Chinese Oil Giant Accused of Human Rights Abuses in Burma

By WILLIAM BOOT

BANGKOK—More evidence has emerged of the steamrollering effect of China’s tightening grip on the economic life of Burma.

A watchdog report alleging land theft and intimidation of local people by a major Chinese corporation comes on top of a report by an international human rights agency expressing concern at China’s growing control over Burma’s natural resources.

The latest report accuses the Beijing state-owned China National Oil Corporation (CNOOC) of human rights abuses and land theft in an oil prospecting venture on isolated Ramree Island in western Arakan State.

The accusations this week by Arakan Oil Watch (AOW) come less than a month after the US-based EarthRights International (ERI) expressed concern about China’s increasing grip on Burma’s natural resources.

Both reports cite the west coast Arakan region as particularly exposed to Chinese corporate control and influence, which they say is treading on local peoples’ rights.

AOW accuses the CNOOC of a raft of abuses, ranging from land seizure to wanton pollution of rice fields and water systems with oil waste.

China already has ambitions to build an oil transshipment port on Ramree, an oil pipeline through Burma into southwest China’s Yunnan province, and a gas pipeline from the port town of Sittwe.

In September, ERI published a survey that identified 69 Chinese companies engaged in oil, gas, hydropower development and mining across Burma—a 250 percent increase on the number thought to be operating in the country when a similar study was made one year ago.

“Given what we know about development projects in Burma and the current situation, we’re concerned about this marked increase in the number of these projects,” ERI said.

This week’s AOW report is more specific. The Chinese-led Ramree oil prospecting venture had “left hundreds of local islanders landless and unemployed and their environment befouled,” the report charges.

“The consortium confiscated 81 hectares, and offered the local owners 40,000 kyat (US $31) for their land regardless of the size of their plots,” said Jockai Khaing, director of Arakan Oil Watch. “An estimated 500 to 1,000 local oil drillers were put out business.”

Ramree has been a source of near-surface crude oil well-pumping for many years by the islanders, providing a modest but steady income to supplement rice growing and offshore fishing.

But when the CNOOC and its partners were awarded the site by the military government for deeper oil exploration to test commercial viability, island land owners were rudely evicted, says the AOW, which has also produced photos to back up some of its allegations.

Observers note that the actions by CNOOC are similar to the methods still used throughout rural China when entrepreneurs in cahoots with communist party officials want to pursue a development against local peoples’ wishes. They simply steamroller opposition.

AOW, an environmental and human rights group, said the CNOOC consortium “left behind such a trail of abuses and environmental contamination on Ramree Island that outraged locals attacked their facilities.”

The AOW says its informants claim that local people looted a CNOOC installation in revenge before dozens of islanders fled Burma to avoid arrest by the authorities.

CNOOC partners in the Ramree oil venture are Golden Aaron, Asia World Company and two other state-owned Chinese oil-service firms.

Golden Aaron is registered in Singapore but is owned by Burmese businessman Steven Law. Asia World has close connections with the Burmese junta chiefs and is reportedly involved in the Ramree deepwater port project.

Both companies are on a US sanctions blacklist aimed at the military regime’s business activities.

The Ramree venture is reportedly now on hold after the initial exploratory drillings, but local residents have been told that CNOOC will return to begin commercial production, said AOW.

ERI says Burma has become “geopolitically significant” to China for natural resources, but perhaps most significantly is Burma ’s position on the edge of the Indian Ocean, making it a “particularly desirable partner in China ’s pursuit of energy security.”

China is reportedly building a deep-draught port on Ramree to handle ocean-going supertankers carrying oil from Africa and the Middle East. Transshipping the oil on the Burmese coast and piping it up through Burma into China is quicker—and probably more secure—than vessels taking the long route to southern Chinese ports via the congested Malacca Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia.

China and other Asian countries have moved into the void left by natural resources-tapping Western firms curbed by US and European sanctions against the Burma military regime.

But ERI says China’s hunger for energy makes Burma an inevitable target.

"The surge of Asian investment in Burma's oil and gas sector is not due to western sanctions, but simply to Asia's increasing demand for natural resources,” ERI’s Burma Project coordinator Matthew Smith told The Irrawaddy on Friday. “Chinese and Indian companies would be investing in Burma regardless of western foreign policy, and most of them likely dislike sanctions because they leave them alone to deal with the inherent risks of doing business with the generals.

“An oil and gas project in Burma can not proceed without human rights impacts, and Asian governments would do well to recognize that promoting and protecting human rights in Burma now will do more for their own long-term energy security.”

In its report of CNOOC’s Ramree island abuses, AOW cites the Chinese company’s own 2005 Code on Corporate Social Responsibility: “We believe that community and social acceptance is the important foundation for our long-term development. Since establishment, the company has been committed to building reciprocal and mutual trust friendly relations with stakeholders.”