2nd wave of Burma solidarity — target Total (London, Cardiff, Oxford)

Lon­don Total Oil’s offices tar­get­ed again this morn­ing
5.10.2007

Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ was tar­get­ed again this morn­ing as work­ers made their way into the build­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary jun­ta.

After a mass call out, activists showed up again this morn­ing to speak to office work­ers at Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ about the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in Bur­ma. Police forces were already present at the site, actu­al­ly out­num­ber­ing pro­test­ers at 8:30, guard­ing the entrance and check­ing every­one enter­ing the build­ing, which caused sig­nif­i­cant nui­sance and slowed things down a bit. A FIT team was also present, hap­pi­ly snap­ping pic­tures of peo­ple. After stag­ing a die-in out­side the entrance and hand­ing out leaflets, it was decid­ed to end the action and re-group for break­fast.

We shall be back.

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Cardiff Total closed in Bur­ma protest

7.10.2007
A Total garage in Cardiff was closed for three hours in a sol­i­dar­i­ty action for the peo­ple of Bur­ma

Around 30 peo­ple marched from the cen­tre of Cardiff to the Total garage, where more pro­test­ers had already gath­ered.

Despite the nor­mal threats of arrest from the police, activists blocked the entrance and exit routes to the garage, shut­ting it down. The garage remained closed by the action for three hours. There were no arrests.

The lev­el of pub­lic sup­port for the action was amaz­ing, and car horns were beep­ing their sup­port almost con­stant­ly. Even the motorists that turned up to use the garage were (on the whole) sup­port­ive, and hap­pi­ly drove off to find some­where else to fill up.

This was an effec­tive and suc­cess­ful action — it would be nice to see more of these in the weeks and months to come.

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Text of leaflet that was giv­en out:

Total Oil — the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma

French Oil Com­pa­ny Total is the biggest cor­po­rate investor for the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship of Bur­ma. For the last 45 years a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship has ruled Bur­ma with an iron fist. Total oil has pro­vides the dic­ta­tor­ship with 30% of there export rev­enue, which is esti­mat­ed at $450 mil­lion.

This is the largest for­eign invest­ment sup­port­ing the bru­tal regime, and Total is ful­ly aware of this. It has been fund­ing the regime since 1992, which has per­mit­ted them to exe­cute some atro­cious human right vio­la­tions includ­ing:

70,000 child sol­diers.
One of the largest armies in South East Asia, despite no exter­nal ene­mies.
Rape of women and chil­dren as a weapon of war.
Mass oppres­sion of free­dom of speech and opin­ion, which has lead to 1,350 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.
Almost half of the bud­get is spent on the mil­i­tary while only 19p is spent on health care per per­son, per year.
Total fund­ed the cre­ation of a 63-kilo­me­ter pipeline, secured by the army, which has lead to:

Between 600,000 and 1 mil­lion peo­ple forced from their homes and inter­nal­ly dis­placed.

Some of the worse forced labour abus­es on thou­sands of Burmese peo­ple.

Forced trans­port­ing of weapons, beat­ings and tor­ture.

And the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers.

Total Oil is fund­ing and pro­tect­ing this vio­lent regime, to defend its assets and prof­its made form Burmese oil and gas.

In 1988 mass demon­stra­tions occurred across Bur­ma due to the bru­tal­i­ty of the Mil­i­tary regime, and a 500% increase in oil and nat­ur­al gas prices. This result­ed in over 5000 peo­ple indis­crim­i­nate­ly being slaugh­ter by the army, and thou­sands more impris­oned, 1, 350 of which are still there.

2007 UPRISE — A REPEAT OF HISTORY – On the 15th of August, petrol prices rose by 500%, spark­ing mass protests for the next 2 months. The protests were lead by tens of thou­sands of social activist, monks and civil­ians. The mil­i­tary fought back with tear gas, beat­ings, arrests, shoot­ings and pre dawn raids on monas­ter­ies.

It’s esti­mat­ed that up to 3000 peo­ple, includ­ing elder­ly monks, chil­dren between 5 and 10 years old, nuns and women have been arrest­ed, endur­ing atro­cious con­di­tions in prison. It has been inter­nal­ly esti­mat­ed that 130 peo­ple have been killed.

