'Vietnam experienced war and was slapped with economic sanctions. We fully understand the agony people felt at the time. Therefore, we will not support economic sanctions on Myanmar.' - VIETNAMESE PRESIDENT NGUYEN MINH TRIET
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United Nations envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, is due to arrive in Cambodia for talks
on Burma's political crisis.
However, officials say it is unlikely he
will meet Burma's premier, Thein Sein, who is also visiting Cambodia.
Mr
Gambari, the UN secretary general's special representative to Burma, is on a
regional trip to assess the position of the military-run nation's neighbours
following the recent suppression of protests in the country.
The
Association of Southeast Asian Nations has come under increasing pressure to
push Burma towards democracy since the crackdown in September.
Burma
attracted international condemnation after troops killed at least 15 people and
arrested about 3,000, drawing international condemnation.
Cambodia, which
maintains close diplomatic ties with Burma, has called on the junta to stop
using force to stifle dissent, but also rejected the imposition of sanctions
against the ruling generals.
Published: November 29, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand: The recent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar has rekindled a decades-old debate: Is it morally right to do business in countries with repressive regimes?
Some foreign businesses, including French jeweler Cartier, cut ties with the country after the suppression of the protests in September and October. But others remain, arguing that they help the people of the impoverished country by creating jobs.
France's Total SA contends that cutting off Myanmar, also known as Burma, hurts ordinary people more than it harms the military regime and could hinder moves toward democracy. Total and Chevron Corp., which are partners in a natural gas field off Myanmar's coast, also provide health and social programs for local communities.
"We feel the country would have evolved much more if more responsible companies had remained," said Jean-Francois Lassalle, Total's vice president of public affairs for exploration and production. "Development of human rights goes along with the development of the economy."
More broadly, the arguments form part of a larger debate over whether economic sanctions work.
South Korea has invested in some business ventures in North Korea in an attempt to encourage the communist state to abandon its nuclear weapons programs and open its economy. But Iran has been hit by limited United Nations sanctions for defying demands to freeze uranium enrichment.
In the past, companies and governments wrestled with whether they should do business with apartheid-era South Africa. The effectiveness of that boycott — which some corporations ignored — is still disputed.
"This is not a slam dunk kind of debate," said W. Michael Hoffman, the executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The United States has banned new investment in Myanmar since 1997, and the European Union has had less stringent restrictions since the mid-1990s. But both allow pre-existing investments to continue, including Total's natural gas operation in the offshore Yadana field. Chevron has a 28 percent stake in the project, which it inherited when it took over Unocal Corp. in 2005.
The approximately US$2 billion (€1.36 billion) in gas sold every year to Thailand from the Yadana field and from another field operated by Malaysia's Petronas provides the bulk of Myanmar's foreign exchange earnings.
"Only a few people are benefiting from these investments ... the majority of people are not," said Soe Aung, spokesman for the National Council for the Union of Burma, an umbrella organization based in Thailand for exile groups.
An estimated 90 percent of Myanmar's 54 million people lives on about US$1 a day.
But some argue that Western sanctions harden the regime against negotiations for a democratic opening and that they strengthen the influence of China — which shows little interest in democratic reform — in Myanmar affairs.
Chevron and Total provide free healthcare to 50,000 people along the Yadana pipeline, where local infant mortality rates are a sixth of the national rate and enrollment in school has doubled due to the creation of 44 schools in 23 villages, Chevron said.
Activist groups call this propaganda.
"Every time we focus on a company doing business in Burma, they throw some money at a local foundation ... and throw some pictures up on their Web site of smiling, happy people," said Mark Farmaner, acting director of the Burma Campaign UK.
"They don't put up pictures of the MIG jets that the generals bought with their first oil and gas paychecks," he said.
Total and former partner Unocal Corp. were accused of cooperating with the military in human rights violations during construction of a pipeline across Myanmar to Thailand in the 1990s. Both companies denied the accusations, though Unocal settled a related lawsuit in the U.S. in 2005.
The top U.N. official in Myanmar says some companies do help ordinary people.
"They (Total) are providing fairly significant support to communities near the pipelines, and probably more support than we do in our support in other parts of the country," said Charles Petrie, the humanitarian coordinator for the U.N. in Myanmar.
Petrie said he sometimes asks the head of Total in Myanmar to raise human rights issues with the government "because I feel the government is going to be less likely to close the door on Total than on us."
Authorities in Myanmar plan to expel Petrie by Dec. 5 for criticizing the regime for not meeting the needs of its people.
Burma Campaign UK has a "Dirty List" of more than 100 companies it says provide income to the government while doing business in Myanmar, including timber and gem companies, and hotel and tour operators. Even the British guidebook company Lonely Planet has been listed for encouraging tourism to Myanmar.
