Houston Chronicle Editorial 5/24

[John Scherb]

6:42 PM 5/23/1996

Burmese Daze

Time for world to confront Burma's military dictators

Trying to put a damper on this weekend's observance of the sixth anniversary of
Burma's last election, that country's military rulers have resorted to the mass arrest
of hundreds of democratic sympathizers. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who won
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, said many of those arrested were among those elected
to Parliament but never allowed to serve.

In response to the crackdown, the Senate Banking Committee held an emergency
hearing on legislation that would prevent U.S. companies from investing in Burma.
Unfortunately, the principal witnesses in favor of the bill were a movie actress and a
former member of the rock group Talking Heads, witnesses that risk making the
pressing issue of repression in Burma into another trivial Hollywood cause celebre.

Many American companies such as Pepsico and a host of fashionable clothiers have
pulled out of Burma, either to protect their images or because their managers believe
it morally reprehensible to conduct commerce that rewards murderous dictators.
Several U.S. oil companies, including Texaco, have chosen to stay in.

Texaco, like other oil companies, has a special problem. Providence placed much of the
world's oil and gas deposits beneath countries ruled by repressive, corrupt tyrants,
and the Burmese military regime is among the worst of a bad lot.

Forced labor, heroin trafficking, massacres and detention without charge -- all in a
day's work for Burma's thuggish State Law and Order Restoration Council.

In a message to stockholders, Texaco's board of directors said that the legitimacy of
Burma's dictators and the scope of their human rights violations should be judged by
the U.S. government rather than individual companies. If that is true, then the views
of the U.S. State Department should weigh heavily on Texaco's managers.

In testimony prepared for the Senate hearing, Kent Wiedemann, the State Department
official in charge of East Asian affairs, writes that there has been no improvement in
Burma's human rights record and that things are getting worse. That should answer
any question about whether the presence of U.S. companies in Burma is improving
conditions there for the Burmese people.

According to Wiedemann, the United States does not give economic aid to or "promote
U.S. investment in or trade with Burma," because its regime denies human rights and
cooperates with drug traffickers. Another of the department's Asian experts said
privately that even the most casual observer must conclude Burma's dictators are
evildoers with no redeeming qualities.

The Clinton administration does not think unilateral trade embargoes will do any good
in Burma, but a spokeswoman for Texaco said that Texaco is not an amoral company
incapable of distinguishing good from evil and controlled only by the profit motive.
She was quick to point out that Texaco does not condone slave labor and human rights
violations, although she did not know if company executives had formally requested
Burma's thugs to knock it off.

Texaco, she agreed, was capable of recognizing an evil so great that no responsible
company could do business with it. Perhaps Burma's military dictators, like the
apartheid regime of South Africa before them, have become that evil.

Copyright 1996 Houston Chronicle