Even though the media cov­er­age is dis­ap­pear­ing today, the oppres­sion and vio­lence direct­ed towards the Burmese’s peo­ple con­tin­ues to esca­late.

Stop the mil­i­tary regime. Act now before anoth­er 5000 die.

Action

www.burmacampaign.org.uk To sign peti­tions pres­sur­ing Total and oth­er cor­po­ra­tions to with­draw invest­ment in Bur­ma.
www.burmanet.org/news/ For up to date reli­able news in Bur­ma.
www.southwalesanarchists.org A group of like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.
www.avaaz.org To sign a peti­tion tar­get­ing and pres­sur­ing Chi­na, the main sup­port­er of the regime.

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Total Total­ly Block­ad­ed in Oxford

6.10.2007
Pro­test­ers peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Oxford today, in sup­port of the democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma (Myan­mar); activists were there for two hours and seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed Total’s busi­ness for the day.

This protest took place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma, who have asked for inter­na­tion­al sup­port now that the regime is crack­ing down on them. Total Oil is the fourth largest oil com­pa­ny in the world and one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. Its joint ven­ture with Bur­ma’s dic­ta­tor­ship earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year.

Peo­ple began to gath­er out­side the petrol sta­tion in East Oxford at 2.30 pm, and at 2.45 moved into the entrance­way, hold­ing a ban­ner which read ” Fuelling Oppres­sion In Bur­ma”. We blocked the entrance for a while until the police arrived and threat­ened to arrest peo­ple. How­ev­er, even after we shuf­fled to either side of the main dri­ve­way, just the pres­ence of the pro­test­ers, the ban­ner and the police was enough to put most cus­tomers off — we saw numer­ous peo­ple eye­ing up the entrance and then choos­ing to dri­ve by.

Those few who did plunge past the crowd of pro­test­ers onto the fore­court were quick­ly pounced upon by friend­ly leaflet-wield­ing activists who man­aged to per­suade the major­i­ty to take their busi­ness else­where.

The Total staff were less than over­joyed, but we gave them all leaflets too and explained why we were there. The police, too, were less than delight­ed by our pres­ence but seemed will­ing to tol­er­ate us, even though we’d pret­ty much closed the petrol sta­tion down for the after­noon. We got lots of waves and horn-toots of sup­port from passers-by.

Total has been a long­stand­ing sup­port­er of Bur­ma’s bru­tal regime. Wide­spread human rights abus­es have been asso­ci­at­ed with the Total pipeline in Bur­ma, includ­ing forced labour, tor­ture and rape. In addi­tion, tougher Euro­pean sanc­tions against Bur­ma have been blocked by the French gov­ern­ment in its effort to pro­tect Total’s inter­ests in the coun­try.

Today’s action was part of a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al move­ment against Total. Forc­ing the com­pa­ny to pull out of Bur­ma would be a major blow to the legit­i­ma­cy of the regime, jeop­ar­dise a vital source of income for the jun­ta and would make it even more dif­fi­cult for oth­er com­pa­nies to do busi­ness in the region.

For more infor­ma­tion see www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_briefing.html. To get involved in action in Oxford email oarc@riseup.net.

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2nd Report from the Oxford Total demo

A brief expla­na­tion of some of the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and a report on the demon­stra­tion in Oxford which took place on the 6th of Octo­ber, 2007.

Glob­al Day of Action for Bur­ma

The 6th of Octo­ber was the glob­al day of action for Bur­ma (also known as Myan­mar), and activists and sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed around the world for an end to the appalling actions of the repres­sive and vicious mil­i­tary jun­ta (group of army gen­er­als) that rules the coun­try. If you watched the news recent­ly you might remem­ber images of thou­sands of monks march­ing on the streets, before the bru­tal mil­i­tary crack­down. There is lit­tle or no news get­ting out of Bur­ma now because the gov­ern­ment shut off the inter­net and has start­ed to seize mobile phones and cam­eras so that images of vio­lent repres­sion can­not escape. The jun­ta has banned protest­ing and the expres­sion of any oth­er view apart from their own, which is that they are cre­at­ing a “dis­ci­pline-flour­ish­ing democ­ra­cy” and unusu­al­ly for a democ­ra­cy, all oppo­si­tion must be crushed. Con­tra­dic­to­ry? It sure is, but it is no laugh­ing mat­ter for fifty mil­lion Burmese.

