As Texas entrepreneur and close associate of the SLORC Pat James told John Pilger: "Look here, the cost of labour is very low by international standards and that makes Myanmar a very attractive location. As for the human rights violations, the government here, on the inside, behind closed doors, is concerned about this. This is something they're truly sorry about I'm in Myanmar because I love the tradition and the values, and the passiveness of the people. I mean the acceptance. That's it. They're learning, you see. They're begging, too - literally begging for the foreigners to come in and teach them.' His business is tourism but his sentiments reflect those of many western businesses and governments.
Many spokesmen for Western government and business are far less open about their actions and their opinions.
In 1988, when the government needed more bullets, Singapore sorted them out and maybe saved their skin. Two years later, during further unrest, it was British company BMARC's ammo via Singapore that was delivered. This common practice was acknowledged by entrepreneur Pat James in 1995. "Right now a lot of the British company funding is actually coming through companies from Singapore and Thailand. Projects you see are British and American, but other countries will be receiving credit on the ledger sheet'.
Gerald James, former chairman of Astra of which BMARC was a subsidiary, claims that British Intelligence were running a 'secret book' for arms deliveries to Burma through BMARC. He found a Burma order in a box of papers returned by Astra's receivers in 1995.
In 1993, Richard Needham, Britain's then Trade minister, told Parliament, 'The government's policy is to provide no specific encouragement to British firms to trade or invest in Burma in view of the current political and economic situation there'. Then in written parliamentary replies the government admitted that it had appointed four new trade promotion staff at the Rangoon embassy and was organising British trade missions and helping to fund them.
In 1995, the veil had been dropped. The British Department of Trade and the London Chamber of Commerce funded a seminar in London called 'An introduction to Burma - the latest Tiger Cub'. The organiser Peter Godwin told the seminar that the 'good news is that economic growth is picking up'. No reference was made to the massacre of 1988, the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi or the continuing lack of progress towards democracy.
In 1996, the shadow Foreign office minister Derek Fatchett, set out the labour party's policy on sanctions. 'The government has argued that such measures ultimately hurt the ordinary Burmese citizen more than the ruling elite'. This argument was wrong when used to justify continued trade with the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is still wrong today in regard to Burma."
A year later and now in power and elevated to the Foreign Office Fatchett said that the government will 'continue to provide British companies with routine advice about doing business in Burma'. This advice would 'wherever possible?draw to bussinessmen's attention statements by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi discouraging trade and investment in Burma'. No mention of sanctions. Britain remains sufficiently preoccupied with relations with the SLORC's allies as well as its trade to consider implementing Labour's pledges.
In 1996, the United States imposed a ban on 'new' investments in Burma. They however chose to exempted the Unocal/Total pipeline whose construction was surrounded in doubts about forced labour see Death railway. The exemption undermined any stance on human rights as well any attempt to apply economic pressure on the SLORC. The pipeline alone provides the generals with revenue for life.
The same year, William Brown, former US ambassador to Thailand, was dispatched to Burma to see what the score was. Brown announced that after conferring with the SLORC, 'contrary to what we read in the media, we found large areas of consensus in Burma. The issue of forced labour has diminished.' Ironically, two days earlier the International Labour Organisation had reported that forced labour had 'increased markedly' and was now imposed 'on a massive scale and under the cruellest of conditions'.
Australia too made the rights noises in the 1990s about meeting human rights standards. Gareth Evans, on behalf of the Australian Labor Government told the Burmese foreign minister that, Australia 'had an extreme concern about the continuing human rights situation,' and that it also had 'a desire to find ways of moving the situation productively forward'. Investing in Burma seemed like a good start. In 1995 the number of Australian business delegations to Rangoon doubled.
It is difficult to estimate the true level of Western investment in Burma, since a lot of this investment is routed through third countries, especially Singapore and Hong Kong. It is not difficult to see that countries who have made proud proclamations of support for democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi, have continued to allow their companies to trade freely with the military government | 
