Category Archives: justice

"I have seen with my own eyes…"

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“I have seen with my own eyes the result of foreign investment in Burma.
More soldiers, more guns, more rapes and more killings.”
Zoya Phan – Burmese refugee from the Karen ethnic minority

URGENT ACTION – WRITE TO IAN MCCARTNEY – FOREIGN OFFICE MINISTER RESPONSIBLE FOR BURMA

For more than ten years the British government has refused to ban new investment in Burma, despite repeated requests from Burma¹s democracy movement. The regime in Burma has used foreign investment to double the size of the army, reinforcing its grip on power, while ordinary people have become poorer.

Since 1988, Britain has been one of the largest investors in Burma, largely because many foreign companies use places like the British Virgin Islands to channel their investment to Burma. The British government could stop this, but refuses to do so. One of the excuses the government uses for doing nothing is that there is no evidence that investment is still happening.

Well now there is. On the 21st January, media reported that MPRL E&P Ltd, based in Singapore but registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), had signed a contract with the regime to explore for gas. The response from the British government? NOTHING.

Then on February 8th Xinhua news agency reported another BVI company, Rimbunan Petrogas, Ltd, has just signed a gas deal with the regime. The response of the British government? NOTHING.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IS ALLOWING INVESTMENT IN BURMA THAT WILL HELP ARM THE REGIME AND LEAD TO MORE HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES.

Please write to:
Ian McCartney
Minister of State
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles St
London SW1A 2AH

Ask the Minister to immediately ban new investment in Burma via the British Virgin Islands and other Overseas Territories. (The government can do this using a mechanism called a Queens Order in Council)

Ask the minister to introduce legislation that will also enable the government to ban British companies from investing in Burma (Labour is the only major political party in the UK that does not support a unilateral investment ban)

Find out more about the campaign to stop new investment in Burma here

State Britain

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To kill some time before Moot on Sunday (it seemed daft to drive home and back later!) I popped in for a wander around the Tate Britain and fell by accident upon State Britain, which somehow I had missed hearing about.

The Tate say:

Brian Haw began his protest against the economic sanction in Iraq in June 2001, and has remained opposite the Palace of Westminster ever since. On 23 May 2006, following the passing by Parliament of the ‘Serious Organised Crime and Police Act’ prohibiting unauthorised demonstrations within a one kilometre radius of Parliament Square, the majority of Haw’s protest was removed. Taken literally, the edge of this exclusion zone bisects Tate Britain. Wallinger has marked a line on the floor of the galleries throughout the building, positioning State Britain half inside and half outside the border.

This is fantastic and worth making the effort to see as it stretches the full length of the Duveen galleries. I think it challenges our illusion that we are as feree as we think we are in the UK. If you do go – its fair to say that some of the photos of suffering, especially that of children (the enemy in Iraq? asks a placard) are quite nasty and tear provoking.

Traffik Free Chocolate

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I was shocked by the email I received this week from Stop the Traffik.
Nearly half the worlds chocolate comes from Cote D’Ivoire, in Africa.
12,000 children have been trafficked into cocoa farms in Cote D’Ivoire.

12000!!!!

I read that statistic as Joe, Beth and Tom were eating a chocolate bar nearby.
I shivered.
It was a chilling feeling as I realised that if circumstances were different it could by my children, that could have been stolen from us to work in a cocoa farm.

When we buy chocolate we are being forced to be oppressors ourselves as we have no guarantee that the chocolate we eat is ‘traffik free’.

Diabate and Traoré had left their village in Mali to go to Ivory Coast looking for enough money to afford a bicycle, but they were sold to a man who had paid 50,000 West African Francs (about £50) for the two boys and he wanted the money back—in labour. The boys from Sirkasso met about twenty others in the same predicament and learned that no one was ever paid. They slept in a rectangle-shaped mud hut that initially had windows but when some boys found they could escape during the night, the windows were sealed shut. Diabate and Traoré remember eating mostly bananas, though they would gobble up the cocoa beans, as others did, whenever they got the chance. Many months passed, and the boys forgot what the purpose had once been for this adventure. Life became a struggle to exist, then hardened to despair.

They gave up thinking of escape. They were under constant threat of beatings if they were caught trying to flee—and they had seen several boys treated savagely—they were actually spooked by a belief that they were under a spell. Read more in Carol Off’s book “Bitter Chocolate”.

We can do something really simple here by buying our chocolate which is guaranteed to come from traffik free sources. You can see a list here, and a lot of brands are stocked in high street shops and supermarkets.

Why not commit to buy traffik free chocolate and go to the chocolate campaign page to see what else we can do.