Exiled Burmese call for sanctions

Exiled Burmese democratic leaders have urged the New Zealand Government to stop its "immoral" exports of dairy produce to their home country ruled by a military junta.

A small group met Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff yesterday to argue the case for trade sanctions against Myanmar - the country formerly known as Burma.

New Zealand, in common with most other countries including the European Union and the United Nations, has not agreed to impose economic sanctions on Myanmar.

Mr Goff said it was widely believed that economic sanctions hurt only the ordinary people while regimes and military forces survived.

However, the general secretary of the National Council of the Union of Burma, Maung Maung, told the Herald that most Burmese could not afford dairy products in the country where the defence budget was more than 10 times larger than the health budget.

"Those things that are brought into Burma never get to the people ... only a small minority would be doing the buying."

He said while New Zealand exports to Myanmar were small, about $5.9 million per annum,and mainly milk powder, it was wrong to sell products to the totalitarian regime.

"It is a moral thing we are asking."

Mr Goff told the Herald the meeting had concentrated on wider issues such as how to reform the ruling regime and restore democracy and human rights.

"Our trade with Myanmar is overwhelmingly exports of dairy products. At a time when New Zealand is working with other countries through the World Food Programme to alleviate malnutrition in Myanmar, withholding products needed by families for basic nutrition makes absolutely no sense.

"We would simply be punishing ordinary people in Myanmar for the sins of their Government, when they are already victims of the repressive nature of that Government."

Mr Goff said New Zealand was instead applying sanctions against military leaders and their families through denial of visas for travel or education.

New Zealand would also continue to help victims of repression in Myanmar by accepting 125 refugees this year as part of its annual refugee quota.

He said New Zealand had, and would continue, to be an outspoken critic of the military regime as long as human rights abuses and the suppression of democracy continued.

"New Zealand's opposition to the suspension of democracy and human rights abuses in Myanmar, including the ongoing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, has been strong and consistent," he said.

"We have expressed this view directly to the Myanmar Government and publicly in front of Myanmar's Asean partners."