ERI Calls On Oil Companies to Use Their Influence With the Burmese Junta to Improve Desperate Conditions
Oil companies asked to fully disclose their diplomatic
efforts with the regime in Burma in the wake of Cyclone Nargis
Chiang Mai,
Thailand,
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - In the interest of improving the emergency relief effort
in Burma,
EarthRights International is demanding that the multinational corporate
partners of the military regime use their influence to pressure the regime to
accept all aid and fully cooperate with international relief efforts.
Moreover, in the interest of transparency and
corporate responsibility, EarthRights International requests the corporations
to publicly disclose any past, present, and future diplomatic efforts toward
the military regime in the wake of Nargis.
“There are very few members
of the world community today that have meaningful influence with the regime,
but one of them is the oil companies, the regime’s largest source of revenue”
said Ka Hsaw Wa, Executive Director of ERI. “With that power comes
responsibility, especially when lives are at stake.”
It has been nearly one month since Cyclone Nargis completely
devastated the Irrawaddy Delta in Burma, home to 6.5 million people.
Since then, the military regime has actively obstructed international emergency
relief efforts, costing thousands of lives.
Access to the hardest hit areas has increased
considerably since a meeting last Friday between U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon and Senior General Than Shwe, when the junta leader reportedly agreed
to open the country to the international relief effort, which has been put on
hold for weeks.
But due to the previous delay, the access and capacity
of the relief effort is no where near where it should be: at least 2.4 million
survivors are in desperate need of aid, thousands upon thousands of which have
still received no aid at all, and the number of aid workers on the ground is
extremely small relative to the immense size of the disaster. The junta’s flash
of openness is regarded as unreliable.
The official figures of the number of dead and missing
has not changed since May 16: 77,738 are reported dead and 55,917 missing. These
figures, nearly two weeks old, were widely regarded as conservative when they
were first released by the military regime in Burma. By now they are grossly inaccurate.
EarthRights International fears the death toll is much higher than 100,000
people.
The U.S.-based Chevron and
the French oil company Total, both partners with the military regime in the
controversial Yadana gas project, have already announced some of their efforts,
which ERI commends. Both companies announced donations of US$2 million dollars
to aid organizations assisting in cyclone relief, an amount that exceeds the
donations of some donor countries; Total has offered the use of their
resources, including transport and fuel oil, to provide relief through its
personnel in Burma.
EarthRights International commends these efforts.
However, EarthRights International
is not convinced that the companies have done enough, diplomatically, to
pressure the regime to accept international emergency relief.
“In the aftermath of the
cyclone, the critical hours, when emergency relief could have saved thousands
of lives, what did Chevron do to pressure the regime to open its doors?” asked
Naing Htoo, Program Coordinator with ERI. “The companies claim to benefit the
people of Burma,
but for that they’ll need to do more than write checks.”
Chevron and Total are partners with the junta in the
Yadana gas project, the military regime’s largest source of revenue and the
subject of a recent ERI report, The Human Cost of Energy, released just
prior to Cyclone Nargis. The report documents the companies’ ongoing complicity
in serious human rights abuses connected to the project, including forced labor,
murder, rape, and torture; abuses which have been ongoing for seventeen years. The
Human Cost of Energy is the first comprehensive report on conditions in the
Yadana pipeline region since Chevron acquired Unocal’s interest in 2005, and it
describes Chevron’s continuing legal liability associated with abuses in the
pipeline region.
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