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BURMESE URGE BOYCOTT BEER



THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1997

BURMESE URGE BOYCOTT OF BEER

Drinking Foster?s beer  showed support for Burma?s military regime, a
leading  Burmese dissident said in Sydney yeaterday.
	
The Burmese Women Union (BWU) foreign affairs spokeswoman, Thet Thet
Lwin, called for a complete boycott on trade with Burma during an Evatt
Foundation breakfast.
	
?Drinking Foster?s beer buys more bullets for soldiers to kill
refugees,? she said.
	
?The only way [Burma?s State Law and Order Restoration Council, SLORC]
will be changed is for international boycotts and pressure.?

SLORC, a military junta which has governed the country since 1988, was
set up after a democracy movement was quashed by the military
Government.

Thet Thet said Australians should boycott companies operating in Burma
and named Foster?s Carlton and United Breweries, Ericsson and Caltex
products as targets for protest.

?Companies such as Heineken and Pepsi-Cola have been forced to pull out
of Burma because of protests at home and it?s time Australians did the
same thing,? she said. ?Some governments have argued that economic
development can bring around democratic changes in a country.

?This will not be the case in Burma because foreign investment only
brings prosperity to the military elite while the majority of civilians
remain in poverty.?

Burma was one of Asia?s richest countries when a military coup installed
the Government of Ne Win in 1962. But the economy suffered from State
control and low world prices for rice and other exports.

Burma was granted least-developed-nation status in 1987 by the United
Nationa.

Hundreds of thousands of students, citizens and military men staged
massive protests against Ne Win?s Government throughout the 1980s before
forming the National League for Democracy(NLD)

Led by 1991 Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD won an
overwhelming victory in a May 1990 election. But the SLORC has refused
to hand over its power to the NLD.