CONNECTION
"The modern society demands all of the products, all of the services, all of the quality of life that we all enjoy. So we, the consumers, are pushing this. We are demanding services and goods and conveniences and luxury items. So keep in mind that these all come from natural resources; often they occur in isolated areas where marginalized indigenous people live. So they go to these areas where natural resources are, and they extract them. And in the process, they commit human rights abuses." -Billy Doerner, Educative Director of EarthRights International
Doerner, Billy. Personal Interview. 9 Dec. 2014.
"Yet you could look out their house and see this pipeline going by, which is providing people far away with a high standard of living and electricity and all the conveniences, but yet the people who are receiving the negative impacts of this have only one candle. And this is just one example, it happens all over. The people who live in the area where the natural resources are, or where they’re being exploited, or extracted, get no benefit."
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"Moreover, resource-rich countries often do not pursue sustainable growth strategies. They fail to recognize that if they do not reinvest their resource wealth into productive investments above ground, they are
actually becoming poorer. Political dysfunction exacerbates the problem, as conflict over access to
resource rents gives rise to corrupt and undemocratic governments."
Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Resource Rich, Cash Poor." Project Syndicate
MONEY AS INCENTIVE FOR ABUSE
"The military elite are hiding billions of dollars of the peoples' revenue in Singapore while the country needlessly suffers under the lowest social spending in Asia." |
At the expense of the Burmese people, the Burmese military collected over five billion dollars in revenue from the construction of the pipeline, in cooperation with Total and Unocal. The money was being stored by the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation & Development Bank of Singapore Group. Ka Hsaw Wa's documentation of the Yadana pipeline construction exposed these injustices that could be used as ammunition to expose this corrupt government, encouraging other nations to instill sanctions against the military junta.
"The revenue from this pipeline is the regime’s lifeline and a critical leverage point that the international community could use to support the people of Burma" |
SIMILAR CASES
"All over the world countries have been doing this."
Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Resource Rich, Cash Poor." Project Synd...
The exploitation of resource-rich nations by international corporations and governments that has resulted in human rights abuses has many parallels to the Yadana pipeline in Burma that Ka Hsaw Wa documented. Some of these include African nations like Ghana, Uganda, and Mozambique, and other regions in Burma like Rohingya massacres near the Shwe Oil Pipeline and injustices in the Rakhine mining state.
"Equally important, the money gained through natural resources must be used to promote development. The old colonial powers regarded Africa simply as a place from which to extract resources. Some of the new purchasers have a similar attitude.
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"Today, there is a new great game under way between very different competitors... But this time the ball is Burma…saturated in more than ten trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and possibly also oil, beneath its offshore waters."Paul. "Dictators Watch– Burma." Truck and Barter. Creative C...
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"After much wrangling, New Delhi thought it had secured exclusive purchase from Burma of 5.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That was the quantity confirmed by independent U.S. assessors Gaffney, Cline & Associates to be in just one undersea block, known as A-1, of the Shwe field near the port of Sittwe. But while India was sizing up the route of a 960-mile land pipeline bypassing Bangladesh, China swooped in and signed a memorandum of agreement to buy the A-1 gas."Paul. "Dictators Watch– Burma." Truck and Barter. Creative C...
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"Our politicians must put their own economic interests aside and act urgently to prevent this imminent
human disaster...Never before has the public been so informed through social media that a massacre was
about to happen – our governments must not be allowed to sit back and do nothing."
-Jamila Hanan, in response to a planned massacre in Burma, 2014
Rowell, Andy. "Is Oil One Reason For Genocide of Rohingya in...