Chevron's Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime's Lifeline
Chevron's Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime's Lifeline
By Amy Goodman
Tuesday 02 October 2007


The image was stunning: tens of thousands of saffron-robed Buddhist
monks marching through the streets of Rangoon [also known as Yangon],
protesting the military dictatorship of Burma. The monks marched in
front of the home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was
seen weeping and praying quietly as they passed. She hadn't been seen
for years. The democratically elected leader of Burma, Suu Kyi has been
under house arrest since 2003. She is considered the Nelson Mandela of
Burma, the Southeast Asian nation renamed Myanmar by the regime.

After almost two weeks of protest, the monks have disappeared. The
monasteries have been emptied. One report says thousands of monks are
imprisoned in the north of the country.

No one believes that this is the end of the protests, dubbed "The
Saffron Revolution." Nor do they believe the official body count of 10
dead. The trickle of video, photos and oral accounts of the violence
that leaked out on Burma's cellular phone and Internet lines has been
largely stifled by government censorship. Still, gruesome images of
murdered monks and other activists and accounts of executions make it
out to the global public. At the time of this writing, several
unconfirmed accounts of prisoners being burned alive have been posted
to Burma-solidarity Web sites.

The Bush administration is making headlines with its strong
language against the Burmese regime. President Bush declared increased
sanctions in his U.N. General Assembly speech. First lady Laura Bush
has come out with perhaps the strongest statements. Explaining that she
has a cousin who is a Burma activist, Laura Bush said, "The deplorable
acts of violence being perpetrated against Buddhist monks and peaceful
Burmese demonstrators shame the military regime."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the meeting of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said, "The United States is
determined to keep an international focus on the travesty that is
taking place." Keeping an international focus is essential, but should
not distract from one of the most powerful supporters of the junta, one
that is much closer to home. Rice knows it well: Chevron.

Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma's
natural gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership
with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company
Total and a Thai oil firm. Offshore natural gas facilities deliver
their extracted gas to Thailand through Burma's Yadana pipeline. The
pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the
Burmese military.

The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights
International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was
settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal.

Chevron's role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear.
According to Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights
International: "Sanctions haven't worked because gas is the lifeline of
the regime. Before Yadana went online, Burma's regime was facing severe
shortages of currency. It's really Yadana and gas projects that kept
the military regime afloat to buy arms and ammunition and pay its
soldiers."

The U.S. government has had sanctions in place against Burma since
1997. A loophole exists, though, for companies grandfathered in.
Unocal's exemption from the Burma sanctions has been passed on to its
new owner, Chevron.

Rice served on the Chevron board of directors for a decade. She
even had a Chevron oil tanker named after her. While she served on the
board, Chevron was sued for involvement in the killing of nonviolent
protesters in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Like the Burmese,
Nigerians suffer political repression and pollution where oil and gas
are extracted and they live in dire poverty. The protests in Burma were
actually triggered by a government-imposed increase in fuel prices.

Human-rights groups around the world have called for a global day
of action on Saturday, Oct. 6, in solidarity with the people of Burma.
Like the brave activists and citizen journalists sending news and
photos out of the country, the organizers of the Oct. 6 protest are
using the Internet to pull together what will probably be the largest
demonstration ever in support of Burma. Among the demands are calls for
companies to stop doing business with Burma's brutal regime.