TotalEnergies already announced to move out of Myanmar this year. But still revenues keep flowing from TotalEnergies to the military junta. Therefore 459 civil society organisations submitted an open letter to the French government urging them to stick to EU sanctions and not provide any exemptions for TotalEnergies! For more details check out the page on the Blood Money Campaign.

Open Letter to President Macron:
Do not authorize TotalEnergies’ use of exemptions to EU sanctions!

Worldwide call: Do not authorize TotalEnergies’ use of exemptions to EU Sanctions on the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE)

We urge President Macron and the French Government to:
1. Prevent millions of dollars of gas revenues reaching the junta by refusing to authorize TotalEnergies’ use of exemptions to EU sanctions – instead enforce EU sanctions and ensure that TotalEnergies does not hand over its share and interests to MOGE, and continue making and facilitating payments to MOGE before it exits or bring in a new operator that will collude with the junta.

2. Continue to support the Myanmar people’s efforts to defeat the brutal military junta and build a federal democracy and stop TotalEnergies from funding genocidaires, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Please stand with justice and humanity!

459 Myanmar, regional & international organizations including Civil Society Organizations, Community Based Organizations, Human Rights Organizations, Humanitarian & charity organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, strike committees and labour unions from 20 countries.

Announcement by
Blood Money Campaign:  

Call on President Macron and the French Government to refuse to allow TotalEnergies to use exemptions to EU Sanctions!

Targets: President Macron, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French Embassy in Myanmar, French Ambassador

16-20 June 2022

#NoExemption #FreezePaymentsToJunta
#BloodMoneyMyanmar

We urge local and international Strike Committees, Revolution Organizations, CSOs, Unions and INGOs to be involved in the Blood Money Campaign:  Preventing millions of dollars in gas revenues to reach the genocidal junta and to stop its brutality and disincentivizes it from the coup.

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UPDATE (June 20th, 2022)

Joint Statement

Myanmar and International: Call on President Macron and the French Government to refuse to allow TotalEnergies to use exemptions to EU Sanctions, 459 Organizations from 20 countries.

We urge President Macron and the French Government
1. To prevent millions of dollars of gas revenues reaching the Myanmar military criminal junta by refusing to authorize TotalEnergies’ use of exemptions to EU sanctions.
2. It is imperative that the French government continues to support the Myanmar people’s efforts to end the brutal military dictatorship and build a federal democracy and stop TotalEnergies from funding genocidaires.
President Macron must listen to his own lawmakers and officials and stop capitulating to a corporation that has demonstrated a willingness to disregard the Myanmar people and fund a military junta that is actively engaging in genocide and crimes against humanity.

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Online activities and ground movement

1. Photo Campaign (to post on Facebook + Twitter)
2. Comment Campaign
3. Twitter Trending
4. Ground Protest!

1. Photo Campaign

Call on President Macron and the French Government to refuse to allow TotalEnergies to use exemptions to EU Sanctions!

Write the requested text on a paper and upload the photo to your social media accounts with the bloody three-finger salute sign.
You can wear a red shirt, a blood-stained shirt, and a red armband.

Requested text on paper:

President Macron & French Government – Don’t Allow Exemptions

President Macron – Stop TotalEnergies funding genocide

French Government –  #NoExemption

Hashtags to use:

#NoExemption #FreezePaymentsToJunta #BloodMoneyMyanmar #Total_StopSponsoringJunta

Please send your photos to the BMC page: fb.com/BloodMoneyCampaignMM and email to bloodmoneycampaign21@gmail.com and asia@icl-cit.org.

2. Comment Campaign (Facebook and Twitter)

Please comment with photos that the genocidal junta commits atrocities in Myanmar!

Facebook:

French President: fb.com/EmmanuelMacron
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: fb.com/france.diplomacy 

French Embassy in Myanmar: fb.com/France.Birmanie 
French Ambassador: fb.com/christian.lechervy.3

#FreezePaymentsToJunta  #NoExemption

For the comments, you can use these sample texts (.doc).

3. Twitter mass trending

#FreezePaymentsToJunta #NoExemption

Accounts to mention:

French President: @EmmanuelMacron
French Diplomacy: @francediplo_EN
French Ambassador: @CLechervy

On the Twitter Team For Revolution Facebook page, you can see the dates and times to join Twitter mass trending. To support the mass trending, the below pictures and these sample tweets (.doc) were created!

