Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 28, 1995 TAG: 9510300016
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
He doesn't like Pepsi and neither do the more than 100 students who protested the company's politics in front of Burruss Hall Friday morning.
They wore red shirts emblazoned with "Free the Burmese People: Pepsi is Not the Choice of Our Generation." They shook rock-filled cans of Pepsi, Slice, 7-Up, and Mountain Dew, all owned by the colossal PepsiCo.
But first, they stood in the chill of a gray morning and listened with somber faces to Diggs Professor Edward Weisband and Stacey Danraj of the Asian American Student Union.
Many of the students, like junior Chris Arcello, came to the rally after seeing fliers and petitions on campus. They wanted to "get more information" about PepsiCo's involvement in slave labor production in Burma.
They got it.
In 1990, free elections were held in Burma and democratic supporters won 80 percent of the seats in the government, the speakers said. Gen. Than Shwe used military force to install martial law and imprisoned, tortured, or killed many of those who had won seats, they said.
Weisband stressed the need for "a restoration of law and order in Burma."
According to Amnesty International, PepsiCo, which owns a slew of products and chains such as Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, sends products into Burma and receives its revenues in kyat, Burmese currency. To get hard currency in dollar form, PepsiCo must buy mung beans, sesame seeds and other cash crops with its kyat from front companies in Burma.
The front companies' mung beans are purchased from markets that are commingled with slave labor production from civil war zones, where oppressed peasants are robbed of their land, the group says.
Amnesty International's message at the rally: Because of these counter trade practices, each time you drop 50 cents into a Pepsi machine to get a caffeine buzz before class, you are ensuring human rights violations will continue.
Danraj read the personal testimonies of two women: "They walked on our chests as if we were logs. Each time I thought I would die."
"Our scars always remind us of how we were tortured."
Danraj ended her talk by saying "there are hundreds of people like this in villages I've never heard of before, villages I can't pronounce.
"It takes all of us working together," she told a quiet audience. "We can a make a difference now."
Nissim-Sabat broke the silence and stirred up the crowd, asking them to repeat the chant: "Hey Pepsi, We oppose slavery. Hey Pepsi, We oppose brutality."
Many students changing classes looked at the can-shaking chanters and continued walking. "You all can come up here, this isn't exclusive!" Nissim-Sabat yelled with a smile.
Prior to the rally, he expressed concern that Tech students, with 130 members of Amnesty International, tend to be apathetic. "It's disgusting," he said. Others in the crowd agreed.
"I just wish more people could have turned out," said Kristen Bovey, a senior.
The students ended the rally by marching onto the steps of Burruss where they chanted "PepsiCo has got to go."
With 2,000 signatures gathered on petitions to boycott PepsiCo all over campus, students concerned about the situation in Burma hope Pepsi will hear them. Banding with 70 other colleges and universities nationwide - including Penn State and Berkeley - they just might.
Levi-Strauss, Liz Claiborne, Amoco, Reebok and Eddie Bauer already have discontinued doing business with Burma, according to Amnesty International.
"We have the power," Nissim-Sabat told the crowd. "Pepsi isn't going to get out of Burma tomorrow or next month. But it will happen."
For more information call Tech's chapters of Amnesty International at 953-2382 and Asian American Student Union at 231- 6253.
by CNB