Burma is the latest phase of the major counter-insurgency wars fought in South-East Asia since World War II.

Burma is a land with extensive natural resources including minerals (lead, zinc, copper, tin), precious stones (pearls, rubies), timber (predominantly teak: Burma once produced 75% of the world's teak), and oil and natural gas. Burma also had a wealth of labor resources, with a highly literate population.
Burma is one of the world's oldest oil producers, exporting its first barrel in 1853. Oil has been extracted manually at Yenangyaung on the Irrawaddy River since ancient times, and the first exports of crude oil were shipped to Britain as early as 1853.

The first foreign oil company to operate in Burma was the Rangoon Oil Company, * set up in 1871 by a group of Scottish businessmen. Oil, timber and gems were the natural resources that drew British interests to Burma, annexed as a province of British India in 1886.
Between 1886 and 1963, the country's oil industry was dominated by the Burmah Oil Company  (BOC), * which discovered the Ychaugyaung field in 1887 and the Chauk field in 1902. Both are still in production. During the British colonial administration, Burma supplied oil to India through the Burmah Oil Company.*
George Orwell (who served as a civil servant in Burma between 1922 and 1927), once predicted that of all the countries of the British Empire, none was more likely to prosper on achieving independence than Burma. When independence from Britain was finally granted in 1948, Burma was still known as the “rice bowl of Asia”, that is, the largest exporter of rice in the world, despite suffering the devastating effects of the Second World War.

By 1987, however, Burma was one of the United Nations’ Least Developed Countries (LDPs), and at the start of the 21st century, Burma is among the world’s lowest-income countries. This dramatic change in Burma’s economic fortunes over the last 50 years has largely been the result of the rule of the military dictatorship that has been in power since 1962. While the 1950’s saw a parliamentary democracy encouraging economic development, a military coup d’etat engineered by General Ne Win in 1962 has brought about an autocratic police state. Stagnation and decline in the Burmese economy, combined with various social crises, resulted from the imposition of a brutal command economy (the “Burmese Way to Socialism”) enforced by the military during the 1962-1988 period.
Subsequent moves by the military government (from 1988-1993) to introduce wholesale neo-liberal economic policies, and eliminate obstacles to foreign investment and trade, led to a brief growth boom (official figures since 1991/1992 record economic growth of more than 5%, on average, every year, with peak growth rates of 10% in 1992/1993). Economic growth since 1993 has however, slowed considerably.
Substantial evidence suggests that the government of Burma (known as the SPDC or State Peace and Development Council), through various policies aimed at maintaining its military rule, has consistently “put military interests above food security.”

By 1995, in fact, "the overall human rights situation [was] worsening...  As the SLORC... moved to attract international investment at least 2 million people [were] been forced to work for no pay under brutal conditions to rebuild Burma's long-neglected infrastructure."
In a country with one of the largest armies in Asia (despite having no external enemies), civilian communities are primarily obliged to satisfy demands for goods and services from the military. A recent survey has indicated that 23% of the population lives below the poverty line, and in addition, that Burma has one of the worst human development records in Asia. Infant mortality is 79 per thousand births, compared with the East Asia average of 34; 45% of children under 5 in Burma suffer stunted growth; and life expectancy at birth is 60 years compared with an average in East Asia of 68.

The military junta has also been responsible for widespread and systematic human rights abuses. In 1998, it was estimated that approximately 8 million Burmese men, women and children had been forced into compulsory, uncompensated labour, often with the threat of physical abuse, torture, rape and murder. Large parts of the country have been “ethnically cleansed” as hundreds of thousands of people from minority groups have been forcibly relocated from their homes to areas where they are unable to farm and provide for their families.


