Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Environment, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Labour

BURMA: Forced Labour For Trans-border Gas Pipeline Feared

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 9 2006 (IPS) - If the International Labour Organisation (ILO) needs further reminder about the disregard Burma’s military regime has towards ending the abusive practice of forced labour, protests planned across 16 countries on Nov. 15 should be instructive

Environmentalists and human rights activists from Burma and elsewhere will be mounting protests in the capitals of such countries as South Korea, India, Bangladesh and Thailand to try and stall the construction of a trans-national gas pipeline, which will span three countries, Burma, Bangladesh and India.

Concern about a possible spike in slave-like labour when construction begins next year along the 1,200 km route of the natural gas pipeline – which begins off the coast of Burma’s Arakan State and then moves up to the Chin State – tops the list of abuses the protestors want to highlight. Others include relocation of the villagers living along the pipeline’s route, denial of the right of local communities to their livelihood and destruction of the environment.

”Forced labour is already a problem in the Arakan State and this will go up when construction of the pipeline begins,” says Wong Aung, spokesman for the Shwe Gas Movement, a group created by Arakan people in 2002. ”Using forced labour is the way the Burmese military gets projects built. It is an abuse that is to be expected,” he told IPS.

The protestors find ominous the number of Burmese military battalions that have been moved into the Arakan State to secure land for the pipeline and protect its path, Wong Aung said. ‘’There are over 40 troop battalions at the moment and the local people are afraid that the troops will force them to help build the pipeline, the roads needed for it and for clearing the area around it.”

This fear of forced labour is not exaggerated, given the oppressive record Rangoon’s junta established in the construction of the Yadana and Yetagun pipelines in the south of the country through the late 1990s. Burmese soldiers ‘’conscripted thousands of civilians to perform forced labour for the benefit of the pipelines, and (they) have killed, raped, tortured and forcibly relocated innocent villagers for the crime of living near the pipeline route,” states EarthRights International, a Washington D.C-based non-profit environmental lobby.

Human rights violations stemming from this project – which involved three Western oil companies, working in collusion with the Burmese regime – resulted in a landmark judgement by a U.S court which ruled in December 2004 that Unocal must pay 14 villagers from Burma’s Karen ethnic community compensation for the abuse they were subjected to during the 1.2 billion U.S. dollar pipeline’s construction. Similarly, the French petroleum giant Total was ordered to compensate eight Burmese villagers, last year.

”During forced labour people have to bring their own tools, food medicine and women and children as young as 12 years are forced to work on the project if their parents cannot go,” Naing Htoo, Burma Project coordinator at EarthRights International, told IPS. ‘’The worst thing is that soldiers are making the villagers walk in front of them to clear the area of land mines. ”

Studies done by his organisation about continuing use of forced labour have confirmed that it is ‘’going on in many areas.” It also includes building military outposts, growing rice for the military, building roads and bridges and also building heliports for use of the foreign companies involved in major projects like building gas pipelines, added Naing Htoo.

The timing of the Nov. 15 international protest against the new gas pipeline should be of little comfort to Rangoon, since the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, appears poised for further rebuke at the meeting of the ILO’s governing body in Geneva. Burma’s failure to deliver on all its commitments to help end the practice of forced labour is billed for discussion on that day.

Of particular concern to the ILO is Burma’s reluctance to unequivocally support a ‘’credible mechanism” in the country for victims of forced labour to turn to in their quest for redress. The need for such an independent mechanism was strengthened after a report to an ILO meeting in June noted that ‘’forced labour continued to be widespread, particularly by the army”.

”A mechanism to address complaints of forced labour was a key requirement set by the International Labour Conference in June,” Richard Horsey, ILO’s pointman for Burma, said in a telephone interview from Rangoon.

A report for the Nov. 15 meeting, seen by IPS, includes sections stating that Rangoon’s failure to commit to a ‘’credible mechanism” could result in this South-east Asian country being taken before the International Court of Justice next year. Burma would consequently become the first country tried by this international tribunal for its abusive labour practices.

But such international pressure offers small comfort to Wong Aung of the Shwe Gas Movement, noting the financial rewards Burma’s ruling generals are expected to reap from large gas deposits found in the seas off Arakan State. Rangoon stands to earn between 12 -17 billion US dollars in profit from this project, which is being backed by an international consortium involving South Korean and Indian companies, states the Shwe Gas Movement in a report.

‘’It will be the largest single source of income to date for the SPDC,” adds the report, ‘Supply and Command.’ ‘’Already, fishing livelihoods have been restricted and destroyed due to the establishment and violent enforcement of exclusion zones at sea.”

In fact, human rights groups say that natural gas and other power sources in Burma have come to the rescue of the regime, helping to keep it stay afloat and buy more weapons at a time when Western nations, led by the U.S., have adopted a tough line against it. That includes sanctions and placing Burma under U.N. Security Council scrutiny.

In October, Burma’s ministry of national planning and development announced that the country had hit a record high in annual foreign investments since it opened to outside investors almost two decades ago. Foreign investments in the country’s gas and oil sector were among the highest of the over six billion dollars that flowed in during the financial year ending in Mar. 31, 2006.

‘’Oil and gas provide the largest source of legitimate foreign exchange for the regime,” Debbie Stothard of the regional rights lobby Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, told IPS. ‘’It is a financial lifeline of the SPDC.”