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As expected, China has utterly ignored protests by Burmese activists to begin construction of a 980-kilometer dual oil and gas pipeline that will cross the entire Burmese countryside from the offshore Shwe gas fields of Arakan state to China’s southern Yunnan province.

One protest group, Arakan Youth, says that as long ago as 2006, 500 people from villages on the India-Burma border had already been relocated and forced into uncompensated labor to clear the way for the $2.5 billion pipeline, which is expected to go online in three years.

That constitutes a dilemma for US President Barack Obama as he seeks to engage with the long-isolated country, one of the world’s poorest and most brutal. It remains a question whether the United States, having applied the stick to Burma for more than two decades, will now get anything out of applying the carrot, as he famously attempted to do at APEC meetings in Singapore last week.

The countries contiguous to Burma appear nearly oblivious. In a lesson to Obama of just how little effect the sanctions have had on Burma, the Shwe field itself is being developed by companies from some of America’s staunchest allies, including South Korea’s Daewoo International, Korea Gas and India’s state-owned enterprises ONGC Videsh and GAIL. Daewoo is expected to take up a 25 percent stake in the pipeline, which will transport crude from tankers calling from Africa and the Middle East rather than making the time-consuming trip down through the pirate-infested Malacca Strait and back up to China.

Nor are India and South Korea alone. According to a brochure put out by Total, the French energy company that is part of a consortium whose other partners are Unocal, a unit of the US-based Chevron, Thailand’s PTTEP and Burma’s own Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise, they are producing gas from the rich offshore Yadana field and exporting 85 percent of the gas to Thailand, where it supplies 20 percent of that country’s power generation facilities, with output averaging 20 million cubic meters of gas per day in 2008.

The remaining 15 percent is sold locally. But even though most of the cities in Burma are dependent on private generators for electricity, instead of using the natural gas for Burmese citizens, the military junta is selling the gas to its neighboring developing countries in exchange for foreign currency.

China in particular has steadily increased its trade ties with Burma, one of the world’s most reviled countries because of its poor human rights record, and recently signed an agreement to become the sole buying authority of the Shwe gas reserve. Under this agreement, Beijing took on responsibility to construct the $2.5 billion trans-Burma oil and gas corridor to feed its voracious need for energy. The state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation holds 50.9 percent of the pipeline, with the capacity to pump nearly 12 million tons of oil and 12 billion cubic meters of gas annually, in partnership with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise. The Burmese government stands to get $29 billion over 30 years from the deal.

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

Speaking to Asia Sentinel from New Delhi, Kim, who is associated with the Burma Center Delhi, pointed out that the junta that runs the country has mastered the art of ignoring the concerns of the international community for its rights record. Once the rice bowl of Asia, Burma is today one of the poorest countries on the globe, but the military junta of Naypyidaw spends more than 40 percent of its national budget on defense. Only 2 percent goes to the health and education of the 50 million Burmese.

Beijing has brushed aside demands by more than 120 organizations based in 20 countries to halt the construction of the pipeline project. Led by the Shwe Gas Movement, a Thai-based oil and gas watchdog and rights group, the movement endorsed a memorandum to the Chinese government on the Global Day of Action on Oct. 28.

In the letter addressed to the Chinese president and sent through its embassies in various countries, including, among others, Burma’s Asean partners, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Sweden, they expressed serious concern at the probable threats to the environment and the Burmese people because of the project. The letter also asked President Hu Jintao to immediately stop construction, which was all but inconceivable. EarthRights International, in a recent survey, identified 69 Chinese companies engaged in extracting natural resources, including oil, gas, hydropower development and mining, from Burmese sites.

Nor did Burma’s Asean partners appear to be concerned. The 10-member body refused to go along with a request by Obama for a joint communique asking that democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest, be freed. Obama was forced to release his own statement asking for Suu Kyi’s freedom, although the group did join the United States to release a joint statement calling for free elections next year — which the opposition has already condemned as a sham aimed at providing a thin veneer of democracy for the junta.

“We are gravely concerned for the thousand communities living along the planned 980-kilometer pipeline corridor. Based on experiences in Burma, partnerships with the MOGE on infrastructure development projects invariably lead to forced displacement, forced labor and loss of livelihoods,” the letter from the 120 organizations said. “The escalation of abuses around a project when Burma army soldiers provide security is well documented by UN agencies and NGOs.”

Wong Aung, the coordinator of the Shwe Gas Movement, said what was even worse was that the local communities who will be affected by the project were still unaware of it and had not being consulted. “At the same time, neither the military authority nor the CNPC had gone for any environmental and social impact assessments before launching the pipeline project,” he said.

Speaking to Asia Sentinel from Chiang Mai, Thailand, Wong Aung also revealed that more than 10,000 Burmese soldiers had already been deployed along the pipeline route, a number that was likely to be increased in the days to come and likely to add to the number of incidents of human rights abuses.

“Past experiences have shown that pipeline construction and maintenance in the country always involves forced labor, forced relocation, land confiscation and other kinds of abuses by the soldiers engaged in the project area,” he added.

In a recently launched book titled “Corridor of Power: China’s Trans-Burma Oil and Gas Pipelines,” the Shwe Gas Movement strongly requested that the extraction of the Shwe natural gas deposits be postponed until local people in western Burma could participate in the decision-making process about the use of the resources. It added that the countries and oil companies involved should halt trade with the military junta and refrain from further investment until the country had a democratically-elected government.

Burma’s western coast, which is rich in oil and gas reserves, has become the battleground for Beijing and New Delhi in recent years, said an editorial in the Shwe Gas Bulletin. “The Western companies showed reluctance in investing in Burma, but both China and India continued their mission and battle over the Burmese oil and gas.” The editorial added that at a time when China and India were exploiting the resources of Arakan to enhance their energy and economic security, more than four million people living in the state were facing human rights abuses and economic hardship.

Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the activist group the Alternative Asean Network on Burma, said projects in Burma have displaced thousands of poor Burmese and exposed to them to abuse by the military. Speaking to Asia Sentinel from Bangkok, Stothard added that the Shwe pipeline project would have a heavy impact on the people along the route and would end up adversely affecting the entire region.

But none of that appears to matter to the Chinese, the governments around Burma or any countries wishing to buy Burma’s rich natural resources.



Nava Thakuria is a senior journalist based in Assam in northeast India.

Asia Sentinel