Huge energy projects to transport oil and gas across Myanmar to China are fuelling human rights abuses, including forced labour, violence, evictions and land confiscation, activists warned Tuesday.

The deployment of 6,600 government troops to guard a corridor for the pipelines, being laid from Myanmar's western coast to its northeastern border with China, risks increasing abuses and ethnic unrest, according to a report by the Shwe Gas Movement.

The community-based campaign organisation said that pipeline-related infrastructure is being built with forced labour and land has been confiscated to make way for project roads and military camps.

It urged firms such as China National Petroleum Corp. and South Korea's Daewoo International to withdraw from the projects, which will transport natural gas from Myanmar and oil from the Middle East and Africa to China.

"Companies are ignoring widespread abuses and worsening civil war," said Wong Aung of the Shwe Gas Movement. "The investors should pull out now before the project blows up in their faces."

According to the group, offensives by the Myanmar army to clear ethnic rebels out of resource-rich areas in northern Kachin and Shan states since March 2011 have displaced an estimated 50,000 people.

In western Rakhine State, it said fishermen had been banned from certain areas near sites where a deep sea port, gas terminal, and oil transfer point are being constructed.

Coral reefs in the area have also been damaged due to dynamite dredging to clear the way for an undersea natural gas pipeline, it added.

Local residents are afraid to speak out against the projects for fear of serious repercussions, and those who have spoken out have been threatened, beaten and jailed, it alleged.

The organisation called on Myanmar to use its natural gas domestically to help the impoverished country, which faces severe energy shortages.

"These natural gas reserves could transform Burma's economy," said Wong Aung, using the country's former name.

"Instead the regime is selling out our economic future to China."

A civilian administration has been nominally in charge of Myanmar since March, following a controversial election last year, but its ranks are dominated by former generals.

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