Burma cracks down.

• Position: Boycotts urged against companies doing business with Burma's repressive regime - Column

it's boycott time again. Burma's repressive government continues its campaign against the pro-democracy movement and Aung San Suu Kyi. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Suu Kyi was elected as the country's leader by landslide vote in 1991, but was never allowed to serve. The SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), Burma's military government, held Suu Kyi under house arrest from 1989 until 1995.

Today, the repression of Burma's democracy movement is escalating. In the final days of September, the SLORC rounded up hundreds of Suu Kyi's followers

to prevent Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, from holding a weekend congress. On September 28, riot police surrounded Suu Kyi's house, preventing her from leaving and from making her customary weekend speeches to the thousands of supporters who gather to hear her.

Meanwhile, the SLORC carries on more repressive actions, including forced relocations, village burnings, imposing slave labor, and murder.

Here's where the United States comes in: Several U.S. companies have major investments there and are collaborating with the SLORC (see "Burma in Chains," October 1995, and "From Green Bay to Rangoon," Page 30). U.S. investment in Burma last year totaled $245 million, most of it in oil and gas.

Because of the conditional sanctions President Clinton signed in September as part of the appropriations bill, U.S. law will prohibit new investment in Burma if Suu Kyi is imprisoned or harmed, or if there is a largescale crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

But the conditional sanctions will not apply to companies that already have operations in Burma. Zarni, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and a citizen of Burma, is the founder and coordinator of the Free Burma Coalition, an international network of activists who maintain daily contact with each other via e-mail (zni@students.wisc.edu). "It's better than nothing," Zarni says about the recent legislation. "But it's not enough. We need to get the oil corporations out. "

The Free Burma Coalition and other groups supporting the...