Rights and the Philippines Minister of Labour. Stories out of Burma ahead of the visit told of officials
rehearsing villagers and others in their responses, and gathering signatures on petitions that denied the use of
forced labour.
The mission spent more than three weeks in Burma, and for the first time was permitted to choose its own itinerary. They travelled out to Shan, Kayah, Karen, Mon and Arakan states, where word of forced labour practices
were common. Their report was presented to the annual International Labour Conference in November 2001.
Among much else it drew attention to the murder of seven Shan villagers who had complained to the Shan
regional commander, after a speech Lt.General Khin Nyunt had spoken about the illegality of forced labour, that
the practice was actually increasing in their area. Their bodies were later found in a river. The commissioners also
noted that the regime had failed to use the mass media — radio, television or newspapers — to broadcast warnings
about forced labour, and that written notices of this in ethnic areas were written only in Burmese and English.
“Urgent efforts should be undertaken by the Myanmar authorities to rectify this situation and provide convincing
evidence…by the next session of the Governing Body” the ILO concluded. It also proposed that a permanent
ILO representation and a form of ombudsman be established in Burma.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both warn that forced labour is still persistent in the country.
But in view of present political trends that favour nudging, not threatening, Burma along the path to reform, the
ILO is expected to continue use its power in this carrot-and-stick game very carefully.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
33
C H A P T E R S I X : GEOPOLITICS
AND INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES
BURMA SITS STRATEGICALLY AT THE CROSSING-POINT BETWEEN SOUTH ASIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA, AND BORDERS
five other countries. It lies between the two most populous countries in the world, India and China. Two of its
borders – those with Bangladesh and Laos — are short, but the other three borders — with India, China and
Thailand - amount in total to more than 5,000 kilometres. It also possesses the tiny Coco Islands, just north of
India’s much larger Andaman Islands. In land area it is,at 675,552 sq.km, only slightly larger than Saskatchewan;
yet its population is believed to have passed the 50 million mark some years ago. (There has been no recent census.)
It is potentially a big player in the geopolitics of this region, and the attitudes of its neighbours will be determining influences on its political development.
Its population is one of the most diverse and complex in the region. Major ethnic families break down into many
subgroups and ways of life. The Burmans and, for the most part, the Shans have practised rice-farming in the
river valleys, and are Buddhists; while the Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhine in Arakan state on the
northwest coast are fisherfolk. The Chin near the Indian border and the Kachin in the salient between India and
China have been slash-and-burn farmers in the mountains. The Karens spread along the border with Thailand
in what was once a village and farming economy. They have the Karenni and Mon as neighbours. Nearly all these
peoples, except the Burmans, straddle the borders into neighbouring countries. Though Burma has no external
enemies among the region’s governments, its army has more than doubled since the present regime gained
power. The generals use it to control and suppress their own people.
Neighbouring Countries
Thailand: Its border with Burma is about 2,000 km long. Parts of it are in dispute and much of it is porous.
Karen, Mon, Shan and Karenni people live along the mountains and hills of both countries. This shared border
and peoples reflect a long history of engagement – economic, social and cultural. Today some 138,000 official
refugees from Burma live in camps near the border, and there are also an estimated one million illegal Burmese
34
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
immigrants. Thailand’s overall policy is to maintain a relationship of cool friendship with its neighbour; this is
often achieved by differing policies within its own administration . It has quietly deported thousands of refugees.
Up to a point it has tolerated incursions by Burmese troops and their harassment of refugee camps. However, in
early 2001 relations became badly strained,mainly because of the increased flow of new illegal drugs — methamphetamines — from Burma across the border. Tatmadaw troops initially shelled over the border, then moved
across to occupy a Thai army camp, taking hostages. The Thais retaliated, and diplomatic relations plummeted
as skirmishes were fought along the border. The plight of tens of thousands of Shan farmers who had been
driven by the Tatmadaw from their villages and sought refuge along the border added to the crisis. By June,
however, the Thai prime minister was visiting Rangoon and in September Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary 1,
visited Bangkok. Early in 2002 at a meeting of the new Thai-Burma Joint Commission, agreements concerning
the fishery and illegal migrants were signed. However, the issue of Burmese refugees just over the border
in camps in Thailand will not be easily solved. Burma considers them anti-Rangoon insurgents, or at
least sympathetic to its opponents, while Thailand has been anxious to clear the camps and get refugees back
to Burma.
The Thais have looked on legitimate trade with Burma as fundamental to their prosperity for many years. Once
teak was the most valuable product; now a main concern is its joint undertaking in natural gas, piped from the
Andaman Sea across southern Burma into Thailand. Less savoury is the large illicit sex trade of girls from the
border regions recruited into Thailand, as well as drug trafficking – particularly the millions of methamphetamine tablets, yaa baa and yaa ee — that cross the border from Burma to swell the numbers of addicts in
Thailand. The Thai government’s decision to adopt a policy of “flexible engagement” rather than “constructive
engagement” may have stemmed from this influx and its consequences.
China: China, as Burma’s strongest ally, has always been of immense concern to the Burmese. As a permanent
member of the United Nations Security Council, China’s veto (or threat of one) is useful protection now for the
regime’s generals and a hindrance to more assertive UN action. Locally, the saying, “When China spits, Burma
swims” is pertinent now in Mandalay, centre of Burmese traditional culture, where many Burmese townsfolk
struggle to keep their heads above water as Chinese traders dominate the city’s small businesses and its customs.
But China’s real muscle is seen in its desire for access to the Indian Ocean and in its own military power.
China has always seen Burma as an access route to a second coastline on the Indian Ocean. An arms deal with
the regime during the 1990s is estimated as worth up to US$ 3 billion. That, with its willingness to offer technical aid, led to it being granted naval facilities including visiting and berthing facilities and a radar installation, in
the Coco islands, just north of India’s Andaman Islands.
