Burma in chains: U.S. companies profit from slavery.

The Border Area Development Program is close to reaching the goals set forth under the Master Plan," drones a wax-like figure on the television news. It is her mouth that moves, but it is the numbing propaganda of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Burma's repressive military regime, that seeps from the TV. The "news" is supplemented with film footage of the army, training amid staged explosions and folk music. The SLORC-controlled television stations and newspapers--the only news sources the government allows--say the border regions are being developed to "strengthen unity and friendship among national brethren."

But on the border, in the homeland of the Karen. Mon, and other ethnic minorities, there is no folk music soundtrack as the army drives out the tribal people to clear a path for foreign investment.

Padauk and pyinkado trees rise out of the jungle and disappear into the fog more than 100 feet above the ground. Below, in a clearing, two Mon refugees hold onto a pale pink pig, his head on a stump. The screaming starts when they smash his skull with a sledgehammer. The pig doesn't die, but runs into the jungle, followed by some growling dogs and laughing Mon. More screams float from the jungle, and then it is quiet, as four Mon emerge from the fog, carrying the pig, one man holding each pink leg.

Later, twelve men and two women gather in a large hut. They are among the 700 refugees who have arrived at this border camp within the last two months, adding to the 2,000-plus people already here. The recent arrivals left their homes and walked for four days across the mountains. Some did not make it. They were shot by the Burmese army, called the Tatmadaw. The government troops had been forcing them to work on the Ye-Tavoy railroad, an extension of the "Death Railway" constructed by the Japanese army during World War II.

To build the "New Death Railway," the Tatmadaw takes one person per Mon and Tavoyan household, often holding them in guarded labor camps. If a family can't provide someone to work, it must pay a fine. The workers are not paid, and are not given food. Sometimes they must rent their construction tools. They are given neither medicine nor rest if they are sick. If they stop working, the soldiers beat them. Some work in chains for twenty-four hours straight. Young and old, women and men are treated alike,

One man in his mid-thirties was arrested for being a suspected rebel and put in wooden stocks for four days, beaten, and then forced to work for six months.

Another man fled after his twenty-one-year-old cousin, a mother of two, was tied to a pole and raped by three Tatmadaw soldiers. They poked her with a bayonet and then raped her again. Then they took all her belongings, including her earrings.

A sixty-year-old woman had to pay the SLORC because her family could not provide a worker. When she ran out of money, she had to leave. Only forty-five of ninety families were left in her village. The rest had fled their homes and farms.

The Karen and other rebel groups living in Burma's border region have been battling the government since 1948. After a generation of murders, disappearances, and starvation, National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi led students and monks in massive, nonviolent demonstrations in 1988. The protests ended as 10,000 people were shot down in the streets and thousands more were detained and tortured.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council seized control of the government and changed the country's name to Myanmar, imposed martial law, and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

The Burmese people continue to be bludgeoned by the military junta. And although the U.S. government has declared its support for the democratic movement, it has done little to put that support into practice. Meanwhile, U.S. corporations have eagerly embraced Asian and European companies' policy of "constructive engagement" in Burma.

Using the invested dollars of companies like Unocal, Texaco, ARCO, Total, CALTEX (a joint venture of Chevron and Texaco), and Pepsi, the Burmese government carries out environmental destruction and genocide. The SLORC has an embassy in Washington and retains its seat at the United Nations. The U.S. embassy is open for business in Rangoon, with a DEA presence and a commercial attachi available to provide companies with advice on how to invest in Burma.

Since the SLORC's creation in 1988, oil companies have provided between $400- and $500 million to the military regime. Between 60 and 80 percent of this money is used to arm the Tatmadaw.

Recently, Secretary of State Warren Christopher has hinted that the United States may take an even more conciliatory stand with the SLORC. The release of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest on July 10, 1995, may give the State Department a reason to relax its posture on Burma, and fuel corporate propaganda that says "constructive engagement" is working.

In early February of 1995, the government's Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise signed a $1 billion contract with the consortium of oil companies, including the United States' Unocal. France's Total, and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, to supply natural gas through Thailand via a pipeline through Mon and Karen land. As politicians celebrated the deal in Bangkok, the Tatmadaw drove 10,000 more people across the Thai border.

Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest came shortly after the Burmese ambassador returned to Rangoon from Washington, D.C., to brief the SLORC leaders on the mood of the Congress and on possible sanctions against the junta. It came shortly before a conference of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the announcement by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, that he would introduce a trade-sanctions bill in Congress that would ban U.S. companies from trading with or investing in Burma. While the SLORC has attempted to create a positive image of itself by releasing San Suu Kyi, it has launched new military offensives against the Karens and the Karen National Union (KNU).

