Total Oil Faces Burma Protests At AGM

Burma Campaigners have purchased shares in Total Oil in order to attend the company’s Annual General Meeting in Paris on Friday.  Total Oil is one of the largest corporate funders of the military dictatorship in Burma, which is currently denying aid to millions of its citizens following a devastating cyclone which struck the country on May 3rd.

“Total Oil has made much of its $2.2 million donation to cyclone victims, but this is a fraction of the $500 million it gives to the regime each year,” said Johnny Chatterton, Campaigns Officer at Burma Campaign UK. “Total Oil has helped keep the Burma regime in power, and that regime is now killing thousands of its people by denying aid to them.”

Total Oil is the lead partner in the Yadana gas field in Burma, which has earned billions of dollars for Burma’s brutal dictators, who spend half the government’s annual income on the military.  The generals used the first downpayment from the gas field to purchase ten MIG jets from Russia, despite 90 percent of the population living in poverty.

“The regime deny aid to their people, shoot monks on the streets, and their soldiers rape women and children, yet still Christophe de Margerie thinks it is acceptable to give them hundreds of millions of dollars every year,” said Johnny Chatterton. “Total Oil is living in a moral stone age, investors should insist Christophe de Margerie drags the company into the modern age.”

Christophe de Margerie is Chief Executive of Total Oil.

For more information contact Johnny Chatterton on 020 7324 4714

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