Gem traders to fight US ban on Burmese stones

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200810/s2405507.htm

The world's gemstone traders have decided to fight back against a new US law banning the sale of Burmese rubies and sapphires.

The legislation, which closes a loophole in America's existing ban against Burmese gems, has been praised by human rights groups. However, the peak body for gemstone traders says the move is misguided and the "collatoral damage" could be unemployed Burmese miners pushed into growing opium.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speakers: Dave Mathieson, Human Rights Watch ; Andrew Cody, president of the International Coloured Gemstone Association

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COCHRANE: The new law, which came into effect this week, makes it illegal for American gem dealers to buy Burmese products - even if the stones have been cut, polished and re-traded from a third country. Previously the law banned gems bought directly from Burma but not those traded via other countries. Speaking from the Thai-Burma border, Dave Mathieson from Human Rights Watch, said closing the legal loophole was a small but important step.

MATHIESON: In terms of monetary value it's probably not huge, but in terms of symbolic value and the fact that these counter-measures are in place and being tightened up, it is important because it sents a signal to the Burmese military government and their business associates that abusive production of gems and other precious metals wont be accepted into the United States.


COCHRANE: But the International Coloured Gemstone Association, which represents 600 traders in 40 countries, describes the law as "well-meaning" but "misguided". Andrew Cody is the president of the association.

CODY: The huge concern I have and many other people in the industry [have] is that this was targeted to help the people of Burma and in fact there was little or no collatoral damage study undertaken and they've actually forgotten about the very people they were trying to help.

COCHRANE: Mr Cody cites the example of the gem mining town of Mogok, 200 kilometers northeast of Mandalay.

CODY: Their whole livelihood is based upon the gemstone industry and unfortunately this is going to send them broke. That means that they will have to turn to other things to make a living and as you know there are very little things they can turn to in that area, it might well be they turn to drugs - exactly what the industry doesn't want and what the world doesn't want. We don't need 400,000 people in the world growing more drugs.

COCHRANE: The production of opium poppies in Burma has decreased over the last decade, but some farmers are choosing to go back to the lucrative drug trade. However, Dave Mathieson from Human Rights Watch disagrees with the gem traders' argument - that those at the bottom of the industry will be hardest hit.

MATHIESON: Well that's really not the case, because a lot of the miners around Mogok and other places inside Burma get paid appalingly anyway, so they never see any of the top end profits of the trade. And the small traders, the ones that actually do mine and bring some o fthe stones out... those guys don't actually make that much money and these measures don't affect their low level sales. So that's a spurious argument.

COCHRANE: Since the nineteen-sixties, Burma has held annual gem sales and at the trade fair earlier this month, more two thousand dealers spent an estimated $175 million on Burmese gems. Human rights groups say this money funds Burma's repressive military, but Andrew Cody says only around 5-percent of the profits from gemstones filters back to the Burmese regime.

CODY: Ninety-percent of the value is actually done in the re-working of them, in other world the cutting, the polishing and the treatement and marketing. So who you are really hurting are the Thais, the allies of the United States, and you're hurting India and all those cutting families who spend a lot of time doing this.

COCHRANE: The debate looks set to continue. At a recent meeting of international gem traders in Dubai, the association decided to begin an advocacy campaign against the US law. Andrew Cody.

CODY: We want to take it further into the European Union. We want to take it further into the United States of America and also into Japan... and take into account that the major damage is going to be done to other nations around the world that have nothing to do with the Burmese government.