Bangkok Post News (10/10/98)

[mandalay@xxxxxxxxxx]

Firms 'use forced labour'
US report 'shows need of punitive measures'

The French oil giant Total and the US-owned Unocal appear to have used
forced forced labour in building a petroleum pipeline in Burma, according
to a new US government report.
Unocal and Total - involved in a joint venture with Burma's military regime
to pipe natural gas from the offshore Yadana field to neighbouring Thailand
-  have categorically denied using forced labour.
A Unocal spokesman rejected the report as "fraught with error" and charged
that the US Labor Department ascrificed objectivity by hiring a former
Burma human rights activist to assist in the investigation.
"This is nothing more than the same old stuff that we have heard from
activist groups before," said Unocal spokesman Barry Lane, who added that
the reported abuses are dated and the area of investigation vague.
The report concluded that by 1998, in the final stages of the pipeline
project that began in 1992, the oil companies had apparently stopped using
manual labour recruited by the army.
No one was available for comment about the report on Thursday at the
Department of Labor, which conducted the probe in consultation with the
State Department. It also relied on worker accounts and Total documents.
Villagers were allegedly forcibly relocated and coerced into serving as
porters for soliders protection the pipeline, and to build support
facilities for the project.
The United States, Canada and the European Union, as well as a slew of US
cities, counties and states, have already put in place economic sanction
and boycotts to pressure the Yangon government on human rights.
The Labor Department document noted that: "At the very least, Total's
documented practice of using manual labour recruited by the army and
quartered in army battalions demands explanation.
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