TEXACO Leaves Burma!

Earth First! Journal 1997

In a huge victory, US oil giant Texaco announced on September 24 that it is selling its stake in a natural gas project off Burma's coast. The Burmese democracy movement and its supporters worldwide have been sustaining a boycott of Texaco for months to bring about this result.

The sale to Premier Oil of Britain follows a decision in April by President Clinton to bar new investment in military-ruled Burma in the interest of human rights, democracy and counter narcotics efforts. In recent months, both Canada and the European Union have taken supportive action against the Burmese government. Multinational oil company investments in Burma provide the largest legal source of foreign currency to the regime.

"Now that Texaco realizes that Burma is no place to do business, how can UNOCAL justify dealing with this brutal regime? If they stay we will continue boycotting and intensify ongoing efforts against Unocal," said Pamela Wellner, campaign coordinator for Free Burma: No Petro-dollars for SLORC.

A flagrant human rights abuser, Burma's junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), has a 15 percent stake in the gas project. The junta has been criticized for its human rights record which includes massacres of democracy supporters and the torture of indigenous tribes to force them to work on various oil and gas pipeline projects.

"We believe the Texaco decision to leave Burma sends another message to the oil companies that corporate downsizing and exploiting US workers to raise capital for investments in totalitarian countries, where slave labor and wholesale repression are routine, will not go unchallenged" said Robert Wages, President of the 90,000 member Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union.

For more information contact the Free Burma Coalition, c/o Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin, 225 N. Mills St., Madison, WI 53706; (608) 827-7734; fax 263-9992;

e-mail: zni@students.wisc.edu and Free Burma: No Petro-dollars for SLORC, 1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94703; (510) 848-1155; fax 848 1008; e-mail: freeburma@irn.org.

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