Press release by The Seattle Campaign for a Free Burma, April 24, 1995. Also in Resolution 29077. This section is based on interviews with Marco Simons in Boston, January 1997, and Zar Ni in Washington, DC, in February 1997. Simons, Billenness interviews. Selective purchasing laws were being considered across the country by local city councils.
Constructive engagement is the free-market argument for investment in troubled regions.
The argument goes that with investment, the standard of living is raised for the average person. This in turn raises the expectations for rights and freedoms from the government. At the same time the heightened economy requires a free flow of information, which boils down to technology and freedoms of press and speech. These then open up a previously closed society. In Burma, the currency is virtually worthless, so foreign investors have to repatriate their profits before taking them out of the country.