Millers, Katies cut ties with Burma

By AAP, Inside Retailing.

Speciality Fashion Group, which owns Millers, Katies and four other fashion brands, will stop sourcing products from Burma.

It was among eight firms named last month in a report commissioned by Burma Campaign Australia, which says the companies are funding Burma's repressive military dictatorship.

"We made a group decision to cease trading with Burma due to the continued repression of the Burmese people and the ongoing presence of military rule," Speciality Fashion Group company secretary Howard Herman said in a statement released through Burma Campaign Australia on Monday.

The Australian company is following insurance company QBE and engineering company Downer EDI, which withdrew from Burma earlier this year.

Campaign spokeswoman Zetty Brake praised Speciality Fashion Group on its decision to withdraw, and encouraged other businesses to do the same.

"Corporate Australia needs to put people before profits and do the right thing by the people of Burma and withdraw," she said.

The campaign has previously calculated the Burmese regime could earn $US2.5 billion ($A2.76 billion) through royalties, income tax and an equity stake in a joint venture project with one Australian company alone, Twinza Oil.

They say this is enough to fund a quarter of Burma's army for a decade.

Other Australian firms named in the report as having business interests in Burma include Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd, Chevron, Geckos Adventure, Jetstar Asia, Lonely Planet and Sri Asia Tourism.

Australian unions and churches have joined the campaign, pressuring the companies to wake up to the "ongoing atrocities" in Burma and withdraw all business interests.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962.

Its democracy icon, the Nobel Peace winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent about 14 of the past 20 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the elections in 1990.