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Juna's Friend (and That's not in Vo
- Subject: Juna's Friend (and That's not in Vo
- From: tun@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 04 Aug 1994 13:10:00
Subject: Juna's Friend (and That's not in Vogue)
Mail*Link(r) SMTP SHE'S THE JUNTA'S FRIEND (AND THAT'S NOT IN VOGUE)
NYT-08-01-94 1949EDT
SHE'S THE JUNTA'S FRIEND (AND THAT'S NOT IN VOGUE)
(Editors: This was budgeted earlier as BURMA-IMAGE)
(ART ADV: Photo of Miriam Marshall Segal is being sent to NYT photo
clients. Non-subscribers can make individual purchase by calling
212-556-4204 or 1927.)
(bl)
By PHILIP SHENON
c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service
YANGON, Myanmar Her two-tone Chanel pumps were not made for
wading through puddles. But there was Miriam Marshall Segal, a
white smock pulled over her couture-clad frame, touring her new
shrimp-packing plant in a warehouse district in this most
dilapidated of Asian capitals.
``Now this, this to me is human rights,'' Mrs. Segal said,
admiring the work of her young, stern-faced Burmese workers as they
cleaned and packed handfuls of the morning's catch of meaty Black
Tiger shrimp. ``We are giving jobs to 200 people here. These people
have pride in their work. And that is what human rights is all
about.''
Remarks like those set teeth on edge among human rights
campaigners, who say this Manhattan businesswoman has been doing
* the devil's work in Myanmar, the country formerly called Burma.
Mrs. Segal, they say, is a callous apologist for a military
government that imprisons, tortures and sometimes kills those who
dare stand up to it. Nonsense, says Mrs. Segal, who might seem an
unlikely candidate for a one-woman crusade to burnish the image of
one of the world's most notoriously repressive governments.
``Most of the people who claim to have great thoughts about this
country have never been here,'' she said.
For someone who made a name for herself as an arbiter of fashion
in the 1960s, she opened trend-setting accessories boutiques at
Henri Bendel, Neiman Marcus and other expensive department stores
Mrs. Segal could not have picked a less fashionable cause. The
junta has almost no friends in the outside world.
``The criticism doesn't worry me because I know what I
believe,'' said Mrs. Segal, whose designer clothes, long crimson
fingernails and ruby-encrusted jewelry make her an unusual sight on
the crumbling streets of Yangon, formerly Rangoon. She has been
doing business in Myanmar for the better part of two decades,
traveling here often from her home in New York.
``I am not a political person,'' she said. ``I'm here to do
business. But I think most of the reporting about this place is
wrong. This country is certainly not all perfect, but it's
certainly not all wrong, and we need to recognize what is right.''
Mrs. Segal says Myanmar is unfairly singled out for
international scorn even as larger Asian countries with equally
serious human rights problems notably China and Indonesia are
accorded U.S. trade privileges and diplomatic recognition.
Her praise for the junta puts Mrs. Segal at odds not only with
human rights groups, but also with Washington. The United States
has long refused to sell arms to Myanmar and, as a result of the
violent crackdown on the democracy movement in the late 1980s, has
refused to send an ambassador.
Although the junta has embraced the free market and welcomed
foreign investment, few large U.S. corporations do business in
Myanmar.
Simon Billenness, chairman of the Coalition for Corporate
* Withdrawal from Burma, a Boston-based human rights group, said Mrs.
Segal ``has an unseemly eagerness to provide this regime with
character references.''
Mrs. Segal recently testified in Congress in support of American
investment in Myanmar, comparing the struggles of the Burmese army
to those of the United States during the Civil War.
``Lincoln was also unwavering in establishing his priority
national unity,'' she said. ``Can we really blame the leadership in
Myanmar for doing the same?''
That comparison struck some in the hearing room as absurd, but
it clearly delighted the junta, which printed her testimony in full
across two pages of the Government newspaper. A page 1 photograph
showed Mrs. Segal in discussions with Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, the
military's intelligence chief. ``A very intelligent man,'' she
said.
With its globe-trotting rags-to-riches drama, Mrs. Segal's life
story could have been dreamed up by Danielle Steele. She was born
on a fishing boat off the coast of Palestine, the child of Polish
Jews eager to fight to establish a Jewish state, and was raised in
Australia until, at the age of 18, she made her way to the United
States.
There she broke into the world of high fashion in New York and
made a fortune with her Port of Call boutiques. She will not
disclose her age.
Mrs. Segal first came here in 1976 in search of Burmese
handicrafts that she could sell as fashion accessories. Her
business ties did not become an issue until after the military's
crackdown on the democracy movement, in which thousands of
civilians were gunned down.
In 1989 the movement's leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was placed
under house arrest. She remains in detention only a few blocks from
the hotel where Mrs. Segal makes her home in Yangon.
But as Myanmar was turned into a pariah state, Mrs. Segal
expanded her business ventures, setting up a fishing company three
years ago in a joint venture with the junta. The company is a
showpiece of the government's efforts to open up the economy to
foreign investors while holding tight to political power.
Asked about the government's brutal actions in the late 1980s,
Mrs. Segal says ``it was a very panicky situation when you are
faced with a situation like that, what do you do?''
As for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the 1991 Nobel
Peace Prize and who is beloved by millions here for her willingness
to defy the junta, Mrs. Segal offers an appraisal that is something
less than flattering.
``I think she's become a prisoner of the Nobel Prize because
it's an incredible thing to live up to,'' she said. ``I don't have
criticism of her, but I feel that there should be compromise on her
part and on their part. You can't be defiant in a marriage. You
can't be defiant in politics. You can't be defiant in business.''