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BURMA'S GAS PIPELINE - TEST FOR BOY
- Subject: BURMA'S GAS PIPELINE - TEST FOR BOY
- From: ggundrey@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 15:19:00
Subject: BURMA'S GAS PIPELINE - TEST FOR BOYCOTT MOVEMENT
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COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
450 Mission Street, Room 204
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-4364
NEWS ANALYSIS-710 WORDS
BURMA'S GAS PIPELINE -- LITMUS TEST FOR GLOBAL BOYCOTT MOVEMENT
EDITOR'S NOTE: Widespread crackdowns on Burma's pro-democracy movement
have led a broad range of human rights advocates -- from e-mailing campus
cyber-revolutionaries to U.S. Senators -- to dub Burma "the South Africa
of the 90's". Pressure is mounting for a worldwide embargo on foreign
investment. The test of the strategy will be stopping Burma's largest and
most controversial project, a natural gas pipeline planned for the
rainforest homeland of embattled ethnic minorities. PNS commentator Edith
T. Mirante is author of "Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure"
(Atlantic Monthly Press).
BY EDITH T. MIRANTE, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Early this year the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria focused world
attention on Shell Oil's conflict with that country's Ogoni ethnic group.
Today, a similar crisis is unfolding in Burma where a gas pipeline scheme
is causing mayhem among indigenous people.
More than a dozen multi-national corporations have paid Burma's junta,
the State Law and Order Restoration Council or Slorc, millions of dollars
each for the rights to search for petroleum in Burma. Most have come up
dry in their on-land efforts and withdrawn. But a few, obtaining
off-shore concessions, struck large reserves of undersea natural gas.
The main offshore concessions are a block belonging to Texaco (U.S.),
Nippon (Japan), and Premier (UK); another is held by Unocal (US) and
Total (France), while the Los Angeles-based Arco recently signed an
exploration contract with Slorc as well. To transport the natural gas,
Unocal and Total, in partnership with Slorc and neighboring Thailand's
Petroleum Authority, have begun a pipeline which will stretch from
Burma's Andaman Sea, across its southern Tenasserim region, to
electricity generating facilities in Thailand.
The Tenasserim is inhabited largely by the Mon, Karen, and Tavoyan ethnic
groups, who have long been in rebellion against Burma's ruling military.
Mon rebels are observing a ceasefire with Slorc, but remain armed, and
many other guerrilla groups roam the area. To secure the Tenasserim, the
Slorc has moved several battalions of troops around the pipeline route, a
beefed-up presence reportedly accompanied by large-scale violations of
human rights.
Road-building and a railway extension that connects to the pipeline
route, as well as construction of new army bases, have made extensive use
of ethnic minorities for slave labor, according to Human Rights
Watch-Asia, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International. Escaped slaves tell of
beatings, torture, rape and murder of captives working on the Tenasserim
infrastructure projects by Slorc's security forces.
The foreign oil companies have shrugged off accusations of complicity in
the abuses by Slorc security forces. "If you threaten the pipeline
there's gonna be more military," predicted Unocal's John Imle in the
Bangkok Post. "For every threat to the pipeline there will be a reaction."
For their part, a coalition of rebel forces has vowed to turn the
pipeline into "a snake of fire" if it is ever completed, and last year
five members of a Total surveying team were killed and eleven wounded in
an ambush by Karen rebels of their Burmese army guarded convoy.
In addition to the human cost, the Tenasserim pipeline slices through one
of the last tropical rainforest areas of mainland Southeast Asia. This
habitat of elephants, tigers and rhinoceros is threatened by
construction, and by the likelihood that logging company access will
follow a successful security campaign.
The junta is anticipating billions of dollars in revenue from selling gas
to Thailand -- a strong incentive for it to hang onto power. But pressure
to withdraw is mounting on Slorc's corporate backers from pro-democracy
supporters, particularly in the U.S. which ranks as among the Slorc's top
five investors. Revelations about military involvement in joint-venture
factories have prompted Levi Strauss, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, and
Macy's to quit manufacturing in Burma. Consumer and shareholder pressure
continue on the oil companies, and on Pepsi-Cola which has bottling
plants in Burmese cities.
Borrowing a tactic from South Africa's anti-apartheid campaign, activists
have encouraged selective contracting legislation to bar city and state
governments from doing business with companies in Burmese ventures. San
Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., and Madison, Wis., have passed such acts,
and New York City and the State of Massachusetts have them in process. On
a national level, a bill for broad-based economic sanctions against Slorc
has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky)
and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt).
At a time when ethnic insurgency is at a low ebb, and pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi's non-violent campaign to free Burma is facing a
wealthy and well-armed Slorc, the international economic strategy seems
to be the strongest option for undermining Burma's regime. The true test
of that strategy will be stopping the pipeline scheme, and with it the
Burmese generals' dreams of natural gas riches.
(06111996) **** END **** (c) COPYRIGHT PNS
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