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"We want to hit the regime in the pocket," Farmaner said.
Adidas AG, Levi Strauss & Co. and underwear manufacturer Triumph International are among those that have pulled out of Myanmar or won't buy products there.
"The way we view this is as safeguarding our reputation," said William Anderson, head of social and environmental affairs in the Asia Pacific region for Adidas.
Jewelers of America, which represents more than 11,000 stores in the U.S., has also called for the U.S. Congress to include Myanmar gemstones in the list of items barred from import until the release of all political prisoners and an end to human rights abuses.
The U.S. and EU are now considering beefing up their sanctions primarily to close loopholes that allow American and European businesses to deal in gems and timber from Myanmar.
But for sanctions to be effective, Myanmar's Asian trading partners such as China, Thailand and India would need to be involved, said Leon de Riedmatten, a Bangkok-based representative of Switzerland's Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. Companies like Total should do more to pressure the regime on human rights, he said.
"We should not ask these companies to withdraw. We should just ask them to use the leverage they have," de Riedmatten said.
Total says that goes too far.
"We are an investor, not a political entity," said Lassalle.
| Burma Shuts Down Monastery Allegedly Linked to Protests | |
| 29 November 2007 |
Burmese authorities have closed down a Rangoon monastery they believe was very active during monk-led pro-democracy demonstrations in September.
Security forces Thursday sealed-off the Maggin monastery, forcing two monks and six novices off the premises.
The monastery was raided at least four times following the September protests, and its abbot U Indaka has been arrested and detained at an unknown location.
The Maggin monastery also provided housing for AIDS patients who came to Rangoon seeking treatment, but they also have been relocated.
In other news, U.N. envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari held talks Thursday with Cambodian officials aimed at finding a democratic solution to Burma's political crisis.
After their meeting, Cambodia's foreign minister Hor Namhong noted the importance of improving relations between the Burmese government and detained pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Burma's Prime Minister Then Sein is scheduled to arrive in Cambodia Friday for an official visit.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters
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Give Myanmar incentives to solve crisis, says Cambodia 30-Nov-2007 | |
| Foreign Minister speaks out against sanctions during UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari's visit | |
PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA favours giving Myanmar's ruling military junta incentives to find a democratic solution to its political crisis. The Cambodian Foreign Minister said this after meeting UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who was on a two-day visit to the country which started yesterday. 'We should not talk about sanctions, but we had better talk about how to take the momentum forward and prevent the situation from sliding backward,' said Mr Hor Namhong. He said Cambodia supports Professor Gambari, who has been allowed to visit Myanmar twice since the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in September. The Cambodian Foreign Minister said the international community should encourage Myanmar's rulers to continue holding talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. 'Cambodia proposes that the UN and Myanmar go forward step by step with the process of democracy', and the international community should also encourage the Myanmar government to do more with the process, Mr Hor told reporters. This is the view of Asean, he said, adding that Cambodia supports the engagement between the UN and Myanmar, as well as that between the Myanmar government and Aung San Suu Kyi. 'I told Gambari that we do not have to talk about the sanctions on Myanmar anymore from now on, but we have to provide humanitarian aid for the Myanmar government and the Myanmar people,' he said. 'Gambari told me that the UN involvement with Myanmar's issues does not mean it is opposed to the Myanmar government, but wants to help it solve the problems there.' Prof Gambari said he had a frank and useful discussion with the Cambodian Foreign Minister, but did not elaborate. The UN envoy's visit is part of his tour through South-east Asia to encourage Myanmar's neighbours to promote reconciliation between the junta and the pro-democracy movement. After Myanmar's September crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, Cambodia joined countries around the world in calling for the junta to halt its violence and embrace democracy. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen also called on Asean to play a more active role in resolving the crisis. Prof Gambari is scheduled to leave Cambodia today, the same day that Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein will arrive to hold talks with Mr Hun Sen and leaders of Cambodia's Parliament. Mr Hor said the timing of the two visits to Cambodia was coincidental. The UN envoy visited Vietnam earlier this week and is scheduled to travel to Laos after leaving Cambodia. Myanmar sparked global outrage in September when the country's ruling military junta crushed pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks, killing at least 15 people. Nearly 3,000 were arrested, most of whom have been released, according to the junta. During Prof Gambari's visit to Myanmar, the junta assured him that political arrests would stop, but more were reported after he left. Amnesty International said the junta arrested a dozen activists and Buddhist monks this month. ASSOCIATED PRESS |
| Nov 29, 2007 |  | |
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Vietnam against sanctions on Myanmar | ||
| TOKYO
- PRESIDENT Nguyen Minh Triet of Vietnam, which joins the UN Security
Council next year, yesterday rejected Western moves to punish Myanmar,
saying his country remembered the pain of economic sanctions.