Aung San Suu Kyi herself has criticized foreign corporations for "coming to do business when it is a matter of life and death for all of us." If Unocal and Total proceed with their pipeline construction, a 200-foot-wide scar will be cut from the Andaman Sea through the rain forest, twenty-seven miles to Nai et Taung. Wetlands, riverbeds, and farmland will be destroyed, and the offshore section will damage fragile coral reefs and fishing grounds.

The Tatmadaw has started to relocate the inhabitants along the pipeline route, forcing them to set up refugee camps along the Thai border. In a Karen camp south of Nai et Taung, Than Min, the village doctor, draws a map in the dirt to show the flight of the people.

"First the SLORC army forced us into Thailand," he says. "Then the Thai military burned our village. They did it twice. Now we must move again."

Thailand does not recognize Than Min's people as refugees, and the Thai army has been cutting off medicine and rice supplies provided by nongovernmental organizations. The shortages are designed to force the fleeing villagers back into Burma and pressure the rebels to sign ceasefire agreements with the SLORC.

Than Min believes his people are being moved around to make way for the pipeline.

"It will come out of Burma at Nai et Taung and pass right near here," he says, pointing to the forest-covered mountains. "Tomorrow more families will leave here for Burma. They will walk twenty kilometers. This is not good. First we need the fighting to stop, then we can go back to Burma. In that order."

But it is unlikely that the fighting will stop any time soon.

"As the pipeline is built, the fighting will follow it," says Ye Kyaw, who runs a Karen refugee camp inside Burma. Many of his camp's residents arrived from the pipeline area. They left because they were tired of being forced to construct roads and military installations for the Tatmadaw.

The SLORC has recently moved seventeen battalions into the area to clear out rebel resistance, using the unwilling aid of villagers. Amnesty International has issued a report that the Tatmadaw has been using civilians to carry weapons and ammunition into combat zones. They also use them as human mine sweepers.

The pipeline's path through the rain forest will bisect the Karen's territory, allowing the Tatmadaw to carry out its "Four Cuts Strategy": depriving the rebels of information, food, finances, and recruits.

Insurgent groups like the Karen National Union and the New Mon State Party have vowed to sabotage construction of the pipeline, and, if it is completed, to turn it into a "snake of fire."

The New Mon State Party signed a cease-fire with the SLORC in late June. But there have been a number of violent deaths related to the pipeline. On March 8, 1995, five Total employees were killed in a KNU attack near the village of Kanbuak, Burma. The KNU's Fourth Brigade attacked a surveying crew after issuing a statement condemning the pipeline project and related human-rights abuses. The rebels were also upset over recent comments by Unocal president John Imle insinuating that the Karen and Mon were to blame for increased SLORC repression.

The All Burma Students' Democratic Front, a rebel group associated with the Karen and Mon, also maintains a presence in the area.

Meanwhile, the clearing of the forest is opening up new fields of fire.

Many refugees believe that the forced construction of the "New Death Railway" is related to the gas pipeline, since it crosses the pipeline's route, and could be conveniently used to transport materials and soldiers.

The SLORC claims that its forced labor policy is actually a form of voluntary labor--that it is an old tradition for people to work for "the good of their villages."

But the villages are being abandoned, the farms seized without compensation, and the people are in refugee camps far from their homeland.

Unocal and Total have conceded that the SLORC is using slave labor, and claim they will not use the railroad because of it.

The companies would not risk the damaging public relations connected with paying their workers nothing. Minimal wages are a different matter. Total claims to have 200 employees involved in the surveying process, all of whom are being paid. But the Tatmadaw takes more than half of their wages. Total executives are aware of the wage skimming, but say they can't be held accountable.

"But they are accountable," says Faith Doherty of the Southeast Asian Information Network, "because they are dealing with the SLORC."

Unocal and Total knew in advance whom they would be dealing with in Burma. Reprecht von Arnim of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Thailand made a public statement in September 1994 that the SLORC would most likely use slave labor on any infrastructure projects.

Besides the Ye-Tavoy railway, the military junta has used slave labor on a number of tourism-related projects in connection with its "Visit Myanmar '96" promotional effort.

Doherty bas been meeting with villagers and rebels in the pipeline area, exchanging information on Unocal/Total construction plans.

"You can't just look at the issue of corporations using forced labor or not," she says. "This is an investment issue. They should not be there."

