Banning Imports from Burma

Robert Naiman

In Burma - "Myanmar" to its military regime - Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the democracy movement, sits in her car, blocked by the military dictatorship from meeting her supporters.

Her party won the 1990 elections with 80% of the vote. The military canceled the election results.

Among notorious abusers of human rights, the Burmese military junta stands out. Burma has been virtually expelled from the International Labor Organization for continuing the widespread use of forced labor. The State Department reports that government- directed forced labor in Burma has been accompanied by credible allegations of rape, forced prostitution, and beatings, often fatal. Many bonded laborers are children.

The New York Times claims the United States can do little but issue statements of support for the opposition.

Yet the United States has a powerful lever against the Burmese junta: exports to the United States are a major source of foreign exchange for the junta. This is money that the regime uses to buy weapons to repress the population. A quarter of Burma's export earnings come from the United States. More than four-fifths of U.S. imports from Burma are clothes. In the last two years, U.S. apparel imports from Burma have increased by nearly 50 percent a year.

Congress and the Administration have supported sanctions to force the Burmese regime to relinquish power - sanctions supported by the democratic opposition in Burma. A little public pressure could bring about a ban on imports from Burma.

The labor movement could be decisive. The AFL-CIO has advocated restricting imports from Burma for years. Now would be a good time to step up the pressure.

A "new labor movement" means many things. The recent strike at Verizon showed workers fighting successfully for basic rights. These included the right to refuse overtime - essential if working people are to enjoy "family values" - and the right to organize.

But a key element of the new labor movement is also a more aggressive defense of the rights of workers abroad.

Thousands of working people protested in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. Thousands protested in Washington against the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Jobs with Justice and the AFL-CIO are organizing demonstrations in more than forty cities in the United States on September 26, when the IMF and the World Bank meet in Prague. Trade unionists are pressuring the department store Kohl's to make its subcontractors in Nicaragua pay a living wage and stop firing trade unionists. Pushing for a ban on imports from Burma is a logical next step.

There will never be a more compelling case for using the power of our domestic market to command respect for workers' basic human rights abroad.

This would not be a unilateral action. There is an international movement to isolate the Burmese military dictatorship. Currently, Burmese democracy activists are campaigning to have the junta expelled from the United Nations General Assembly.

The charge of "protectionism" would be absurd. No U.S. producer will benefit from a ban on imports from Burma. Burma's garment workers earn four cents an hour, but according to a report by the National Labor Committee, some workers producing Kathie Lee handbags for Wal-Mart in China make no more than this - no production is going to shift to the United States as a result of a ban on imports from Burma.

A ban on imports from Burma could likely withstand challenge at the WTO. WTO rules allow restrictions on imports of goods produced by prison labor and to protect public morals. These exceptions have never been tested. While the WTO has tended to interpret these exceptions narrowly, that may be changing under public pressure. The WTO recently upheld a French ban on the import of asbestos - the first that time this public health exception to free trade rules was successfully invoked.

Furthermore, for most countries it would be politically costly to challenge an import ban on Burmese goods, since their own governments are committed to sanctions against Burma.

In any event, it we are ever to move the WTO on the question of workers' basic human rights, the limits of the WTO's power to enforce "free trade" over human rights will have to be tested. There will never be a better test case than Burma.