But Mr Triet said Vietnam shared concerns about military-ruled Myanmar, a fellow member of Asean which launched a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in September. 'Vietnam experienced war and was slapped with economic sanctions,' Mr Triet told a news conference during a visit to Tokyo. 'We fully understand the agony people felt at the time. 'Therefore, we will not support economic sanctions on Myanmar, which are merely a means of making people suffer.' The United States and European Union have both stepped up sanctions on Myanmar over its clampdown on dissent, but Asian countries have largely preferred to focus on engaging the regime. Vietnam, which was under a US trade embargo until 1994, joins the UN Security Council next year for a two-year term in a sign of its integration with the world. Professor Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Myanmar, visited Hanoi this week and called for Vietnam to support UN efforts to resolve the crisis, saying that the communist country was among the states closest to Myanmar's junta. During talks with Mr Triet on Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda urged Vietnam to ask Myanmar to respond to international calls to move towards democracy and cooperate with the United Nations. Meanwhile, the Myanmar Prime Minister and Prof Gambari will take turns to visit Cambodia this week to discuss Myanmar's political crisis, officials said yesterday. Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith declined to comment on whether the timing of the two visits was coincidental, but said that Cambodia is not playing an intermediary role in the Myanmar crisis. Prof Gambari will arrive today to meet Cambodian officials, said Ms Hua Jiang, a UN diplomat travelling with the envoy. Prof Gambari is scheduled to leave Cambodia tomorrow. On the same day, the Myanmar Prime Minister, Lieutenant-General Thein Sein, will arrive for a three-day visit to Cambodia, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its official website. Myanmar's leader will hold talks with Prime Minister Hun Sen and the leaders of Cambodia's Parliament, said the statement, which provided no other details. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS | ||
| Nov 27, 2007 | |
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Vietnam 'can help engage Myanmar' | |
| HANOI
- UNITED NATIONS special envoy Ibrahim Gambari said yesterday that
Vietnam, which joins the UN Security Council for a two-year term in
January, can play a role in engaging the isolated Myanmar regime.
Professor Gambari, on a regional trip to assess the position of Asean countries towards the isolated regime, also said he hoped to return to Myanmar before the end of the year to continue the dialogue with the regime. 'I sincerely hope I will be able to go before the end of the year because there were a number of issues that were left on the table, and we would like to obviously follow up,' he said. Vietnam's leaders 'are listened to by Myanmar because I think they are among the countries closest to Myanmar among the Asean countries', Prof Gambari told a media briefing. He said Vietnam 'has its own history of transition in terms of dealing with the international community and opening up the economy and working with the UN. We think that those will be assets'. The UN envoy has travelled to Myanmar twice since the junta cracked down on pro-democracy protests in September, when troops killed at least 15 people and arrested about 3,000, earning the junta international condemnation. Prof Gambari also said Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, was in good spirits and health when he met her despite having spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest in her lakeside residence in Yangon. 'Each time I have been there, she looked better. She was energised, particularly last time, by the prospect for change in Myanmar and the opportunity for engagement with the government,' he said. Meanwhile, hundreds of Buddhist monks, nuns and students marched in eastern India yesterday against Myanmar's military regime, urging Buddhists worldwide to unite against the junta. At least 1,000 monks and nuns sang religious hymns and walked through the Buddhist holy town of Bodh Gaya in Bihar state, witnesses said. Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya in southern Bihar in the 6th century BC. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS | |
| Nov 27, 2007 | |
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Myanmar sold $217m of gems at auction: official | |
| YANGON
- MILITARY-RUN Myanmar has sold precious stones worth US$150 million
(S$217 million) during this month's gem auction, an official said on
Tuesday, despite calls for a boycott after its deadly crackdown on
protests.
Sales from the 13-day auction, which ended on Monday, were estimated at over 100 million euros (S$216 million), said an official from state-run Myanmar Gems Enterprise (MGE). But estimated sales reached only half of the junta's goal, as the military government initially said it hoped to sell some 5,500 lots of jade, gems and pearls, worth nearly 200 million euros. State media said on Tuesday a total of 3,618 lots of jade, gems and pearls were sold during the auction, which was held amid global pressure on the junta following its suppression of pro-democracy protests in Yangon in September. The most expensive jade lot at the auction was worth 80 million euros, according to MGE, the country's third biggest state enterprise. The MGE official declined to say whether that pricey green stone was sold. global pressure US First Lady Laura Bush urged companies to shun the auction, while top jewellers Tiffany, Cartier and Bulgari said they would refuse to sell Myanmar gems. But the official paper said more than 3,600 gem merchants, including nearly 2,300 foreigners, had attended the auction despite global calls for a boycott on Myanmar's gems and tightening Western sanctions. Nearly 90 per cent of the foreigners were from jade-crazed China, one of Myanmar's closest allies and a major weapons supplier to the regime, with others from around the world, state media said this month. -- AFP
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| Nov 25, 2007 | |
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Unrest poses no threat to region, says Myanmar | |
| World media exaggerated situation and ignored facts, claims PM Thein Sein | |
| YANGON
- MYANMAR Prime Minister Thein Sein reassured South-east Asian leaders at
a summit last week that recent unrest in his country posed no threat to
the region, official media said yesterday.
