India and China to boost forced labour in Burma

Going against the flow of today’s business mantra on ethical and sustainable behaviour, China and India continue to sign energy agreements with the military dictators in Burma.

Only last Friday, Indian President Abdul Kalam sealed such a new deal, which will allow India to tap into a part of Burma’s vast natural gas reserves. As part of that deal, yet another pipeline will be built. In Burma, more pipelines mean more slave labour, and more misery for the Burmese people. 

This latest Indian deal follows the announcement late last year that the Burmese junta decided to sell a portion of its gas from the large Shwe project to China.

By granting this and other rights to PetroChina and CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corp.), the military dictators opened up Burma’s new natural gas resources to both regional superpowers, continuing their old habit of creating rivalries between them. Some gas will now, in part, be produced by Indian companies, but sold to China. Both nations are hungry for resources to drive their energy needs.

These deals concern recently discovered offshore gas reserves, including the massive Shwe Project, operated by consortiums of Asian companies, including South Korea’s Daewoo and India’s state owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC).

This is in addition to the other ‘older’ gas fields in the region, such as Yadana and Yetagun, which are mainly operated by a mixture of OECD-based and regional companies, including Total, Unocal (now Chevron), Nippon Oil and Petronas of Malaysia.

The ‘newer’ fields are still largely in their test-drilling phases. Estimates on their combined size vary, but range from twice the size of the combined Yadana and Yetagun fields, to ten times as much.

Together with a few recently discovered oil fields, they are likely to become the latest and maybe largest pool of resources at the hands of Burma’s military cartel, widely known as one of the most horrific dictatorial regimes in the world. Burmese generals spend roughly half of their nation’s budget on the army, a tool used to terrorize Burma’s population. Spending on education or health services is nearly non-existent. 

      

With the Chinese and Indian investments comes a startling fact: the projects will entail at least two new pipelines built inside Burma, one to India and one to China.

While China is “studying” building a pipeline from the Arakan coast to the Chinese province of Yunnan, India reportedly agreed with Burma to build a pipeline that will now be much longer than originally anticipated, bypassing Bangladesh and going via Burma into northeast India.

“We all know about the consequences of building pipelines in Burma: countless Burmese civilians may be subjected to forced labour and suffer from it, ranging from having to work under slavery conditions at gunpoint, at best, to being murdered at worst“ said Fred Higgs, ICEM General Secretary.

History is clear about what happens when pipelines are built in Burma. While the onshore part of the pipeline that links the Yetagun and Yadana gas fields with Thailand is only 65 kilometres in length, construction of it brought serious human rights concerns with it.

Forced labour was used in connection to the building of the pipeline by the omnipresent army, officially there to protect operations. Land confiscation without compensation, something common throughout Burma, is another likely consequence of the investment. Estimates on the current number of people forcibly displaced already range from a few hundred thousand to a few million.

All this will be no different this time. According to the ILO, the United Nations agency that deals with labour issues, forced labour is still widespread in Burma.

Multinational companies still have to enter into joint-venture deals with Burmese state-run companies, in this case MOGE, the Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise, a company owned and controlled by the army, which continues to control virtually all aspects of life in Burma.