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Article

23 Oct 2017

Author:
Paul Garvey & Matt Chambers, The Australian

Australia: Woodside's chief executive to assess ramifications for company of abuses against Rohingya in Myanmar

"Woodside CEO Coleman to assess Myanmar Rohingya crisis", 20 October 2017

Woodside Petroleum chief executive Peter Coleman will travel to Myanmar...to personally assess the humanitarian crisis affecting the nation, amid warnings from human rights experts that the company risks ethical and even legal damage from continuing to invest there.

Woodside was among the first international oil and gas companies to enter the highly prospective nation after the country began to open its doors to the rest of the world.

But the nation’s social and economic emergence has been threatened by the crisis surrounding Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya ethnic minority. There have been allegations of severe human rights abuses and even genocide against the Rohingya, with several governments and aid groups condemning the actions of the military and regime.

The bulk of the company’s ground sits off the coast of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where most of the alleged atrocities have taken place, and any pipeline connecting Woodside’s discoveries with Asian markets would almost certainly have to cross through the region...

Mr Coleman said the company was watching closely to see how Myanmar worked through the “complex” situation.

Keren Adams, the director of advocacy at the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre, said Woodside was “walking a very fine line in terms of its human rights obligations”...

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