The Shan peoples bestride both countries, and commercial exchange between them has flourished, particularly
along the border with China’s Yunnan province. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang sheltered and marauded in Shan
state for a decade or more, building up informal trading links. China then supported the insurgent Communist
Party of Burma until its implosion in the 1980s. Relations were only fully restored in 1985 after friendly messages
from Deng Xiaoping. Now China has built an all-weather road from Kunmin into Mandalay.
On the other hand, China is unhappy about several aspects of the junta’s misrule: the slow pace of economic
reform; continuing political instability, and the spread of drugs and of HIV from Burma into its western
provinces. China, like Thailand, seems to be following a two-track policy. Beijing allows opposition groups to
operate from inside China and its representatives have had talks with their leaders, while keeping up good relations
with the Burmese régime. If and when a transitional process toward democracy begins, China, because of its
influence, must surely play a role.
35
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
35
India: It shares a surprisingly long border, of 1,643 km with Burma, with four Northeast India states lying alongside. Relations were poor for many years. The Burmese resented being a province of India under the British until
1938, and India remembered the attacks of the 1930s upon its citizens in Rangoon and elsewhere. India also angered
Myanmar leaders by criticizing SLORC’s action in annulling the 1990 elections, awarding its prestigious Nehru
Peace prize to Aung San Suu Kyi, and generally supporting opposition groups. India and especially its neighbour
Bangladesh have been safe havens for thousands of Burmese refugees. Recently, however, India has decided to show
a neighbourly hand. Partly to co-operate in quelling cross-border insurgents and drug traders, who move both ways
across the frontier, but mostly to balance the advantage China has established, it has signed a joint co-operation
agreement with Burma. There have been high-level visits back and forth. In international fora it seems to be trying
to dispel routine notions of Sino-India rivalry over Burma. India’s foreign minister visited Rangoon in February
2001, and India has helped build a 165-km stretch of the Asian Highway and a remote sensing centre. India wants
mainland facilities on the Burma coast for visiting Indian warships, to counter the Chinese military presence near
its own Andaman islands.
Malaysi a , Singapore and ASE A N
Mala ysia: Its importance lies in the considerable influence its long-lasting Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohammed has in the region. He is aggressive about national sovereignty – Malaysia’s or that of neighbouring
countries. He invited a military technical team from Rangoon to study Malaysia’s advanced defense technology.
On the other hand, he is a realist on trade matters and his visit to Rangoon in 2000, combined with the visits of
another Malaysian, Razali Ismail, the UN Special Envoy, were key factors in nudging the SPDC into talks with
Aung San Suu Kyi about release of political prisoners and the prospect of transition from military rule. His foreign minister Syed Hamid said in July 2001: “We have to allow Burma to evolve into a system that is acceptable.
They accept that the democratic process is inevitable.”
Singapore: More distant from Burma than Malaysia, Singapore’s importance lies in being an investment and financial centre. Robert Friedland moved there from Vancouver in 1996 with his privately-owned venture capital corporation, Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, which funds his various exploits,e.g. Ivanhoe Mines, a 50-50 joint venture with
the regime, which is Burma’s largest foreign mining enterprise. According to official Burmese figures, Singapore was
at or near the top of the list of foreign investors, with US$1.5 billion made or pledged in enterprises approved by the
Burmese military régime from 1988 to mid-2001. In these particular stakes, Britain was close behind. Singapore is
also a convenient financial centre where drug profits can be laundered into, say, real estate investments. Finally, it has
been a stable member of ASEAN, supporting the policy of “constructive engagement” with the Burmese régime.
ASEAN: The Association of South East Asian Nations originally comprised only five members: Indonesia,
Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia. It invited Burma to join as a full member, along with
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in July 1997. Its first attitude to SLORC might be called protective neglect:“Don’t
let us, and certainly nobody else, get too involved.” However it accepted Burma as its eighth full member in July
1997, pursuing a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ which, as Professor David Steinberg describes it, is “…to a
cynical outsider [seeming] to be little more than a screen for foreign investment and the exploitation of Burmese
natural resources”. According to Steinberg, ASEAN turned recently to “active engagement”, which he int erprets
as meaning “the possibility of commenting on the internal political affairs within the ASEAN states, something
that was anathema before.” Little frank talk has emerged but the new policy may have had one indirect result. At
the 1999 ASEAN summit in Singapore, Senior General Than Shwe (the chairman of SPDC) was apparently so
impressed by the economic recovery and prosperity of other ASEAN states after the Asian financial meltdown
that he returned home arguing for some degree of political change.
36
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
Thailand, China, India, Malaysia, Singapore and ASEAN as a whole now agree that without political change in
Burma, there can be no economic development. Singapore, especially is losing money on its early investments.
China is concerned about stability in Burma but would be happy with a change in regime that will be able to
deliver the economic benefits it seeks. ASEAN expected that by making Burma a member, the SPDC would be
more amendable to advice and change but are now embarrassed because Burma’s regime is as recalcitrant as ever.
Canada and Other International Inf luences
Burma’s future is of deep concern to three sets of players beyond its geographic neighbours. They are major
international bodies, especially the United Nations; some national governments; and civil society in many
countries — almost certainly the most active group. Canadians are involved in each of these. Citizens’ groups
especially, using the internet to inform and consult with others across the world, are often ahead of the others in
information and the ability to organize swiftly.
