E-mail carries cry from Burma <The

[burma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: E-mail carries cry from Burma <The Nation, Apr 10>

E-mail carries cry from Burma
10.5.96/The Nation

Anti Slorc activists on the Internet are making inroads with US
companies, Joe Urschel writes from Washington.

"Seldom do you have a case as clear cut as Burma. There's a very
clear connection between government and oppression.
Marco Simons
HEAD OF HARVARD'S FREE BURMA COALITION

This time, the whole world is not watching. Nevertheless, a tiny
campus protest movement, taking place almost entirely outside the
media glare, is engaged in a 60s-style revolt that has
universities, corporations and international political groups
snapping to attention.

Using the "interconnectedness" of the modern cyber-university, a
failed Hollywood movie and the business savvy of socially
conscious investor groups, protesters are bringing worldwide
pressure on the insular and brutally repressive nation of Burma.

Two weeks ago, PepsiCo became the latest US company to announce
it was extricating itself from ties there, and the United Nations
formally denounced the country's human rights abuses. A
bipartisan bill barring further US investments there and imposing
sanctions is pending in Congress.

But few students took to the streets to shout about the victory.
No campuses were shut, no armouries torched.

The e-mail was burning up the Internet, though, as a modem-day
student rebellion celebrated its accomplishments not with
bullhorns and fist-pumping, but with the furious clatter of
fingers on the keyboard.

At Harvard, a US$1 million (Bt25 million) Pepsi contract has been
cancelled in part because students contend the company's
investments help prop up Burma's repressive regime.

At Stanford, students stopped Taco Bell (owned by PepsiCo) from
opening in the student union. At Northwester, students pressured
the Alumni Association to halt its Burma trips.

Given all the wars, all the troubles, all the large-scale
repression in the world, how did the United States' campuses come
to turn Burma into the South Africa of the 1990s?

"Seldom do you have a case as clear 1 cut as Burma," says
Harvard's Marco Simons, 20, head of that school's Free Burma
Coalition. "There's a very clear I connection between government
and oppression."

"The military regime is committing every form of human rights
violation known to humanity: imprisonment without trial, torture,
campaigns against villages and ethnic minorities," says Jane
Jerome of Amnesty International. People "are beaten and raped,
children are snatched from the streets."

Still, the country got little notice in the media or on campus
until the past year or two. Then it just seemed to balloon.
Bewildered parents found themselves confronted by "Free Burma"
and "Boycott Pepsi" banners as they escorted their high
school-age students scouting prospective schools.

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration condemned Burma's military
dictatorship, and placed the country on the list of international
"outlaws" that includes Libya and Iraq.

American companies such as Eddie Bauer, Levi Strauss, Liz
Claiborne and Macy's began severing their business ties.

The genesis of the movement appears to be a single student at the
University of Wisconsin. He is a 32-year-old Burmese exile named
Zar Ni , who fled his homeland in 1988 after the military
government arrested and killed about 3,000 opponents, including
pro-democracy student activists like himself.

Now a doctoral student, Zar Ni, heads an umbrella group called
the Free Burma Coalition. He founded it in September 1995,
promoted it in early October at a student environmentalists'
conference, and by Oct 27 had choreographed "Burma Action Day"
demonstrations at dozens of campuses nationwide. The movement now
has chapters at 70 to 90 US campuses.

Burma scholar Edith Mirante, of Portland, Oregon, in part credits
the recent movie "Beyond Rangoon" for glamourising the cause.

The story of the 1988 massacres, told through an American tourist
played by Gen-X actress Patricia Arquette, might have been a box
office dud, but it ignited campus idealists with its docu-drama
depictions of the crushing of the democracy movement and its
saintly portrayal of Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader {who
was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Castle Rock, the film's
distributor has given the Free Burma Coalition permission to use
the film. "I was leaf-letting outside movie theatres and people
would make donations right away because they were horrified,"
says Simons.

But mostly, the cause has spread on the Internet.

"The Internet is really the mainstay," says Zar Ni, who spends 15
hours a day at his computer, Networking with other campus
activists. "It's really cheap" - perfect for a shoestring
movement with no cash for phone and fax bills.

The Free Burma Coalition Home Page
(http://danenet.wicip.org/fbc/freeburma.html) offers would-be
activists a little of everything: Order information for "Boycott
Pepsi" stickers, congressional testimony, interviews and speeches
by Aung San Suu Kyi, links to far-flung campus leaders.
WebActive, a Seattle based on-line journal that appraises
Internet activism, recently named Free Burma's home page its site
of the week.

"We saw the information on the Internet, but we don't have any
comment on that," said a spokesman for Burma in Washington, who
declined to speak for attribution. The country offers no reaction
to the protesters or their claims.

"It's become one of the first cyber-campaigns,~ says Simon
Billenness, senior analyst with Franklin Research & Development
in Boston, an investment firm that handles about $450 million for
institutions. "The students are all hooked up to the Net, so they
all talk to each other."

Billenness helps coordinate shareholder pressure in conjunction
with activists on campuses, and pushes municipalities for
selective purchasing legislation.

Four cities have passed laws barring contracts with any business
that has interests in Burma, he says. The companies include
Texaco Inc. Unocal Corp, Atlantic Richfield and PepsiCo. So far,
Berkeley and Santa Monica, California; Madison, Wisconsin; and
Ann Arbor, Michigan, have such laws.

Billenness had been tracking the situation in Burma for years,
but when Zar Ni and the Internet came along, awareness of the
issues there grew almost instantly.

"If something happens in Rangoon, I'm going to know about it the
next day by reading my e-mail," he says. "The Internet has proved
to be an invaluable tool for organisation."

It enables even small cadres of activists to effectively push
their cause on campuses nationwide.

Protesters continue to pressure Pepsi, despite its decision to
sell its bottling plant in Burma because the drink will still be
sold there through a separate licensing agreement with a
businessman they say is connected with the military.


Pepsi denies it is bowing to pressure by selling its plant."We
made the decision that we felt made the most business sense,"
says spokesman Keith Hughes.

But business experts think Pepsi had more to lose by staying in.
"Boycotts can be very damaging," says Al Ries, a New York
marketing consultant. "The last thing a company like Pepsi wants
is to alienate college students. Especially since its positioned
as the soft drink ... of the young generation."

Still, the protests continue.

Doug Steele, 30, a first year law student at Georgetown, has
introduced a resolution to the student government urging them not
to do business with companies that do business in Burma.

At Stanford Free Burma member Niek Thompson says, "Our main goal
is to convince Stanford to vote its proxy shares in favour of the
Burma resolutions presented to all the shareholders who have
money in Unocal, Texaco and Pepsi." And all of it pretty much
goes back to one man who fled his country and started the large
first revolt in cyberspace.

Zar Ni shows "why this couldn't have worked without the
Internet," says Thompson.

"He's one Burmese guy sitting in Wisconsin and there's probably
not a Burmese guy within 300 miles. E-mail got people talking to
him. It didn't matter that he was in Wisconsin and everyone else
was in California."

USA Today / Gannett News Service
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