In 2007, the leader of the democratic opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, began her twelfth year under house arrest. She is allowed no visitors, her phone line has been cut and her post is intercepted. There is currently no prospect of her being released and fear is growing for her safety. Aung San Suu Kyi is often referred to as  "Asia 's Nelson Mandela" for her work to peacefully bring democracy and human rights to Burma. 
Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize after leading her political party, the National League for Democracy, to a landslide 82% victory in Burma 's last democratic election in 1988. The regime has consistently refused to recognize the results, and has kept her imprisoned for eleven of the past eighteen years. [1]

Meanwhile the Burmese State has steadily intensified its atrocities against the population. Rape is regularly used as a weapon against indigenous women and children. Forced labour is widespread, described by the UN's International Labour Organisation as a "crime against humanity". A report by Danish Doctors for Human Rights noted that "sixty-six percent of the over 120,000 refugees from Burma now living in Thailand have been tortured" and subjected to "forced labor, deportation, pillaging, destruction of villages, and various forms of torture and rape." The doctors reported that refugees witnessed the junta's military forces murder members of their families. [2]

The junta currently holds more than 1,200 political prisoners, many of whom are routinely tortured. Throughout Burma, up to three million people have been forcibly displaced to so-called ‘satellite zones,’ where under the direct control of the military, they construct bridges, military camps, irrigation systems and oil and gas pipelines.
 
In these camps, ‘porterage,’ * a British colonial euphemism signifying forced menial labour, is enforced by the Burmese army upon the displaced population. Under this system, men, women and children, primarily of ethnic nationalities in Burma, are forced to labour on roads, railroads, and other construction projects as well as to carry military materiel and other goods essential to the armed forces of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). People are made to carry the very arms that the regime subsequently uses against them in battle.

The SPDC regime has also recruited more child soldiers than any other country in the world. According to the United Nations, there are more than half a million internally displaced persons inside Burma in addition to over two million refugees and illegal immigrants outside the country. Half the national budget is spent on the military whose primary enemy is the population, while next to nothing is spent on health; one in ten Burmese babies dies in infancy.
The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, has called on countries around the world to impose sanctions on Burma for its use of modern-day slave labour. Many people continue to die and flee as a result of the regime's policies, and the Associated Press in reporting on the slaughter, calling Burma "Southeast Asia's Darfur."
[3]

"Suu Kyi and the people of Burma," writes Archbishop Desmond Tutu, like Aung San Suu Kyi a Nobel peace laureate, "have not called for a military coalition to invade their country. They have simply asked for the maximum diplomatic and economic pressure against Burma's brutal dictators."
The U.S. Congress first authorized the president to impose sanctions against Burma in September 1996, during the administration of former President Bill Clinton, when Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat of California) and former Senator William Cohen (Republican of Maine) successfully introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill for the 1997 fiscal year.
President Clinton then issued Executive Order 13047 on May 20, 1997, certifying, under the authority of the 1997 Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Act (Public Law 104-208) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706), that the government of Burma had engaged in repression of and violence against the country's democratic opposition.
The executive order established a state of national emergency and prohibited "U.S. persons" from making new investments in Burma or facilitating new investment in Burma by foreign persons.
Those restrictions were expanded under the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003, which was passed by Congress following a May 30, 2003 attack Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters.  Evidence showed that Burma's ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), supported the attack. [4]
On May 18, 2006, President Bush signed a one-year extension of a declaration of national emergency sustaining the imposition of economic sanctions against Burma, according to a notice released by the White House.
 
The policy of the European Union, meanwhile, with an eye to the vast Asian market, appears to be that of active appeasement of the Burmese junta. Limited sanctions are in place, but they are being easily circumvented by third-party states.
In fact, the EU is sustaining the regime by increasing imports, worth roughly $4 billion between 1998 and 2002. On October 8th 2004, the fifth summit of the 38-state Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) was held in Hanoi and attended by representatives of the junta for the first time. Instead of announcing a boycott, various European Governments and the EU Commission turned up and said nothing. Instead, France's former president, Jacques Chirac, stated he hoped stronger sanctions would not be necessary because they "will hurt the poorest people".