The Asia Regional Forum (ARF): The ARF on multilateral peace and security which includes India and China
meets annually at the same time as the ASEAN post-ministerial meetings. These meetings provide Canada’s foreign minister with the opportunity to meet with ASEAN foreign ministers and others. According to participants,
these meetings allow for frank one-on-one discussion with foreign ministers of ASEAN states, now including
Burma, as well as policy discussions with other like-minded observer states. Canada, like Australia, regards these
meetings as indispensable for pursuing the possibility of change in Burma. From time to time Canada’s foreign
minister, returning from these meetings, has invited Canadian members of the Burma democracy movement to
share views about the state of ASEAN’s relations with Burma.
The United Nations
The UN and its agencies are obligated, wherever they are represented, to work through the host government
which means its representatives in Burma must work with the military regime. But the UN’s many organizations
include some that examine the regime’s behaviour from afar. For example the International Labour Organization
(ILO) commissions of inquiry have recently broken new ground in unveiling the truth about forced labour in
37
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
37
Burma and how it must be abolished. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and the UN
General Assembly’s Third Committee for years have probed the evidence and nature of human rights abuses in
Burma. They annually debate reports on human rights abuses such as extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary execution, forced disappearances, rape, torture, inhuman treatment, mass arrests, forced labour, forced relocation,
and denial of freedom of assembly, association, expression and movement. Canada has typically co-sponsored the
resolution on Burma, withholding support only when they felt that it was not critical enough of the military
regime as a pressure tactic.
In recent years, the current UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Razali Ismail and the current Special
Rapporteur to Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, have played important roles. Razali Ismail has made five visits and
helped lay the groundwork for talks between Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Nothing
substantial has emerged from these talks, except some prisoner releases which were often already overdue. Paulo
Sergio Pinheiro made his second visit to Burma in October 2001 whereas in previous years his predecessors were
rarely allowed entry.
In recent years the most visibly active UN agency on Burma has been the International Labour Organization,
whose delegates include trade union representatives as well as government officials and employers. A previous
section describes its ground-breaking inquiry into forced labour in Burma, the work of its commissions of
inquiry within Burma, and the ILO’s unprecedented call to its members to review their relations with Burma in
light of that forced labour. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions went further in February 2001,
calling on ILO members to identify their trade relations and announcing plans to build a database of multinational companies doing business in Burma “under harsh labour conditions”.
Working inside Burma, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has over the years carried out
infrastructure and other projects especially in Burma’s border development regions. Sometimes these have
drawn criticism from members of the democracy movement, who demonstrated that certain roads and railways
built with UN money were being used to transport the regime’s soldiers. UNDP donors then reduced the money
available for such projects. The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) has tried to compensate for the gross
imbalance in government expenditure that leaves most children without health care or educational opportunities. However, the army has made use of UNICEF medicines and vaccination programs in its self-promotion
through such events as “Tatmadaw vaccination day”. There is also evidence that the army prevents ethnic peoples
in cease-fire areas from receiving medical supplies, while it uses UNICEF materials in camps as part of its forced
relocation program. In Karen State, where UNICEF surveys suggest sanitation and water supplies have been
38
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
improved, there is doubt whether these plans have in fact been implemented. As well, the claim made by some
UNICEF representatives that tuberculosis has been virtually eliminated in Burma is, according to professionals in
the Burma Medical Association,highly questionable since TB is clearly present in Karen State near the Thai border.
The UN Drug Control Program and its predecessor have worked inside Burma since the 1970s. First called the
UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control (UNFDAC), it faced in 1976 a situation where most of the poppy fields were
in areas controlled by insurgents. So it launched a program of “preventative crop substitution” to introduce alternative crops in areas where poppies were not grown to ensure farmers would not want to grow poppy. In 1988,
after the SLORC regime took power, this preventative program was dropped in the ceasefire areas and its generals introduced UNFDAC officials to “the leaders of the local nationals” — in effect, prominent drug traffickers
in Shan State and elsewhere. In return for Western aid, these drug traffickers promised poppy growing would be
eradicated by certain deadlines — which receded as the 1990s wore on. The reconstituted UNDCP then
launched, in 1999, a series of crop substitution programs in the poppy growing areas, including a project in the
Wa region. In a March 2000 paper, Bertil Lintner comments:
“The problem with any UN agency is that it is forced to go through the host government, and it would be
economic suicide for the Burmese government to do anything substantial about the country’s lucrative
drug trade. Moreover, the UN has been forced into a partnership with local drug-lords such as Lin
Mingxian and Pao Yuquiang – a situation both of them have used in their propaganda to show that they
are ‘co-operating’ in the war on drugs. Ironically, the base for the UNDCP’s operations in the area is a small
town, Ho Tao, which has the largest complex of heroin and methamphetamine laboratories in the world
today. No one is accusing the UNDCP of complicity in the drug trade. But … sadly the UNDCP has
become part of the problem, rather than the solution.”
In February 2001 when Mary Robinson, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Thailand to
study the situation of Burmese refugees, she drew attention to overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions
among them. Thailand has had long and important experience with refugees from Southeast Asia, especially the
huge exodus of refugees from Indochina. It has not signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees and until recently it worked at arms length with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
Responsibility for Burmese refugee camps near its Burma border lies with the Bangkok-based Burmese B order
Consortium — an NGO consortium financed by governments and NGOs. The BBC liaises with the Thai
government, administers food aid to the camps but leaves day-to-day camp management to the refugees
themselves. The UNHCR, in recent years, gained a limited protection role for these refugees and monitors the
registration of new arrivals. It was responsible earlier for the controversial repatriation of Muslim Rohingyas
who had fled persecution in Arakan state to Bangladesh in the early 1990s.
Other National Governments
Besides statements urging the Burmese generals to abandon repressive policies, Western and other governments
have taken a range of actions to show their disdain for the régime. Most discontinued official aid after the
army-led massacres in Rangoon in 1988. They have banned the sale of weapons to the regime and have
refused to issue visas to top officials excluding diplomats. The US and Australia maintain embassies in Rangoon.
