You may know that the military in Myanmar (also known as Burma) staged a coup against the legitimate, elected government there on February 1st. That was the morning the government of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party of Aung San Suu Kyi was to be first seated, having overwhelmingly won national re-election on November 8th, with more than 80% of the seats.

Since then the entire diverse nation has come together to reject the coup. Civil servants, business owners, workers, students, people of all ethnicities and faiths have come into the streets, and have refused to work on behalf of the coup makers, as part of a nationwide, completely peaceful Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). After 10 years on a flawed but hopeful democratic path, the people are not willing to return to the dark days of military dictatorship, and are standing firm.

The military has responded with brutality. Scores have been murdered on the streets, thousands arrested, and the tide of repression keeps rising. At one point more than a third of those killed were teenagers who were shot in the head with a single bullet, by police and army snipers. These snipers were under no threat whatsoever, but could take their shots at leisure, under orders from their commanders. At night time, the national internet is shut off, and soldiers patrol city streets, shooting into houses and apartments at will to terrorize the people, destroying property, looting and burning. Medics, passersby, even pregnant women have been savagely beaten. Some arrestees have been killed while in custody. All of this is documented, and the videos and photographic evidence keeps pouring out[1].

Young people, especially young women, are at the forefront of the CDM movement, using contemporary technology to document crimes, to organize, to avoid soldiers when they can. And it is these young people who are asking for your help.

The Burmese military, since it first took national power in 1962 and held it directly for nearly 50 years, has become like an occupying power, a state within a state, with their own schools, hospitals, housing and other perks and, critically, its own business interests. This is where you come in.

Chevron, the US oil company, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Unocal Myanmar Offshore, is a partner in the largest Western investment in Myanmar.  The partnership includes a project to take undersea natural gas, pump the majority to Thailand for sale, with the rest for domestic use in Myanmar. Members of the CDM movement have made a simple request[2]: That Chevron and the operating partner Total of France, put the funds that are due under contract into an escrow account, to be held until they can be paid to a legitimate government, not to a thuggish and illegitimate military junta. This junta has no right to these revenues, which come from the sale of gas that is the property of all Burmese citizens. The payments from gas sales amount to nearly $1 billion a year[3]. Halting these payments could be a make or break action on behalf of 54 million Burmese.

So far, Chevron has not responded to this reasonable plea. Please join more than 400 Burmese community groups in requesting:

• That Chevron publicly commit to placing any and all revenues owed by their joint ventures with MOGE into an escrow/protected account, to be released only when a properly representative government, based on a new, representative federal constitution, takes its rightful place, and that Chevron commit to avoid making any payments to the murderous coup makers.
• That Chevron publicly recognize what has happened in Myanmar as a coup (rather than referring to it as “the current situation” per Chevron’s Feb. 12th statement,) condemn the coup, and refrain from engaging in any new contracts with the coup junta. Chevron should support the Myanmar peoples’ call for an end to military involvement in civilian politics.
• That Chevron offer support to workers from the project partnership who choose to join the CDM, and commit to protecting them from being fired or experiencing other retribution for doing so.

We hope that Chevron breaks its silence and agrees to putting its payments and taxes in escrow instead of giving it to killers who have no right to this money. What we will not accept is the company saying it has no choice but to pay these murderers. Chevron is an extremely litigious company when it chooses, and has a vast legal team it can use to make its case if it wants to. Witness the lawsuit by villagers from Ecuador against Chevron, which the company has tied up in court for 20 years. It can do the same here if necessary. Lives depend on it. If Chevron is unwilling, it is time to consider a boycott. All of these actions and more require your awareness and support before it is too late. We urge you lend your influence and voice to this most urgent matter of life and death for the people of Myanmar.

FAQ

Are there others supporting this call?

Yes! Not only the hundreds of Myanmar community groups mentioned above, but the Myanmar labor movement, UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Tom Andrews, the UN’s Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar, as well as numerous Myanmar diplomats in the UN and around the world, who have stood up against the coup and called for international restrictions on the coup makers. The US government froze more than $1 billion in Myanmar assets held in the US, to keep it out of the hands of the coup makers. The same logic applies to Chevron.

Will placing payments into escrow cause hardship to the people?

It is critical to keep the interests of the people in mind. Myanmar is a poor country, and people’s livelihoods have been badly affected by the COVID crisis. But since the coup, these natural gas revenues from Chevron and its partners are entirely under control of the military. Giving these thugs access to those funds literally harms the people at large. On the other hand, there are important efforts to protect workers in the garment sector among others, where many are employed and the military has little involvement[4]  

Could some other company, from China for instance, merely step in to replace Chevron and its partners?

No, that would be extremely unlikely. This is a fully functional, highly technical operation, and any changeover would require at least months of transition and downtime, even in a more cooperative environment. The junta can’t just shut the project down, as that would deeply alienate its neighbor and natural gas customer Thailand, whose quasi-military government the Myanmar coup makers must keep either neutral or friendly. Any disruption whatsoever would greatly change the calculations the Thai government would make, a risk the Myanmar coup junta cannot afford.

Hasn’t this same Myanmar military committed other atrocities?

Yes, the Myanmar military is notorious for using violence against its own citizens, massacring thousands during a civilian uprising in 1988, and demolishing the Buddhist monk-led Saffron Revolution in 2007. For decades they have attacked civilians in ethnic minority areas around the country, using rape, torture, burning of villages and destruction of crops to terrorize and demoralize those they see as enemies. And in 2017, against the minority Rohingya population they committed what the UN said “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law”. The UN Fact Finding Mission further said there’s enough evidence to investigate and prosecute Myanmar’s top military generals – today’s coup makers -- for genocide[5]. And some of the same units that raped and pillaged through the Rohingya population are now in Myanmar’s cities, committing atrocities in the heartland[6],[7].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qooWPOaXSvo  https://www.fortifyrights.org/our-films/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/mar/04/myanmar-police-filmed-assaulting-medics-in-cctv-footage-video?fbclid=IwAR14ceIWkmL58MBwH5Uf5pU6sxVKQpMbpePBTI3UZutMDIvT7rr69rN4e5w

 [2] https://www.facebook.com/Myanmar-Alliance-for-Transparency-and-Accountability-MATA-672103292860036/photos/pcb.5056835061053482/5057177711019217

 [3] https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/how-oil-and-gas-majors-bankroll-the-myanmar-military-regime

[4] https://rohingyacampaign.wordpress.com/2021/03/09/open-letter-to-apparel-brands-sourcing-from-myanmar-ensure-protection-of-worker-rights/

 [5] https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/FFM-Myanmar/A_HRC_39_CRP.2.pdf

 [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/asia/myanmar-protests-violence.html

[7] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/03/myanmar-arsenal-troops-deployed-crackdown/