The "poorest people," however, means France’s Total Oil Company, the largest foreign investor in Burma, where the company's infrastructure of roads and railway access has largely facilitated the military take-over of Burma’s natural resources. Total's money has also allowed the junta to expand its military and overall repression apparatus. John Jackson of Burma Campaign UK pointed to the farcical nature of present EU sanctions. After as many as 100 of Suu Kyi's supporters were publicly beaten to death by soldiers in 2003, the EU extended its visa ban to the junta and Germany froze no less than ¤86 ($112) of German-based Burmese assets. "None of the EU officials... denies that foreign investment and military spending in Burma are closely linked. In the week the regime received its first payment for gas due to be piped to Thailand from a gas field operated by Total Oil, it made a $130m down payment on ten MiG-29 jet fighters." [5]

The current campaign against TOTAL has dwarfed the scale of previous campaigns against transnational corporations in Burma. PepsiCo, Heineken, British American Tobacco, Triumph International & Premier Oil have all been forced to pull out of Burma following intensive and sustained campaigns against them. [6] 
Through direct action, the international campaign has secured major disinvestments, such as Premier Oil, Heineken, PepsiCo and British Home Stores. The current "dirty list" of investors includes the oil companies Total and Unocal, Rolls-Royce, Lloyd's of London and so-called prestige travel companies such as Bales, Road to Mandalay and Orient Express. The bestselling Lonely Planet guidebook is a fixture on the list. Lonely Planet has stated, in the words of one of its writers, that Burma is "better off" today, and that although the junta is "abominable", "political imprisonment, torture" and "involuntary civilian service to the state" are not new and "have been around for centuries". [7] 
On the issue of sanctions, Archbishop Tutu further stated that: "International pressure can change the situation in Burma. Tough sanctions, not `constructive engagement,' finally brought about a new South Africa. This is the language that must be spoken with tyrants, for it is the only language they understand."

What is hopeful is that there is the promise of sanctions, coming not from governments, but from a remarkable grassroots disinvestment movement in the United States. Modeled on the campaign to boycott apartheid South Africa, selective purchasing laws have been enacted by six American cities, including San Francisco and Oakland.
These laws prevent public funds from going to companies that trade with or invest in Burma. At the time of writing, New York State is considering similar legislation. Byron Rushing, who has written a selective purchasing law for the state of Massachusetts, stated: "In the case of South Africa, we were able to put pressure on a whole range of companies like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi-Cola, and eventually most withdrew. And that really added to the pressure on the white South African government. That was a victory. As for Burma, it's not going to happen overnight, but we have started. The civilized world should follow." [8]

EU sanctions are slow in coming into place because European governments have yet to reach any lasting agreement on this issue. EU members are committed to a common foreign policy on Burma. As all 25 EU members have to agree on any issue such as sanctions, it takes only one country to refuse to take action, and nothing further happens.

Current EU measures against Burma include:

•    An arms embargo: however, there is no worldwide arms embargo and the regime buys most of its arms from China and Russia.

•    A ban on non-humanitarian aid: this is not a measure that has a serious impact on the regime.

•    A visa ban for senior regime officials and their families: otherwise known as the shopping ban, as exemptions in the visa ban allow regime officials to attend many international meetings in Europe.

•    A freeze of assets held in Europe by people on the visa ban list: less than £4,000 has been frozen in all 25 EU member states.

•    A limited investment ban: this measure was introduced in 2004. European companies are banned from investing in a small number of named state-owned enterprises. These state-owned companies are largely insignificant. None of the companies listed are involved in the areas that earn the regime any significant revenue. The timber, mining, oil and gas sectors are not included. However, European companies are banned from investing in a pineapple juice factory and a tailor shop. To cap it all, it is already illegal to invest in state-owned enterprises under Burmese law, so the EU banned something that couldn’t happen anyway.

