Unocal Project in Myanmar

Re “Myanmar Project Fueling International Controversy,” Nov. 24: For more than two years Unocal’s pipeline project has been documented, by the Karen and Mon peoples’ own human rights reporters, to be using forced labor on infrastructure, such as roads and helipads, well before other investigators. The article undervalues the social and political structure of the Karens and Mons, many of whom live in the pipeline region. These people have their own government, social services, economic means and armies. These armies have been defending their people from the SLORC army, which systematically pillages, rapes, tortures and murders innocent villagers in the pipeline region.

The area visited by the journalists in the story appears to have been sanitized of anyone who would speak of these atrocities.

PAMELA WELLNER

San Francisco

* Evelyn Iritani’s judicious overview of the controversy surrounding the Yadana project reflects one of the fundamental moral questions of our time: How low does one go to honor the bottom line?

Unocal and its French partner, Total, are investing $1 billion-plus to build an oil pipeline in Burma, despite the fact that the nation is captive to one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in modern history.

Unocal has protested that it can’t control this dictatorship. “What you’re asking us to determine is the legitimacy of a government,” argues its spokesperson, David Garcia. “That is not our job.” That’s precisely what those of us who oppose this project are so concerned about.

Total’s Herve Madeo points defensively to the handful of Burmese villages that his company has supplied with schools or medical facilities. As the millennium draws to a close, Madeo still explicates “the white man’s burden”: While you’re bolstering the slavery, at least spruce up the slave quarters.

RICHARD DeROY

Brentwood