Published on Thursday, 01 March 2012
130 organizations over 20 countries today held demonstrations and submitted letters calling on Burma’s President Thein Sein to postpone China’s trans-Burma oil and gas pipelines project. The letter expressed serious concerns over human rights abuses as well as social, economic and environmental impacts of the Burmese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian company-led project.
The Shwe Gas Project and trans-Burma oil and gas pipelines are currently under construction, originating off Burma’s western coast and terminating in China’s Yunnan Province, and set to come online in 2013. The project will become the country’s largest source of foreign revenue generating US $29 billion over 30 years.
The open letter to Thein Sein strongly condemns the confiscation of the thousands of acres of farm lands for the project, and the military offensives against ethnic armies in the pipeline corridor in Northern Shan State. The letter references the previous suspension of the Myitsone Dam and Dawei coal-fired plant and “call[s] for a consistent policy of social and environmental accountability, and an immediate postponement of the project”. More
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