EBO Burma News, 28 April 2003
News Summary:
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1. Supping With The
Devil
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Supping With The
Devil
Forbes Magazine
Thu Apr 24,
By Michael Freedman
Deep in the jungle of southern
to maize and rice farms, raise livestock and
fish in the rivers. Traversing their land
is a natural gas pipeline, 1 meter in diameter
and 2 meters underground. It begins
350 kilometers
offshore before entering western
63 kilometers
toward
a Thai company and a state-owned energy
company in
There is little dispute that
of the pipeline, starting at least as early
as 1995. At issue today is what role Unocal
played in allowing the abuse to take place and
whether it benefited from it--even
if it wasn't directly complicit. In suits
filed in
human rights groups claim that Unocal both
encouraged and gained from the nasty
regime. To get the case into a
Labor Rights Fund, invoked the Alien Tort
Claims Act, a 214-year-old law that gives
The pipeline carries gas from a 5.7-trillion-cubic-foot
reserve discovered in the 1980s
by the government-owned Myanmar Oil &
Gas Enterprise (news - web sites). The gas
company signed an agreement with the French
company Total and American Unocal
to build the pipeline. Allegations of abuse
were no surprise in
Asian land of 48 million taken over in
1962 by a socialist military regime that quickly
impoverished the nation. In 1989 the military
government, known as the State Law
& Order Restoration Council, changed
the nation's name to
regularly jails and tortures dissenters and uses
forced labor and rape as management tools.
Security was an immediate concern in the
pipeline area. Oil executives admit they
liked having the military around, particularly
when insurgents ambushed a group
of villagers in 1995. But as the project got
under way, the military increased its
presence, and the companies began to hear accounts
from villagers that soldiers
had forced people to work in the pipeline
vicinity. Company officials say they
reacted responsibly to the reports, although they
insist the abuses were unrelated
to the pipeline. As a humanitarian gesture
they provided financial and other aid
to 300 to 400 individuals affected, and
lobbied Burmese authorities to discontinue
the practice.
Yet villagers say the forced labor continued until 1999. In court documents one
villager claimed soldiers forced him to build a
helipad used by Unocal and Total
officials. Others say they were required to serve
as "pipeline porters," workers
who hauled materials and cleaned camps for
soldiers guarding the pipeline.
A woman claimed she was nursing her
month-old baby when a soldier kicked her
and pushed them into a fire. Soldiers then
ordered her to relocate from their village.
The baby died soon after.
One damning piece of evidence against the
companies comes from a cable from
the
official and Joel Robinson, a Unocal manager.
According to the account, Robinson
acknowledged that Unocal hired the military as
security and met directly with
the soldiers to inform them of its activities
so the area could be secured.
Unocal and Total disavow the account. They
say they did not contract with the military
and communicated with it only through the
Burmese gas company. The forced labor
involved other projects in the region and had
nothing to do with Unocal or Total.
"It never happened in relation to the
pipeline," says M. Randy Oppenheimer,
a Unocal lawyer. "Nobody asked or
coerced anyone to do any work for the pipeline."
In June a California Superior Court judge
ruled Unocal could be "vicariously liable"
for abuses committed by the Burmese military,
which means the company could be
liable for the government's actions even if it
did not participate in them. In March
a state appeals court cleared the way for a
trial in
Last September a federal court ruled
Unocal could be liable for abuses if it "aided
and abetted" them. The meaning of those
words will be crucial. But the court found
there was enough evidence that Unocal knew
about and benefited from forced labor
to go forward, noting in particular that the
company held daily meetings to show
the military where to provide security and
build infrastructure, despite the knowledge
it would probably use forced labor to do so. "The evidence also supports the
conclusion
that Unocal gave 'encouragement' to the
to murder, rape and torture," the court
noted. A hearing reviewing this decision
will be heard in June.
The oil companies point out, and villagers
agree, that life has improved significantly
since the completion of the pipeline in 1998.
In a nation with a per capita gross
domestic product of $100, Unocal and Total
contributed $10 million in goods and
services to the 40,000 people in the pipeline area.
Health care workers have given
400,000 free consultations and
vaccinations since 1997. Infant mortality has
plummeted. "Now there's not much communication
with the army," observed
one village woman. "They seldom
come."
The Unocal case may one day land in the
U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites).
But it already serves as a sharp warning
to
Two dozen similar cases have been filed
against other
For instance: Plaintiffs in a
hired security forces in
The company did not return calls.
Some lawyers are pushing the law to an
extreme, arguing that companies that
do business in certain countries are liable
for abuses--simply for having invested
there. Suits are pending against Ford and
Citigroup for doing business in
apartheid-era
benefited from the government's abuses. Citi's offense? It made loans to
These suits may be doing no favors for the
multinationals and the jobs and capital they bring. The
suits may also interfere
with
a Tort Claims Act suit seeking damages from
ExxonMobil for work in
warning the suit could imperil counter-terrorism
initiatives. But the plaintiffs seem
to have the upper hand legally. "Right
now," says
Anthony Sebok,
"the law does have the extraordinary reach its
most radical
proponents say it does."
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