Resource information
Executive Summary: "This report is the culmination of a one year investigation by Amnesty International into alleged human
rights abuses by companies, including multinational companies, operating in Myanmar. The
report focuses on the Monywa copper mine project and highlights forced evictions, substantial
environmental and social impacts, and the repression, sometimes brutal, of those who try to protest.
It also raises serious questions about opaque corporate dealings and possible infringements of economic
sanctions on Myanmar. The report calls on the Government of Myanmar to urgently introduce
strong measures for the protection of human rights, and on multinational companies and the home
governments of those companies to ensure that due diligence is carried out to international standards
for all investment in Myanmar...This report examines the issues in relation to one major mining operation - the Monywa project -
made up of the Sabetaung and Kyisintaung (S&K) and the Letpadaung copper mines. During an
extensive one-year investigation, Amnesty International examined incidents that are specific to the
Monywa project as well as some of the wider structural issues – such as the processes for acquisition
of land and environmental protection – that will affect other extractive projects in Myanmar. The
organization found that, since its inception and throughout its various changes in ownership, the
Monywa project has been characterised by serious human rights abuses and a lack of transparency.
Thousands of people have been forcibly evicted by the government with the knowledge, and in some
cases the participation, of foreign companies. Environmental impacts have been poorly assessed
and managed, with grave long-term implications for the health and livelihoods of people living near
the mine. Protests by communities have been met with excessive force by police...".....CONCLUSION:
The Government of Myanmar is responsible for the serious human rights violations that have taken
place at the Monywa project over many years. It has forcibly evicted people and has failed to put in
place safeguards to protect mine-affected communities from environmental pollution which can im-
pact their rights to water and health, amongst other rights. It has shown an unwillingness to monitor
corporate activity or to hold companies accountable for the harm their operations cause.
The companies involved also bear responsibility. Despite a history of human rights violations sur-
rounding the mine, a Canadian company, and subsequently a Chinese company, have invested
without undertaking appropriate due diligence to ensure that past abuses were remediated and
future abuses prevented. They have profited from abuses that they knew or should have known were
happening, and have, in certain cases, themselves abused rights by participating in forced evictions
or failing to remediate environmental pollution.
The system that enabled the transfer of the Monywa project to a business venture that involved My-
anmar military interests, without any transparency as to how such a sale occurred, is emblematic of
the lack of accountability that exists around allocations of concessions and contracts in the extractive
industry in Myanmar.
The people of Myanmar must not see a resource curse unfold as it has done in so many other
countries where powerful economic interests profit from a context in which regulation is weak,
the government is unwilling to hold powerful political interests accountable and there is little or no
transparency. The home states of multinational corporations must ensure that these corporations
do not unjustly enrich themselves at the expense of Myanmar’s poorest people. The home states of
companies involved in the Monywa project – Canada and China – have failed to do this...".....The report also contains critical analyses of Myanmar's land legislation.
