U.S. Policy Regarding Burma.

Key Points

* A world-class human rights abuser, Burma's military junta is condemned both by the UN Human Rights Commission--every year since 1989--and by the International Labor Organization for its systematic use of forced labor.

* The SPDC continues to refuse to recognize the results of the 1990 elections, won overwhelmingly by the National League for Democracy (NLD), and has imprisoned over 55 NLD parliamentarians.

* Economic sanctions by the U.S. and other nations continue to pressure the SPDC regime, despite a recent ruling by the Supreme Court overturning the Massachusetts Burma law.

Springing from obscurity to America's editorial pages, college campuses, city councils, and state legislatures, Burma has become a major foreign policy issue seemingly out of proportion to its relatively limited ties to the United States. Ruled by a series of harsh military regimes since 1962, Burma serves as a test case for U.S. policy on several fronts: human rights; a growing worldwide heroin epidemic; the role of U.S. state and local governments in relation to international trade policy and practice; forced labor, international labor standards, and the new prominence of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in the era of globalization; and the role of multinational corporations in supporting dictatorships. U.S. verbal commitments to promote human rights and democracy are being put to the test as an embattled democracy movement--led by 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi--faces a relentless campaign of arrests and intimidation by the State Law and Order Restitution Council (SLORC) military junta, renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in November 1997.

SLORC came to power in September 1988, when it commanded the Burmese army to smash a nationwide democracy movement by gunning down more than 3,000 protesters in Rangoon and thousands more in smaller cities and towns. Nine consecutive years of UN General Assembly resolutions condemning the junta demonstrate that little has changed since then. The UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) has criticized the SPDC for "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, death in custody, torture, arbitrary and politically motivated arrest and detention, absence of due process of law, severe restrictions on freedom of opinion, expression, movement, assembly, and association, including portering for the military." The use of forced labor by the SPDC affects as many as 800,000 Burmese daily, according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). In November 2000, the ILO will likely employ--for the first time--Article 33 of its constitution and call on member states to take action against the junta. The ILO is demanding that the SPDC scrap legal authority for the use of forced labor, order all government authorities to cease using it, and prosecute those responsible, especially the military.

Attempting to legitimize its rule, SLORC/SPDC organized a multiparty election on May 27, 1990. The move turned out to be a huge miscalculation, as Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a landslide victory, taking 392 of 485 seats in the Parliament. The official military party won just 10 seats, and the military promptly refused to honor the results of the election. When the SPDC employed mass arrests to prevent the convening of the elected Parliament in August 1998, the NLD announced the formation of the Committee Representing the People's Parliament.

Civil society groups continue to be totally repressed. Only in July 2000 did the SPDC reopen universities shuttered since 1996 to prevent student gatherings. The dominance of military spending has relegated Burma's once-proud health service to 190th (out of 191) in overall health system performance, according to the World Health Organization.

The SPDC has consolidated control over ethnic groups in border areas by employing the infamous "four cuts" strategy, designed to cut off insurgents from food, funds, intelligence, and recruits. The result has been forced relocations and human suffering that rivals anything seen during ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Kosovo. Detailed research on internally displaced peoples (IDPs) among ethnic groups has found that over 300,000 Shan, more than 200,000 Karen, and over 30,000 Karenni citizens have been forced from their homes. Hundreds of villages have been turned into free-fire zones, in which heavily armed SPDC battalions, using civilians as forced porters and minesweepers, wreak havoc. Another 100,000 refugees have fled to Thailand.

The People's Republic of China--the SPDC's closest ally and primary diplomatic supporter--has provided $1.8 billion in military equipment for the SPDC's military modernization drive. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), recently revealed that Burma has one of the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world. Yet Western and Asian multinationals continue to invest with government ministries or entities like the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, controlled by military officers.

Successful efforts by activists to pass "Burma selective purchasing" legislation in two states (Massachusetts and Vermont) and 21 cities (including New York and Los Angeles) have pressured at least 39 international companies to withdraw from Burma. But on June 19, 2000, the Supreme Court upheld the National Foreign Trade Council challenge to the Massachusetts Burma law, marking a counterattack by a coalition of America's largest businesses, who oppose any restrictions on foreign trade.

Phil Robertson <[e-mail]> is the Mainland Southeast Asia Representative of the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, based in Bangkok, Thailand These are the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of either the American Center for International Labor Solidarity or the AFL-CIO.