By 
New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins Colorado this year sold to the Japanese Beer giant Kirin. Fans of New Belgium rejoiced, signaling a new era for the dominating force in the craft beer movement.
A big leap for the employee-owned brewery, the sale gives workers at Fort Collins’ New Belgium a pension boost and allows them to maintain their jobs for the foreseeable future.
While all of this seems like a positive start to a new acquisition, you need only to scratch slightly beneath the surface, and one starts to encounter some problems with New Belgium Brewing’s new parent.
New Belgium Brewing has prided itself on sticking to a high standard of ethics. As a former resident of Fort Collins, I have always been impressed with their commitment to their employees and the community around them through a comprehensive employee ownership program, b-corp status, arts funding and much more.
This is why the resulting Amnesty International report about its brand new parent company Kirin funding a genocide is more than concerning.
The relationships that guide large corporations can be complex. Led by monetary incentives and less so by ethics, they are inherently untrustworthy. Kirin has been playing with fire in Myanmar for some time now. With its 55% stake in Myanmar Brewery and as of recently a 51% stake in Mandalay Brewing it has given Kirin majority control of Myanmar’s beer industry.
Coming in at a 45% stake in Myanmar Brewing is a company called “Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings” MEHL or UMEHL for short.
This is where the story gets a bit more complicated.
According to the Amnesty International report during the peak of the Rohingya genocide, Myanmar Brewing made three separate donations amounting to $30,000 that were far from transparent. Despite claims made by Kirin that ultimate destination of these donations was unknown to them — according to the report at least one of these donations ended up in the hands of the Commander and Chief of the Myanmar Army, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. It even happened at a televised ceremony in the capital Nay Pyi Taw on 1 September 2017, according to the General’s Facebook page.
Kirin refuses to take responsibility, despite evidence from
Multiple
International
Sources
This brings us back to the Partnership that Kirin has with UMEHL. Remember that they run a profitable split on Myanmar Brewing. UMEHL was founded by the Ministry of Defence and for context, the army of Myanmar is called the Tatmadaw overseen by the Ministry Itself.
Ahmed, a Rohingya refugee man cries as he holds his 40-day-old son, who died as a boat capsized in the shore of Shah Porir Dwip while crossing Bangladesh-Myanmar border, in Teknaf, Bangladesh.
The results of a fact-finding mission performed by the UN in August of this year have been so damning, that the United Nations is urging the international community to sever ties with the vast web of companies that the Government of Myanmar controls. It states:
“The Mission said the revenues the military earns from domestic and foreign business deals substantially enhances its ability to carry out gross violations of human rights with impunity.”
“Two Tatmadaw conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), are owned and influenced by senior Tatmadaw leaders, including the Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and the Deputy Commander-in-Chief Vice Senior General Soe Win, responsible for gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law. The Mission identified 106 MEHL and MEC owned businesses across diverse sectors of the economy – from construction and gem extraction to manufacturing, insurance, tourism and banking, and a further 27 businesses that are closely affiliated with the MEHL and MEC through corporate structures. The revenue that these military businesses generate strengthens the Tatmadaw’s autonomy from elected civilian oversight and provides financial support for the Tatmadaw’s operations with their wide array of international human rights and humanitarian law violations.”
“At least 45 companies and organizations provided the Tatmadaw with USD 6.15 million in financial donations that were solicited in September 2017 by senior Tatmadaw leadership in support of the “clearance operations” that began in August 2017 against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine.”
Rohingya women cry as they shout slogans during a protest rally to commemorate the first anniversary of Myanmar army’s crackdown which lead to a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh, at Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. Thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees on Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the attacks that sent them fleeing to safety in Bangladesh, praying they can return to their homes in Myanmar and demanding justice for their dead relatives and neighbors. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
Well isn’t that convenient… Kirin doesn’t know where their donations went, but it seems during the exact same time, the Tatmadaw was basically trying to rev up their IndieGoGo campaign for genocide.
The UN Report continues to outline the many ways that the government of Myanmar has used these holdings to evade accountability and calls on the international community to take immediate action. The Government is using a slew of businesses to evade international scrutiny and fund genocide.
So here we are again. Back in Colorado with this longtime local favorite. Yet we arrive at the impending sale of this iconic brewery with a new, significantly more bloody taste in our mouth. There isn’t really a nice way to portray the fact that New Belgium’s new parent company has been complicit in war crimes.
There was a rumor in the town of Fort Collins over a year ago — seeping out from the brewery like a pungent smell in the air and settling in the service industry of the town; one that suggested that the Brewery was over-leveraged from the opening of its Asheville plant. Due to this overextension, they could face closure unless a buyout were to occur in the next 18 months.
It would stand to reason that if this rumor was accurate, that this buyout was made out of desperation to avoid a catastrophic failure. It would serve as one explanation as to why an otherwise morally uncompromising Colorado-based B-corp would place itself in the same company of a genocidal military government.
It is just beggars belief that New Belgium would even consider such a deal, this link between Kirin and the Tatmadaw has been public knowledge for more than two years, literally since the genocide began. The fact that Kirin, to this day, is extracting and sharing revenues with the Tatmadaw is utterly revolting on every level.
Photo courtesy of The New York Times/Adam Dean
125,000 Rohingya are in detention camps as of this writing. Over 300 villages have been burned to the ground and over a million people are displaced throughout the region. The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in September, drafted by the EU and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), establishing a mechanism to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence of grave crimes committed in Myanmar, and prepare case files for prosecution. Because of this, we expect the true loss of this genocide to become more known over the next year.
So New Belgium, if you, your staff, or your supporters are reading this, I hope you are as disappointed as I am. The Fort Collins and Colorado community have come to know you as a deeply ethical company, who would never willingly associate with bloodthirsty, genocidal dictators who rape and murder vast populations of their own people due to their religious beliefs.
When this sale goes through, you will be stuck with these literal evil corporate overlords. Philanthropic programs and messaging campaigns will not be able to do the trick. You will no longer masters of your own behavior — Kirin will be. Because of this, you are just as accountable for their behavior.
Moving forward, my only hope is perhaps you can instill that same level of ethical responsibility in them. The same moral compass that you are so well known for in Colorado, and make a difference on the world stage. Since the sale is pending an employee vote, there is potentially time to avoid this mess.
Do it for those who have suffered, and for those who are hell-bent on seeing suffering end.
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