BurmaNet News: May 8 2003

[editor at burmanet.org]

May 8 2003 Issue #2232

INSIE BURMA

AFP: Crowds flock to see Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi despite warnings
AP: Myanmar garment manufacturers call for end to U.S. ban

MONEY

Guardian: BAT Burma pay row reignited
Economist: Big oil’s dirty secrets

REGIONAL

AFP: Myanmar military leader leaves Laos

STATEMENTS

UK FCO: Foreign Office Minister speech on Burma’s wasted year

INSIDE BURMA

Agence France Presse May 8 2003

Crowds flock to see Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi despite warnings

Jubilant crowds turned out Thursday to greet Myanmar's democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi as she pushed on with what is expected to be her longest
political trip since her release from house arrest last year, her party
spokesman said.

The leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) departed
Yangon for northernmost Kachin state Tuesday, the first anniversary of her
release by Myanmar's junta from 19 months' confinement to her lakeside
villa.

The trip is being viewed as a test of whether the regime will attempt any
disruption. The NLD and Suu Kyi have complained increasingly of government
harassment during the leader's travels, particularly of the thousands who
flock to see her.

She travelled Thursday to northern Shwebo from Mandalay, a former NLD
stronghold that she was blocked from visiting in September 2000, prior to
her arrest, NLD spokesman U Lwin told AFP.

"On her way she met many people in many villages. In some villages she had
to stop because those people wanted to offer her a lot of flowers. She has
to go slowly," he said.

In Shwebo, "there were many people, many motor cars, motorcycles, and they
put their lights on, their battery horns on, even though the people in
those villages and Shwebo were warned by the authorities not to form a big
crowd to receive her," he said.

People were warned earlier in the week not to see her, but U Lwin said no
fresh reports of harassment -- which Suu Kyi complained about last month
-- had been received since then.

The Nobel peace laureate aims to meet with party supporters, reopen NLD
offices shut by the junta and assess conditions in the military-ruled
state, activities she has also carried out during seven other trips she
has made in the past year.
_______________

Associated Press May 8 2003

Myanmar garment manufacturers call for end to U.S. ban

Local garment makers called on a U.S. trade group Thursday to withdraw a
ban on goods from Myanmar, saying the boycott aimed at the military
government was "unfair" and could harm more than 300,000 workers.

The American Apparel and Footwear Association's ban on Myanmar textiles,
apparel and footwear is based on "false allegations" about labor
conditions, said Myint Soe, chairman of the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers'
Association.

The AAFA, which says in its Web site that its members account for
approximately 80 percent of wholesale apparel sales of U.S. companies,
said in an April 15 statement that it was mounting the campaign "due to
the ongoing cruel and repressive nature of the ruling regime" in Myanmar.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been ruled by military governments
for more than four decades. The current crop of generals came to power in
1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising, a move that prompted an
international outcry.

"We firmly declare that no garment factory in Myanmar uses forced labor
nor child labor. All factories adhere to the existing laws and
international standards," Myint Soe told reporters.

Myint Soe said the AAFA's decision could detrimentally affect the lives of
more than 300,000 garment factory workers, most of whom are young women
between the ages of 18 and 24, and more than a half million of their
dependents.

He invited representatives from the group to visit Myanmar to investigate
whether labor conditions at garment factories are up to international
standards and urged them to withdraw the "irresponsible announcement."

The Myanmar Garment Manufacturers' Association represents about 400
garment factories. Ninety-five percent of the factories are state-owned
while the remaining 5 percent are either joint ventures or wholly owned by
foreign companies.

Myint Soe said about 75 percent of the products manufactured at the
factories are imported by the United States and 25 percent by European
countries.

Garments are one of the few major exports from impoverished Myanmar, which
already faces limited international economic sanctions by governments,
including a ban on all new investment by U.S. companies. The shaky economy
faced a banking crisis in February.

Myint Soe said a bill submitted to the U.S. Senate in May 2001 to prohibit
all imports from Myanmar had already triggered a sharp decline in demand
and was hitting the garment sector hard.

He said garment factories production in Myanmar - counted by dozens of
items - was 34.54 million in 2000 but dropped to 20.25 million in 2001,
and to 18.78 million in 2002.

MONEY

Guardian May 8 2003

BAT Burma pay row reignited
By Terry Macalister

British American Tobacco yesterday insisted that it was one of the best
employers in Burma - despite giving its factory workers there a basic
salary of 17p a day.

A row over BAT's continued presence in the south-east Asian military
dictatorship dominated the company's recent annual meeting.

