Protest shackles Total Oil petrol station (& 7th November action call-out)

On 1st Novem­ber pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the 24-hour Total petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road in cen­tral Lon­don. They were call­ing for Total Oil to pull out of Bur­ma due to their fund­ing of the Burmese mil­i­tary regime. The protest began at 5pm to coin­cide with rush hour.

London Total shackled protestOn 1st Novem­ber pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the 24-hour Total petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road in cen­tral Lon­don. They were call­ing for Total Oil to pull out of Bur­ma due to their fund­ing of the Burmese mil­i­tary regime. The protest began at 5pm to coin­cide with rush hour.

The protest con­sist­ed of ban­ners, plac­ards, leaflets and a peti­tion. One pro­tes­tor wore shack­les to sig­ni­fy the oppres­sion of the Burmese peo­ple.

With­in 10 min­utes of the protest begin­ning staff closed the sta­tion, block­ing off the fore­court and switch­ing off the lights. Even the accom­pa­ny­ing shop was shut. When it became appar­ent that the protest was con­tin­u­ing the police were con­tact­ed. One offi­cer arrived and after con­sult­ing the staff told the demon­stra­tors that there were not allowed onto the fore­court and risked arrest if they “inter­fered” with the busi­ness’s trade by block­ing the entrance or lock­ing onto any of the pumps. (It should be not­ed that none of the pro­tes­tors had entered the fore­court or caused any “inter­fer­ence”.)

After an hour the sta­tion re-opened. The protest con­tin­ued until 7.00pm.

http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com

A world­wide day of action against French oil giant Total’s invest­ment in Bur­ma has been called for Wednes­day 7th Novem­ber, the day the com­pa­ny’s quar­ter­ly results are pub­lished. Total’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in the oper­a­tion of the Yadana gas pipeline in the south of the coun­try, in part­ner­ship with Chevron-Tex­a­co, is opposed by the coun­try’s demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest or deten­tion for 12 years. The pipeline earns the regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds in rev­enue every year, with only a tiny frac­tion reach­ing the Burmese peo­ple. The main cus­tomer for the pipeline is Thai­land.