Many environmentalists and humanrights advocates in the United States agree. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Bay Area Burma Roundtable have been organizing boycotts against the oil companies and Pepsico, including its subsidiaries Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Frito-Lay, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has warned Unocal that under US. tort law, the company could be legally liable for any death or destruction associated with its operation.

This kind of pressure has produced some results. Levi Strauss, Liz Claiborne, Eddie Bauer, and Amoco have pulled out of Burma, although Amoco claims its withdrawal was for financial reasons only.

In February 1995 the city council of Berkeley passed a resolution barring the city from buying goods or services from companies operating in Burma, and in August, Madison, Wisconsin, followed suit. A statewide ban has passed the lower house and is currently before the state senate in Massachusetts. Simon Billenness of Franklin Research Development in Boston says he expects similar "selective purchasing" laws to be introduced in ten new cities by the end of the year.

Unocal says it has been monitoring the situation and will not tolerate humanrights violations in any of its project areas. But Unocal's fact-finding mission consisted of a one-day helicopter tour. So far, the company has ignored the requests of the KNU to conduct interviews with refugees who have fled the pipeline area, and Unocal representatives have not met with Karen or Mon leaders.

Unocal claims to be a "good corporate citizen" and, in a stockholders' report, CEO Roger Beach says the company conducts all its "business activities--in any country--ethically and responsibly, or we don't do business there at all."

Small fires burn around the monastery, increasing the heat of the sun. San Moe cuts bamboo poles to use as supports for the makeshift building. He used to be a monk, until he joined the All Burma Students' Democratic Front and was shot in the femur at the Battle of Sleeping Dog Hill. A scar marks his thigh at the bullet's point of entry. A tattoo of a demonic ogre called a Bilu decorates his back.

The thirty families in the camp where San Moe lives have been forced to move three times since the beginning of 1995, after the All Burma Students' Democratic Front abandoned the base called Dawn Gwin, north of Manerplaw.

Each time the families have attempted to establish a community, with a school, a hospital, and a monastery, they have been told to relocate and have had to survive with nothing more than plastic sheets for shelter.

The SLORC has recently intensified its military operations against the rebels here in order to secure the area for timber and hydroelectric projects.

In 1993, the junta discontinued its contracts with Thai loggers, saying they would be renewed only after the border areas were secured. Eager to begin logging again, the Thai government has helped the Tatmadaw to secure the border, initiating a program to keep the hill tribes out of Thailand, removing those who arrived after 1991. The Thais have also proposed a plan to combine all sixteen Karen refugee camps into two locations and police them with soldiers.

The Thais have allowed the Tatmadaw to cross the border. In May 1995, the Thai army began raiding Karen border camps to seize weapons and appease the SLORC. The Thai troops operate with the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group, which gives foreign armies counterinsurgency advice.

The Rainforest Action Network estimates that Burma's teak forests Twill be eliminated in two or three years. The SLORC, the Thai government, and U.S. teak importers like Dean Hardwoods and Teak Imports International stand to profit, and the jungle and its inhabitants face probable extinction.

One of the jungle's inhabitants walks along a stream toward a hut where a wedding is being held. The girl wears a T-shirt that says, "Save the Salween--Damn the Dams," a reference to the SLORC's plan to build a hydroelectric dam on the Upper Salween River, reportedly financed by Chase Manhattan Bank. It is another way to increase the flow of money into Burma--and the flow of refugees into Thailand, adding to the 80,000 already there.

After a Buddhist monk performs the wedding, the girl and some of her teenaged friends gather around a battery-operated boom box and dance in their dislocated home in the jungle.

Back in the city, a Burmese student, Ea Nang, looks up from her glass of Pepsi. "After the attack on the Total workers in Kanbuak, my friend had to carry one of the bodies on the plane in Rangoon. The man killed was married. He had a six-week-old baby."

As long as the corporate war goes on, the bodies will continue to stack up at the airport in Rangoon.

At the same airport, soldiers climb into a Huey gunship, which shudders and heads off to put in its eight-hour shift, cutting a swath through the jungle, tearing through forests, villages, animals, and people, leaving behind profits and skeletons.

Brad Miller is a freelance writer who recently traveled to Burma. For more information on grassroots action on Burma, contact: Franklin Research & Development, 711 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA 2111; Progressive Asset Management, 1814 Franklin Street, Suite 710, Oakland, CA 94612; or Citizens for Participation in Political Action, 25 West Street, Boston, MA 02111.