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BURMA: French Company Could Face Charges
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Oct 2 (IPS) - Total, the French energy giant, could face charges of abetting crimes against humanity perpetrated by Burma's military junta.
A federal prosecutor in Belgium has decided to reopen an investigation into a complaint against Total filed by four Burmese refugees, who accuse the firm of giving financial and logistical support during the 1990s to a regime responsible for forced labour, murder, arbitrary executions and torture.
The prosecutor is expected to decide later this month if a criminal prosecution should ensue.
The announcement that the case has been revived was made Oct. 2 by Alexis Deswaef, the refugees' lawyer.
The complaint was originally lodged in 2002 and was declared admissible by a Belgian constitutional court three years later. It suffered a setback in March this year, however, when a court of appeal struck down the case as the plaintiffs were not Belgian.
Yet the constitutional court has subsequently issued a fresh opinion, noting that under international law a recognised refugee has the same right of access to justice as a Belgian citizen.
Belgium has also enacted a law of 'universal competence', giving its courts power to assess cases relating to human rights abuses, irrespective of where those abuses occurred. This law has previously been invoked to lodge complaints against former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, and against several figures implicated in the genocide that swept through Rwanda in 1994.
The complaint is directed at former Total chief Thierry Desmarest and the company's former director of its Burmese operations Hervé Madeo.
Burma's gas industry brought more than 2 billion dollars in revenue to the country's military last year, providing its single largest source of income. Most of this money was generated from just two gasfields, Yetagun and Yadana. The latter, situated in southern Burma, has been developed by a consortium led by Total, since 1992.
Human Rights Watch pointed out this week that there is no transparency about how income derived from gas sales is used, although the military is believed to receive the lion's share, with a comparatively paltry sum reserved for health, education and other social services.
Investors in the Burmese oil and gas sector hail from such countries as Australia, China, the British Virgin Islands, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, France, the U.S., Japan, Singapore and India.
These companies should exert pressure on the State Peace and Development Council, as the Burmese government is known, so that the crackdown on Buddhist monks campaigning for democracy ends, dialogue with opposition and ethnic groups takes place, and all political prisoners are freed, Human Rights Watch said. It has urged the firms to consider withdrawing from Burma if these improvements do not occur.
"Companies doing business in Burma argue their presence is constructive and will benefit the Burmese people but they have yet to condemn the government's abuses against its own citizens," said Arvind Ganesan from Human Rights Watch. "Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement."
Last year, Yadana yielded more than 19 million cubic metres of gas per day, which was largely used to fire power stations in neighbouring Thailand. Yadana contains an estimated 150 billion cubic metres of gas. Total has predicted that its project there will last for three decades.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy announced last week that there will be no fresh investments by companies from his country in Burma. There is no suggestion, though, that Total will leave the country.
Jean-François Lassalle, Total's vice-president, said that forcing the firm to withdraw from Burma would only "lead to our replacement by other operators."
He admitted that the Burmese army has used forced labour in the area surrounding the Yadana gasfield.
But he added: "Total has never used forced labour, either directly or indirectly through contractors. We always ensured that forced labour was not used in the area in which we operated. When we learned that incidents of forced labour had occurred in the pipeline corridor despite our vigilance, we paid compensation immediately, on humanitarian grounds."
Harn Yanghwe from the Euro-Burma Office in Brussels said: "I don't think Total were involved directly in human rights abuses. However, in order to get the pipeline going, they did give a contract to the SPDC for security, and that is where the problem lies. There was a lot of human rights abuses but whether Total was aware of them is another matter."
Despite being an outspoken critic of the Burmese regime, Yanghwe said the question of whether firms doing business with it should remain in the country is a "tricky issue". Any company leaving Burma has generally been replaced by another one, he noted. Shares held by Britain's oil industry, for example, have been sold to Petronas of Malaysia.
"Emotionally, most Burmese want to get these companies out," Yanghwe told IPS. "On the other hand, I think we need to revisit that kind of position.
"At the moment most of our investors are Asian companies. But I think we will need to have foreign investment and companies with international standards, especially if there is a change in Burma."
Human Rights Watch has pointed out that the companies doing business with Burma include gem traders who bring rubies and jade to the West. These stones are then sold in European jewellery shops.
"The junta's largest trading partners should insist that Burma's rulers stop stuffing their own pockets and instead use these immense revenues to improve the lives of ordinary Burmese," said Arvind Ganesan. (END/2007)
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