It blew up again last night, when human rights activists released new data
which appeared to show that its pay scales in Burma were much lower than
it had revealed at the company's annual meeting. The latest figures
threaten to embarrass BAT's deputy chair man and former Tory chancellor,
Kenneth Clarke, because they contradict those he recently gave to the
parliamentary group on Burma.

At the annual meeting, the company had argued that the 17p salary was one
part of a series of payments - including a bonus, meal benefit, shift
allowance and overtime - which could give its lowest paid workers pounds
30 a month or 52,941 Burmese kyat.

The Burma Campaign UK says it checked these figures later with David
Wilson, the corporate and regulatory affairs manager for BAT in the Asia
Pacific region.

Mr Wilson admitted to the human rights group that the overtime figure was
one sixth of the figure given by BAT previously, and said the average
monthly figure for the lowest paid workers was pounds 16.10 a month - not
pounds 30.

The tobacco company, based in London, would not comment on the discrepancy
between the figures, insisting there were no anomalies.

"Our Group company is one of the best factory payers, with pay rates in
the top 25% of major companies in Burma.

"Burma Campaign's continued interest in our employee wages in Burma is
very surprising, given their publicly stated demand that we 'immediately
close' the factory and make all 500 employees redundant," the company said
in a written statement.
____________

The Economist May 8 2003

BIG OIL'S DIRTY SECRETS

The ethics of the oil industry are coming under unprecedented scrutiny

EVEN as it celebrates soaring profits--thanks to higher prices during the
war--and soaring share prices, now war is over, the oil industry faces a
new danger largely of its own creation. It will surprise nobody to learn
that oil and ethics mix about as well as oil and water. But, just as the
tobacco industry and Wall Street gained a false sense of security because
for years they got away with well-known practices of an ethically shady
nature, only to pay a hefty price later, so too oil's hour of reckoning
may be approaching. There are several reasons, including a high-profile
bribery scandal; the growing political sensitivity of the oil industry;
changing attitudes to corporate governance; and some potentially explosive
lawsuits.

The bribery scandal, which seems certain to grow larger as more details
emerge, concerns the battle to win oil contracts in Kazakhstan. During the
1990s, several big oil firms fought for the right to exploit the oil
riches of the region, including Chevron Texaco, on whose board Condoleezza
Rice served prior to joining the Bush administration. And, if prosecutors
are to be believed, executives at some firms behaved over-zealously as
this battle raged.

This week, Swiss investigators were reported to have added a bribery and
money-laundering probe involving, among others, Credit Agricole, a French
bank, to continuing American investigations into alleged Caspian
corruption. Last month, a grand jury in New York issued indictments
against two Americans--James Giffen, an independent banker with close ties
to the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Bryan Williams, a
former executive of Mobil. Both deny wrongdoing. America's Justice
Department is also looking into whether Mobil, now merged with Exxon, took
part in a plan to pay $78m from American and European oil firms into Swiss
bank accounts belonging to Mr Nazarbayev, among others. Exxon Mobil, the
world's biggest oil firm, says it knows of no wrongdoing.

OILING THE WHEELS

This is already the largest investigation by American authorities into
alleged bribery abroad. As it unfolds, it seems certain to provide plenty
of colourful stories that will keep it in the spotlight. It involves
well-known Russian businessmen and politicians, payments for speed boats
and fur coats, and--if only because they too were involved in bidding for
Kazakh contracts--other big oil firms besides Mobil, including firms with
connections to senior Bush administration officials other than Miss Rice.

It may also provide the sternest test yet of America's Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act (FCPA), which outlaws bribery. When the act was introduced
in 1977, many American oil firms groused that the law handicapped them
against foreign competitors when dealing in the undemocratic and
unscrupulous parts of the world where oil is often found. That fear was
not entirely groundless, as is clear from the current trial of former
officials of France's Elf Aquitaine (now part of Total), where bribery
seems to have been a core competency.

Some American oil-industry executives privately grouse that, if anybody is
found guilty, it will be due to carelessness. The FCPA, they admit, can be
skirted by careful use of "signature bonus" payments to middlemen
brokering contracts and via "arm's-length" transactions involving law
firms based, more often than not, in London. On the other hand, argues
Scott Horton of Patterson Belknap, a New York law firm, the FCPA has
prompted American oil firms, though generally opposed to transnational
laws on corporate behaviour, to support efforts led by the OECD to impose
an international ban on bribery.

The current scandal in the Caspian can only bolster such efforts to bring
some transparency to this mucky business. But will it also lead to a
greater questioning of some of the techniques used to get around the FCPA?
Amy Jaffe, of Texas's Rice University, insists that the current
investigation "is going to force every legal department at every major oil
firm to ensure they have a clear picture of what their agents, advisers
and everyone else in foreign countries are doing. The Giffen case will
define what you can and can't do."

