Photos/videos of the DC event can be found here at the
SumOfUs flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sumofus/albums/72157718943019609
Outside Chevron’s offices in DC, Chevron’s new DC lobbyist
Craig Hall was depicted on a piñata which protesters took turns batting. A
mobile billboard was parked outside Chevron’s office for several hours on
Friday, shaming the company for their continued support of the brutal military
regime.
Simon Billenness, Executive Director of the International
Campaign for the Rohingya said: “As the largest US investor in Myanmar, Chevron
has for many years not just bankrolled the Myanmar military, but also served as
the junta chief lobbyist and defenders in Washington DC.”
Groups are urging Chevron, French energy giant Total, South
Korea’s POSCO, and all other oil and gas companies operating in Myanmar to
suspend payments made to the state-owned oil and gas company -- and instead
place those payments in an escrow account where they will be released once
democracy is restored. More than 94,000 people have signed petitions by
campaigning groups SumOfUs and the International Campaign for the Rohingya.
Billenness added: “The civil disobedience movement has been
demonstrating outside the offices of oil companies like Chevron and Total in
Yangon, and now we are bringing their struggle to Chevron’s chief lobbying
office in Washington DC.”
The US has already placed sanctions on several military
Generals and a handful of military-run companies, but activists are now urging
the US government to also sanction the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) --
the state-run company that is the main financial lifeline for the military.
MOGE’s revenues are the largest source of foreign exchange available to the
military, forecasting to bring in USD1.5 billion this upcoming year. Military
leaders have anticipated sanctions, but probably not sanctions on gas revenues
which were exempted in the 2000s and were a linchpin for the regime’s financial
viability.
If MOGE is sanctioned, it would also effectively force
Chevron and Total to suspend payments to the military.
Rewan Al-Haddad, a Campaigns Advisor for SumOfUs said, “The sanctions placed so far don’t go nearly
far enough to create meaningful change. If we’re to have any impact on the
military’s calculus, the US must sanction MOGE immediately and urge governments
around the world to follow.”
On Friday morning, SumOfUs parked a mobile billboard outside
the Treasury Department urging the US Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen and
the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control Andrea Gacki to place MOGE
on the list of sanctioned companies.