Transnational legal conflict between peasants and corporations in Burma: human rights and discursive ambivalence under the US Alien Tort Claims Act

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511819193.012

7 - Transnational legal conflict between peasants and corporations in Burma: human rights and discursive ambivalence under the US Alien Tort Claims Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2011

John G. Dale

Edited by

Mark Goodale and

Sally Engle Merry

Show author details

John G. Dale: Affiliation:
George Mason University
Mark Goodale: Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Sally Engle Merry: Affiliation:
New York University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the 1990s, Unocal Oil Corporation made a deal with the authoritarian government of Myanmar (Burma) to build the Yadana Project, a natural gas pipeline. As part of that deal, the military junta that runs Myanmar forced local villagers to work for Unocal under some of the most deplorable conditions imaginable. The junta forced the peasants from their homes and made them work literally at gunpoint. Soldiers from Myanmar's army raped, tortured and, in some cases, murdered the forced laborers. Doe v. Unocal Corp., 963 F Supp 880 (C.D. Cal. 1997). They also used the workers as human shields and munitions porters against other peasants, often from their own villages, who the government had branded as rebels. The peasants working for Unocal on the Yadana Project were slaves – joining the ranks of the 27 million other people held as slaves in the world today (Bales 1999: 8–9).

Peasants such as those forced to work on the Yadana Project have little power within Burma. In 1988, they participated in a statewide pro-democracy movement that the military junta brutally crushed. The crackdown in Burma was bloodier than the one the following year in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. However, it received little international attention because it was not televised. Best estimates suggest that the death toll ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 citizens.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Practice of Human Rights
Tracking Law between the Global and the Local
, pp. 285 - 319

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819193.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alden, Edward. 2002. “Unocal wants Government to Assess Labour Lawsuit.” Financial Times, August 9, p. 3.

Amnesty International. 2004. “Appeals for Action: Myanmar: End Crackdown Now”, April 5. Available on-line at web.amnesty.org/pages/mmr-040603-action-eng, accessed February 8, 2007.

Amnesty International. 2006. “Urgent Action: Myanmar: Possible ‘disappearance’/Fear of torture/Arbitrary detention”, January 20. Available on-line at web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA160012006?, accessed February 8, 2007.

Baker, David R. 2005. “Chevron Donates to Lawmakers against China Bid; Politicians Deny Link to Stance on Oil Firm's Unocal Offer.” San Francisco Chronicle, July 23, p. C1.Google Scholar

Bales, Kevin. 1999. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Bassiouni, Cherif. 1996. “International Crimes: Jus Cogens and Obligatio Erga Omnes.” Law and Contemporary Problems 59: 63–74.CrossRef Google Scholar

Benson, Robert. 1999. Challenging Corporate Rule: A Petition to Revoke Unocal's Charter as a Guide to Citizen Action. New York: Apex Press.Google Scholar

Block, Fred. 1990. Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Block, Fred. 2001. “Introduction.” In Karl Polanyi. 2001 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 2d Paperback, Beacon edn, with a foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz and new introduction by Fred Block. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar

Brysk, Alison. 2000. From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Cleveland, Sarah H. 2001. “Norm Internalization and U.S. Economic Sanctions.” Yale Journal of International Law 26: 1–92.Google Scholar

Dale, John Gilbert. 2003. “Transnational Legal Space: Corporations, States, and the Free Burma Movement.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis.

EarthRights International. 2005. “Common Questions and Answer for ERI: What are the terms of the settlement?”, April 5. Available on-line at www.earthrights.org, accessed February 8, 2007.

EarthRights International. 2005b. “Senator Feinstein Introduces Bill to Protect Perpetrators of Human Rights Abuses”, October 20. Available on-line at www.earthrights.org/, accessed February 8, 2007.

EarthRights International. 2005c. “Senator Feinstein Puts the Breaks on Anti-ATCA Bill S. 1874.” October 25. Available on-line at www.earthrights.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=126&Itemid=41&lang=, accessed February 8, 2007.

Efron, Sonni. 2002. “Judge Lets Unocal Ask State Dept. to Intervene in Myanmar Lawsuit.” Los Angeles Times, August 9, p. C2.Google Scholar

Fink, Christina. 2001. Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule. New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar

Henkin, Louis, ed. 1981. The International Bill of Rights: The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar

Human Rights Documentation Unit (National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma) (1997), Human Rights Yearbook: 1996 Burma. Nonthaburi, Thailand.

