Bangkok Post - 4th April, 2000.

Karen charged with encroachment

Uamdao Noikorn

A Karen villager has been charged with encroaching on Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary after confessing to occupying the land where several logs were recently found, said a senior forestry official yesterday.

The statement by Sakda Wichiensilp, head of the Forest Protection Division, refuted an allegation by an ethnic minority rights advocate that the Karen was being used as a scapegoat and had been arrested without a charge.

A team of local forestry, police, military and provincial officials last week arrested Kamtorn Srisuwanmala on the encroachment charge after more than 100 logs were found at 10 cleared sites in the wildlife sanctuary two weeks ago.

At the time, no one was arrested and environmentalists alleged that forestry officials were themselves involved in the felling of trees.

Surapong Kongchantuk of Karen Studies and Development Centre said the arrest of Mr Kamtorn, a resident of Ban Klity Lang, was an attempt by forestry officials to find scapegoats to deflect any suspicion from the officials themselves.

Bangkok Post-4th April, 2000.

Postbag
Will it sink in why Burma is a pariah?

While your editorial (April 3) on the ILO and Burma comes out with a worthwhile recommendation-that Burma should allow the UN rapporteur and the ILO to conduct investigations inside Burma-you are simply not correct to say that "there has been little real evidence" from inside Burma about the SPDC junta's wholesale abuse of forced labour.

The evidence is contained in literally hundreds of orders requiring forced labour from villagers that have been issued by SPDC military commanders, village and tract "Law and Order Restoration Councils" and other appendages of the Burmese military junta. These orders are typically sent to village chiefs and villages with such warnings that porters or labourers shall be sent without fail or "we will not be responsible for the consequences", which in Burma is a clear threat to kill, torture and destroy.

Provided at great risk by villages to human rights organisations involved with Burma, these orders bear the signatures and seals of various military commands and government offices. They are the clearest sort of evidence that one could get.

It is these orders, issued after the SPDC military junta claimed that it issued a regulation to stop forced labour, that is the most damning indictment of the SPDC's duplicity in its dealings with the ILO.

And it is precisely these orders for forced labour that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), working with Burmese labour organisations and ethnic-based human rights groups, provided to the ILO as evidence. The evidence of forced labour in Burma is as clear cut a case as one could find at the ILO, and this practice continues today in clear contravention of Burma's obligations as a state that has ratified ILO Convention 29 on forced labour.

On the issue of the special rapporteur, Rajsoomer Lallah, he is appointed by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, not by the ILO as you indicate. During his service in this post (he has now left), he repeatedly sought permission to conduct inquiries in Burma but the SPDC junta refused every time.

For it to then claim that he cannot know the real situation because he did not go to Burma is disingenuous in the extreme. It is simply more of the Orwellian 1984 logic that the SPDC spouts when anyone attempts to challenge its rather warped sense of reality.

The ILO should proceed with its article 33 case, full speed ahead. Rangoon has had its chance to come clean, and instead it prefers to play word games. Porters and forced labourers are dying every day in Burma and it is time for the international community to act forcefully to end these abuses of international law.

One timely initiative could be for the UN to ban all meetings by UN specialised agencies in Rangoon. Then we would all be spared the photos of grinning SPDC generals standing next to hapless bureaucrats from the FAO or other UN agencies that have held meetings in Burma recently.

And more importantly, maybe it would finally sink into the SPDC that it is and will continue to be an international pariah until it agrees to a transition to a democratic regime which respects the human rights of all of Burma's people.

Philip S. Robertson

The Nation 4 th April, 2000.

From the Edge: Burma and Unocal in dock in US

Two historic lawsuits – grassroots activists versus transnational corporations – are taking place in the United States.

The Supreme Court in Washington DC is hearing arguments and will decide if the Massachusetts Burma Law is constitutional. In California, a Federal Court in Los Angeles will soon decide if it will proceed with or dismiss a lawsuit against oil giant Unocal brought by Burmese victims of alleged human rights abuses.

On March 22, the Supreme Court, which takes up only one per cent of the 10,000 cases referred to it annually, began hearing a suit filed by the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) – an association of nearly 600 US companies involved in foreign trade – that the Burma selective purchasing law passed by the State of Massachusetts in June 1996 is unconstitutional.

The District Court of Massachusetts and the Appeals Court had earlier ruled in favour of NFTC, which initiated the lawsuit in 1998 arguing that the statute, restricting state purchases from companies that do business in Burma, violates US constitutional provisions which give the federal government exclusive power to set foreign policy and regulate foreign commerce.

Joining in the debate are Japan and the European Union, which in 1998 had filed a suit against the Massachusetts law at the World Trade Organisation, arguing that the state’s legislation infringes global freetrade policy that advocates procurement based solely on price and performance, not political criteria. Pressured by its trading partners, the US Administration filed a brief in support of the NFTC.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Massachusetts lawyers argued that a ruling against the Burma Law would go against the decisions made by the people through legislatures about how their tax money should be spent and therefore constitutes an infringement of local democracy. The Massachusetts Burma Law, which is identical to the one that helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa, stipulates that companies that do business in Burma must add a 10 per cent penalty to their bid against competing firms – a precondition which virtually bars such companies from winning any state procurement contracts (amounting to about US$2 billion annually).

