To the OECD Norway Contact Point:
Complaint Concerning Use of Telenor Tower for Genocide in Rakhine State
Ms. Cathrine Halsaa cathrine.halsaa@mfa.no
Ms. Bente Bakken beba@mfa.no, oecdncp@mfa.no
December 16, 2019
The following complaint outlines serious breaches of OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (“the OECD Guidelines”) by Telenor and its Myanmar subsidiary, Telenor Myanmar, in relation to its activities in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Specifically an incident in Alethankyaw, Maungdaw Township in August 2017 where a tower that is part of Telenor’s cellular network was used to aid the military as it carried out crimes against humanity against the local unarmed civilian population during a campaign of genocide. It is the aim of this complaint to have it thoroughly examined by the Norwegian National Contact Point (NCP) under the Specific Instance Procedure of the OECD Guidelines.
As the Norwegian government is the majority owner of Telenor, Norway has a particular obligation to investigate fairly and without bias Telenor’s connection to the killing in Alethankyaw. Many of the major humanitarian and human rights legal treaties that Norway is a signatory of, call on states to make sure that non-state actors adhere to the human rights obligations the treaties contain, including prohibitions on genocide and torture.
We, the Committee Seeking Justice for Alethankyaw, hope that Norway takes these obligations seriously.
