Screening: Total Denial

Total Denial is the story of a historic lawsuit. Fifteen villagers from the jungles of Burma bring a suit against a giant oil corporation for human-rights abuses, in US courts. After 10 years of fierce legal battles, the impossible happens – they win.

For five years filmmaker Milena Kaneva collected accounts from Burmese villagers of forced labour, the relocation of villages, rape and murder associated with construction of the Yadana pipeline.

Her guide during this journey was Ka Hsaw Wa, a member of Burma’s Karen ethnic minority, and one of the leaders of the student movement for democracy in Burma in 1988 which was violently suppressed by the Burmese government.

For more than a decade, at considerable personal risk, he has gathered testimonies and other evidence on numerous cases of human rights and environmental abuse.

In 1995, along with the co-founder of Earth Rights International, Katie Redford, Ka Hsaw Wa  brought a landmark lawsuit against UNOCAL and TOTAL that drew international attention to the pervasive abuses in Burma.