"Total's Pipeline -- the Junta's Lifeline"
 

TotalFinaElf continues to be one of the major financial backers of Burma's brutal regime. As Time Magazine stated "The natural resources at their disposal have clearly made it easier for the generals to cling defiantly to power”, Burma boasts sizable reserves of natural gas near three fast-growing, energy-hungry nations: China, India and Thailand ... etc. Two existing operations, one managed by France's Total and the other by Malaysian state oil company Petronas, provided Burma with about $1 billion in revenues in 2005, estimates one energy consulting firm.

Total's role as a crucial source of revenue for the SPDC junta undercuts any European Union policies in favor of Burma's democracy movement. This lifeline of hard currency for the generals far outweighs any social programs Total has been forced to implement. Those programs are an attempt to make up for the horrors that Total's pipeline project visited on Burma's Tenasserim region in the first place, with military occupation, forced labor for infrastructure projects, and deforestation. Total and its American partner, Unocal, have been held accountable in litigation for the damage their project did to the indigenous people of the pipeline region. Credible allegations of human rights abuse in that region continue to this day.

Withdrawal of Total and Chevron-Texaco (which purchased Unocal) from their joint-venture with the SPDC regime may lead to the pipeline project being adopted by an Asian firm. But it would send a strong message to the SPDC that their reign of terror over Burma will no longer be tolerated or treated as "business as usual" by most of the world. The Global Day of Action can show Total executives that this issue will not go away until they stop bankrolling the dictators of Burma

Edith Mirante

___________________________________________________________

[Edith Mirante is Director of Project Maje <http://www.projectmaje.org>  and author of "Down the Rat Hole: Adventures Underground on Burma's Frontiers" (Orchid Press 2005)]

"Down the Rat Hole: Adventures Underground on Burma's Frontiers"

A memoir of the author’s journeys among the brave indigenous peoples of some of Asia’s most remote and violent regions. Knowledgeably obsessed with Burma’s struggle for freedom, American artist/activist Mirante breaks laws and infiltrates borders, in impassioned journeys of discovery that take her through China, India, Laos, and chaotic Bangladesh. Down the Rat Hole is a wild and exotic headlong plunge into a hidden world of guerrilla warfare, heroin and jade trading, the AIDS pandemic, rainforest destruction, strikes and rioting, and one of the worst natural disasters of the 20th Century.