SF NIKE PROTEST:A REPORT (r)

[cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Posting to Burmanet, eye witness account of support for Suharto
Indonesian dictatorship and Nike partner, thank you for the
account.(personally i deplore this trend-hysteria for identity-craved
youngsters, duped and impoverished for NIKE-Suharto benefit.) Nike
stockholders should look at the PepsiCo Burma Boycott for precedent on
what can be done. Labor advocates are asked to consult the Burma sites
for information on slave labor/forced labor, child labor by the Burmese
dictatorship, now hosting Suharto.
++++++
press release
Subject: Suharto's Burma Trip Could Spark Militarism, Warns Opposition 
Leader
Suharto's Burma Trip Could Spark Militarism, Warns Opposition Leader
By Andreas Harsono
(Jakarta)
         An opposition figure has questioned the purpose of President
Suharto
visiting the military regime in Burma, speculating that the visit might
revitalise fascism and militarism in the historically-troubled southeast
Asian region.
        Indonesian opposition leader Sri-Bintang Pamungkas told The
Nation
yesterday that the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) in
Rangoon had long imported military doctrines and techniques from
Jakarta.
        ''Suharto is now looking for friends to excuse the practice of
fascism in
Indonesia, to legitimise the practice of having only one single state
ideology, one single party system and widespread intelligence services,"
Pamungkas said.
        The former legislator said that former fascist-communist
countries in
southeast Asia, which include Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, could
easily adopt a renewed fascist-militaristic ideology. Suharto arrived in
Rangoon yesterday from Vientiane on the last leg of a tour to Cambodia,
Laos
and Burma. The Indonesian president, who rose to power in 1965, visited
Burma in 1974 during the rule of Burmese strongman Ne Win.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Press Advisory

February 22, 1997
For further information or to arrange interviews, contact:
Jane Jerome   408/467-2721
Dan Orzech    510/528-0653


BURMA:  First Hand Accounts of Oppression

On Wednesday, February 26, four Burma experts based in Thailand with
first-hand experience from Burma's front lines will speak at Unitarian
Fellowship in Berkeley at 7:30 p.m.  

Two Thailand-based activists from Earth Rights International, Ka Hsaw Wa
and
Katie Redford, will bring with with them the first-ever photographs of
the notorious natural gas pipeline being built in Burma by Los
Angeles-based
Unocal and the French oil company Total.  They are among only a handful
of
people in the world outside of Burma to have first-hand information on
the
pipeline.  

Two leaders of the All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF), the
foremost
student group advocating democracy in Burma (Myanmar) will report on
attacks
upon student activists in December 1996 and the role of US based
activism in
supporting freedom.  The ABSDF speakers, Dr. Naing Aung, vice chair, and
Aung Naing Oo are both elected representatives of the organization's
Central
Committee.

Redford and Ka Hsaw Wa will also bring recent photographs of the refugee
camps inside Thailand burned in late January  by the Burmese military.   
Katie Redford is one of the attorneys in the pioneering human-rights
lawsuit against UNOCAL and SLORC (Burma's notorious State Law and Order
Restoration Council), which was filed last October in Los Angeles.
A member of Burma's Karen ethnic minority, Ka Hsaw Wa has been working
for
democracy in Burma since the massacres of democracy activists there in
1988.   Ka Hsaw Wa directs ERI's Indigenous Staff's field work and
gathers
evidence of the abuses associated with foreign investment in Burma. 
Both
were involved in the publication of Total Denial, a July 96 document of
human rights abuses accompanying the Unocal/Total pipeline authored
jointly
by Earth Rights International and Southeast Asia Information Network.  

The Unitarian Fellowship in Berkeley, is located at 1924 Cedar @
Bonita.  

The speaking event is sponsored by the Bay Area Burma
Roundtable, an activist group which was instrumental in passage of
selective
purchasing laws in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and the County of
Alameda barring contracts with companies doing business in Burma.
The San Francisco law was responsible for the withdrawal of Motorola,
Inc.,
from Burma, and has played a key role in keeping Mitsubishi  from a $137
million people mover contract at San Francisco International Airport.


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change
the world;  indeed it's the only thing that ever has."   -- Margaret
Mead

end press release


 Thank you

dawn star, paris
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/
> 
> NIKETOWN PROTEST IN SAN FRANCISCO 2/22/97:
> WHERE WAS LABOR?
> 
>      On an unusually warm day in downtown San Francisco, about
> 1,000 people turned out to protest the opening of a garbage
> shoestore, Niketown, that more appropriately belongs in some
> suburban shopping mall, except that since its goods were made by
> slave labor in Indonesia, it should simply disappear off the face
> of the earth.  This is in an area that has literally millions of
> union members and on an issue which did involve the San Francisco
> Central Labor Council.  It was the radicals, who were mostly
> white and definitely over 30, mostly over 40, who were there.
>      The protestors allowed themselves to be herded into pens on
> the street, inside police gates.  Some of us knew our
> constitutional rights, and walked on the sidewalk, until the
> police told us to get off the sidewalk.  I tried to get the
> supposedly politically advanced people to get out of the animal
> pens and onto the sidewalks, but they did not bother.
>      The shoppers, who stood in line for these expensive garbage
> tennis shoes, were mostly African-American teenagers and twenty-
> year-olds, some with small children.  The teenagers should have
> been home studying and the parents of the small children should
> have taken their children to the park or the beach on such a nice
> day, but definitely not shopping in wall-to-wall cement, downtown
> San Francisco.  No amount of chanting, leafletting or anything
> else would change the minds of these unbelievable un-class
> conscious kids to not go in the store and spend someone's money
> on slave labor shoes. They were not old enough to earn enough to
> pay $120 for 1 pair of shoes.
>      One Asian women asked me why it is that these non-whites
> were working with the police to support slave labor shoes.  I
> told her I did not know.  Somebody is not teaching their children
> that they are workers, that they must support all workers, and
> that the police do the bidding of the bosses.  The police, in San
> Francisco, are of course, the Democratic Party's police, with the
> good liberal, elected with labor's vote, Mayor Willie Brown, also
> supporting the opening of Niketown, with its low wage jobs.  As
> far as I know, the workers inside that store are not union.
> Readers, please correct me if I am wrong.
>      Above all, the labor union members were not there in full
> force.  There should have been at least 10,000 people there.  The
> protest received excellent publicity in all media this past week.
> The unions, of course, have phone trees and should be able to get
> their members to demonstrations, by the millions.  They have the
> money and the networks.  That store should have been shut down
> for good.
> 
> tyler
>