[NYTr] Chevron's Pipeline Is the "Burmese" Regime's Lifeline

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Amy Goodman, like the San Francisco Chronicle, BBC, et al. is
blasting "Burma" and Chevron. -NY Transfer]

sent by Dan Clore - activ-l

TruthDig/Znet - Oct 4, 2007 
http://tinyurl.com/275gel

Chevron's Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime's Lifeline

by Amy Goodman
truthdig

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 hadnt 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 Burmas 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 Burmas 
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 Burmas 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.

Chevrons role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear. 
According to Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights 
International: Sanctions havent worked because gas is the lifeline of 
the regime. Before Yadana went online, Burmas regime was facing severe 
shortages of currency. Its 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.
Unocals 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 Burmas brutal regime.

[Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, a daily international 
TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.]