CITES
CONFLICT WITH US ECONOMIC
SANCTIONS ON MILITARY REGIME & CALL
FOR WIDER GAO INQUIRY
Anti-Sweatshop
Watchdog Discovers Major US
Retailers Importing from Burma
US Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, announced today that she will ask the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to expand its inquiry into the Army and Air Force Exchange Service’s (AAFES) use of sweatshop labor. After a leading anti-sweatshop watchdog, Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee for Human Rights (NLC), produced shipping records showing that AAFES imports garments from a sweatshop in Burma, McKinney cited the apparent conflict with the spirit, if not the letter, of US policy toward Burma.
“Last week, President Clinton awarded the Medal of
Freedom, America’s highest civilian award, to Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s
Nobel Prize winning advocate for democracy. At that very moment, she was being
held under house arrest by a brutal military regime that has earned worldwide
condemnation for repression and the use of forced labor,” she said. “The US
has imposed economic sanctions on Burma, in much the same way as we did in the
1980’s against the apartheid regime in South Africa. I cannot understand what
the Pentagon must be thinking,” she added.
On November 30th, four leading Senate Republicans and
Democrats—Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jesse Helms (R-NC), Tom Harkin
(D-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT)--wrote to President Clinton urging him “to use
the power of the Executive Office of
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the President to ban all textile and apparel imports, at
least, if not all imports from Burma.” A bipartisan group of eleven Members of
Congress sent a similar letter to the President.
Two weeks ago, Kernaghan, brought to light documents showing that AAFES was purchasing blue jeans from a notorious sweatshop in Nicaragua that had been cited in a letter to Nicaragua’s Minister of Foreign Affairs by US Trade Representative, Charlene
Barshevsky. “This is the second example of AAFES’ relationship with sweatshop
operators. This time they may well be helping to support the world’s most repressive
military dictatorship that owns or controls most Burmese
exporting companies,” Kernaghan said.. “President Clinton has labeled the
regime a threat to US security. Now we find the Pentagon doing business with
them,” he added.
On December 5th, at a press conference on Capitol Hill,
McKinney and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) called on the GAO to conduct an
inquiry into the Pentagon agency’s practices. Brown had traveled to Nicaragua
in July where he interviewed former workers, plant managers, and government
officials. He and a series of delegations including human rights and religious
leaders documented brutal sweatshop conditions in the Nicaraguan factory. The
Pentagon claimed that its investigators found no problems at the plant.
Burma is ruled by a military government that has remained
in power despite suffering an overwhelming defeat in a 1990 election that saw
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win 82% of seats in the
Burmese Parliament. Last month, the United Nations’ International Labor
Organization (ILO) called on member nations to reconsider their relationships to
Burma because of its continued use of forced labor. In 1997, the Clinton
Administration, with bipartisan support in Congress, including Senators Mitch
McConnell, Jesse Helms, Daniel Moynihan, and Patrick Leahy, imposed a ban on all
new investment in Burma.
Kernaghan also produced shipping records and labels from
items purchased in US stores showing that major US retailers, including Kenneth
Cole, Montgomery Ward, Kohl’s Department Stores, Williams Sonoma, Fubu,
Jordache, Bugle Boy, Carter’s, Dress Barn, Kasper, and others, are purchasing
from sweatshops in Burma. The National Labor Committee reports that since the US
imposed a ban on all new US investment in Burma, in 1997, US apparel imports
were up 49% in 1998, 45% in 1999, and during the first nine months of 2000, they
were up 125.62 %. Clothing imports will exceed $400 million this year, an 800%
increase since 1995. NLC’s findings provided the factual basis of the
Senate and House letters.
Advocates argue that AAFES and company purchases undermine
US policy that seeks to isolate the military regime economically and
diplomatically in order to bring them to the negotiating table with Aung San Suu
Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
Copy of AAFES/Burma
(Myanmar) shipping record available on request.
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