Although the UK does not officially encourage trade, investment or tourism with Burma, Britain ranks as the second largest source of approved investment in Burma. China, in fact, ranks 16th overall. The reason for this is not just the massive investment in Burma by British companies. It is that companies all over the world use Britain to invest in Burma via the dependent territories. Tax benefits and the lack of transparency make the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda the perfect place for investors wanting to do business with the regime. The British government has done nothing to stop it.
Between 1990 and 2000, Western countries disbursed 65% of total foreign direct investment to Burma. Some of the regime’s most significant business partners have been Western multinationals, including TOTAL Oil (France) and Chevron (US). [9]

Having successfully liberalized the Burmese economy by 1993, the SPDC bargained that the "Asian Tiger" states of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia as well as the Western Powers would respond with the required inward investment. The SPDC was not disappointed. The U.S. government, in spite of a certain sound and fury by its representatives at the U.N., said it would continue "neither to encourage nor to discourage" trade and investment into Burma. This new policy was marketed in public relations terms as "constructive engagement," a euphemism borrowed from the Reagan administration's support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. The prize is not merely Burma’s vast resources, but also a pool of forced labor that will undercut the cheapest in Asia. This will attract further international capital, and, it is projected, loans from the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

That this expectation on the part of the SPDC would be eventually rewarded in the long-term was indicated by a London trade conference, "Burma: The Next Tiger?” organized by the British Government on 5th December 1995, and funded by the then Department of Trade. The attendees were told about the "visionaries" in the Burmese military. Immediately upon Aung San Suu Kyi's temporary release in 1995, the Japanese government restored some $50 million in aid. The new Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, who had previously announced "democracy is coming to Burma," said that Australia could now adopt a "flexible" approach to a country that offered "great economic opportunities." By far the biggest investment, however, is by now well in place: a billion-dollar pipeline built by the French state oil company Total, and its U.S. partner Unocal. This pipeline carries Burma's natural gas into Thailand and gives the generals an estimated $200 million to $400 million every year for 30 years. At present, more than two-thirds of the SPDC's foreign underwriting now comes from foreign oil companies.
[10]

On January 12th, 2007 the governments of China, Russia, and South Africa effectively blocked action against Burma at the UN Security Council. The Security Council was presented with a draft resolution on Burma by the United States.
In fact, for all the sound and fury over the Burmese dictatorship, this was the first time that a resolution on Burma was presented to the UN Security Council. It was officially stated that the draft resolution was designed to encourage national reconciliation and democratization in Burma, the release of all political prisoners (including Aung San Suu Kyi), an end to human-rights abuses in the country, and inclusion of the opposition and ethnic minorities in a dialogue leading to a process of democratic transition. The resolution also prescribed active involvement by the good offices of the Secretary-General, but did not include punitive measures such as sanctions. While the majority of the Council, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy, Slovak, Peru, Panama and Ghana supported the resolution, China and Russia exercised their veto powers to block it. South Africa also opposed the resolution, while Qatar, Indonesia, and Congo abstained. [11]
"I am very disappointed by the actions of these governments. By rejecting the proposed resolution, they effectively signal to the Burmese military junta to continue its crimes against humanity and its war on its own citizens,” said Aung Din, a former political prisoner and Policy Director of the US Campaign for Burma. In response to active opposition by China, Russia, Indonesia, and South Africa to the recent UN General Assembly resolution on Burma, Aung Din continued, “They say that the Security Council is not the proper venue for discussing Burma, but they voted against Burma resolution at the UN General Assembly as well. Their actions indicate they don’t want to give us any possible venue to highlight the Burmese regime’s atrocious abuses and seek an end to these attacks and abuses. They are giving the regime a license to kill.”
[12]


Notes and References:

[1] http://burma.total.com/en/news/p_5_3.htm

* [The extraction of oil in Burma was monopolized by the Britain through the Burmah Oil Company, which was set up in continuation of the Rangoon Oil Company in 1886 and subsequently dominated the Burmese oil industry until 1962. Immediately after Burma's annexation, the Burmah Oil Company took over the Yenangyaung oil field from its indigenous owners. In 1897, another major oil field was discovered at Singu in the Irrawaddy basin: the Chauk-Lanywa field.
By 1906, Burmah Oil delivered nearly half of all kerosene supplies to India and was a contracted provider of fuel oil to the British Navy. Oil refineries were built at Syriam, a river port opposite Yangon (Rangoon). Later, crude oil from Chauk was sent by a 563 km pipeline to Syriam for refining. A profitable oil industry was established, with production reaching 6.56 million barrels in 1939 and oil exports amounting to US$35 million in 1940.]
http://www.nautilus.org/~rmit/forum-reports/0630a-kolas-tonnesson.html

