CALL TO BOYCOTT
BURMA BRAS
Copyright 2001 The Observer, All Rights Reserved
[ December 9th 2001 ]
A leading
line of luxury lingerie, promoted by Kelly Brook
and Nell McAndrew, will be subjected to a fierce
boycott campaign this week. As part of the protest,
women will be urged to 'support breasts, not dictators'
in a series of posters of models wearing barbed-wire
bras.
Campaigners
are furious that the lingerie manufacturer Triumph
International has rented a factory in Burma, where
workers are paid 70p a day, and where the military
leaders have a record of human rights abuses and
use of slave labour. The protesters want the company
to withdraw from the troubled state and will this
week launch its anti-Burma campaign, just as Triumph
starts to promote its latest line of lingerie
using a computer-generated cyber model, similar
to Lara Croft.
"Triumph
are clearly in Burma for the abundance of cheap
labour and the prospect of a 'compliant' workforce,"
said Yvette Mahon, director of Burma Campaign,
the organisers of the protest. 'They are supporting
- financially, politically and morally - an illegitimate
military junta that oppresses and impoverishes
48 million people.'
In the
past, Triumph has used TV presenter Brook and
the model McAndrew - upon whose physique the video
game character Lara Croft was based - to promote
their products. But now the provocative poses
are to be mimicked in new posters featuringmodels
wearing barbed-wired underwear.
In recent
months, other British high street retailers, including
BHS and Burton Menswear, have ended their involvement
in the region in the face of public protests about
work conditions there. This latest campaign is
particularly controversial because it is also
claimed the factory site was refurbished by child
labour just before Triumph moved in. Last week
the company refused to comment on this.
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