Narinjara News

Dhaka, May 11

AASYC joins hands with Bangladeshi activists against the tri-nation Gas Pipeline Project

Members of an Arakanese student and youth organization, All Arakan Students and Youths Congress (AASYC), joined hands with Bangladeshi social activists against the tri-nation gas pipeline at a function held at Dhaka University, Bangladesh on 9 of May.

The public meeting was held under the banner of ‘Preserving Natural Resources and Using them for the Native People’ organized by Student and Youth Movement Against Plundering Oil and Gas (SYMAPOG) and the Workers Party of Bangladesh (WPB) at Dhaka University’s Teacher and Student Center.

About 100 individuals, including scholars, students and social and environmental activists, attended the meeting. Five members of AASYC who are working against the sale of gas from Arakan State to India through Bangladesh attended the meeting representing the Shwe Gas Movement.

During the meeting, a leader of AASYC, Khaing Zaw, explained about the current situation of many of the gas projects in Burma and Arakan, focusing particularly on the human rights violations that are occurring.  He also pointed out that current arrangements to sell all the gas found in Arakan under the name of Shwe Gas Deposit have no consensus from the people of Arakan nor its democratically elected representatives. At the same time, the people of Arakan believe that this sale would not benefit them, but only sustain or strengthen the junta’s rule and its oppression of the people of Burma, he claimed.

Khaing Zaw also urged the Bangladeshi people and activists to work together with activists from Burma to stop this tri-nation gas pipeline.

Other members also informed the meeting’s attendees by distributing pamphlets and flyers.

The military junta, in co-operation with foreign investors, has found many large natural gas deposits in northern Arakan State. Instead of using these resources for upgrading energy and electricity supplies in Arakan for the use of the people, the junta is selling all of them overseas to enrich itself and to sustain its despotic rule in Burma. #

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