Monks from Drepond Loseling Monastary work on Mandala (sand painting) in library Atrium.

BP Amoco Refuses to End Investment in Controversial Tibet Pipeline

Tibetans, Activists Plan Day of Action

Tibet Support Groups have joined with environmental and human rights organizations in organizing a February 15th International Day of Action against BP Amoco (BP). Students, Tibetans, and activists will be gathering at BP offices in more than 20 cities and calling on the oil company to divest from PetroChina and end their involvement in China’s occupation of Tibet. BP offices from Paris to Delhi, from Los Angeles to New York, from Calgary to Miami will be faced with demonstrations, picketing, guerrilla theater, giant banners, and nonviolent direct action.

BP’s $598 million investment in PetroChina, a Chinese state-owned oil company, represents the most direct corporate involvement in the exploitation of Tibet today. SFT charges that the pipeline will have severe implications for the Tibetan people, including militarization and environmental degradation. Construction of the pipeline will cause an influx of Chinese gas workers into Tibet, accelerating China’s decades-long population transfer efforts that have made Tibetans a minority in much of their own nation. According to SFT BP has failed to provide adequate assurances that the pipeline will not be built with prison labor, the use of which is extremely common in the region.

Despite BP’s endorsement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the corporation has found itself in direct opposition with human rights organizations for its refusal to divest from PetroChina. “It is time for BP to take responsibility for the very real impacts of their investments,” said John Hocevar, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a network of 650 chapters in more than 30 countries. “After a year of excuses, denials, and the finest spin control that money can buy, people have had enough. BP’s refusal to divest from PetroChina will cause them headaches in their boardrooms, hassles at their Annual General Meeting, and lost business at their gas pumps.”

China is currently under fire for their human rights abuses in China and Tibet.

A report issued by Amnesty International this week cited “widespread and spreading” use of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners in China. This report reaffirms recent findings by Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State Department that the human rights situation is getting worse in Tibet and China. Tibetans describe a “second cultural revolution” in Lhasa where the current crackdown on Buddhist practice has seen children banned from religious activities and vigorous house to house searches and confiscation of photos of the Dalai Lama.

“BP is the largest foreign investor in PetroChina, and one of the largest investors in China of any kind,” said Thupten Tsering, SFT’s Grassroots Coordinator. “BP’s involvement in the exploitation of occupied Tibet for financial gain while claiming to have no influence in the company is corporate greed and irresponsibility at its worst. Fortunately, we are now living in a time where people won’t let BP get away with it.”