Sec. 2. FINDINGS

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## SEC. 2 FINDINGS Congress makes the following findings: ####

(1)The State Peace and Development Council

(SPDC)has failed to transfer power to the National League for Democracy(NLD) whose parliamentarians won an overwhelming victory in the 1990 elections in Burma. ####

(2)The SPDC has failed to enter into meaningful, political dialogue with the NLD and ethnic minorities and has dismissed the efforts of United Nations Special Envoy Razali bin Ismail to further such dialogue. ####

(3)According to the State Department's “Report to the Congress Regarding Conditions in Burma and U.S. Policy Toward Burma” dated March 28, 2003, the SPDC has become “more confrontational” in its exchanges with the NLD. ####

(4)On May 30, 2003, the SPDC, threatened by continued support for the NLD throughout Burma, brutally attacked NLD supporters, killed and injured scores of civilians, and arrested democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and other activists. ####

(5)The SPDC continues egregious human rights violations against Burmese citizens, uses rape as a weapon of intimidation and torture against women, and forcibly conscripts child-soldiers for the use in fighting indigenous ethnic groups. ####

(6)The SPDC is engaged in ethnic cleansing against minorities within Burma, including the Karen, Karenni, and Shan people, which constitutes a crime against humanity and has directly led to more than 600,000 internally displaced people living within Burma and more than 130,000 people from Burma living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. ####

(7)The ethnic cleansing campaign of the SPDC is in sharp contrast to the traditional peaceful coexistence in Burma of Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and people of traditional beliefs. ####

(8)The SPDC has demonstrably failed to cooperate with the United States in stopping the flood of heroin and methamphetamines being grown, refined, manufactured, and transported in areas under the control of the SPDC serving to flood the region and much of the world with these illicit drugs. ####

(9)The SPDC provides safety, security, and engages in business dealings with narcotics traffickers under indictment by United States authorities, and other producers and traffickers of narcotics. ####

(10)The International Labor Organization (ILO), for the first time in its 82-year history, adopted in 2000, a resolution recommending that governments, employers, and workers organizations take appropriate measures to ensure that their relations with the SPDC do not abet the government-sponsored system of forced, compulsory, or slave labor in Burma, and that other international bodies reconsider any cooperation they may be engaged in with Burma and, if appropriate, cease as soon as possible any activity that could abet the practice of forced, compulsory, or slave labor. ####

(11)The SPDC has integrated the Burmese military and its surrogates into all facets of the economy effectively destroying any free enterprise system. ####

(12)Investment in Burmese companies and purchases from them serve to provide the SPDC with currency that is used to finance its instruments of terror and repression against the Burmese people. ####

(13)On April 15, 2003, the American Apparel and Footwear Association expressed its “strong support for a full and immediate ban on U.S. textiles, apparel and footwear imports from Burma” and called upon the United States Government to “impose an outright ban on U.S. imports” of these items until Burma demonstrates respect for basic human and labor rights of its citizens. ####

(14)The policy of the United States, as articulated by the President on April 24, 2003, is to officially recognize the NLD as the legitimate representative of the Burmese people as determined by the 1990 election. ####

(15)The United States must work closely with other nations, including Thailand, a close ally of the United States, to highlight attention to the SPDC's systematic abuses of human rights in Burma, to ensure that nongovernmental organizations promoting human rights and political freedom in Burma are allowed to operate freely and without harassment, and to craft a multilateral sanctions regime against Burma in order to pressure the SPDC to meet the conditions identified in section 3(a)(3) of this Act.