Urgent! E-mail TOTAL (US) TOTAL (FR

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Subject: Urgent! E-mail TOTAL (US) TOTAL (FRANCE) now! June 4 General Assembly Today !

TOTAL SA General Assembly June 4 1996, Paris 
TOTAL DENIAL : Tell them you don't believe it!
Email, right now, TOTAL (US) , and TOTAL (Paris) 

by Dawn Star, Paris, UVI.net

June 4 - Today, TOTAL SA, the French state-owned international oil company holds its annual General Assembly meeting  in Paris bringing together its investors and government official as CEO Thierry Desmarest will lay down strategy and profits from exploiting world energy resources. Burma and the Yadana and Sein projects will certainly be subjects of debate among  journalists invited to attend, including Euro-Burmanet.

Mr. Desmarest will also be confronted by the 60-page report  - " Total Denial " - by the Southeast Asian Information Network and Earth Rights International which criticizes the $1.4-billion pipeline project, half-owned by Burma's junta.

Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democratic pary leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, continues to condemn international business investment in Burma,  targeting European investors for ignoring the tragic plight of her people in a brutal greed for profits as she makes an appeal for international pressure on the ruling military regime to enter into dialogue towards a genuine political reconciliation with the democratic opposition, a position supported last week by the French Foreign Ministry, on May 25, at the peak of the Slorc crackdown shaking the country.

Since the arrest of hundreds of her top supporters, Suu Kyi says only half have been released, and 2O NLD party leaders have been sent to the dreaded Insein prison facing long prison terms. 

TOTAL has issued no official statement, and told Euro-Burmanet, that the company does not comment on such events, but then said, " we must wait and see how long they are detained. " 

The 254-mile Burmese end of the pipeline, to be completed in 1998, will carry gas from the Gulf of Martaban to Thailand. It is expected to earn Burma's military government $400 million a year in foreign exchange, though Total's company headquarter's spokesman, Joseph Daniel, in a letter last month attacking the authenticity of the film documentary "Inside Burma", by John Pilger, says the amount is " more or less  half of this amount".

 TOTAL, and its partner, Unocal, has denied many of the accusations in the SAIN report.
Unocal officials said there have been no forced relocations since it signed a contract for the project in 1992. Unocal says it has been welcomed by villagers, and that charges of forced labor were false.The remote region is off-limits to foreigners without permission.

But human  rights observors on their return from the location accuse the oil companies of awareness of and complicity in forced labor and relocations, arbitrary killings, rape and torture committed by Burma's military to build a railway, roads, helicopter pads and other infrastructure used to bring in equipment for the pipeline.

Oil company officials have said that there have been no forced relocations  since the company signed a contract for the project with Burma's military government in 1992. The oil companies say they are welcomed in the area by local people, and that charges of forced labor were false because pipeline construction  has not yet begun. Yet, Burmese troop strength in the area has increased from five to 14 battalions since the signing of the Yadana gas pipeline project., the report says. U.N. human rights investigators have strongly condemned abuses by the Burmese army in tandem with the oil companies.

"In October 1993, up to 2,000 people every day were reportedly being forced to labor on the construction of (the death) railway," the report said.

Burmese ethnic minority organizations have also publicly accused the government of abuses connected to the pipeline. Thailand's Electricity Generating Authority -- sole purchaser of gas from the pipeline -- confirmed that 11 ethnic Karen villages have been forcibly relocated.  The report also substantiates  three attacks on pipeline workers, one by a rebel army and two by villagers.

Contrary to denials by both TOTAL and Unocal  that two of the attacks never took place,villagers there say they did and the Burmese army executed villagers and burned homes in response. The companies pride themselves on exclusive access to the military and the restricted region, but that has been debunked by Pilger's own clandestine filmed documentation on the spot. 

" As a rule, human rights groups do not have direct access to on-scene information in Myanmar,' as the ruling military junta has renamed the  country. We do ", a Unocal shareholders report said

NGO workers  accuse the oil companies of awareness and complicity in forced  labor and relocations, arbitrary killings, rape and torture committed by Burma's military to build a railway, roads, helicopter pads and infrastructure needed to bring in equipment for the pipeline and troops to secure the area. Villagers told of the presence of Westerners as they are rounded up for forced labor on 'pipeline roads.'  NGO workers suspect the Westerners are in fact security personnel hired by the oil companies from private companies in Bangkok and Singapore.

'In October, 1993, up to 2,000 people every day were reportedly being forced to labor on the construction of (the) railway,' the report declared.

Oil company workers are also observed to be sleeping in " bunkers ", they said. TOTAL oil executives remain silent on their contacts with the burmese generals, several of whom were in Paris, last October, under special government security protection,  to set down crisis management in the media in anticipation of further violent conflict in the pipeline area.

 'What the people of Burma have been explicitly stating (is) that unless the conflict which exists in Burma is resolved through political means, the pipeline region will never be secure,' the report said.

JOIN THE  TOTAL DEBATE NOW!  DOWN WITH SLORC AND BURMA TYRANNY! FREE BURMA !

Send your letters now : 

TOTAL  SA

Thierry Desmarest, CEO, President of Exploration and Production,
HQ: 24 Cours Michelet 92800 LA Défense,  France
Tel: 33-1-41-35-40-00  Fax: 33-1-41-35-64-65
E-mail : Paris France : <hourcard@xxxxxxxxx>

New York City : 
<TOTALNYC@xxxxxxx> 
<roberth@xxxxxxxxx>

Don't forget that TOTAL SA is part-owned by the French government, and French state companies.
Write the French  Prime Minister, Monsieur Alain JUPPE

Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Hotel Matignon
58, rue de Varenne
75007 Paris
FRANCE

TOTAL DEBATE TOTAL DEBATE TOTAL DEBATE TOTAL DEBATE TOTAL DEBATE