Arakan News Agency
A socially responsible investment firm and a Roman Catholic international religious congregation announced that they have filed the first shareholder resolution focused on the persecuted Burmese Rohingya minority, calling on California-based Chevron Corporation to evaluate a policy of not doing business with governments that are believed to be engaged in genocide or crimes against humanity.
Filed by Azzad Asset Management and the Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk, U.S. Province, the proposed resolution urges the oil giant to halt its relationship with the government of Burma (Myanmar) until that country ends the state-sanctioned violence against its Rohingya minority. It is the first time a shareholder resolution focused on the Rohingya has been submitted to a U.S. corporation.
The proposal was prepared in consultation with the International Campaign for the Rohingya and is expected to be voted on by stockholders at the Chevron annual meeting in May 2017. It describes the recent violence by Burma’s army against the ethnic Rohingya people in Arakan state in western Burma. Through its subsidiary Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co., Ltd., Chevron entered into a production sharing contract (PSC) with the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in 2015 to explore for oil and gas in the Arakan Basin.
In late November 2016, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights said that abuses perpetrated against the Rohingya by the Burmese military may amount to crimes against humanity. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has reported that the Rohingya are “at grave risk of additional mass atrocities and even genocide.”
