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LA TIMES: Unocal Burma Demonstratio



Friends,
The following article appeared in the LA Times on Tuesday the day after our
demonstration at UNOCAL's annual shareholder meeting in Brea, CA.    We
were protesting UNOCAL's continued support of the ruthless military regime
in Burma.       You can write letters to the editor of the LA Times at
letters@xxxxxxxxxxxx       The story also included a very nice picture of a
the paper mache elephant we built to highlight the environmental
destruction and displacement of elephants that is also being caused by
UNOCAL's pipeline project in Burma.      Slogans written on the sides of
the elephant read: "UNOCAL Stop Your Burma Pipeline Now!."

UNOCAL's OVERSEAS TIES DRAW PROTESTS
By Nancy Rivera Brooks
Times Staff Writer

Unocal Corp. has been generating profits - and contreversey - by exploring
for oil and gas in such unstable places as Myanmer, Indonesia and,
potentially, Afghanistan.

As protestors marched outside the company's Brea facility Monday, Unocal
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Roger C. Beach told the annual
shareholders meeting that the El Segundo-based oil giant has overhauled
itself in the last two years, selling its gas stations and oil refineries
to become a "super independent" that searches for oil and gas
internationally.

"Unocal has tremendous potential for future growth" without saacraficing
social responsibility, Beach said.   "This is fundamental to the way we do
business-and a key to our success."

But Carol Richards, a founder of the activist group Burma Forum, said the
company "has been transformed into a rogue band of adventurers who will now
make a deal no matter how dirty, no matter how risky, with the most
appalling regimes on Earth."

The L.A. based group has called for the Unocal board's ouster in protest of
the company's dealings in Myanmar, formerly Burma, which is home to a
military regime that has been widely condemned for terrorizing political
opponents.

So went the latest gathering of oil industry shareholders, with activists
pushing for a variety of causes bevore Big Oil investors not always in the
mood to listen.

Unocal's even included a few dozen protestors and a large paper-mache
elephant denouncing Unocal's ties to several Asian regimes.

But as they did last year, shareholders overwhelmingly defeated measures
asking the company to limit or rethink those business ventures.

Opponents of Unocal's participation in a $1.2-billion, multinational
Myanmar pipeline and of a potential pipeline dealin Afghanistan were
allowed to speak in support of shareholder resolutions to review executive
compensation and possibly tie that pay to corporate responsibility, to
investigate charges that the state-owned Myanmar Oil ang Gas Enterprise is
invlved in drug trafficking, and to assess the cost to Unocal of the
increasing opposition to its Myanmar operations.

Each of the resolutions was rejected by more than 90% of the shares voted,
but each received more than the 3% needed to be reintroduced at next year's
meeting.

Afghanistan is a more recent controversy for UNOCAL.   The company is
considering paticipating in building a pipeline there buy won't do business
in the country until a stable government is installed and peace is
restored, Beach said.

Feminist groups say that any activity in Afghanistan would support the
ruling Taliban militia and its restrictions on women.

"It was a start," said Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the
Feminist Majority Foundation.  "We wanted to shine a bright light on the
issue."






===================================================
Kevin Rudiger
Burma Forum, Los Angeles
Campaign for Corporate Withdrawal
2118 Wilshire Blvd #383
Santa Monica, CA 90403
(310)399-0703 - phone
(310)392-9965 - fax
(310)588-3404 - pager
bfla@xxxxxxxxxxxxx