Asia Times: Southeast Asia


	June 18, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Activists laud Unocal action
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - Human-rights activists are cheering as a landmark decision by a Los Angeles judge to have US energy giant Unocal Corp face a lawsuit for profiting from a gas pipeline in Myanmar at the expense of harsh rights violations.

The broader implications of the judge's decision are equally significant, they add, since it sets a new benchmark for US companies and other multinationals - they can be held accountable for human-rights abuses that incur when doing business in Myanmar.

"We feel vindicated at this development; it is a moral boost," says Debbie Stothard of Bangkok-based ALTSEAN, a regional human-rights body focused on rights violations in Myanmar. "But this is just a foot in the door."

"This decision will expose the human-rights violations in Burma to a broader audience," adds Alec Bamford of the Thai arm of global human-rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

"It is a landmark decision. Now the plaintiffs will be able to face Unocal and claim their due," asserts Tyler Giannine, a director at EarthRights International, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has taken a lead role to present the case for the Myanmese victims, most of whom are villagers.

Giannine is confident that this legal battle will go ahead as scheduled in California in September. "There is nothing between us and the trial date, and we have sufficient evidence."

Stothard expects the case to resemble a "David versus Goliath" tussle, given the lengths Unocal has gone to prevent a court appearance. "They [Unocal] have spent so much before the trial to stop it, maybe millions of dollars."

Since the lawsuit against Unocal was filed in 1996, rights activists here have had to endure setbacks. It ranged from the issue of extra-territoriality - where Unocal argued that US courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case of rights violation that had happened in Myanmar - to the energy giant's claim that the plaintiffs lacked concrete evidence.

But all along, the activists were convinced the Myanmese victims had a strong case. The landmark class-action lawsuit the Myanmese villagers filed in 1996 in the United States was against Unocal and Total, a French-based multinational.

In that suit, the victims claimed that a number of human-rights violations had been committed by the Myanmese military who had been contracted to provide security for the gas-pipeline project the two multinationals were constructing. The abuse villagers endured included "slave labor", arbitrary detention, intimidation, torture, rape and summary executions, according to the US division of AI. Myanmar's military regime "began flooding the area with troops when construction started", it adds. "Villagers living in the region were driven from the pipeline route."

This pipeline, which cost nearly US$1.2 billion, spans 669 kilometers. It begins off Myanmar's west coast from the offshore Yadana gas field in the Andaman Sea, cuts through the Tenasserim region in southern Myanmar and ends in Thailand.

The Los Angeles judge's decision last week - that Unocal has to answer for the rights violations - could not have come at a worst time for Yangon's ruling junta, since it is witnessing a rapid drop in the number of US companies willing to set up shop in Myanmar. According to the US Department of Commerce, for instance, apparel imports to the United States from the garment industry in Myanmar fell 35 percent in the January-March period.

That drop "marks a major reversal of recent trends," states the Washington-based Free Burma Coalition (FBC), a lobby group that is campaigning to get US companies to sever all economic links with the Southeast Asian nation. "Since 1997, when the United States imposed a ban on new US investment in the country over human-rights, democracy and drug concerns, apparel imports from the country skyrocketed 480 percent to over $400 million per year," it adds in a media release distributed this month.

But that climate has changed this year, it notes. "Apparel imports from Burma decreased from $116 million in January-March 2001 to $75 million in January-March 2002." The FBC interprets this shift to US companies becoming more aware of Myanmar's "brutal system of forced labor". It says there are reports that "forced labor, including forced child labor, has contributed materially to the construction of industrial parks subsequently used largely to produce manufactured exports, including garments".

Myanmar, which has been under a military dictatorship for the past 40 years, has also been singled out by the International Labor Organization (ILO) for similar violations. Forced labor in Myanmar is one of the most troubling, the United Nations agency maintains. This includes civilians being compelled by the authorities to build military camps, serve as porters and do agriculture work.

The Unocal case should make all foreign companies doing business in Myanmar take note of the "dirty manner" in which they are raking profits, says Somchai Homlaor, head of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human-rights watchdog. "This is a lesson for the multinational companies; they cannot always get away."

It is relevant to Southeast Asian governments, too, he asserts, since they encourage companies from their respective countries to set up business ventures in Myanmar. "The Thai government is one," he adds. "It cannot ignore human-rights violations for the sake of investments in Burma."

(Inter Press Service)