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Divestment Campaign Coming to U of T

By Steven Borowiec
The Newspaper [Toronto's Student Community Weekly]
February 6, 2008

U of T [University of Toronto] will soon be targeted by a large-scale divestment campaign. Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) is planning to lead a campaign with partner student organizations to lobby U of T to divest from companies doing business in Burma. Those involved in the campaign hope that divestment and the resultant loss of income will put increased pressure on Burma's military government.

Burma is located between India and Thailand and remains a pocket of severe poverty and repression in a region of impressive development. It is ruled by a military junta which uses revenue from Burma's large extractive industries to maintain its hold on power. These industries have high degrees of foreign investment from countries like China, the U.S and Canada.

With high global commodity prices and resource scarcity, Burma has gained considerable leverage in international business deals. The junta asks that its business partners overlook its brutal human rights record and authoritarian methods of control.

A similar divestment campaign recently took place at York University, where students and faculty have called on York's Foundation Endowment Fund to cut its $300 million in investments through trans-nationals involved in mining and other labor-intensive industries.

"Foreign investment is not very beneficial to the ordinary citizens of Burma, it only benefits business and strengthens the military by providing financial resources", says Tin Maung Htoo, executive director of CFOB.

Canada enacted tough economic sanctions on Burma on November 14, 2007. They featured bans on imports and exports between Canada and Burma. These sanctions don't cover Canadian investment in companies working in Burma.

"We are now preparing to launch a university endowment fund divestment campaign. Students here should be aware of the appalling human rights situation [that is] systematically perpetrated by the Burmese military", says Tin Maung Htoo. "We will be joining with student groups who are concerned with the situation in Burma. We will ask students to put pressure on school administration to divest. Student funds should not be used as a tool to strengthen the military. The school fund managers are using these funds irresponsibly."

U of T's investments are managed by The University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM). The UTAM Investment Policy makes no mention of a formal commitment to invest ethically.  UTAM is fully owned by the university.

John Lyon, UTAM's Managing Director of Investment Strategy, says "We take direction from the university and invest assets in accordance with their objectives.  It's up to the university to set those objectives."  One of the campaign's major goals will be to have the university adopt a code of ethical investment, as was adopted by McGill University's Board of Governors in 2006.

The situation in Burma has faded from Western news coverage, but remains dire. At least seven hundred people arrested during and since the September protests remain imprisoned and there have been ninety-six arrests of political activists since November 1 2007, according to Amnesty International.

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