4. Ground Protest

President Macron and French Government – Don’t Allow Exemptions
ပြင်သစ် အစိုးရအနေနဲ့ ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်တွေ အသုံးပြုခွင့် မပေးပါနဲ့။

President Macron – Stop TotalEnergies funding genocide
ပြင်သစ် သမ္မတ – တိုတယ် က ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွေ ထောက်ပံ့နေတာကို ရပ်တန့်ပေးပါ။

French Government – #NoExemption
ပြင်သစ်အစိုးရ  #ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်တွေကိုအသုံးပြုခွင့်မပေးနဲ့။

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5. Massive Calling and Mailing

Only AFTER June 20th!

Let’s call and speak to the French Government not to allow TotalEnergies to use exemptions and to stop the funding of atrocities in Myanmar. No business with complicity in crimes against humanity, other mass atrocities and genocidal junta!

French Embassy’s phone number: +95 1 212 520
Email Address: ambafrance.rangoun@diplomatie.gouv.fr 

Ten months after the military coup in Myanmar –
new elements on TotalEnergies’ complicity in the military’s atrocities

The press conference is over. To summarize the most important aspects the below recap was created.

Some videos which were part of the press conference:

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Invitation
Press Conference
Wednesday December 1, 2021 at 2 p.m. (Paris Time)
At CICP (green room – 1st floor)

In an open letter to be published on December 1st at the initiative of the Blood Money Campaign (BMC) x Global Myanmar Spring Revolution (GMSR) more than 720 civil society organizations and unions challenge TotalEnergies on its complicity in atrocity crimes, and of the French company’s support of army crimes, and respond to the company’s unacceptable defence of the status quo.

Monthly payments for TotalEnergies’ Yadana gas project are one of the junta’s main sources of foreign income, reaching over US $ 400 million annually. By making and facilitating payments to accounts controlled by a criminal junta that is not recognized as the Government of Myanmar, TotalEnergies is breaking the country’s laws, its contracts and its human rights obligations. Yet it is fuelling a desperate criminal regime, which seeks to hold itself in place through terror but continually failing to control the country.

While December 1, 2021 will mark the 10 months of the attempted military coup, the Burmese people know they are at a pivotal time in their fight against the junta and for democracy. Burmese civil society demands accountability from TotalEnergies and calls on it to suspend all payments made to the junta whose crimes amount to crimes against humanity according to the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. A report also documents calls from staff of Total and its subcontractors to stop revenues to the junta. The petition initiated by GMSRxBMC has already collected more than 224,000 signatures. The call of civil society is also that of Myanmar’s National Unity Government: it is high time that TotalEnergies follows the call of the Myanmar people.

December 1 also sees the 10th Annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, which takes stock of 10 years of the United Nations “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” TotalEnergies undertook to comply with UNGP’s principles, instead it is marking the anniversary by funding and facilitating the Myanmar military’s atrocity crimes.

The conference will be moderated by Sophie Brondel of Info Birmanie, a former lawyer on International Human Rights Law, Criminal Law & Minority Rights,

in presence of:

• Ro Nay San Lwin, Activist and co-founder of Free Rohingya Coalition, Human Rights Defender
• Ben Hardman, Lawyer, Myanmar Legal & Political Advisor, EarthRights International
• Thanegi Preuss, Activist, 1988 pro-democracy revolutionist, CRPH / NUG Support Team (Germany)

The following experts and activists will attend by video-conference and will remain available to answer questions:

• Khin Ohmar, Human Rights Activist, founder of Progressive Voice Myanmar
• Debbie Stothard, founder of ALTSEAN Burma, Advocate & Trainer for Women’s Leadership, Business & Human Rights
• Mon Zin, An Advocate for Global Myanmar Spring Revolution, Blood Money Campaign & Women Activists Myanmar (WAM)
• Ko Ye, Blood Money Campaign, Natural Resources, Mineral & Fossil Fuels Activist
• TotalEnergies Worker’s Representative

A press kit will be given to the journalists attending, including testimonials from TotalEnergies employees in Myanmar.

Press contact:

In Person attendance:
Sophie Brondel, Info Birmanie coordinator, +33 (0)7 62 80 61 33
sophie@info-birmanie.org

RSVP Virtual attendance:
Registration for zoom link to join: https://bit.ly/pcgmsrbmc
Blood Money Campaign contact, bloodmoneycampaign21@gmail.com
Global Myanmar Spring Revolution, globalmmspringrevolution2222@gmail.com
Phone: +61 (0) 426 795 509

Facebook event page: https://fb.me/e/2W2XyWfuF

Open Letter handed over to TotalEnergies – incl. list of supporting organisations (excl. those in Myanmar)