BURMA'S GAS PIPELINE - TEST FOR BOY

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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dry in their on-land efforts and withdrawn.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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