Shadow of Slave Labor (The Irish Ti

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Copyright 1998 The Irish Times                                 

The Irish Times
April 4, 1998, 
CITY EDITION
SECTION: NEWS FEATURES; Pg. 11


SHADOW OF SLAVE LABOUR 

Western oil companies are laying a pipeline through Burma - with the help of
slave labour, say critics of the ruling military regime. 

Sandy Barron went searching for evidence and reports from Kanbauk

	The troops were away when another reporter and I strayed through a fence
into a Burmese army camp in a high-security zone south of Rangoon. We had
been looking to see ordinary life in tiny Eindayaza village, but found
ourselves instead with a rare view of a Burmese military base.

	The camp, which is near the village Baptist church, seemed little to look
at at first: flimsily-built huts of wood and bamboo that looked as if they
would blow down in the next wind were clustered around a wooden building.

	This was a bleak spot, but comforts are scarce in Burma.. Regular soldiers
in the 400,000-strong army are as poor as they are reputedly fierce - the
lowest-paid men have to struggle to afford a proper pair of boots.

	"Conquer thine enemy," read a flowery title on the largest of a few maps
and documents pinned to a wall in the main building. Blue rectangles dotted
around a bright yellow line showed the positions of around 2,400 soldiers
guarding a 40-mile onshore section of the (pounds) 0.75 billion Yadana gas
pipeline.

	The almost-finished mega-project being built by French oil giant Total and
California's Unocal will soon be joined by a second pipeline running from
Burma into Thailand which Britain's Premier Oil will start laying later this
year.

	The oil companies have steamed ahead in Burma despite a chorus of protest
from human rights groups, which accuse them of supporting a brutal
dictatorship. The groups say soldiers guarding the projects have perpetrated
massive abuses on local villagers, including torture, rape, murder,
displacements of whole villages and forced labour.

	Total and Premier flew a group of journalists in recently for a brief view
of the pipeline and to defend their projects. The Light Infantry Battalion
409 camp we had blundered into was not on the agenda, and our intelligence
officer escort later told other reporters it was off-limits.

	The oil companies balk at being held to account over allegations that
forced labour is being imposed on local people by soldiers from LIB 409 and
other regiments providing pipeline security.

	Forced labour is actually "normal" throughout the country. Amnesty
International and a host of other human rights groups have condemned Burma
for forcing millions of ordinary people to do backbreaking hard labour,
stacking and breaking rocks for roads and railways.

	Civilians are also made to work as porters for the army, sometimes in
life-threatening situations.

	Critics say the oil companies' presence in southern Burma has increased and
encouraged the use of forced labour here.

	Video evidence smuggled out shows villagers doing forced labour on the
nearby Ye-Tavoy railway used by troops guarding the pipeline. Soldiers are
also responsible for building new roads in this little-developed region.

	The soldiers in Light Infantry Battalion 409's army base were clearly
supervising some local infrastructural work. Among the documents pinned to
the wall was a neatly-drawn wall chart which monitored the "Progress of Rock
Collecting". Hundreds of rock piles were numbered and accounted for,
although it was not clear where the work was taking place.

	LIB 409 turns up in testimony from people who fled this region for refugee
camps in Thailand. Mr Maung Dtoo, a LIB 409 deserter, said he had helped
burn down a village, conscripted villagers to work as army porters, and
watched in horror as superiors raped two Mon women.

	Unocal is fighting two pipeline-related lawsuits in Los Angeles. Burma's
pro-democracy leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, last week described Premier Oil
as "very selfish" for doing business with the military regime.

	The lack of access to the normally forbidden region has made it extremely
difficult for reporters to write about. Rare visitors must be flown in by
the oil companies for what are usually very brief views. The Burmese
military does not allow reporters or anyone else free rein around the wider
region.

	The oil companies say they do not know what the soldiers are doing and that
they are helping develop a chronically poor area by paying above-average
local wages and handing out aid to villages on the pipeline route.

	Mr Ronald Morris, Premier's local general manager, said Premier was
spending $ 1.4 million ((pounds) 875,000) over three years on community
development projects here.

	Flying in the face of a call from Ms San Suu Kyi for non-governmental
organisations to stay out of Burma, Save the Children (USA) has been hired
for $ 350,000 ((pounds) 200,000) a year to set up education programmes.

	Total is helping 13 designated villages with shrimp farms, poultry and pig
projects, schools and health programmes, said the company's new local
general manager, Mr Michel Viallard.

	A map in the Eindayaza camp detailed each house in the village and the
names of heads of household, indicating extraordinary army interest in this
tiny ethnic Karen settlement. Karens have been traditionally opposed to
Burma's military government, and they are the only ethnic group left which
has not signed a ceasefire agreement with Rangoon.

	Ten villagers from Eindayaza were summarily executed by troops from another
regiment two years ago, in retaliation for an attack by unknown perpetrators
on the pipeline, according to human rights group Earthrights International
(ERI).

	Forced labour and other abuses are still continuing in the region, says Mr
Ka Hsaw Wa, a Karen director of ERI, which is filing one of the two
California lawsuits against Unocal.

	According to a recent Unocal submission to a US Department of Labour
inquiry into labour practices in Burma, "the government of Myanmar does not
provide or arrange for personnel to work on the pipeline." But a 1996 Total
document handed to a US official appears to contradict that.

	It describes "payments made to villagers hired by the army." In Burma,
people "hired" by the army rarely feel they have a choice in the matter,
even if they are paid.

	Progress has not been smooth for the Yadana project on the Thai side of the
border either. Prominent social activist Sulak Sivaraksa was arrested in a
storm of publicity in March for refusing to quit a protest site where the
pipeline cuts into pristine Thai forest.

	Now he is planning to use his May trial to condemn consortium partner the
Petroleum Authority of Thailand and the multinationals for their record on
the environment and human rights.

	That will irk the oil companies once more. But it will not stop the race to
finish the work by next July.

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