On Oct. 18, Burmese student leader Min Ko Naing spent his 12th consecutive birthday behind bars in Burma's infamous Insein Prison, where he has been tortured, starved, and held in solitary confinement by the Burmese military dictatorship since 1989. In 1988, Min Ko Naing was at the forefront of Burma's national movement to end dictatorship, which culminated on August 8 with nationwide demonstrations. The protests were carried out by hundreds of thousands of Burmese students, monks, lay people, and defected members of the military. Tragically, the demonstrations were quashed by the military dictators, who executed, imprisoned, and forced into exile tens of thousands of Burmese people. Today, the Burmese military dictatorship is seen as one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world. Burmese citizens are commonly conscripted into what the International Labor Organization calls "a modern form of slave labor" by the military for tasks ranging from building hotels and roads to carrying artillery and acting as "human mine-sweepers" - literally forced to walk at gunpoint in front of military troops so that they can detonate landmines. Citizens conscripted into slave labor are almost never compensated for their time and endure brutality at the hands of the military. Those who resist work are tortured, murdered, and mutilated; women are forced to work during the day only to be gang-raped or otherwise sexually assaulted by soldiers at night. In addition to enduring the sufferings that accompany slave labor, the people of Burma live in a crumbling economy with the second poorest health services in the world (222 percent more money is spent on the military than on education and health services combined), and the second highest population prevalence of AIDS and HIV in all of Asia (although the military denies that there is any recognizable AIDS problem). For all its mismanagement of the country, the military maintains a firm grip on Burma, propped up by foreign investment in oil, natural gas, and the apparel export industry. The greatest American benefactor to the military dictatorship in Burma is the petroleum company Unocal. The company, in collusion with other oil companies and the Burmese dictators, built and maintains the Yadana natural gas pipeline that runs through Burma. Unocal has contracted with the Burmese military to provide security and infrastructure development for the pipeline project. Human rights organizations have documented evidence detailing the systematic rape, torture, execution, forced relocation of entire villages, and slave labor that has ravaged communities along the pipeline route. Unocal is not the only company whose ties to Burma's dictatorship spell suffering for the people of Burma. Connections between investment and human rights abuses can be drawn for almost all foreign investments in Burma because state enterprises, especially those controlled by the military, dominate local and joint venture investments. Whereas international investors in most countries set up partnerships with independent businesspersons, almost all joint ventures with foreign companies in Burma are controlled by an economic holdings company owned by the dictators. Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and colleague to Min Ko Naing in the Burmese democracy movement, has called on foreign corporations to avoid operating or investing in Burma: "Until we have a system that guarantees rule of law and basic democratic institutions, no amount of aid or foreign investment will help our people." Ironically, as college and university students in the US, we unwittingly contribute to keeping our fellow students imprisoned in Burma. Indeed, many of the schools we attend invest directly in companies operating inside or exporting from Burma - this means that some of our tuition dollars through our endowments may be lining dictators' pockets and financing their violence and brutality. In effect, we help to keep our fellow students in Burma in jail. Realizing this terrible irony, students at the University of Virginia, American University, Bucknell University, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, London School of Economics, and Edinburgh University organized to stop their universities from propping up Burma's military dictatorship. Many of these students have succeeded in prohibiting their schools from investing in or purchasing from companies that operate in or import from Burma. In honor of Min Ko Naign's birthday on Oct. 18, students across the US and around the world are embarking on another campaign to help free Burma from the suffering imposed by the military dictatorship and supported by the foreign corporations doing business in Burma. The retirement fund that most of our high school, college, and university professors use, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), holds $63 million in Unocal shares.
Our teacher's retirements are literally being paid for by money earned from the use of slavery in Burma. Students across the US are calling upon their professors and administrators to send letters to TIAA-CREF demanding that the retirement fund exert shareholder pressure on Unocal to pull out of Burma. To many, repression in Burma might seem far off or irrelevant, but to our fellow students who languish in Burma's prisons, there is nothing more real. Thoughtful and forward-thinking students in the US should take action to ensure that our high schools, colleges, universities, and teachers are not complicit in human rights abuses in their country.
Naomi Sleeper is a ? majoring in philosophy and environmental science.
