Situation report, Myanmar (Burma):
"The government's severe repression of human rights increased during 1996, even as increased economic activity fostered the appearance of greater normalcy. Out of sight of most visitors, citizens continued to live subject at any time and without appeal to the arbitrary and sometimes brutal dictates of the military dictatorship. Citizens do not have the right to change their government.
"There continued to be credible reports, particularly from ethnic minority-dominated areas, that soldiers committed serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killing and rape. Disappearances continued, and members of the security forces beat and otherwise abused detainees.
"Prison conditions remained harsh. Arbitrary arrests and detentions continued for expression of dissenting political views. Several hundred, if not more, political prisoners remained in detention, including approximately 20 members of parliament elected in 1990. The judiciary is subject to executive influence, and the government infringes on citizens' rights to privacy."
Expanding operations
That assessment comes from the Burma section of the U.S. Department of State's Human Rights Report for 1996. On the very day that the department published its report, Jan. 30, Unocal Corp. announced an expansion of its operations in the country.
Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co. Ltd. and Total Myanmar Exploration & Production Ltd. signed a production sharing contract with state-owned Myanma Oil & Gas Enterprise (MOGE) for exploration of 4,275 sq mile Block M8 in the Andaman Sea. The companies, plus Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production Co., are investing $1.2 billion in development of 5 tcf Yadana natural gas field, on offshore Blocks M5 and M6 northeast of Block M8, and related pipeline construction.
In response to the State Department report and Unocal's new agreement, human rights groups have intensified demands for U.S. trade sanctions on Myanmar. The controversy has subjected Unocal to the usual condemnation.
It's a spiraling pattern. Companies are being held to account for misbehavior by the governments of countries where they work. British Petroleum Co. plc has run into the problem in Colombia, Royal Dutch/Shell in Nigeria. Companies based in the U.S. suffer by exclusion, or the risk of it, when official dissatisfaction with foreign regimes leads to the imposition or threat of economic sanctions.
Role of companies
No one doubts the seriousness of human rights violations. And no one doubts that abuses occur in Myanmar, Colombia, Nigeria, and the countries now subject to U.S. sanctions. But it is not inconsistent to deplore the abuses and at the same time support involvement by international companies in countries where they occur.
For Myanmar, sanctions have been under varying degrees of discussion in the U.S. since 1990, when the military government in Rangoon ignored elections and placed under house arrest prodemocracy leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Unocal is resisting the sanctions effort.
"Sanctions are counterproductive," wrote Unocal Pres. John F. Imle Jr. in the Feb. 6 issue of International Herald Tribune. "They hurt people, not regimes." Noting the failure of U.S. sanctions to depose Fidel Castro in Cuba, Imle asserted, "Economic progress, fueled by foreign investment, provides the foundation for more-democratic and open societies." Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, all places where Unocal has large and long-term energy investments, followed this route to democracy, he said. "The growing trend toward using the business community as an instrument of foreign policy must be halted."
Oil company executives need to make that case at every opportunity, and not just because the trend represents a serious investment risk. Restricted commerce is no cure for totalitarian evil and creates too many victims of its own.
Copyright 1997 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
