How can we justify doing business w

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Subject: How can we justify doing business with Burma ?

Letters to the Editor
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The Edmonton Journal , Feb. 15, 1999
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How can we justify doing business with Burma ?

Since the military junta seized control of Burma in 1988, tens of
thousands of students, minorities and political opponents have been
killed, tortured and displaced.

Unfortunately, the international political community has done no more
than offer stern warnings or occasional condemnations, in large part due
to the open-door policy the regime has chosen to attract foreign
investment. Burma offers lush jungles for hardwood harvesting, untapped
oil reserves and potential mining operations, which serves to dampen
efforts to address human-rights atrocities.
Through the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings ( UMEH ), foreign
multi-nationals do lucrative business. What most of these firms
overlook, or do not realize, is that UMEH is fully owned by the junta
with 40% of its capital funnelled into the arms-procurement branch of
the Burmese military.

In 1993, Petro-Canada International abandoned its Burmese operations
under intense criticism. In 1996, a major American ski-wear producer
pulled out of Burma after learning that 16% of the profit made for it by
a UMEH subsidiary was being channelled into weapons budget.
In 1997, after exposure to the links between the junta and the heroin
drug trade, both Britain and US imposed trade sanctions.

Unlike U.S. sanctions, Canadian measures apply no constraints whatsoever
on investment in Burma.

Recently, Vancouver-based Indochina Goldfields announced the start-up of
a $300-million (US) copper mine in Burma, while Edmonton-based Mindoro
Resources has partnered directly with the regime in a gold exploration
project.

How can these companies separate their concern for stockholder
satisfaction from the obvious, albeit indirect, effect on the thousands
of Burmese citizens ?
The morality-sapping power of the profit margin never ceases to amaze
me.





Tracy Morton

Slave Lake


P.S.    We, the human rights and pro-democracy activists living in North
America would need to do some campaigning against these companies .

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