Oil-gas giant faces landmark trial over slavery in
Myanmar
Monday, December 1, 2003
By KATHY GEORGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The Unocal oil company is about to become the first
corporation in history to stand trial in the United States
over human rights violations abroad.
And two Seattle law professors are helping to make history
in the shocking case, in which corporate partners used
Myanmar's notoriously brutal military regime to provide
"security" for a natural gas pipeline project in the remote
Yadana region near the Thai border.
The long-delayed trial starting next week in California will
determine whether Unocal, a major investor in the project,
is legally responsible for the military's abuse of villagers
living along the pipeline route.
It's a case involving allegations of forced labor, rape, torture
-- even killing. But mainly it's about corporate
responsibility and how far it reaches beyond American soil
and beyond corporate walls separating subsidiaries from
parent companies.
That's where Seattle University professors Kellye Testy and
Julie Shapiro come in.
Lawyers for the villagers hired Testy, an expert in
corporate formation, to help knock down the walls
between California-based Unocal and the two
subsidiaries that it set up to hold its 28 percent
interest in the pipeline project in Myanmar.
"Our argument is that these are phony corporations
created solely to hide from liability," said Dan Stormer of
Pasadena, Calif., the lead attorney for the Myanmar
villagers.
"Kellye Testy is a nationally renowned expert on the
formation and makeup of corporations and their
legitimacy," he said. "She is among our most important
witnesses."
Shapiro is an expert in the procedural rules that
control lawsuits, including who can be sued
where. She has been an attorney of record in the
Unocal case from its beginning in 1996.
It's not easy representing a group of impoverished people
who live thousands of miles away in Myanmar, formerly
called Burma, against powerful corporations based in
California and France.
The foot-high stacks of records in Shapiro's campus office
attest to the daunting nature of the case.
"I had no idea how complicated it really would get," said
Shapiro, who volunteered to help because she wanted to
make a difference and because her longtime friend,
Philadelphia attorney Judith Chomsky, is involved.
Testy, as a witness, could not talk about her role except to
say, "It is a very complex and interesting case."
The allegations are horrific.
With Unocal's knowledge, the Myanmar military
government formed four battalions, each with 600 men, to
"guard" the pipeline corridor during construction,
according to a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on
preliminary motions in the case.
But the center of Myanmar's civil war was at least 150 miles
away from the corridor, where "little or no rebel activity"
was occurring, the opinion said.
The soldiers' true role was to force villagers in the pipeline
region to work without pay -- a modern form of slavery, the
9th Circuit opinion said.
And Unocal knew, both before and after investing in the
project, that the military was enslaving the people, the
opinion said.
Unocal's own consultant, former military attache John
Haseman, reported to Unocal in December 1995 that the
soldiers were committing "egregious human rights
violations" along the pipeline route.
"The most common are forced relocation without
compensation of families from land near/along the pipeline
route, forced labor to work on infrastructure projects
supporting the pipeline ... and imprisonment and/or
execution by the army of those opposing such actions,"
Haseman told Unocal in a report quoted in court records.
Two groups of villagers from the region filed separate suits
in federal and state courts in California, alleging violations
of the federal Alien Tort Claims Act and state law. The
villagers are not named, to protect them from military
retribution, Stormer said.
The suits claim that, because of the pipeline project, the
villagers lost their homes, their family members were killed,
and they were raped, assaulted, tortured or forced into
slavery.
Their suit, said attorney Stormer, "will prevent corporations
from exploiting local peoples in the name of profit."
Unocal calls the allegations false and insists in a written
statement, "This company has never encouraged,
participated in human rights violations in any way. ... We
will defend our reputation vigorously and expect to be fully
vindicated."
Unocal has won some important victories. This year, it
persuaded the 9th Circuit to reconsider its opinion that
there is enough evidence to try Unocal for aiding and
abetting the forced labor. That reconsideration is pending.
Also, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled last
year that Unocal is not directly liable for human rights
abuses in Myanmar, although it may be vicariously liable --
the subject of the upcoming trial.
Unocal, with $11 billion in assets, is primarily involved in
exploring and producing crude oil and natural gas around
the world.
Shapiro's work focused not on Unocal but on a French oil
company, Total, the pipeline project operator.
"You have to find a connection between the defendant and
the place where you want to sue them," Shapiro said.
Although Total was "equally complicit" with Unocal in the
human rights violations, she said, she could not establish
enough of a link to California to haul the French company
into court there.
Total set up a subsidiary to extract natural gas from the
Yadana field and to build a pipeline for shipping the gas to
Thailand.
It was Total that sold an interest in the project to Unocal.
And it was Total's subsidiary that contracted with the
Myanmar government to provide security protection, the
9th Circuit opinion said.
Although disappointed that Total avoided the suit, Shapiro
said the preliminary rulings that Unocal can be sued are of
greater importance.
"The U.S. really has an extraordinary legal system. It offers
in many ways a real possibility to level the playing field"
between poor villagers and large corporations, she said.
Even if Unocal ultimately wins, "the corporation has to
answer in a specific and concrete way" for its actions, she
said.
"It is enormously important that a case has actually been
brought this far."
To learn more: www.unocal.com/myanmar/suit.htm
www.earthrights.org/burma/yadana.shtml
seattlepi.nwsource.com |
