BRUSSELS - Total, the French energy giant,
could face new charges of abetting crimes against
humanity perpetrated by Myanmar's military junta.
A federal prosecutor in Belgium has
decided to reopen an investigation into a
complaint against Total filed by four Myanmar
refugees, who accuse the firm of giving financial
and logistical support during the 1990s to a
regime allegedly responsible for
forced labor, murder,
arbitrary executions and torture.
The
prosecutor is expected to decide later this month
if criminal prosecution should ensue. The
announcement that the case was revived was made on
October 2 by Alexis Deswaef, the refugees' lawyer.
The complaint was originally lodged in 2002 and
was declared admissible by a Belgian
constitutional court three years later.
It
suffered a setback in March this year when a court
of appeal struck down the case as the plaintiffs
were not Belgian. Yet the constitutional court has
subsequently issued a fresh opinion, noting that
under international law a recognized refugee has
the same right of access to justice as a Belgian
citizen.
Belgium has also enacted a law of
"universal competence", giving its courts power to
assess cases relating to human rights abuses
irrespective of where those abuses occurred. This
law has previously been invoked to lodge
complaints against former Israeli premier Ariel
Sharon and against several figures implicated in
the genocide that swept through Rwanda in 1994.
The complaint is directed at Total chief
Thierry Desmarest and the company's former
director of its Myanmar operations, Herve Madeo.
Myanmar's gas industry brought more than US$2
billion in revenue to the country's military last
year, providing its single largest source of
income. Most of this money was generated from just
two gas fields, Yetagun and Yadana. The latter,
situated in southern Myanmar, has since 1992 been
developed by a consortium led by Total.
US-based rights advocacy group Human
Rights Watch (HRW) pointed out this week that
there is no transparency about how income derived
from gas sales is used, although the military is
believed to receive the lion's share, with a
comparatively paltry sum reserved for health,
education and other social services.
Investors in the Myanmar oil and gas
sector hail from such countries as Australia,
China, the British Virgin Islands, Thailand,
Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, France, Japan,
Singapore, India and the US.
These
countries’ respective energy companies should
exert pressure on Myanmar’s ruling State Peace and
Development Council so that the crackdown on
Buddhist monks campaigning for democracy ends,
dialogue with opposition and ethnic groups takes
place, and all political prisoners are freed, HRW
said. It has urged the firms to consider
withdrawing from Myanmar if these improvements do
not occur.
"Companies doing business in
[Myanmar] argue their presence is constructive and
will benefit the Burmese people but they have yet
to condemn the government's abuses against its own
citizens," said HRW’s Arvind Ganesan. "Keeping
quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters
are murdered and jailed is not evidence of
constructive engagement."
Last year Yadana
yielded more than 19 million cubic meters of gas
per day, which was largely used to fire power
stations in neighboring Thailand. Yadana contains
an estimated 150 billion cubic meters of gas.
Total has predicted that its project there will
last for three decades.
French President
Nicholas Sarkozy announced last week that there
will be no fresh investments by French companies
in Myanmar. There is no suggestion, though, that
Total will be forced to leave the country.
Jean-Francois Lassalle, Total's vice-president,
said that forcing the firm to withdraw from
Myanmar would only "lead to our replacement by
other operators".
He admitted that the
Myanmar army has used forced labor in the area
surrounding the Yadana gas field. But, he added:
"Total has never used forced labor, either
directly or indirectly through contractors. We
always ensured that forced labor was not used in
the area in which we operated. When we learned
that incidents of forced labor had occurred in the
pipeline corridor despite our vigilance, we paid
compensation immediately, on humanitarian
grounds."
Harn Yanghwe, from the
Euro-Burma Office in Brussels, said: "I don't
think Total were involved directly in human rights
abuses. However, in order to get the pipeline
going, they did give a contract to the SPDC for
security, and that is where the problem lies.
There was a lot of human rights abuses but whether
Total was aware of them is another matter."
Despite being an outspoken critic of the
Myanmar regime, Yanghwe said the question of
whether firms doing business with it should remain
in the country is a "tricky issue". Any company
leaving Myanmar has generally been replaced by
another one, he noted. Shares held by Britain's
oil industry, for example, have been sold to
Malaysia’s oil-and-gas giant, Petronas.
"Emotionally, most [Myanmar citizens] want
to get these companies out," Yanghwe said. "On the
other hand, I think we need to revisit that kind
of position. At the moment most of our investors
are Asian companies. But I think we will need to
have foreign investment and companies with
international standards, especially if there is a
change in [Myanmar]."
HRW has pointed out
that the companies doing business with Myanmar
include gem traders, who bring rubies and jade to
the West. These stones are then sold in European
jewelry shops. "The junta's largest trading
partners should insist that [Myanmar's] rulers
stop stuffing their own pockets and instead use
these immense revenues to improve the lives of
ordinary [Myanmar citizens]," said Ganesan.
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