Behind the Facade II
source : Toronto Star: January 28, 2001, Sunday, Edition 1
Martin Regg Cohn
MANDALAY - A SHOWPIECE of Canadian architectural excellence is also a monument to military misrule in one of the world's most miserably impoverished police states.It is the eeriest airport in Asia.
The cavernous new terminal is desolate and dark most of the day - an oasis of calm and serenity,steeped in a legacy of slave labour.
Thanks to Canadian planning and paving, the $225 million Mandalay International Airport boasts the longest runway in Southeast Asia - equipped for the biggest jumbo aircraft. Yet air force fighters are the only jets touching down on its world-class, 4.3-kilometre-long tarmac.
Western governments and United Nations organizations have condemned Burma for using forced labour, committing human-rights abuses and profiting from drug trafficking. But with help from a few Canadian corporate friends, the military regime is charging ahead with grandiose plans to earn hard currency. Apart from the airport's Canadian connection, Burma's biggest foreign mining operation - a $210 million investment - is run by a Canadian company, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., in a joint venture with the military.
In fact, Burma boasts that Canada is its second-biggest investor, exceeded only by South Korea. The United States, by contrast, has banned all new foreign investment in this cash-starved country since 1997, arguing that hard currency would only prop up the military and prolong "large-scale repression."
During the time that Toronto-based Marshall Macklin Monaghan Ltd. (MMM) took on the airport assignment - responsible for project management and design - examples of forced labour and land confiscations were out in the open. " Villagers in Zegyo have been evicted because the Mandalay International Airport road cuts through their village," the opposition National League for Democracy reported at the time. "Forced labour of the villagers is required for transporting crushed granite powder from the vehicles transporting the rocks to road sites."
MMM won't disclose its share of the profits from the airport project. But working in Burma is nothing to boast about, according to the company's vice- president of airports management, H.N. Edamura.
"We tend to be low-key about that particular activity," Edamura said when contacted by The Star for a telephone interview. "Very few people know that we've done that work." He declined to elaborate.
"I'm reluctant to do that. Number 1, because that's a hot spot in the world. And there could be consequences if people find out about our involvement." MMM's marketing director, Peter Overton, explained later: "Obviously, as you know, there's some sensitivity to this."
But company president Bruce Bodden called the project - designed with the help of Toronto-based architects McMillan and Lowe International Inc. and built in association with a Thai-Italian consortium - a great success. MMM employees were smitten with the "excitement and romance of being a bit off the path," he said in an interview.
Still, Bodden acknowledges that few foreigners are beating a path to the airport today and said the regime rejected suggestions to scale down the project. Built to handle 1,000 passengers an hour, the airport rarely gets more than a few dozen in a day.
The government projected 3 million passengers annually for the airport, but Burma attracts barely 150,000 tourists nationwide every year.
The airport's state-of-the-art passenger bridges to service international flights have never been used because no international flights have made it up- country to Mandalay. The major airlines are content to service the capital, Rangoon, 570 kilometres to the south.
Not all Canadian companies keep a low profile about their Burmese connections. Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. says it is "proud" of the Monywa Copper Project it owns jointly with the military regime, 100 kilometres northwest of Mandalay.
"Ivanhoe is working with our joint-venture partner . . . to make Monywa a model of responsible mineral development," said company president Dan Kunz.
As for the military's track record, Kunz believes there's no alternative.
"There are 146 different tribes and ethnic groups that have been at civil war for decades and decades," he told Canadian Press last September. "It's complicated. The military government,unfortunately, is probably the only form of government that can deal with such a complex problem."
Contacted by The Star for comment, Ivanhoe insisted all questions be submitted in advance, but then declined a telephone interview with Kunz. The president would only provide written replies and rejected requests for a follow-up interview.
In its written replies, Ivanhoe said it would not reveal the wages paid to workers and would not answer questions about salary cutbacks.
Access to the mine site in Monywa is restricted, but local residents who are in close contact with company employees report the company started out paying line workers $375 a month - a handsome salary in Burma, where a truck driver is lucky to earn a $100 a month. But last year, the company slashed wages to about $270 a month, claiming depressed copper prices were eating into profits, the sources said. With no union permitted and no dissent tolerated by the military regime, the workers had no way to defend their interests.
Ivanhoe hands over about $1.2 million a year in royalties to the military regime.
Kunz was asked directly about salary levels and wage cuts. He declined to give a direct answer. "For competitive reasons," he wrote, "we are not prepared to disclose specific wages paid to employees." Ivanhoe consults its Burmese partner to ensure "compensation is appropriate," he said.
In its publicity material, the company boasts its mine produces some of the lowest-cost copper in the world. Set on the Chindwinn River, the mine is expanding briskly. A new high- capacity port was built recently and oil storage tanks sit beside Buddhist pagodas on the river's west bank.
The company says it plans to boost production in the next couple of years, with fresh investment bringing the total stake to $780 million.
Aaron James, a researcher with the Vancouver-based Canada Asia Pacific Resource Network, says payments from the Monywa mine "support and entrench the highly corrupt military dictatorship . . . responsible for some of the worst human-rights violations."
Kunz retorted that the company has no responsibility for what took place before it arrived and there have been no such abuses "since our involvement in the project." Despite Ivanhoe's assertions that it is improving local conditions, residents interviewed in Monywa say there has been no significant change in their economic fortunes since the mine came to town - except for the disillusionment when wages were cut back.
"If the company or the government earns lots of money, we ordinary people won't see any of it," said one resident.
"There is no union allowed, so there are no complaints."