The United States: In addition to exclusion policies similar to the above, the United States imposed a ban on
new investment in Burma under President Clinton in May 1997; in May 2001 the Bush administration declared
it would continue this sanction. Its effectiveness can be gauged from the drop o f investment of some US$300
million in 1997-98 down to $30 million in 1998-99. It has since begun to rise, due to investment in the garment
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
39
industry, despite campaign successes by activists in getting some well-known American brands to stop sourcing
their clothes in Burma. In 2001 Senator Tom Harkin, with five co-sponsors,introduced Bill S.296 to institute an
across-the-board ban on American importation of Burmese goods — in response to the huge rise in US imports
of Burma-made garments and textiles.
Australia: Through its diplomatic mission in Rangoon, Australia recently held three workshops on human
rights, attended by 51 Burmese officials. Australian opposition MPs, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi, criticized this
move as “snuggling up to the military.” Australia’s major concern is political stability in the region and good
relations and trade with Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Its proposal of a “benchmarks approach”, to measure
the Burmese regime’s moves towards democracy, with appropriate rewards of increased bilateral contacts, did
not go very far. In ASEAN, as an observer nation, Australia now usually t ries to influence Burma by working
through other ASEAN members.
The European Union: The EU imposed an arms embargo in 1991, and severed all defence links the next year.
In 1996 it applied a visa ban and a few years later declared it would freeze the assets and publish the names of
people banned. However there are differing approaches within the union. When Britain’s Premier Oil was found
to have important interests in a natural gas pipeline from the Andaman Sea,the British government encouraged
it to withdraw. But the governments of Germany and France are opposed to economic sanctions. The EU has
sent high-level missions to Burma to persuade the Burmese régime to start tripartite talks. Its scheduled joint
meetings with ASEAN were disrupted when ASEAN accepted Burma as a member. The EU refused to allow
Burma to participate until the regime made improvements in its human rights record. Later the EU agreed to
allow Burmese delegates to attend joint meetings held in Southeast Asia, but not speak.
Japan: Japan’s mixed record has caused concern to Burma’s pro-democracy movement. Of all countries outside
Southeast Asia (except possibly the United States) Japan could, if it chooses, wield strong influence on Burma’s
future. This powerful country is a major trading partner and investor. Its Electrical Power Development
Corporation conducted a feasibility study for a huge hydro-electric dam to be built on the Salween river in
southern Shan State. Private investment from Japan in 1998 totalled $218 million. The Marubeni Corporation
provided Robert Friedland in 1995 with $90 million debt financing for the Monywa copper mine, and has
pledged to purchase the first seven years of production. Japan’s agreement with the régime not only promises
assistance in promoting joint ventures in oil exploration and mining, but also offers help to develop
“a master plan to attract foreign investments through efforts such as the development of industrial parks”.
In 2001 the Japanese government announced it would resume official development assistance to Burma, including what it called “humanitarian aid” — US $24 million to repair the Baluchaung hydro-power station in Karenni
State. This station supplies one-third of the country’s electricity, including Rangoon and Mandalay, but, Karenni
leaders complain,“not a single light bulb” in their state. The large Japanese business group Keidanren has had talks
with the junta in mid-2001 about investment. Japan has a particular relationship with Burma: its support of the
original Thirty Comrades of the Burma Independence Army and its three-year occupation of the country
produced strong if ambiguous links. Its officials as well as NGOs have declared their concern for democracy and,
several years ago, the Japanese Diet (parliament) debated the issue of banning investment. For two years Aung San
Suu Kyi wrote a frank weekly column about repression in Burma in Mainichi newspaper. It did not stop Japanese
business people from lobbying their government to resume development assistance to Burma. Nevertheless, Japan
now realizes that without political change,there can be no real economic development in Burma. There is now an
international consensus to support the efforts of the Secretary General’s Special Envoy, Malaysian Ambassador
Razali Ismail to bring about a political dialogue which will hopefully lead to positive political reform.
40
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
How does Canada Measure Up?
Canadian actions and policies include:
• Withdrawal of bilateral aid in 1988 following the student massacres, and an official policy of discouraging
business and investment.
• An unofficial no-contact policy which means refusal to issue visas to officials of the regime
(not including diplomats).
• Withdrawal of preferential trade tariffs for Burmese exports in 1997.
• An embargo on direct arms sales that has never been declared officially. (the reason according to government
is that Canada has no defence links with Burma). This however does not mean that Canadian-made weapons
and/or aircraft are not sold by other countries to Burma.
In 1997, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, in removing the preferential trade agreement, called on Canadian
firms “not to trade or invest in Burma until improvements are evident”. From the outset this appeal was greeted
with indifference. Indeed, Canada has been among the top half-dozen investors in Burma and Burmese imports,
mainly garments and shrimp, have soared. Canadian legislators and officials have failed three opportunities to
assist the people of Burma, by not responding to: 1) requests from Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD and attempts
by Canadian NGOs to press the government to impose a trade embargo and investment sanctions under the
1992 Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA); 2) the 1999 resolution of the House of Commons Standing
Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade to recognize the Committee Representing the Peoples’
Parliament and to consider imposing investment sanctions on Burma; 3) the International Labour
Organization’s call on its members to review relations with Burma in the light of its system of forced labour and
take appropriate measures to ensure such relations do not perpetuate forced labour;
41
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
41
The Special Economic Measures Act allows Canada to impose economic measures against a foreign state under
either one of the two following conditions: 1) “…for the purpose of implementing a decision, resolution
or recommendation of an international organization of states or association of states of which Canada is
a member, that calls on its members to take economic measures against a foreign state, or 2) “…a grave
breach of international peace and security has occurred that has resulted or is likely to result in a serious
international crisis.”