Keck, Margaret E., and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998a. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar

Keck, Margaret E., and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998b. “Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Movement Society.” In Meyer, David S., and Tarrow, Sidney, eds., The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century. Lanham, Boulder, New York, and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar

Lamoreaux, Naomi R. 2000. “How Corporations Acquired Legal Personhood: Language and Economics in the Late-Nineteenth-Century United States.” Paper presented at the University of California, Davis Center for History, Society, and Culture, May 4.

Lifsher, Marc. 2005. “Unocal Settles Human Rights Lawsuit over Alleged Abuses at Myanmar Pipeline; A deal ends a landmark case brought by villagers who said soldiers committed atrocities.” Los Angeles Times, March 22, p. C1.Google Scholar

Lintner, Bertil. 1990. Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy. London and Bangkok: White Lotus.Google Scholar

Maung, Mya. 1992. Totalitarianism in Burma: Prospects for Economic Development. New York: Paragon House.Google Scholar

Meyer, David S. 1999. “Tending the Vineyard: Cultivating Political Process Research.” Sociological Forum 14(1): 79–92.CrossRef Google Scholar

Ridenour, Andrew. 2001. “Doe v. Unocal Corp., Apples and Oranges: Why Courts Should Use International Standards to Determine Liability for Violation of the Law of Nations under the Alien Tort Claims Act.” Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law 9: 581–603.Google Scholar

Roy, Laifungham Debabrata. 2002. “Enforced Disappearance,” March. Available on-line at www.manipuronline.com/Features/March2002/disappearance08_2.htm, accessed February 20, 2007.

Schock, Kurt. 1999. “People Power and Political Opportunities: Social Movement Mobilization and Outcomes in the Philippines and Burma.” Social Problems 46(3): 355–375.CrossRef Google Scholar

Smith, Martin. 1991. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London and New Jersey: Zed.Google Scholar

Smith, Michael Peter. 2001. Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar

Taylor, Robert H. 1998. “Political Values and Political Culture in Burma.” In Rotberg, Robert I., ed. Burma: Prospects for a Democratic Future. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 33–47.Google Scholar

Taylor, Verta. 1989. “Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance.” American Sociological Review 54: 761–775.CrossRef Google Scholar

US House Judiciary Committee. 1991. H. R. Report, No. 102–367, Pt. 1.

Walker, , John, M. Jr. 1997. “Domestic Adjudication of International Human Rights Violations Under the Alien Tort Statute.” Saint Louis University Law Journal 41(2): 543–549.Google Scholar

Yawnghwe, Chao-Tzang. 1995. “Burma: The Depoliticization of the Political.” In Alagappa, Muthiah, ed. Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 170–192.

Adra (Abdul-Rahman Omar) v. Clift, 195 F Supp 857 (D.Md. 1961).

Bolchos v. Darrel, 3 F Cas 810 (DSC 1795).

Bowoto v. Chevron Texaco Corp., 312 F Supp 2d 1229 (N.D. Cal. 2004).

Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F 2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980).

In re Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos Human Rights Litig., 25 F 3rd 1467, 1475 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 513 US 1126 (1995).

Doe v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 393 F Supp 2d 20 (D.D.C. 2005).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 963 F Supp 880 (C.D. Cal. 1997).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 27 F Supp 2d 1174 (C.D. Cal. 1998).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 67 F Supp 2d 1140 (C.D. Cal. 1999).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 110 F Supp 2d 1294 (C.D. Cal. 2000).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., F 3d 915 (9th Cir. 2001).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 395 F 3d 932 (9th Cir. 2002).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 395 F 3d 978 (9th Cir. 2003).

Doe v. Unocal Corp., 403 F 3d 708 (9th Cir. 2005).

Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F 3d (2d Cir. 1995).

National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma v. Unocal, Inc., 176 FRD 329 (C.D. Cal. 1997).

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 US 692 (2004).

Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F 2d (D.C. Cir. 1984).

Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 470 US 1003 (1985).

Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 226 F 3d 88 (2nd Cir. 2000).

Xuncax v. Gramajo, 886 F Supp 162 (D. Mass. 1995).

American Law Institute, Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 702 (1987).

142 Cong. Rec. § 8755 (daily ed. July 25, 1996).

Abolition of Forced Labor Convention (ILO No. 105), 320 UNTS 291, entered into force January 17, 1959.

Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, 28 USC § 1350 et seq.

United States Alien Tort Claims Act, 28 USC §1350 et seq.

Vienna Convention of the Law on Treaties, 1155 UNTS 331, entered into force January 27, 1980.