C&A relinquishes trade with Burma

[bcn@xxxxxxxxx]

Rough translation of article from Dutch daily business newspaper "NRC
HANDELSBLAD" September 4. The article was announced on the front page; it
is the lead story in the economy section.

Front page:
C&A relinquishes from trade with Burma
Rotterdam, September 4. C&A, the largest clothing stores chain in Europe,
is no longer doing business with producers or suppliers in Burma. The
company decided this as a result of the "toilsome political situation."
Continued on page 11.


Lead article, page 11:
Headline: "Human rights violation"

By our correspondent
Rotterdam, September 4. C&A, the largest clothing store chain in Europe, is
no longer doing business with producers or suppliers in Burma. The company
decided this as a result of the "toilsome political situation." Both direct
and indirect trade is suspended.

The news comes in the same month that the leader of the opposition National
League for Democracy, Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is
commemorating in Rangoon the tenth anniversary of uprisings in which
thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the Burmese army.
Recently [the Dutch] company IHC Caland was criticized because of its
planned building of an oil-rig [actually an oil storage device, BCN] on the
south coast of military-ruled Burma.

In a written statement that was given to this newspaper, C&A acknowledges
the company's decision. The letter refers to a "minute internal inquest" in
the company controlled by the family Brenninkmeijer. This inquest pointed
out that "during the last 18 months there has been not a single piece of
clothing in the collection from Burma."
Asked why the company had not announced earlier that it had broken ties
with Burma, spokesperson Frank van 't Hek says: "This is because of the
closed way in which the company is run. When beer brewing company Heineken
decided several years ago not to build a brewery in Burma and to pull out
of the Burmese market it was announced from their own initiative. Being a
public company listed on the stock exchange, Heineken has to be clear. C&A
is privately owned, we hardly ever give press conferences. We will only
announce a decision when somebody asks for it."

C&A has it own organization, SOCAM, that checks whether suppliers and
producers keep themselves to C&A's code of conduct. This code contains a
large number of ethical aspects, varying from banning child labour to
requiring certain standards in the work climate, health and safety.

The controllers from SOCAM make one thousand visits per year to producers
and suppliers in mostly third-world countries like Burma without prior
announcement. Last year this resulted in the cancellation of eighty
contracts. "But in the case of Burma SOCAM was not even involved," says Van
't Hek. "The international board of management stated by itself to the
sourcing departments of all six hundred stores and all other parts of the
company that we want nothing to do with Burma again. That is a real 'policy
decision'. The repression there and the violations of human rights in Burma
have taken such forms that no decent company should have any business with
it. As long as the situation in that country does not change drastically,
C&A will stay away."

The Burma Centre Netherlands, which, on the instigation of Aung San Suu
Kyi, is lobbying for economic measures by the European Union - the United
States has already banned all new investments in Burma - welcomes the
decision. "It is to be hoped that this example will be followed by others,"
says spokesperson Gijs Hillenius. "The trend is clearly there; companies
realize that they have a responsibility that goes beyond the making of
profit."

----
Note: Thanks go to the Clean Clothes Campaign (ccc@xxxxxxxxx) that did the
research and joined BCN in contacting C&A about its sourcing in Burma. It
took C&A three weeks (until the press was on them yesterday) to find out
and acknowledge they weren't in Burma, even though they had alerted more
than six hundred stores 18 months ago. You be the judge...