ZOYA Phan has a simple message for the British businessmen and women trading with Burma's military dictatorship: "Stop it. You are helping to kill my people."
Phan, a member of the ethnic Karen group which has been mercilessly persecuted by the ruling military junta, was just 14 when her village was attacked by Burmese soldiers. She fled to the jungle and lived in hiding before escaping over the border to Thailand, ending up in a refugee camp. Phan eventually made her way to Britain, studied at university and now works full-time as a campaigner for democracy in Burma.
"I would say to your businessmen that they should hear a little of my life story," says Phan, now aged 26. "I would tell them about villages being destroyed, about the policy of ethnic cleansing, about rape being used as a weapon of war against girls as young as five years old. While I was in hiding in the jungle, British businessmen were dining in Rangoon and making deals with the very men who had ordered the slaughter of my people."
An example of one of the 56 British firms trading with Burma, and propping up the army generals currently smashing the nation's pro-democracy movement, is Britannic Garden Furniture (BGF).The company builds expensive accessories for Britons using Burmese teak.
The Burmese military regime owns every single one of the teak plantations in Burma and teak sales earn the dictators millions of pounds a year.
In a letter to the UK-based Burma Campaign group over its trade links with Burma, BGF said that Aung San Suu Kyi - the leader of the country's pro-democracy movement, who has been under lengthy military housearrest-"seemstobevery comfortable and well looked after in her bungalow and seems easily to communicate with the outside world".
An outraged Anne Clywd, the Labour MP who chairs the UK parliament's all-party group on human rights, said: "How would the company's bosses like to be in solitary confinement?"
Although, Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won the last free elections in Burma in 1990, taking 392 out of 492 seats, BGF claimed that she "admitted her party had won the election on a very small turnout". The company then later added that it had been "unsettled" by the extent of the hate mail it has received.
Despite Burma having a horrific record on human rights, BGF felt it was fitting to point out that "Burma's human rights, admitted, are not very good, and probably 50% of the world are not either".
Although the UK government says it does everything it can to discourage trade with Burma, the UK has more companies than any other nation on Earth trading with the regime. In total, the London-based Burma Campaign has found that 128 firms globally are trading with Burma - of those 44% are British. The Burma Campaign names and shames all the firms in its "dirty list".
OneofthetravelfirmsisAsean Explorer firm. The Burma Campaign says: "Asean has sent abusive emails to people who have asked them to end their involvement in Burma." Other traders include the British-owned Ben Line Agencies, which operates a range of port services for companies exportingcargofromBurmaandJames Latham,whosellsapproximately £50,000 of Burmese timber a year.
Perhaps the most high-profile firm is Rolls-Royce. Through its Singaporean subsidiary, the company has a contract to supply and service aircraft engines for at least one Burmese airline. SchlumbergerOilfieldServices,an Aberdeenshire-based firm, operates offshore gas rigs in Burma. A spokesman said the firm "views its presence as positive for the Burmese people".
Total Oil, which has offices in London, is in a joint venture with the military regime, developing an offshore gas field. It has been taken to court by six Burmese people who were allegedly used as forced labour in the preparation of Total's pipeline in Burma. Total Oil said its "forced withdrawal ... could cause the population even greater hardship".
Anna Roberts, acting director of the BurmaCampaignUK,said: "The Burmese regime spends half its budget on the military, and just 19p per person on health and education. It relies on foreign trade to supply this income. So, companies which trade with Burma are helping support a military dictatorship whichusesforeignmoneytobuy weapons to suppress its own people."
At the moment, EU sanctions only ban the trade in military equipment or goods which might be used to aid internal repression. The pro-democracy movement in Burma and its supporters in the UK want to see heavier sanctions.
Prime minister Gordon Brown has said: "I want to see all the pressures of the world put on the regime now - sanctions, the pressure of the UN, pressure from China and all the countries in the region, India, pressure from the whole world."
Robertspointedoutthatdespite Brown's "welcome comments, it is up to the government to impose sanctions. It should send a clear message to industry that trade is not acceptable. When the regime came to power in 1988 it was bankrupt. It was foreign trade which gave it its legs. It has not used that trade to help ordinary people but to double the size of the army and increase repression."
Clywd said: "Anyone with any sense would not go to Burma on holiday. I hope that people do not go now, are not going and will not go. Nobody with any kind of morality should trade with Burma. I'd like to see the government makingastrongstatementthatinvestment should be banned."
TheForeignandCommonwealth Office says that the government "discouragestradeandinvestmentin Burma", and claims it has reduced overall trade between Britain and Burma. The biggest success, the FCO says, was the decision, after pressure from ministers, by British American Tobacco and Premier Oil to withdraw from the country. In the first six months of 2007, the UK imported £17.1 million in goods from Burma, while also exporting £2m of goods to Burma.
Any UK company which contacts the government asking about trade with Burma is "informed of the grave political situation there and of the regime's atrocious record on human rights", the Foreign Office added.
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