Having taken legal advice, Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) argues that both conditions of the SEMA have
been met. The ILO’s unprecedented resolution, calling on its members (including governments) to take action
to “review their relations with Burma” in order to ensure they do not contribute to forced labour, fits the
SEMA’s first condition. Forced labour is endemic under the military regime in Burma. According to the general secretary of the umbrella labour body the International Confederation of Free Trades Unions “it is impossible to conduct trade or any other economic activity with Burma without providing direct support, mostly
financial, to the military junta” — which is the cause of most forced labour. The grave breach of international
peace and security, the second condition, is met by the régime’s encouragement and protection of Burma’s
heroin industry, leading directly to addictions, deaths and the spread of AIDS (through use of dirty needles) in
Canada and throughout the world. In addition, CFOB argues that violent cross-border raids on refugee camps
inside Thailand, and artillery duels across the same border, also constitute a breach of international peace and
security. Although the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade agrees with these facts, its lawyers
reject these arguments.
The government has, however, placed Burma on the Area Control List, which restricts export approvals to
humanitarian goods (imports are not affected). Despite this action, Nortel has,through subsidiaries in Israel and
a distributor in Thailand, built basic communications infrastructure in and around Rangoon and exported
equipment that is almost certainly b eing used by security forces and which hardly qualifies as ‘humanitarian’.
Nortel now appears to have severed these links.
Canada did not impose an arms embargo on the grounds that it was not a supplier and had no defence links
with Burma. However, it does provide arms to China, Burma’s biggest weapons provider, and has no secondary
agreement with that government that arms will not be passed on to a third country.
From 1991 to mid-2000, Canada had provided about $2 million for food aid, through the Burmese Border
Consortium, to Burmese refugees in Thailand. In addition, CIDA’s International Humanitarian Assistance division has supported Dr. Cynthia Maung’s training and capacity-building work based in her medical clinic at Mae
Sot. CIDA has also recently supported refugee capacity-building initiatives through a Canada-based coalition of
NGOs, as well as a Canadian Lutheran World Relief project directed toward reconciliation and cooperation
among ethnic nationalities.
However, Canada is slow to act politically. Both the Quebec National Assembly and the British Columbia
legislature have passed resolutions recognizing the 10-member Committee Representing the Peoples’
Parliament (CRPP) as “a legitimate representative of the Burmese people”. The committee was formed in 1998
to represent the members elected in Burma’s multi-party elections. In December 1999, the Commons Standing
Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) passed a motion urging the Canadian
Parliament to recognize as the legitimate authority in Burma today the CRPP and further urge the Government
of Canada to consider the imposition of investment sanctions against Burma’s military regime. But neither
the Parliament nor the Government has so far acted on these recommendations from one of its own
senior committees.
42
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
Civil Soc iety
Canadian citizens have taken some successful actions against Burma, as is the case in many other Western
countries. Under pressure from an alert and outspoken group in Alberta, including some oilmen, PetroCanada
was persuaded to end oil exploration in Burma and forfeit its investment there. A campaign against Pepsi Cola’s
business based in Rangoon, started by students of the All Burma Students Democratic Front and introduced to
Canada by Carleton University students, spread across North America and grew in influence until Pepsi Cola
eventually shut down its business there. Consumer campaigns led by Canadian Friends of Burma against
buying cheap garments made in Burma and against the manufacturers and retail businesses that import them
help spread awareness of the slave wages and conditions for workers in Burma. Mining and related companies
— the biggest is Ivanhoe Mines — that continue to work in the country are regularly exposed and questioned
by CFOB and other democracy activists. So far no action similar to the Burmese villagers’ legal challenge against
UNOCAL, the California oil giant that is helping build a gas pipeline for the regime, has emerged in Canada.
There is only space for a few other examples of Canada’s civil society now at work on Burma issues. Canadian
Lutheran World Relief is in partnership with Burma’s democracy movement on a program of national reconciliation, to bring the ethnic peoples together to define the structures they wish to establish in a future Burma.
A coalition of five NGOs — Inter Pares, Rights and Democracy, Peacefund Canada, the church-based Primate’s
World Relief and Development Fund and the Canadian Friends of Burma — is working with local border groups
on a five-year program of support for Burmese refugees on the Thailand and other borders. Montreal-based
Rights and Democracy (formerly the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development) in
1999 honoured Dr. Cynthia Maung, a well-known Karen physician, with the John Humphrey Freedom Award.
Dr. Cynthia — herself a refugee — converted an old barn in the Thai border town of Mae Sot into a medical
clinic that now receives medical workers from all over the world. The long-imprisoned student leader, Min Ko
Naing, shared this award with Dr. Cynthia from his prison cell.A postcard campaign was subsequently launched
by Rights and Democracy of Montreal and Amnesty International to free Min Ko Naing and other student
political prisoners in Burma.
Besides these groups, much important work goes on in Canada to further the democracy movement in Burma.
It is und ertaken by several trade unions such as the Canadian Auto Workers, the Communications Energy and
Paperworkers Union, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the National Union of Public and General
Employees, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the United Steelworkers of America and the Canadian
Labour Congress,NGOs such as Amnesty International and the writers’organization PEN Canada,the Canadian
Federation of Students, and student bodies affiliated with the democracy movement through World University
Service of Canada (WUSC) and the Public Interest and Research Group (PIRG) network. There are also
hundreds of smaller initiatives — groups of people who receive and support refugee families in their communities, those who arrange small meetings to start campaigns and to spread awareness, and observant individuals
who keep up with Burmese news and share their efforts with friends, newspapers and MPs.