* [The Burmah Oil Company was founded in 1896 by David Sime Cargill in Glasgow, Scotland, with the aim of developing oil interests on the Indian subcontinent. It became an early and major shareholder in British Petroleum, and therefore restricted its interests to the Indian subcontinent, where BP had no business. It played a major role in the oil industry in South Asia for about a century through its subsidiaries, and in the discovery of oil in the Middle East through its significant interest in British Petroleum. It marketed under the BOC brand in Burma, Pakistan and Assam (in India) and through a joint venture with Shell (Burmah-Shell) in the rest of India.

Burmah Oil Company introduced mechanised drilling in Magwe Division's oil fields (Yenangyaung, Chauk, and Minbu). Until 1901, when Standard Oil Company began operating in Burma (now also known as Myanmar), Burmah Oil Company was the sole oil company to operate in Burma. The company operated in Burma until 1963, when Ne Win nationalised all industries in the country.

The company was involved in a landmark legal case, Burmah Oil Co. v Lord Advocate.

In 1966 Castrol was acquired by Burmah, and renamed Burmah-Castrol.

The Bank of England came to the rescue of Burmah Oil after the company lost its tanker fleets in 1974. The core of the rescue operation was the provision of a year's grace so that the company could become smaller and more viable.

In 2000, Burmah-Castrol was acquired by BP Amoco plc (now BP plc). The former British Petroleum purchased Amoco in December 1998, then bought Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in April 2000. ARCO’s offshore oil operations in Burma provided over $55 million to the dictatorship from ARCO’s entry into Burma in 1995 to its withdrawal in 1998.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200109/hattam_printable.asp
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/reports/Investment_report.html
http://www.uscampaignforburma.org/newspress/latestpressrelease.html

* [Porterage was also a system practiced by the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC) in the Putumayo region of Columbia/Peru in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, before Roger Casement’s 1912 Putumayo Report succeeded in exposing these atrocities.
Some slave porters in Burma today receive some minimal food; most of them receive less than subsistence. The SPDC either runs them until they drop dead or lets them go when they are nearly dead so that they can regain sufficient strength for another term as porter. Many porters are permanently disabled due to dislocated shoulders from the heavy loads, severe lacerations from straps and whips, hip-displacements and other indices of prolonged physical toil with grossly inadequate diets.

In particular, the SPDC have targeted Karen and Karenni peoples for porterage work. In testimony taken on 6 June 1995, a Karen victim said:

“Now the Burmese are demanding porters. One person from each house must go… otherwise they would burn down our village… I don't remember how many times they beat me, but until I was blue in many places. They used a heavy length of bamboo… We had to carry the soldiers’ rucksacks but we hadn't eaten any food, so we were very tired because they were very heavy... I was so tired, and I decided, "No, I don't want to go. If I die now, it its alright."
The only way to avoid porter duty is to pay porter fees - usually 2500 kyat - a huge sum for village peasants. 

[2] http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/BurmaSingapore_Drugs.html

[3] http://www.uscampaignforburma.org/news-press/pr011207.htm

      http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=331

[4] http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2006/May/19-713376.html

[5] http://www.uscampaignforburma.org/news-press/latestpressrelease.html                                                                                http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=331

[6] http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P152

[7] http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=331

[8] http://www.utne.com/issues/1999_78/features/734-2.html

[10] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199596/cmhansrd/vo960618/text/60618w19.htm                                         http://www.utne.com/issues/1999_78/features/734-1.html 
        http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v05n3p15.htm

[11] http://www.uscampaignforburma.org/news-press/pr011207.htm
        http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/united_nations/793?theme=alt1

[12] http://www.uscampaignforburma.org/news-press/pr011207.htm                                                                                         http://www.burmanet.org/news/2005/10/13/irrawaddy-maybe-this-time-%E2%80%93-aung-din/                                      http://www.ncgub.net/article.php/20070615101421182