The military-ruled nation was rocked by pro-democracy protests in September, when Buddhist monks led 100,000 people through the streets of Yangon only to suffer a violent reprisal from security forces. A UN rights investigator said that 15 people were killed during the crackdown, while Myanmar has said that about 3,000 people were arrested. Mr Thein Sein told the summit that the unrest would have no effect on other nations, according to the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper. 'World media exaggerated the news neglecting the actual facts, saying that the situation in Myanmar could harm international and regional peace and security,' the government mouthpiece said, paraphrasing Mr Thein Sein's remarks. 'The actual situation in Myanmar did not pose a threat to the international community, let alone regional countries' peace and security,' the paper said. The New Light of Myanmar also indicated that the junta was annoyed with UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari for releasing a statement from detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi without consulting the generals. Professor Gambari 'without any consultation or coordination in advance with the government of Myanmar, had released a statement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi', it added, using an honorific title for the Nobel peace prize winner. In the statement released on Nov 8, Ms Suu Kyi said she was ready to engage with the government in serious talks on national reconciliation. AFP | |
| Nov 24, 2007 | |
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Regional media hails Charter, rues Myanmar | |
| Handling of junta cast shadow over historic signing of Charter | |
| By Alastair McIndoe, PHILIPPINES CORRESPONDENT | |
| MANILA
- ASEAN's 13th summit this week was front-page news across South-east
Asia, with the press in Malaysia hailing it as a landmark event, though
some media in other countries felt the regional grouping's handling of
Myanmar put a damper on the party.
Asean's difficulties with the junta dominated coverage of the summit in the Thai and Philippine media, though in neither country was the gathering the main story in newspapers over the past days. Indonesian newspapers also reported extensively on how the controversy over Myanmar affected the summit. In Vietnam, coverage focused mainly on the attendance of Prime Minister Ngu-yen Tan Dung at the summit. Malaysia's media seemed to be the most upbeat in its coverage of the summit. An enthusiastic editorial in the Malay-language Berita Harian drew attention to the benefits the Charter could bring to the regional grouping, saying it should boost economic cooperation. It noted with approval that Asean had become a 'more matured entity and more prepared to confront issues of common interest'. An opinion piece in Utusan Malaysia argued that the issue of Myanmar should not cloud the fact that the signing of the Charter was a historic event. By contrast, the Philippine Daily Inquirer carried the headline 'Burma problem spoils historic Asean summit' while the Philippine Star ran 'Asean bows to Myanmar; won't hear UN envoy's report' - a reference to the cancellation of a planned briefing on Myanmar by United Nations Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari to the East Asia Summit leaders. Still, columnist Belinda Olivares-Cunanan, writing in the Inquirer, said Filipinos should take 'special pride' in the crafting of the Charter, part of which was drafted while the Philippines chaired Asean. An editorial in the Thai daily The Nation - 'Asean mired in Burma quagmire' - said Myanmar had been allowed to sign the Charter while 'manipulating all around it to consolidate its position'. 'This is the reality that Asean faces. Now, even with the Charter, Asean is still hopeless and unable to act against its pariah member.' But for the Jakarta Post's managing editor Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, 'we Asean citizens and governments now have the legal tools available. And it will be up to us to demand our respective governments apply these articles faithfully to each other'. 'The Charter thus should be welcomed with optimism and guarded hope instead of cynicism. It is a monumental document which a decade ago would have been almost inconceivable,' he wrote. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's warning that her country's Senate would find it difficult to ratify the Charter unless the Myanmar junta lived up to its commitment to institute democracy worried the writer of an opinion piece in Malaysia's The Star. 'The Charter is now in jeopardy. Will the Asean dream of having a united integrated and cohesive organisation become a reality?' he asked. There was little mention of Myanmar in Vietnam's media, though it was reported that Asean's leaders rejected some Western calls for it to be evicted from the organisation. REPORTS BY CHOW KUM HOR IN KUALA LUMPUR, ROGER MITTON IN HANOI, NIRMAL GHOSH IN BANGKOK, AND AZHAR GHANI IN JAKARTA | |