Across Canada many remarkable Burmese-born people have for years worked to raise funds for relief and
training programs and to lobby steadfastly through their organizations and as individuals for support of the
democratic movement. It could be invidious to mention some of these people by name and omit others; so this
can only be a collective tribute to their hard work, in partnership with Canadian-born supporters, in the long
struggle for democracy and a return to a state of human dignity.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
43
C H A P T E R S EV E N : C O N C LU S I O N S
THE SEIZURE AND HOLDING OF POWER BY THE MILITARY JUNTA IS THE PARAMOUNT PROBLEM IN BURMA
TODAY
— the root of all its social, international and economic problems and most of its environmental ones.
In nearly every section of this dossier the trail leads back to the brutal and incompetent military rulers who have
carried the country to a tragic state over 40 years of misrule. Ne Win’s 26-year idiosyncratic rule brought its own
disasters. The generals who followed him pursued his course, brutalizing society, militarizing large parts of it and
further worsening the lives of Burma’s people. Inevitably civil war and financial chaos continued. The ethnic
nationalities – the Arakanese, Chin, Shan, Karen, Karenni and others – along with the junta’s active opponents
have suffered the worst effects of these terrible times. So the first conclusion is that the military must give way
to a civilian government accountable to the people of Burma.
For that government to achieve national reconciliation and begin to restore democracy, it must assure a full place
in government for the ethnic nationalities, who make up at least 40% of the population. The country’s constitution must guarantee this place and also limit the role of the military in public affairs. The way to begin this
process is to extend the current talks between the régime and Aung San Suu Kyi to include representatives of
ethnic minorities. Tripartite dialogue has been called for by the NLD, ethnic representatives and supported by
the United Nations.
44
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
Canad a’s Role
Canada’s part in this process is twofold.First,it should demonstrate its total support for the democratic process
in Burma by recognizing, through a motion in Parliament, the Committee Representing the People’s Parliament
(CRPP). This 10-member committee was formed in September 1998 by representatives of the political parties
that won the overwhelming majority of seats in the 1990 election. Some 250 surviving MPs have given the CRPP
the mandate to act as their executive committee. The Parliaments of Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the
European Union have formally recognized the CRPP. At the end of the 1990s the British Columbia Legislative
Assembly and the Quebec National Assembly passed resolutions also recognizing the CRPP and recommending
that the federal government recognize the CRPP “as the legitimate instrument of the will of the Burmese people.”
But the House of Commons in Ottawa has not yet passed such a motion although it was urged to do so more
than two years ago by its own Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Canada should urge the course of tripartite talks to build national reconciliation and advance democracy in its
bilateral dealings with ASEAN member states and at every international and regional forum such as the United
Nations, Asia Regional Forum (ARF) and Commonwealth meetings. At the United Nations, Burma should be
treated with the same sense of outrage and gravity that many countries showed toward apartheid South Africa.
Canada should identify those countries friendly to ourselves which have particular influence on the SPDC. Chief
among them will be Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Our officials and diplomats should talk
persuasively to all these governments, not only at ARF meetings but they should also create new opportunities
to do so. At Commonwealth meetings, for example, India and Australia are both important regional neighbours
of Burma and members of the Asia Regional Forum on multilateral peace and security. Burma should be on the
agenda of any relevant diplomatic discussions with them. There are also Commonwealth associations, for example
of parliamentarians and judges, in which democracy and justice are leading topics.
Development Assistance
Seven UN agencies made a joint appeal for humanitarian assistance to Burma in mid-2001, after producing figures
showing the deteriorating situation facing many Burmese. However, we are very cautious about the full-scale
resumption of aid at this time. There are two reasons for this. First, UN agencies’ record of delivering assistance to
those people who need it is poor. This dossier has shown how UNICEF assistance was channelled by the régime to
their own propaganda ends, and how the military used the UNDP’s border infrastructure projects. Second, aid
could upset the balance of pressures that drove the junta into starting the present talks with Aung San Suu Kyi in
the first place. It is a delicate balance, composed on the one side of steadfast resistance to overt change within
Burma and promptings (both gentle, like ASEAN’s, and forthright like the ILO’s) and, on the other side, international and economic anxieties that eat into the self-confidence of the generals. If aid, such as Japan has offered,
became a more general response from donor countries, it would restore the junta’s belief that it can defy the
international community and remain indefinitely in power. The Burma pro-democracy movement supports
humanitarian assistance only under very strict guidelines to ensure that it is not exploited by the military regime
for its own purposes and to ensure that it does not undermine efforts to achieve a meaningful tripartite dialogue.
Canada should maintain its present contribution to humanitarian assistance, capacity-building and reconciliation measures which adhere to the democracy movement’s guidelines. The Canadian government should be
preparing for the day when change does occur when we will be asked for significant resources to help rebuild
the country. Our current relationships with border-based groups should be maintained and nurtured. Canadian
NGOs need also to prepare to accompany refugees home – to help rebuild communities, re-establish economic
activities, and begin to find a spirit of national trust.
45
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
45
Trade and Investment
Canada has not imposed any sanctions on investment in Burma and no serious sanctions on trade with that
country. Its sole moves have been to suspend bilateral aid in 1988 and to withdraw preferential trade tariffs in
1997. Lloyd Axworthy’s call in 1997 to Canadian businesses “not to trade or invest in Burma until improvements
are evident” has been widely ignored. Burmese exports to Canada, predominantly in garments — an industry
notorious for its links to forced labour — have soared. The official figures for 2000 show imports from Burma
to Canada have trebled since 1997 to $60.7 million, and garments accounted for $47.5 million of that trade.
These figures demand a Canadian initiative to ban or restrict all imports from Burma. As a result of a similar rise
in garments imported from Burma, six senior U.S. senators from both parties have sponsored a bill to impose a
total ban on imports of Burmese goods.
