UN committee denounces Myanmar human rights record

[struggle4progress]

Source: CNN

By Salma Abdelaziz, CNN
November 19, 2010 2:32 a.m. EST

... In a call to freed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of a peaceful democratic transition and reconciliation process in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1991, has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest for her opposition to authoritarian rule in the nation formerly known as Burma. She was released last week.

"The secretary-general told Aung San Suu Kyi that he was encouraged by the spirit of reconciliation emanating from her statements and appeals for dialogue and compromise following her release," the U.N. said in a statement.

A U.N. General Assembly subset committee approved a draft resolution denouncing "the ongoing systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Myanmar." ...

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/19/un.myanmar.reform/

[dipsydoodle]

1. Might help if the US did something about Chevron

Since the early 1990s, Chevron (formerly Unocal), in a consortium with Total (France) and PTT Exploration and Production (Thailand) has partnered with the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) on the Yadana natural gas project. The project transports natural gas from the Andaman Sea in Burma through an overland pipeline across the country's Tenasserim region to Thailand, where it generates electricity for the Bangkok metropolitan area. The project is operated by Total and has generated over US$7 billion since payments began in 1998.

Despite being a mere 40 kilometers (60 miles) long and located in a remote corner of southern Burma (Myanmar), the Yadana project is one of the world's most controversial resource development projects and is widely recognized as a textbook example of corporate complicity in human rights abuses. The conditions in the pipeline region have been a focus of global divestment campaigns, landmark lawsuits in United States courts, out-of-court settlements with victims of human rights abuses, and shareholder resolutions.

In the early years of the project the regime created a highly militarized pipeline corridor in what had previously been a relatively peaceful area inhabited by mostly Karen, Mon and Tavoyan people. The results were violent suppression of dissent, environmental destruction, forced labor and portering, forced relocations, torture, rape, and summary executions. Today, serious abuses continue to be documented at length, and Chevron continues to deny responsibility for violations committed by the Burma army providing security for the project.

http://truecostofchevron.com/burma.html

[struggle4progress]

2. IIRC, the regime has a long history of exploitative resource-extraction