Big oil is also facing legal troubles over its famed love of nature. This
week, lawyers for aggrieved indigenous folk filed suit against Chevron
Texaco in Ecuador. For a decade, legal activists have been trying to sue
Texaco for dumping contaminated water in open ponds in that country's rain
forest that, they claim, harmed both health and the environment. The firm
denies wrongdoing, noting that there were no specific laws in Ecuador when
it operated there that forbade its practices.

At first, the litigants pursued their claim in American courts, but a
judge finally bounced the case back to Ecuador as the proper jurisdiction
for the matter. That appeared to be a victory for the oil firm, but in
order to have the trial moved south, Chevron Texaco had to agree to
respect the ruling of the Ecuadorian court. If it does not, the American
judge has retained the right to step into the matter once again. Joseph
Kohn, a lawyer for the villagers, is already talking of $1 billion as his
team's estimate for cleaning up the damage allegedly done by the
firm--even before any compensation for suffering and so on.

But legal attacks on alleged human rights abuses committed overseas may
prove to be the most nettlesome of all for the oil industry. Consider the
sort of public denial prompted by a lawsuit filed last month against an
American oil firm: "Occidental has not and does not provide lethal aid to
Colombia's armed forces." Even if the firm does indeed prove not to have
provided "lethal aid," it faces a high-profile trial exposing its
relationship with a regime with an, ahem, uneven record on human rights.
Similarly, Exxon is being accused of complicity in abuses committed by the
Indonesian military in Aceh, and Unocal stands accused of benefiting from
forced labour deployed by the military government in Myanmar. Both firms
have consistently denied any wrongdoing.

These cases are tests of America's Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). As the
law dates back to 1789, its critics note that it does not deal with the
precise circumstances of today's cases: it was probably intended to give
foreigners a legal forum when in America, rather than offer a domestic
remedy for American misdeeds abroad. Oil industry lobbyists have been
pushing Congress to repeal the ATCA. Last year, the Bush administration
took the unusual step of intervening in a lawsuit brought by the
International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF) against Exxon, arguing that
applying the ATCA in this case might hinder America's efforts to fight
terrorism.

Even so, points out the ILRF's Terry Collingsworth, starting in 1980, this
statute has indeed been applied in human-rights cases where foreign states
or victims have been involved. Now, particularly with two separate cases
related to Myanmar in American courts, it may end up applying to
corporations that are judged to be "knowingly complicit" in abuses.

Could this be enough to transform an industry that is famously shameless,
not least in America? Maybe. A few big legal losses, lots of bad
headlines, and an impending Presidential election with an oil man on the
ballot might work wonders.

REGIONAL

Agence France Presse May 8 2003

Myanmar military leader leaves Laos

Myanmar's military leader Senior General Than Shwe has left Laos after a
three-day "friendship and cooperation" visit, state media reported
Thursday.

Than Shwe left Vientiane on Wednesday after a farewell ceremony at the
Presidential Palace held by Lao President Khamtay Siphandone, the KPL news
agency said.

"This visit to Laos by the top leader from the Union of Myanmar marked a
significant milestone to tighten the friendly relations and cooperation
between Laos and Myanmar," it said.

The two ASEAN members also signed a cooperation agreement.

The junta head was accompanied by his wife and a 59-member delegation
including the ministers of agriculture, forestry, mining and health.

Myanmar's number two leader Maung Aye travelled to Vientiane in December
2000.

STATEMENTS

UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office May 6 2003

UK Foreign Office Minister Speech On Burma's Wasted Year

Speaking on the first anniversary of the release from house arrest of Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, UK Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien criticized the
failure of the Burmese military regime to move towards national
reconciliation.
Mr O'Brien said:
'One year ago, many of us hoped that the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
would herald the beginning of political change in Burma. But Senior
General Than Shwe and the Burmese regime have failed to engage in
substantive political dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other Burmese
democratic leaders. The Burmese people hope for a more prosperous,
peaceful, democratic future. For them, this has been a wasted year. The
case for political change in Burma grows stronger day by day.’
Mr O'Brien expressed the UK's ongoing support for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and
the United Nations' efforts to bring democracy to Burma:
‘It is clear to all that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for
Democracy are legitimate and constructive partners for the process of
transition to civilian rule in Burma. There is no reasonable excuse for
the military authorities to further delay substantive political dialogue
or for the continued refusal to allow the United Nations Secretary
Generals' Special Envoy to visit Burma.’
Mr O'Brien also took the opportunity to welcome the recent release in
Burma of 21 political prisoners, including Dr Salai Tun Than, and said:
‘I hope this marks the start of a process leading to the rapid release of
the hundreds of political prisoners remaining in Burma's jails.’