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Belgium Boycott / ABC and CISL / Fr



Subject: Belgium Boycott / ABC and CISL / French Parliamentary report 

WORLDWIDE TOTAL BOYCOTT SINCE 1996

Re the Belgium Boycott. It was brought to the attention of the French
MPs of the apparent progress of the Belgium Boycott. Well, thats news.
It would be good of its leaders to inform all of us of their current
progress, strategy and proposal. Of course we can find some of the
information on the net, as I have posted before. I can tell you that we
at EuroBurmanet first encouraged Gaeten at the University Louvaine to
organise with the Euro-Burma office in Belgium, and he subsequently with
their guidance launched the ABC proposal, also on the net. That did not
however lead to any action by F. Cornelius, former head of PetroFina, on
the Univeristy board, and now number 2 at "Total Fina SA".

I find it somewhat hilarious that it all comes full circle here to Paris
where Michel D. and the Info-Birmanie people have linked up with ERI,
the globetrotter Tyler Giannini, he sure does get around. 

You can find more about the Belgium boycott activity at the ABC
site http://users.skynet.be/vero.michel/birma.html

and go from there.

Here in the report, ("L'appel au boycott de TotalFina en Belgique") we
would like you to see this, loose translation ebn. "A collecion of
associations of the ngo of professors of the University (Louvain) and
students, called "Action Petrol en Birmanie (ABC, actually Action
Birmanie Coherence) launched last may a boycott against TotalFina in
Belgium. "Support democracy. Dont fill up at Total" (a sort of play on
words in french, you have to know french to get it "Pas de plein chez
Total) The Internaitonal Confederatoin of Free Unions (Confederation
internationale des syndicats libres-CISL) is associated with that
operation. Car drivers are called to boycott TotalFina stations. It
quotes the CISL as saying "The commission of inquiry of the ILO
condemned massive use of forced labor in Burma and conlcuded  
individual responsibility under the international penal code to members
 of the junta. They are liable to be accused of crimes against humanity.
The individuals o the companies working with the junta may also one day
be accused of complicity, or example, in front of the future
international Penal Court. 

Well, thats all very well and good but would someone like to tell the
rest of us what is the program and strategy of the Belgium boycott for
Europe, and for the international community, let alone France, if you
have any ideas on that subject?

Further on, in the same MP commission report, the state director of
Total Fina, Didier Houssin, says : "French diplomacy makes an effort to
improve political relations with the oil-producer countries, and France,
as well as a number of producer-countries, have state-owned companies.
Half of the french market is supplied by Total and Elf, so we also find
it convenient to encourage them to diversify their origins of supply. "
 
Its a fairly interesting and readable report, unfortunately, and this is
typical here, its a bit too late, academic, fails to go into the dark
and obscured details of french state and government relations with
the private sector, and is pretty much a big paintbrush over the small
details that might make for a more explosive rendering of the french
problem here, which it is not. 

As always, it glosses over here, touches a nerve there, but really, at
least from what i can see of this non-definitive 200 pages, doesnt go
far enough - and comes a year and a half after the July 1998 ILO report
that was good work and remains the reference.

The FRench should have started three or four years ago, if they wanted
this to be taken seriously, as is, it is not a serious handling of the
problem, apart from its apparent good intentions. Sorry, but lets be
honest  about what we can and do not do today.