By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jun 13 2002 (IPS)

Human rights activists here are cheering a landmark decision by a Los Angeles judge to have U.S. energy giant Unocal Corp face a lawsuit for profiting from a gas pipeline in Burma at the expense of harsh rights violations.

The broader implications from the judge’s decision is equally significant, they add, since it sets a new benchmark for U.S. companies and other multinationals — they can be held accountable for human rights abuses that incur when doing business in Burma.

“We feel vindicated at this development; it is a moral boost,” says Debbie Stothard of the Bangkok-based ALTSEAN, a regional human rights body focused on rights violations in Burma. “But this is just a foot in the door.”

“This decision will expose the human rights violations in Burma to a broader audience,” adds Alec Bamford of the Thai arm of global human rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

“It is a landmark decision. Now the plaintiffs will be able to face Unocal and claim their due,” asserts Tyler Giannine, a director at EarthRights International, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has taken a lead role to present the case for the Burmese victims, most of whom are villagers.

Giannine is confident that this legal battle will go ahead as scheduled in California in September. “There is nothing between us and the trial date, and we have sufficient evidence.”

Stothard expects the case to resemble a “David versus Goliath” tussle, given the lengths Unocal has gone to prevent a court appearance. “They (Unocal) have spent so much before the trial to stop it, maybe millions of dollars.”

Since the lawsuit against Unocal was filed in 1996, rights activists here have had to endure setbacks in this quest for justice. It ranged from the issue of extra-territoriality — where Unocal argued that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case of rights violation that had happened in Burma — to the energy giant’s claim that the plaintiffs lacked concrete evidence.

But all along, the activists were convinced the Burmese victims had a strong case. The landmark class action lawsuit the Burmese villagers filed in 1996 in the United States was against Unocal and Total, a French-based multinational.

In that suit, the victims claimed that a number of human rights violations had been committed by the Burmese military who had been contracted to provide security for the gas pipeline project the two multinationals were constructing.

The abuse villagers endured ranged from “slave labour,” arbitrary detention, intimidation, torture, rape and summary executions, according to the U.S. division of AI.

Burma’s military regime “began flooding the area with troops when construction started”, it adds. “Villagers living in the region were driven from the pipeline route.”

This pipeline, which costs nearly 1.2 billion dollars, spans 416 miles. It begins off Burma’s western coast from the offshore Yadana gas field in the Andaman Sea, cuts through the Tenasserim region in southern Burma and ends in Thailand.

The Los Angeles judge’s decision this week – that UNOCAL has to answer for the rights violations — could not have come at a worst time for Rangoon’s ruling junta, since it is witnessing a rapid drop in the number of U.S. companies willing to set up shop in Burma.

According to the U.S. department of commerce, for instance, apparel imports to the United States from the garment industry in Burma fell 35 percent between January through March.

That drop “marks a major reversal of recent trends,” states the Washington-based Free Burma Coalition (FBC), a lobby group that is campaigning to get U.S. companies sever all economic links with the South-east Asian nation.

“Since 1997, when the United States imposed a ban on new U.S. investment in the country over human rights, democracy and drug concerns, apparel imports from the country skyrocketed 480 percent to over 400 million dollars per year,” it adds in a media release distributed this month.

But that climate has changed this year, it notes. “Apparel imports from Burma decreased from 116 million dollars in January-March 2001 to 75 million dollars January-March 2002.”

The FBC interprets this shift to U.S. companies becoming more aware of “Burma’s brutal system of forced labour”. According to it, there are reports that “forced labour, including forced child labour, has contributed materially to the construction of industrial parks subsequently used largely to produce manufactured exports, including garments”.

Burma, which has been under a military dictatorship for the last 40 years, has also been singled out by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for similar violations.

Forced labour in Burma is one of the most troubling, the U.N. agency maintains. This includes civilians being compelled by the authorities to build military camps, serving as porters and for agriculture work.

The Unocal case should make all foreign companies doing business in Burma take note of the “dirty manner” in which they are raking profits, says Somchai Homlaor, head of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human rights watchdog. “This is a lesson for the multinational companies; they cannot always get away.”

It is relevant to South-east Asian governments, too, he asserts, since they encourage companies from their respective countries to set up business ventures in Burma.

“The Thai government is one,” he adds. “It cannot ignore human rights violations for the sake of investments in Burma.”

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