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The international oil giants Total and Chevron have suspended some cash dividends to Myanmar’s state-owned oil and gas company MOGE, amid increasing pressure for Western oil and gas firms to cut their ties with the military government.
In a statement Wednesday, Total said that due to “the unstable context in Myanmar,” the two oil and gas majors made the decision to suspend cash payments to the pipeline company Moattama Gas Transportation Company Limited (MGTC), in which MOGE owns a 15 percent stake.
Total added that it “condemns the violence and human rights abuses occurring in Myanmar” and would comply with any Western sanctions imposed on the country. The U.S. firm Chevron expressed its support for the move in a separate statement Wednesday.
The people of Myanmar have been hit this year by a double whammy of a deadly new wave of the coronavirus and a military coup, which added political turmoil and military violence to their already difficult lives and poverty as result of decades of war in border regions and mismanagement by the same army that seized power on Feb. 1.
Reportedly, he has been transferred to Yangon's Insein Prison, a detention center used by the ruling military junta, notorious for holding political prisoners