UK retailer John Lewis and Partners will stop sourcing gems from Myanmar, the rights group Burma Campaign UK said.
“John Lewis have done the right thing by deciding to stop sourcing from Burma,” Mark Farmaner, director of the rights group, said in a statement.
Retailers must ensure that the gems they sell have not helped pay for the bombs and the bullets the Myanmar junta’s military is using to kill people, Farmaner said.
Burma Campaign UK had written to John Lewis and about 40 other retailers asking them to ensure that any gems they source from Myanmar are not helping fund the junta.
It received a reply from John Lewis Partnership (JLP)—the employee-owned company that operates John Lewis and Partners department stores—saying that their suppliers source a very small portion of gems from Myanmar, but they are urgently seeking alternative sources of gems.
“We remain extremely concerned to learn of developments around the conflicts that have taken place, and that continue to take place in recent years in Burma/Myanmar,” JLP said.
JLP is the largest and most successful cooperative in the UK. Owned by a trust on behalf of all its employees, it operates John Lewis and Partners, a chain of high-end department stores.
Since the February 2021 coup, the military has taken control of a gems industry worth an estimated US$ 2 billion per year, Burma Campaign UK said.
The junta extracts revenue from the industry through its own private companies, state-owned enterprises and government ministries, control of trade routes, and both legal and illegal trade and business interests of military family members.
The massive revenue generates funds to purchase weapons and equipment for the junta’s brutal military campaign against the nationwide resistance.
Burma Campaign UK said it is not calling for a blanket ban on gems from Myanmar. Rather, it is calling on companies to ensure the gems they sell have not been sourced in a way that provides money to help the junta buy weapons and or fund a military that continues to commit atrocities.
JLP’s decision to stop buying gems from Myanmar follows an announcement in June by TJC—one of the biggest TV shopping channels and online jewelry retailers in the UK—that it had stopped selling rubies and gems from Myanmar.
Since the February 2021 coup, the junta has arrested more than 24,000 people and killed at least 3,848 more, frequently through indiscriminate airstrikes on schools, hospitals, and entire communities.
More than 1.5 million civilians have been displaced by its campaign of terror, according to UN figures.