Similarly, Canadian investment — notably the Ivanhoe mining complex — has put Canada among the top four
investors in Burma during the last few years. In marked contrast, the United States imposed a ban on all new
investment in May 1997, and the ban was renewed in May 2001. At the end of 1999 the House of Commons
Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade urged the Canadian Government to consider
imposing investment sanctions on Burma. The government’s reluctance to invoke the Special Economic Measures
Act (SEMA) to impose sanctions on Burma is based on its lawyers’ view that Burma’s situation does not meet the
required conditions. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade should now request its lawyers
to re-examine Canadian Friends of Burma’s arguments to invoke SEMA. Additionally, it should rescind tax benefits from companies that work in countries such as Burma, where it is evident that commercial activities are
directly linked to the abuse of human rights.
46
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
F U RT H E R R E A D I N G
NOTE: THE LIST BELOW IS ECLECTIC AND ONLY PART OF A LARGE BODY OF LITERATURE. THE MOST SCHOLARLY —
and very readable — are the works of Martin Smith and David Steinberg. On the drug trade, Alfred McCoy’s
1972 book is basic but now historical, revised and updated in 1991; the book by Ronald Renard and the article
by Desmond Ball, an Australian researcher, bring material up to date. Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist long
based in Thailand, is probably the best-informed Western reporter on Burma, and has travelled widely through
the country. The Open Society Institute produced in 1998 a useful booklet with 12 backgrounders on aspects of
the crisis in Burma, which is available on the internet (see internet listings). Two books, by Mya Maung and the
collection edited by Harvard professor Robert Rotberg, cover the economic and political scene. Required reading should be the 1998 report of the ILO Commission of Inquiry into forced labour, and the analysis by Louise
Southalan in 2000. Three books are concerned with the politics and culture — and struggle — of insurgent
groups: Patricia Elliott, a Canadian magazine reporter writes about the Shan peoples; Jonathan Falla, a Jamaican
playwright and nurse, spent a year among the Karen rebels; while Edith Mirante,an American painter and writer,
travelled among the Kachin, Shan, Karen and Mon peoples. From another perspective, Chao Tzang Yawnghwe,
whose father was the first president of the Union of Burma and who now lives in Vancouver, tells of his youth
and involvement in the Shan resistance movement, while the Shan Human Rights Foundation give a detailed
account of forced relocation. From the Thai border five Burmese women’s organizations compiled an excellent
CEDAW Shadow Report for the CEDAW Committee in 2000 from some 127 interviews. Betsy Apple, previously
wrote a booklet on the military and violence against women. Canadian groups commissioned and published two
studies in this list,on mining and the garment industry. Finally, the writings of Aung San Suu Kyi and the lengthy
conversations she had with Alan Clements, an American lecturer on Buddhism, are essential reading for anyone
concerned with Burma’s future.
Some periodicals should also be mentioned. Canadian Friends of Burma publishes a newsletter Burma Links
three times a year. Burma Debate, a substantial magazine of commentary and analysis, is published four times a
year by the Open Society Institute in Washington DC. There are also a variety of online news services and
resources on the internet listings page.
47
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
47
All Burma Students’ Democratic Front. To Stand and
Be Counted: The Suppression of Burma’s Members
of Parliament. Bangkok: ABSDF, 1998.
All Burma Students’ Democratic Front. Burma and
the Role of Women, 1997.
All Burma Students’ Democratic Front. Tortured
Voices: Personal Accounts of Burma’s Interrogation
Centres. Bangkok: ABSDF, 1998.
Apple, Betsy. School for Rape: The Burmese Military
and Sexual Violence. Bangkok: Earthrights
International, 1998.
Asian Human Rights Commission. Voice of the
Hungry Nation: the People’s Tribunal on Food
Scarcity and Militarization in Burma, 1999.
Asian Pacific Forum on Women, Law and
Development. Dignity Denied: Thai migrant
labour policy on Burmese migrant women, 2000.
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
(Burma). Spirit For Survival. Mae Sot: AAPP, 2001.
Aung San Suu Kyi. Freedom from Fear and Other
Writings. London: Penguin, 1991.
Aung San Suu Kyi. The Voice of Hope: Conversations
with Alan Clements. New York: Seven Stories
Press, 1997.
Ball, Desmond. Burma and Drugs: The Regime’s
Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Asia Pacific
Magazine No 14, 1999.
Brandon, John J. editor. Towards the Twenty-First
Century: Dynamic of Continuity and Change. New
York: Open Society Institute, 1997.
Burmese Women Union. Women in Burma: report
for the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women.
Singapore, 1995.
Douglas, Sir William et al. Forced labour in Myanmar
(Burma) Report of the Commission of Inquiry.
Geneva, International Labour Organization,
July 1998.
Earthrights International. Total Denial Continues:
Earth Rights Abuses Along the Yadana and Yetagun
Pipelines in Burma, 2000.
Elliott, Patricia. The White Umbre lla. Bangkok: Post
Books, 1999.
Fall, Jonathan. True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels
on the Burmese Borde
r. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Fink, Christina. Living Silence: Burma under military
rule. Bangkok: White Lotus Press Dhaka: University
Press Ltd. London and New York: Zed Books.
Human Rights Documentation Unit. Human Rights
Yearbook. Nonthaburi. NCGUB Office, 2000.
Images Asia. Migrating with Hope: Burmese Women
Working in the Sex Industry, 1997.
Images Asia. No Childhood at All: Child Soldiers in
Burma. Chiang Mai: Images Asia, 1997.
International Labour Organization. Forced Labour in
Myanmar (Burma). Geneva: ILO, 1998.
Karen Human Rights Group. Wholesale Destruction:
The SLORC/SPDC Campaign to Obliterate All Hill
Villages in Papun and Eastern Nyaunglebin
Districts. 1998.
