What Time Has Over Money

by Mick Schommer, WAMM

After years of arduous, part-time, volunteer work, the Free Burma Coalition passed a benchmark human rights policy in the city of Minneapolis. In support of the people of Burma, the city council voted 8-5 on October 13, 2000 to sell-off (or "divest") its stocks and avoid future investments in companies that do business in Burma.

A multiethnic nation in southeast Asia, Burma is controlled by a brutal military regime with an abysmal human-rights record that is financed by transnational corporations. The Burma Divestment Resolution was authored by Jim Niland (Ward 6). The city will divest an estimated $20 million from the military dictatorship's corporate partners. Perseverance was rewarded.

In 1997, Free Burma activists began what was expected to be a favorable campaign to enact a "selective purchasing agreement" in Minneapolis, which would have prevented the city from buying products or accepting contract bids from companies involved in Burma. Fierce reaction by the council, including several self-described "progressives," created obstacles at every turn.

Eventually, the purchasing resolution was passed, but Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton vetoed it. Several days afterward, the Supreme Court struck down a selective purchasing agreement in the state of Massachusetts, casting a shadow over our efforts in Minneapolis. Quickly rebounding, the Coalition introduced the divestment resolution, which is legally differentiated from purchasing and closely follows the city's former anti-apartheid legislation. A number of cities and states are watching Minneapolis as a test case that will determine the viability of other local legislation dealing with human rights, ecological protection, and civil rights.

The situation in Burma is quite grim and aggravated by the presence of transnational corporations. Many companies have entered into agreements with the military regime to employ forced labor in horrific textile sweatshops and construction sites. CEOs pay off army personnel to disperse villagers and farmers who live in the path of construction at gunpoint or through harassment by rape, torture, and murder. Clothing products created under the most abusive working conditions imaginable reach our stores despite federal sanctions. U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (Dem., IA) has introduced legislation to close the loophole on apparel imports from Burma (which increased by nearly 50 percent in 1999).

Travel agencies and hospitality corporations continue to promote and build up the tourist industry, despite clear evidence that roadways, river channels, and airports are built upon the deaths of many people. Total-Fina and Unocal Oil have made such an egregious arrangement with the military for the construction of a gas pipeline in southern Burma. The military crimes have been so blatant and widespread that a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the indigenous people in U.S. court against Unocal for complicity and direct human rights violations. International scrutiny has prevented the pipeline from operating for now.

The military dictators remain in power with the assistance of transnational corporations that are required to set up financial arrangements with them in order to launder drug profits. The regime is the largest supplier of opium/heroin to the world market. The UN, U.S. State Department, and several NGOs have documented the dubious connection between the narco-dictatorship in Burma and its corporate investors. Even Secretary of State Albright, who is no dove or corporate opponent, has declared that all business dealings in Burma are entwined with the drug trade.

The international, corporate, and militaristic dimensions of Burma's plight are understandably greeted by a sense of helplessness. However, true political change is slow and deliberate, less dramatic, more systemic, evolutionary in the end, and ultimately produced by a million united acts of infinitesimal dissidence. Someday the fight for freedom in Burma may be regarded as an illustration of how dialectical resistance gave way to a new strategy by the spoonfuls: measuring out the end of a military dictatorship by chipping away at the political and economic edges, day by day, from many angles, until the dictatorship collapses under its own weight.