The head of a Calgary resource company which exports amber from Myanmar says doing business in the politically blacklisted southeast Asian country is helping build economic bridges necessary for its development.
And news this past week of renewed talks between the military government and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi “sounds like evolution to me,” declares Jim Davis, president of Leeward Capital Corporation.
Leeward has been working on developing a market for amber — or burmite — in the country’s Kachin State for nearly three years after suspending other mining activities following the Bre-X gold scandal. Leeward’s gold and platinum concessions in the country, also known as Burma, were relinquished back to the government as investment capital quickly dried up.
“Once (Bre-X) was revealed, it became practically impossible for a Calgary-based junior mining company operating in Southeast Asia to raise high-risk exploration financing. It’s as simple as that,” he says.
But a geologist working for Leeward in Myanmar suggested that Davis might be interested in exploring the ancient amber deposits in the northern jungles. “We developed a good relationship with the local Kachin people, and a good relationship with the northern commander of Kachin State, and we managed to obtain the initial samples,” says Davis.
Many of the burmite samples included insects frozen in time — trapped by the resin which once flowed from ancient trees. If the proper conditions exist, resin seeping from broken branches or diseased trees hardens and is preserved along with anything that was in its path, including living organisms.
Tests conducted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York dated the Myanmar burmite samples at around 100 million years old.
Leeward set up partnership with a local company in Kachin State — it’s illegal for a foreign company to mine gems itself — and now has two burmite sites being developed in the Hukawng Valley, one of the oldest known amber sources in the world.
As well as selling the insect-included amber to museums and researchers, Davis is now hoping to develop a market for gem-quality burmite jewelry — which he says is of superior quality to the amber mined in the Baltic or the Dominican Republic.
Doing business with a pariah nation does not come without cost. Leeward has been lashed by human-rights groups for operating in Myanmar, which has faced international condemnation for its treatment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy.
The country has been under military rule since 1962. Although the NLD won the general election in 1990 with an 82-per-cent landslide, the generals have refused to yield power. Suu Kyi spent the years from 1989 to 1995 under house arrest, and her activities have been severely restricted by the government.
Canada has expressed concern over deteriorating human-rights conditions in Myanmar and the country’s increased involvement in the heroin trade, but has imposed only selective economic measures, which Davis dismisses as ineffective.
“They don’t encourage doing business in Myanmar, that’s about the extent of it. It’s a very weak policy.”
The group Canadian Friends of Burma (www.cfob.org) is running several campaigns to fight what it terms the “corporate complicity” of companies such as Nortel, Ivanhoe Mines and Canadian importers including Wal-Mart Canada.
“If people want to make money, they’ll even make deals with the devil,” says Tiger Yawnghwe, a Calgary geologist and supporter of CFB who has lobbied for Leeward and other businesses to pull out of Burma.
“The potential in Burma both for oil and gas and minerals is excellent. But I wouldn’t myself do any business with that bunch of . . .”
Davis says he has no personal knowledge of any human-rights violations in Myanmar, and blames the “lib-left” Western press for distorting the political situation while largely ignoring other offenders. “Do you think North Korea, China and Indonesia don’t have a human-rights problem that far exceeds anything in Burma? The only difference is (they) are left-wing dictatorships,” Davis argues.
“They (the media) will wink at grievous offences against human rights in those countries, and aggressively pursue actions against (former Chilean dictator) General Augusto Pinochet . . .”
Still, he says he has received some letters criticizing his company’s involvement in the country. “I have written polite letters back.”
The economic partnership publicly traded Leeward Capital has forged with the resource-rich country for its amber deposits remains an exclusive and potentially lucrative relationship. Under his arrangement with Leeward’s partner in Kachin, Davis plans to mine 500 kilograms of burmite this year.
“The way things have worked out, the bugs (insect inclusions) pay for the whole operation so far,” he says. “Anything I can sell from the residual gem quality amber is profit.”
Leeward’s business will continue, whether or not the current political talks open a door to the shunned country. “The very fact we’re there, Leeward and a lot of other companies, opens the country up,” says Davis.
“There’s only two ways that a country like Myanmar can advance democratically, which is by revolution or by evolution. I prefer evolution,” he shrugs, “because a lot less people get hurt that way.”