According to William Bole, an American News Service journalist, the heart of the debate is not Burma, but whether the state and local governments can exercise their purchasing power against human rights abusers around the globe. It is also a showdown between transnational corporations and grassroots activists, between global trade and local sovereignty.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the Massachusetts law, similar Burma statures passed by nearly two dozen cities and counties across the US could be wiped from the books. Such a ruling will also have farreaching consequences on identical selective purchasing laws passed by municipalities, cities and the State of Vermont, targeting China, Cuba, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Sudan, Tibet and Switzerland (for the Swiss bank accounts once held by Holocaust survivors).

In a written reply to The Nation, Simon Billenness, a leading Burma campaigner in the US, said if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts’ decision, the Free Burma movement will push for other different types of legislation including divestment laws that require city and state pension funds to divest themselves of stock in companies that do business in Burma. It will also continue with other campaigns of consumer boycotts, shareholder resolutions, demonstrations, lawsuits, federal sanctions, etc, added Billenness, a social activist and a senior analyst of Trillium Asset Management – a social investment firm in Boston.

For Billenness, Burma campaigners “have already won one powerful victory” in the lawsuit. “No US companies are talking about going back to Burma even if the Supreme Court rules that the state and local Burma laws are unconstitutional,” he said. “Burma will remain a country where almost all corporations will refuse to do business.”

A final judgement by the ninemember Supreme Court is expected in June.

On the Pacific coast, the Federal Court in Los Angeles has rescheduled to May 22 a hearing on whether to proceed with or dismiss a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese plaintiffs against Unocal and its two top executives. Unocal is a key contractor for the controversial Yadana natural gas pipeline. It’s unclear why the court decided to postpone the oral argument sessions which were initially scheduled to begin yesterday (April 4).

American lawyers working on behalf of the Burmese victims said they do not know how long the pretrial process, known as “summary judgement”, will last. But if the court rules in favour of the plaintiffs, “there is nothing to stop us from going to the trial”, said Tyler Giannini, a lawyer with EarthRights International, which helped bring the lawsuit against the American oil corporation.

Unocal has submitted a motion for the summary judgement to dismiss the action, but the plaintiffs and their lawyers have responded that transnational corporations can be held legally responsible for violation of international human rights law in foreign countries and that the US courts have the authority to adjudicate such claims.

According to Giannini, “the oral arguments before the judge” by both sides which is like “a little trial” can take as long as the judge wants. The summary judgement hearing is the second of a threephase civil trial in the US and tests whether there is enough of a factual dispute between the litigants that reasonable people could find disagreement. If they could, the case would be slated for a jury trial which is the third and final phase.

On October 3, 1996, a group of 15 Burmese villagers, who were subjected to human rights abuses associated with the construction of the US$1.2billion (Bt31.2billion) Yadana pipeline project, filed suit in the Federal Court in Los Angeles against Unocal. The suit sought to hold Unocal and its two executives liable for international human rights violations, including forced labour, crimes against humanity, torture, violence against women, arbitrary arrest and detention, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The plaintiffs have sought a court injunction ordering Unocal to stop its activities and to pay compensation for the alleged abuses that occurred as a result of the construction project. Unocal and its Yadana partners, including the French oil firm Total, have rejected all charges against them, including complicity with the Burmese junta in its human rights abuses.

On March 25, 1997, US Federal Court Judge Richard A Paez signed a 38page order accepting the plaintiffs’ complaint – the first phase of the litigation. The court rejected a motion by Unocal to dismiss the case based on the argument that the matter was outside the jurisdiction of the US court. The court’s decision to grant jurisdiction over Unocal set a “groundbreaking” precedent as it allowed victims, for the first time, the right to sue multinational companies for violations of international humanrights law, said plaintiff lawyers Katherine Redford of EarthRights International and Jennie Green, a staff attorney with the Centre for Constitutional Rights.

Jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims against the defendants was granted under the 1792 Alien Tort Claims Act. The 200yearold law allows lawsuits in US courts against multinational companies for activities outside the US which violate international law. The tort act was previously applied only to environmental matters.

The March 25 decision allowed the plaintiffs to move into the second phase of litigation, the civil discovery – a process in which the two parties take testimonies from witnesses and exchange copies of documents related to the Yadana project. In an interview last week, Giannini said the discovery was completed last December and that plaintiff lawyers had acquired “some 40,000 plus documents”, a number of which provided strong support to their case.

By Yindee Lertcharoenchok

The Nation
BBC-Tuesday, 4 April, 2000, 09:53 GMT 10:53 UK

Burma Related News-4th April, 2000.

Bangkok Post - 4th April, 2000.

Karen charged with encroachment

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