Burmese activist builds global support ( Sacramento Bee ) November 12, 2002

Burmese activist builds global support

The former UCD student works out of a tiny Berkeley office to try to rid his country of military rule.

Priyanka Sharma-Sindhar -- Bee correspondent
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Free Burma Coalition founder Zarni wants to put economic pressure on military leaders of Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma.

Sacramento Bee/Manny Crisostomo

BERKELEY -- On an average day, Zar Ni gets into work by 5 a.m. Like many others, he works 12-hour days, spending a lot of time on the computer and the phone. Unlike many others, he devotes his time to ridding his homeland -- Myanmar, formerly known as Burma -- of military rule.

Ni, 39, who now goes by the one-word name "Zarni," is the founder of the Free Burma Coalition, the highest-profile Burmese activist organization on the globe.

The movement -- inspired by the push to end apartheid in South Africa -- is rooted in putting economic pressure on Myanmar's military commanders.

"We're a totally nonviolent movement," said Zarni, who left his country 14 years ago to attend the University of California, Davis, and now works out of a tiny office in Berkeley. "We're not training our people to blow themselves up."

His days as a student activist continued at the University of Wisconsin, where he enrolled in a doctorate program in education.

Zarni created the Free Burma Coalition in 1995. The network connects supporters on college campuses via e-mail. Today, the network extends to 28 countries, and has chapters at nearly 50 college campuses in the United States.

"Internationally . . . every activist interested in Burma knows Zarni and the Free Burma Coalition," said Maung Maung Oo, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's journalism school. Oo is a journalist with Irrawaddy, a magazine published by Burmese exiles along the Thai-Burma border.

Renamed Myanmar by its military rulers, Burma is a country of 42 million people in Southeast Asia. Slightly smaller than Texas, it shares borders with China, India and Thailand, and for brief stretches, with Bangladesh and Laos.

It was ruled by the British through the 19th and early 20th centuries -- and for a brief period during World War II by the Japanese -- before it fell into British hands again. Burma finally attained independence in 1948.

But, with warring ethnic groups and a weak socialist democracy, the nation remained politically unsettled. In 1962, Gen. Ne Win overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, U Nu, and seized power.

Since then, Myanmar has been ruled by a military regime. Rebellions have occurred sporadically -- only to be subdued.

The most forceful uprisings took place in 1988, led by student activists. The ruling military junta sent in the army and many protesters died in the ensuing violence.

Two years later, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy swept parliamentary elections, but the transition to democracy has yet to take place.

With an army that's accused of drafting boys into military service, forcing villagers into heavy labor and raping women, the country has a dismal human rights record, according to Human Rights Watch. Dissenters and religious and ethnic minorities are persecuted, the nonprofit group says.

Jack Healey, head of the Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Action Center and former executive director of Amnesty International USA, said efforts to improve conditions within the country, including sanctions by the U.S. government, have largely failed.

"There isn't all that much movement. I don't know if that's because nobody knows where Burma is, or no one cares about Asia, or if it's 9/11," said Healey.

Yet, he and others do credit activists here with keeping the issue alive. Kyaw Paw U, a professor at UC Davis and an American of Burmese origin, said, "The movement is so suppressed under the military regime that any amount of help that comes from here is important."

Human rights groups and the Free Burma Coalition scored their biggest victory with its efforts to get PepsiCo Inc. to withdraw from Myanmar five years ago. The coalition launched a boycott against Pepsi products on local and international campuses. It also reached out to labor groups, women's groups, and church groups. In 1997, Pepsi ceased operations in Burma.

"Pepsi was not the only company we were boycotting, but it became our poster boy, because it was a global company," said Zarni.

The coalition went on to lobby state and federal agencies and corporate shareholders to disengage from companies that had business interests in Myanmar. That ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that states could not use their purchasing power to influence companies in business with countries known for human rights violations -- if the federal government had already established a foreign policy for those countries.

The U.S. government has sanctions in place against Myanmar, which include an arms embargo and a ban on investment and direct assistance to the regime.

The activists continue to pressure companies to pull out of Myanmar and claim 70 successes, such as the hotel chain Best Western International Inc. and clothing retailer J.Crew. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, in 2000 there was a $454 million deficit in U.S. trade with Myanmar, and in 2001, a $458 million deficit.

El Segundo-based Unocal Corp., which has a stake in a $1.2 billion natural gas project, is the last prominent American company in Myanmar.

Six years ago, villagers in Myanmar filed a suit against Unocal seeking damages for human rights abuses, such as forced labor and rape, committed by soldiers during the pipeline's construction. In September,the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an earlier federal court decision and said the oil giant could be held liable for any violations and must now stand trial.

A Unocal spokesman has said the company has no knowledge and is not responsible for any human rights abuses that may have occurred.