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Burma: US Oil Major Complicit in Abuses - Rights Lobby
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Inter Press Service News
Wednesday 30 April 2008
Bangkok - An environmental group is warning U.S. energy giant Chevron to clean
up its act in Burma or face legal proceedings where the multinational's links
to gross human rights violations in the military-ruled country could be exposed.
There has been little relief for villagers living in the Yadana pipeline region
in southern Burma since the Chevron Corporation became a partner to this natural
gas venture in 2005, states the Washington D.C.-based EarthRights International
(EI) in a report released here Tuesday.
"Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army
for pipeline security and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers
for forced labour, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses
in the course of their operations," revealed the 76-page report, 'The Human
Cost of Energy'.
Chevron should act on "its moral and legal obligations to human rights rather
than profit from human rights abuses," the report added of this project that
earned the Burma's junta about 1.1 billion US dollars in 2006, over half of
its total earnings from the sale of gas to neighbouring Thailand, which was
2.16 billion dollars that year.
"Chevron can be sued by villagers from Burma if it does not stop the human
rights violations," Naing Htoo, EI's Burma Project coordinator, said during
a press conference at the launch of the report. "The violations are happening
every day."
"Chevron is aiding and abetting the pattern of abuse that is going on," added
Katie Redford, U.S. director of EI. "Chevron is liable for the forced labour.
They are liable for the torture and rape the (Burmese) security forces are committing
in the furtherance of the contract."
EI's report comes at a time when Chevron has been trying to give itself a positive
twist as a responsible corporate citizen, committed to helping the world achieve
its energy needs in a cleaner manner. This slick campaign on television and
in newspapers was launched last September in the U.S. One report put Chevron's
"green marketing campaign" at 15 million dollars.
In addition, Chevron has been trying to distance itself from the reports of
human rights violations in the pipeline region of Burma, which the junta has
renamed Myanmar, says Redford. "Regardless of the slick marketing campaigns,
if you have a contract with the Burmese junta, you are its business partner.
They cannot try to distance themselves from the accusations, which they are
doing."
Total, Chevron's French partner in the Yadana project, is facing similar criticism,
but it has opted to admit to some of the accusations reported in southern Burma.
"Total has noted on its website that forced labour is going on," Joelle Brohier,
editor of a French website on corporate social responsibility in developing
countries, told IPS. "They have learnt from past criticism that they need to
provide some transparency."
But France's only extractive company involved in natural gas projects cannot
side-step reports of human rights abuse, she added. "It cannot ignore these
kinds of reports. It has to try and offer answers to deal with these problems
that are still going on."
The main abusers are the Burmese military battalions assigned to protect the
pipeline," Naing Htoo said in an interview. "The soldiers confiscate the lands
owned by the villagers and force them to grow rice. They also force the villagers
to carry military supplies for the camp and have other forms of forced labour.
Then there is rape and torture."
Two battalions, the light infantry battalion 282 and 273, have been given the
duty "to handle security for the pipeline," he revealed. Each of these military
units has a strength of 300 soldiers. But in all, 14 battalions operate in the
area, making it one of the more heavily militarised parts of the South-east
Asian country.
The Yadana pipeline has been dogged by controversy since its inception in 1991.
This venture, to extract offshore natural gas in the Andaman Sea and have it
flow along an overland pipe to Thailand, was backed by a consortium that included
the U.S. company Unocal, French company Total and a subsidiary of Thailand's
state-owned gas and oil company. The local partner was the Myanmar Gas and Oil
Enterprise, an affiliate of Burma's energy ministry.
The mounting human rights violations at the time was documented by EI, resulting
in the latter's first report, 'Total Denial', in 1996. Subsequently, several
victims of the Yadana project, assisted by EI and a team of lawyers, filed a
lawsuit in an U.S. federal court against Unocal, accusing it of "complicity
in their injuries."
Nine years later, in March 2005, the Burmese victims emerged victorious, when
Unocal decided to settle this lengthy legal battle and compensate the villagers.
Shortly thereafter, Chevron bought Unocal's stake in the Yadana pipeline.
That legal outcome was a major milestone in international human rights law.
"The case came to be the big test case in terms of corporate responsibility,
because till then there was uncertainty over how the courts will handle cases
of companies linked to human rights violations in a foreign country," says
Doug Sanders, a retired Canadian law professor who is on the visiting faculty
at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "Traditionally, international human
right law applied to only countries and not individuals or companies."
That result has "opened the way for big companies who fail to meet their corporate
social responsibilities in foreign countries to feel the heat in court," Sanders
said in an interview. "It affirmed that corporations have to bear certain responsibilities
under human rights law that can be enforced in local courts."
The legal victory in the Unocal case was not lost on Redford this week. "We
have done it before, even if it took us nearly 10 years," she said of the potential
lawsuit against Chevron.
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