By Mata Press Service
 

Human rights advocates are calling for consumers and gem merchants to shun the upcoming auction of precious stones from Burma saying the proceeds from the sales will finance a repressive military junta.

About 90 per cent of the world’s rubies come from Burma or Myanmar, currently the subject of considerable controversy.

Once plucked from the ground, most rubies are sent to Chataburi, Thailand, to be cut.
“The military junta receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from tourist activities like these annual gem shows,” said Tin Maung Htoo, executive director of Canadian Friends of Burma. “By buying precious stones, visitors are supporting an industry which is built on the backs of workers who suffer deplorable conditions.”

The calls for the international boycott come as Burma’s military government announced plans for a 12-day gem show in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) next month.

The auction is a bid to boost foreign exchange earning, state media reported, admitting international sanctions have had a direct impact on the country’s coffers.

Domestically produced quality gems, jade, pearl and jewelry will be displayed and sold through competitive bidding at the show scheduled for March 9 to 20, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported. A similar gems auction held last November,

netted US$150 million.That event attracted 3,616 merchants from China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, India, Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, the United States and Canada.

U.S.-based lobbyists, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has assailed the gem trade for financially propping up the military dictatorship and renewed its call for a boycott in advance of the auctions--which are run by the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, a conglomerate owned by senior armed forces officers and the Defense Ministry.

Arvind Ganesane of Human Rights Watch said: “[Gems] provide hundreds of millions of dollars to commit abuses, repress its own people and resist international pressure to change, to allow opposition parties to function and allow democratically elected leaders.”
Like the military cabal that has been in power for more than four decades, Myanmar’s gemstone industry is shrouded in secrecy.

The gems are mined in high-security areas in northern Myanmar. Miners work with no protection and in conditions where HIV and malaria are said to be widespread.A typical gem craftsman in Myanmar earns a dollar for each piece he makes.

Human Rights Watch is seeking to draw attention to hundreds of people it says remain in arbitrary detention following last year’s deadly violence, where government forces cracked down on peaceful protests across the country. What had begun as popular disapproval of fuel price increases morphed into anti-government rallies, many of which called for democracy.

Myanmar’s generals have for decades mismanaged the economy, which is currently one of the region’s poorest on a gross national product per capita basis. Growing energy sales to neighboring countries have helped to keep the economy tottering along and profit the ruling junta, known locally as the State Peace and Development Council, Inter Press News reported.

The full value of the gem trade is unknown but by some unofficial estimates, jade accounts for about 10 per cent of Myanmar’s yearly export earning as trade continues to flourish within Asian markets. Even so, proponents say Western-led boycotts and economic sanctions have begun to cut into the junta’s profits. Recent auctions for precious stones have reportedly raised less hard currency and the government, in response, has moved to increase the frequency of the sales, according to rights advocacy groups.

Myanmar’s precious and semi-precious stones are also banned from entering the European Union under rules that took effect last November, soon after the junta rounded up and opened fire on street demonstrators.

In December, both chambers of the U.S. Congress approved legislation to tighten an existing ban on Myanmar gems. The same month, Canada similarly barred all imports.

Some Western firms have long shunned Myanmar gems, among them U.S.-based Tiffany & Co and Leber Jeweler Inc. Others volunteering to follow suit since last year’s crackdown include Italy’s Bulgari and France’s Cartier.

Sanctions and boycotts are already hurting the gem industry, according to gem and jade traders inside Burma. A trader in Mae-Sot, a town near the Thailand border, told Irrawaddy Magazine that vendors sit around all day waiting for buyers.

“I don’t know what to do now,” the Mae-Sot trader said. “If business goes on like this, I’ll have to quit.”

Opponents of trade embargoes against Myanmar have long said such measures would further impoverish the masses while leaving the ruling generals and their families’ business interests largely unscathed. Growing economic isolation in the 1990s led to a resurgence of illegal smuggling, often related to the country’s notorious drug and sex trades.

Rights advocates maintain that they seek sanctions against industries that directly benefit the ruling junta, rather than those from which civilians stand to gain. Myanmar’s junta owns at least a majority stake in all of the country’s mines.

Human Rights Watch, citing reports from other non-governmental groups, said forced and child labor, unsafe work conditions and the confiscation of land from local communities still runs rampant throughout the mining industry, where some foreigners have invested.

“The goal is to cut off the junta’s economic lifeline without affecting ordinary workers but unfortunately this is very difficult,” says Htoo, from Ottawa. “Everyday miners die from heroin use, diseases, and poor nutrition while the military continues to prosper from their labour.”

— With files from Lucy-Claire Saunders