Oppose burmese gas pipeline to china

The military rulers of Myanmar, which is otherwise facing heavy economic sanctions by the United States and many European countries, keep themselves alive with the royalty earned from selling the natural resources to other countries. But all this money is hardly used for any public welfare activities,%u201D said M. Kim, an exiled Burmese living in India.

Speaking to this writer from New Delhi, Kim (who is associated with Myanmar Centre, Delhi) also pointed out that the present group of Generals (collectively called the State Peace and Development Council) have learnt the art of ignoring the concerns of international communities about the worst human rights record and also luring the neighboring countries (China, India and Thailand) into forging trade ties with them.

The exiled Myanmarese and many other sympathetic groups had recently raised their voices against the

Chinese pipeline project inside Myanmar. Over 120 organizations based in 20 countries came out with the demand that Beijing should halt the construction of the proposed oil and gas pipeline project. Led by the Shwe Gas Movement, a Thailand based oil-gas watchdog and rights group;

Once the rice bowl of Asia, Myanmar is today one of the poorest countries on the globe, but the military junta of  Nay Pie Taw (new capital of Myanmar) spends over 40 per cent of its national budget on the defense sector. Shockingly, the dictators spend only 2 per cent of the budget on health and education (of 50 million Myanmarese people).

The Southeast Asian country has been ruled by the military generals since the early sixties. The present regime is headed by Senior General Than Shwe, who has developed a kind of enmity towards the pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. The leader of the main opposition party (National League for Democracy), Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for more than a decade now. Under pressure from international communities, the Myanmarese government had recently declared a roadmap for democracy and an election is scheduled this year. But the Than Shwe government is yet to be committed to the release of thousands of political prisoners including the Nobel laureate Suu Kyi before the polls.

%u201CWe are gravely concerned about the thousands of communities living along the planned 980 km pipeline corridor. Based on experiences in Myanmar, partnerships with the MOGE on infrastructure development projects invariably leads to forced displacement, forced labour and loss of livelihoods. The escalation of abuses around a project when Myanmar army soldiers provide security is well documented by UN agencies and NGOs,%u201D stated in the letter.

The initiative was supported by a number of organizations like, All Arakan Students%u2019 and Youths%u2019Congress, Arakan Oil Watch, and Shwe Gas Movement (India). %u201CWhat is more awful is that the local communities, who will be affected by the project, are still unaware of it and they are not being consulted. At the same time, neither the military authority nor the CNPC had initiated any environmental and social impact assessments before launching the pipeline project,%u201D said Wong Aung, the coordinator of Shwe Gas Movement.

Speaking to this writer from Chiang Mai (Thailand), the young activist also revealed that over 10, 000 Myanmarese soldiers had already been deployed along the pipeline route. He apprehended that the number (of soldiers) would be increased in the days to come and it would simply add to the number of incidents of human rights abuses along the route of the pipelines.

%u201CPast experiences have shown that the pipeline construction and maintenance in the country always involves forced labour, forced relocation, land confiscation, and other kinds  of abuses by the soldiers engaged in the project area,%u201D added Wong Aung. In a book titled %u2018Corridor of Power:  China%u2019s Trans-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines%u2019, the Shwe Gas Movement came out with strong voices that the extraction of the Shwe natural gas deposit must be postponed until the local people in western Myanmar could participate in the decision making process about the use of the resources.

It also added that the concerned neighboring countries and also the oil companies must stop all kinds of trades with the military junta and refrain from further investment until there is a democratically elected government in the country.