Reply #4: Thanks for the link.

[ProSense]

But now the Bush administration is weighing in on the side of business, invoking the war on terrorism as a justification for asking the courts to dismiss such cases and stay out of foreign policy. The Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief in May in a notorious lawsuit claiming that Unocal bears responsibility for the brutal forced labor alleged to have accompanied construction of a natural gas pipeline in Burma (also known as Myanmar) in the 1990s. Villagers claim that Unocal's joint-venture partner in the pipeline, Myanmar's military, rounded up men to haul equipment, clean Army camps, and build roads and helipads. Those who refused to work for no pay, or who grew too weak to continue, were executed, the villagers say. One of them testified that she and her baby were thrown into a fire in retaliation when her husband resisted the soldiers. The infant died, and the couple fled to neighboring Thailand.

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The Bush administration, echoed by the business community, argues that the plaintiffs are abusing "an obscure provision" of an 18th-century law that was never meant to give individuals a basis for lawsuits. "These human-rights groups appear to be using this 214-year-old law as a hunting license to promote an antiglobalization, anticapitalist, and antibusiness agenda," says Occidental spokesman Lawrence Meriage. But advocates disagree. "The administration is trying to turn back the clock on one of the great advances in human-rights law in the last 23 years," says lawyer Robert Swift. He used the law to help obtain a $2 billion judgment against former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The alien tort law also helped obtain a $1.25 billion settlement from Swiss banks in 1998 for Holocaust survivors and heirs whose deposits were looted.