Demon­stra­tors marched in coun­tries as var­ied as Thai­land, France, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, as well as many more. One of the biggest protests in this coun­try was in Lon­don, but they took place in every major city in the coun­try. One of the less pub­li­cised, but nonethe­less very well attend­ed protests was in Oxford, where pro­test­ers man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly stop almost every­one fill­ing up at a Total garage from doing so for over two and a half hours.

On the face of it this action might seem to have lit­tle to do with Bur­ma, since Total is a joint­ly owned French and Amer­i­can com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, Total has a con­tract with the Burmese gov­ern­ment, signed in 1992, and is the sole com­pa­ny oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Two oil pipelines have already been built, one to Thai­land and one across Bur­ma, and a third one is on its way, despite the fact that new invest­ments from French com­pa­nies in Bur­ma were banned in 2004. The pipelines have been asso­ci­at­ed with seri­ous human rights abus­es for those work­ing on them, such as forced labour, the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers, the use of chil­dren, and sys­tem­at­ic rape of women. Total has been said to be the sin­gle biggest com­pa­ny prop­ping up the junta’s regime.

Total is one of the five biggest oil com­pa­nies in the UK and there­fore wields an enor­mous influ­ence both here and abroad. The French gov­ern­ment has blocked mea­sures such as sanc­tions against the jun­ta due to the fact that Total has such heavy involve­ment there.

With all this in mind I went to a demon­stra­tion close by to Read­ing, by a Total garage in Oxford. A huge ban­ner read­ing “Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” left peo­ple in no doubt as to what the protest was about. Vol­un­teers hand­ed out leaflets show­ing a brief sum­ma­ry of the injus­tice of the military’s rule, and Total’s role in it, as well as peti­tions that con­cerned cit­i­zens could sign. The turnout was excel­lent, con­sid­er­ing that the demon­stra­tion had not been as well pub­li­cised as oth­er, larg­er ones in cities such as Birm­ing­ham and Man­ches­ter. In two hours we man­aged to stop the major­i­ty of peo­ple fill­ing up at Total. The work­ers at the garage were under­stand­ably not very pleased but we gave them leaflets too and let them know that we have noth­ing against them since they are only doing their job. Many peo­ple did not have any idea of the things which this com­pa­ny is involved in and once they were informed most of them chose to fill up at one of two near­by petrol sta­tions fur­ther along the road.

The atmos­phere was very jol­ly and every­one was eager to meet new peo­ple and help each oth­er out. The good weath­er helped with this as did the fact that most peo­ple were very friend­ly. We had sup­port both from the local police who were assigned to watch the demon­stra­tion, and from passers-by, many of whom honked their horns at us as they drove past. Many peo­ple who had filled up promised not to do so again. The protest began at 2:30, and although most peo­ple had gone by half past four, three of us chose to stay until five, hand­ing out leaflets to dri­vers.

We do accept that some peo­ple have no choice but to fill up there and we have noth­ing against peo­ple who do so, but I feel it is impor­tant that peo­ple have an informed choice about what it is that they are sup­port­ing when they fill up at a Total garage. At a time when many oil com­pa­nies are regard­ed as uneth­i­cal the idea that a com­pa­ny would open­ly fund one of the world’s most despi­ca­ble regimes pro­duces bad pub­lic­i­ty and a lack of trust, so it is in Total’s best inter­est to pull out of Bur­ma and in so doing, increase their prof­its due to win­ning back respect from peo­ple who have lost it for them. They should see that in the long term, due to the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma (with some states hav­ing had a civ­il war for over 20 years) stay­ing in the coun­try is unsus­tain­able and bad for their busi­ness as well as for human rights.

Should you wish to find out more about Total and their involve­ment in Bur­ma, please vis­it www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_report.html. Please also sign the peti­tion to help the Burmese pro­test­ers, which will be pre­sent­ed to the pres­i­dent of Chi­na after it receives a mil­lion sig­na­tures, at www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma .

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Aside from these direct actions, var­i­ous demon­stra­tions have hap­pened around the coun­try over the last few weeks — for full details, search at indymedia.org.uk