Karen Human Rights Group. All Reports available
on their website at www.khrg.org .
Koetsaawang, Pim. In Search of Sunlight: Burmese
Migrant Workers in Thailand. Bangkok: Orchid
Press, 2001.
Lansner, Thomas R. Burma: Country in Crisis. New
York: Open Society Institute, 1998.
Chao Tzang Yawnghwe. The Shan of Burma: Memoirs
of a Shan Exile. Singapore: Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, 1987.
Lewa, Chris. All Quiet on theWestern Front? The
Situation in Chin State and Sagaing Division.
Chiang Mai, Thailand: Images Asia, 1998.
Clements, Alan and Kean, Leslie. Burma’s Revolution
of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom
and Dignity. New York: Aperture, 1994.
Lintner, Bertil. Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for
Democracy. Hong Kong: Review Publishing
Company, 1989.
48
Looted Land, Proud People: The Cas e for Canadian Action in Burma
Lintner, Bertil. Land of Jade: A Journey through
Insurgent Burma. Edinburgh: Kiscadale
Publications, 1990.
Smith, Martin. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics
of Ethnicity. London: Zed Books, second edition,
1999.
Lintner, Bertil. Burma in Revolt: Opium and
Insurgency since 1948. Boulder: Westview Press,
1994.
Southalan, Louise. Forced labour, the ILO and Burma.
Bangkok, Burma Lawyers Council, September
2000.
Maung Maung Gyi. Burmese Political Values:
The Socio-Political roots of Authoritarianism.
New York: Praeger, 1983.
Steinberg, David I. The Future of Burma: Crisis and
Choice in Myanmar. Lanham: University Press of
America and The Asia Society, 1990.
McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast
Asia. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1973.
Steinberg, David I. Burma/Myanmar: Issues of
Authority and Legitimacy since 1988. Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000.
McCoy, Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin:
CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.
New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.
Mirante, Edith T. Burmese Looking Glass: A Human
Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993.
Moody, Roger. Grave Diggers: A Report on Mining in
Burma. Vancouver: Canada Asia Pacific Resource
Network, 1999.
Mya Maung. The Burma Road to Capitalism:
Economic Growth versus Democracy. Westport:
Praeger, 1998.
Todd, Dave. Dirty Clothes,Dirty System. A report
by Canadian Friends of Burma on the garment
industry, 1996.
Tucket, Shelby. Among Insurgents: Walking Through
Burma. New York: Radcliffe Press, 2000.
Venkateswaran, K.S. Burma Beyond the Law.
London, Article 19, August 1996.
Women’s Organizations of Burma. CEDAW Shadow
Report (on education, health, violence against
women,and poverty). Thailand, 2000.
Renard, Ronald. The Burmese Connection: Illegal
Drugs and the Making of the Golden Triangle.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publications, 1996.
Rotberg, Robert I. ed. Burma: Prospects for a
Democratic Future. Washington D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 1997.
Sargent, Inge. Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a
Shan Princess. Chiang Mai: University of Hawaii
Press, 1994.
Shan Human Rights Foundation. Dispossessed:
Forced Relocation and Extrajudicial Killings in
Shan State, 1998.
Shan Human Rights Foundation. Uprooting the
Shan: A report on forced relocation in Central Shan
State. Chiang Mai, Thailand, 1996.
Smith, Martin. State of Fear: Censorship in Burma.
London: Article 19, December 1991.
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
49
WEB CONNECTIONS
THE
FOLLOWING WEBSITES WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH EXTENSIVE LINKS TO A MYRIAD OF WEBSITES WITH
information about Burma from diverse perspectives on a broad range of subjects. There are also links to news
groups and services to which you can subscribe in order to receive up-to-date Burma news or chat with people
from all over the world about issues related Burma.
Burmanet News: www.burmanet.org
Canadian Friends of Burma: www.cfob.org
Free Burma Coalition: www.freeburma.org
Online Burma Library: www.burmalibrary.org
The Burma Campaign UK: www.burmacampaign.org.uk/
The Irrawaddy (News Magazine): www.irrawaddy.org
The Open Society Institute’s Burma Project: www.burmaproject.org/links_publications.html
50
Looted Land, Proud People: The Case for Canadian Action in Burma
Cover Graphic WEAVE Women’s Education for Advancement and Empowerment
<[email protected]>
Photos
Front Cover Assistance Association for Political Prisoners(Burma);
Back Cover Inter Pares, Rita Morbia; Inside Cover Assistance Association for Political Prisoners(Burma);
p. 1 (top) Karen Human Rights Group, (bottom) Inter Pares, Rita Morbia; p. 2 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia;
p. 3 (Map) The Burma Project, Open Society Institute,“Burma: Country in Crisis”; p. 5 Karen Human Rights Group;
p. 6 Impact Photos, Alain Evrard in “Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit; The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity”
by Alan Clements and Leslie Kean; p. 7 Burma Project U.S.A,“Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…”op.sit;
p. 8 Alain Evrard, Impact Photos in“Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…” op.sit;
p. 9 Bilal M.Raschid in “Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…” op.sit;
p. 11 Impact Photos, Pier Cavendish in “Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…”op.sit; p. 16 Karen Human Rights Group;
p. 17 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia; p. 18 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 21 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia;
p. 22 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 23 Impact Photos, Pier Cavendish in “Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…” op.sit;
p. 24 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 27 Zuma Images, Bruce Haley in “Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit…” op.sit;
p. 28 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 29 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 30 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia;
p. 32 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 39 Canadian Friends of Burma;
p. 42 Karen Human Rights Group; p. 47 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia; p. 48 Inter Pares, Rita Morbia
Printed on recycled paper. E M E RG I NG DE SIG N