For Immediate Release: May 16th, 2005

As Total Shareholders Meet
In Paris, Rallies At French Missions Across
USA Decry Chirac’s
“Blood for Gas” Policy

(Washington,
DC; New York; San Francisco; Chicago; Los Angeles;
Boston) While shareholders meet in Paris, France
at the annual meeting of the world’s fourth-largest
oil company, hundreds of protestors will rally
in front of the embassy of France and five French
consulates across the United States on Tuesday,
May 17th to protest the French government’s
policy of placing the interests of Total Oil
company over human rights in the Southeast Asian
country of Burma.

“France has repeatedly fought, diluted, and
otherwise tried in every possible way to undermine
support for human rights in Burma solely to
protect the interests of Total Oil’s operations
in the country,” said Aung Din, a former political
prisoner and co-founder of US Campaign for Burma.
“It is time for France to change its Burma policy,
which is nothing short of blood for gas.”

USCB is a member of the newly-formed Total Oil
coalition, a group of 53 organizations based
in 18 countries around the world pressuring
the company to cut ties to Burma’s brutal military
dictatorship. The organization will hold protests
at the French embassy in Washington, DC as well
as at consulates in New York, San Francisco,
Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston.

Total’s operations in Burma have been horrific.
Beginning in 1992, Total helped build and develop
a natural gas pipeline from Burma’s Andaman
Sea across the country and into Thailand, in
partnership with Burma’s ruling military regime.
While Total and others provided the technologies
and know-how to extract the natural gas, the
Burmese military regime provided security for
the pipeline region. According to a recent,
groundbreaking report from the Burma Campaign
United Kingdom, villages 15-20 miles north and
south of the pipeline route were forced to move
by troops of the ruling military regime. Bullets
enclosed with written relocation orders were
sometimes sent to village heads as a stark reminder
of what would happen to those who refused to
leave. The relocations and evictions devastated
communities.

Forced labor in Burma–what the International
Labor Organization (a United Nations agency)
has called a “crime against humanity”–was also
heavily used by the troops. Said one of many
villagers interviewed by the US-based organization
Earthrights International about the forced labor
practices, “Before our village was relocated,
the soldiers killed many villagers in my village.
Even though they were civilians, the soldiers
did not trust them, so they were killed. One
person from every house had to go to clear mines.
The villagers had to go all over the place to
find out whether the land mines were set up
or not.” Said another, “When he came [home],
he had lost his left eye, and his arms and legs
were wounded and swollen. His back was bruised
and swollen severely. I saw the scar from the
rope on both of his arms and legs.”

Amnesty International reported in June 2001
serious human rights abuses committed by two
of the regime’s battalions who provided security
for the pipeline which were known to local villagers
as “Total battalions.” Amnesty reported testimony
of one villager: “I was tied with a rope…
beaten on my back, hit with a rifle butt and
cane stick… I was forced to lie on my stomach
while they put two wooden rods on my back while
a soldier stood on each side of the rods. They
dug a hole and put me in it… I was kept under
the hot sun all day.”

In addition to abuses committed in the pipeline
region, Total has helped the ruling military
regime cement its hold on power. It is estimated
that the regime receives between $200 and $450
million per year from the gas, its single largest
export. According to Robert Karniol, Asia editor
of Jane’s Defense Weekly, Russia sold Burma’s
military regime 10 MiG-29 fighter jets the same
week the regime received $100 million in royalties
from the pipeline project.

It is likely that no significant proceeds from
the pipeline will ever reach local populations.
Over the past fifteen years the regime has doubled
its number of troops from an estimated 200,000
to 400,000 while likely spending less on health
care than any other country in the world. The
regime continues to lock up over 1,400 political
prisoners, including the world’s only imprisoned
Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi.
This year, Burma was one of only a handful of
countries to be condemned by the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights.

Tragically, the government of
France has repeatedly gone out of its way to
deflect support for human rights and democracy
in Burma. The friendship between French president
Jacque Chirac and Total CEO Thierry Desmarest
is widely known and reported throughout Europe.
In June 2004 Chirac awarded Desmarest one of
France’s highest accolades, the Legion of Honour,
and the two traveled together recently to Algeria
and Libya. When Total was threatened with a
lawsuit in the United States over the Burma
pipeline, the French government filed an amicus
curiae with the US court, arguing that the suit
would “conflict with France’s foreign policy
interests.”

France and Chirac have consequently
stood firmly against stronger action on Burma.
It led the charge in preventing an EU boycott
of a major European-Asian summit in 2004 over
Burma’s prospective attendance and prevented
a groundbreaking effort by the EU to consider
a ban on all EU investments in Burma. By the
end of the negotiations over the ban, France
had successfully emasculated the effort, allowing
the most profitable industry for Burma’s military
regime, oil and gas, to be entirely omitted.
Said the Financial Times, “After pressure from
France, EU Ambassadors have now decided to make
clear that the ban on such investments does
not refer to arrangements already in place,
which can even be extended or prolonged. Paris
was particularly concerted about investment
in Burma’s oil and gas sector.” It is also widely
presumed that France would veto any resolution
at the UN Security Council.

While demonstrators rally at
French diplomatic missions in the United States,
investors and shareholders will be raising their
concerns at Total’s annual meeting in Paris.
In Paris, representatives of the ‘Total Pollutes
Democracy: Stop the TOTALitarism in Burma’ campaign
(established by a coalition of French and international
non-governmental organizations and trade unions)
will attend the TOTAL General Assembly to question
the company about its activities in Burma. On
behalf of the coalition, French and European
parliamentarians will question TOTAL executives
on the company’s investments in Burma and the
coalition’s demands that the company withdraw.
The coalition has also submitted written questions
that will be answered at the meeting and will
distribute an open letter to shareholders and
a leaflet providing information on the campaign.

DEMONSTRATIONCONTACTS:

Boston Contact, Location, and Time
Ohnmar Khin
khin@fas.harvard.edu
484-432-2216
11:30 am-12:30 pm Eastern Time
French Consulate
31 Saint James Avenue, Park Square Building
- Suite 750
Boston, MA 02116 (corner of St. James Ave. and
Arlington St.)

Chicago Contact, Location, and Time
Cristina Moon
(773) 732-4365
cmoon@uchicago.edu
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
205 N Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60601

Washington, DC Contact, Location, and Time
Jeremy Woodrum
202-223-0300
jeremy@uscampaignforburma.org
12:30-1:30 pm Eastern Time
4101 Reservoir Rd, NW
Washington, DC 20007

San Francisco Contact, Location, and
Time
Heidi Quante
415-845-6330
burmafreedom@yahoo.com
12:00-1:00 Pacific Time
French Consul General
540 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94108, USA

New York Contact and Location:
Moe Chan or Mick Schommer
718-812-0736
oo@bitstream.net, oway_student@yahoo.com.
12:30-1:30 Eastern Time
French Consulate
One Dag Hammarskjld Plaza
245 East 47th Street
New York, NY

Los Angeles Contact, Time, and Location
Khin Maung Shwe
maungshwe8888@yahoo.com
323 839-5431 or 310 859-4694
9:00-10:30 am Pacific Time
French Consulate
10990 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024

####