According to three former UN experts, companies in the US, Europe and Asia are helping Myanmar’s army produce weapons used in human rights abuses.
Companies from 13 countries – including France, Germany, China, India, Russia, Singapore and the US – provide supplies that are “critical” to Myanmar’s arms production, Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) – we read in a report published on Monday.
This support includes licenses, raw materials, software, parts and components, experts said.
As a result, Myanmar’s military, which launched a bloody crackdown on the opposition after taking power in a coup d’état in February 2021, has become largely self-sufficient in the production of a range of weapons. These weapons, manufactured in factories known as KaPaSa and run by the military’s Defense Industries Directorate (DDI), include firearms, ammunition and landmines and are mainly used to quell resistance to the coup, SAC-M said.
“Foreign companies enable Myanmar’s army – one of the world’s worst human rights violators – to produce many weapons which it uses to perpetrate daily atrocities against the people of Myanmar” – Yanghee Lee of SAC-M, former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation man in Myanmar, the statement said.
“Foreign companies and their home states have a moral and legal duty to ensure that their products do not facilitate human rights abuses against civilians in Myanmar,” Lee said. “Failure to do so makes them complicit in the barbaric crimes of the Burmese military.”
The report (PDF) relied on multiple sources, including interviews with people associated with the Myanmar military as well as leaked budget documents from the Ministry of Defence.
It found that high-precision machines manufactured by companies in Austria, Germany, Japan, Taiwan and the US are now being used by the Myanmar military in its arms factories. These automated tools have turning, milling and grinding functions and play a key role in weapons manufacturing, the report says.
The software to operate these machines is provided by companies from France, Israel and Germany.
Meanwhile, Singapore functions as a strategic transit point for potentially significant amounts of items, including some raw materials, that feed Myanmar’s military production of weapons, and Taiwan is considered an important route for the military to purchase precision machinery, the report said.
The military regularly ships these machines from KaPaSa factories to Taiwan, where they are serviced by technicians associated with European machine manufacturers before being shipped back to Myanmar.
Companies in China, such as the state-owned China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, are key in importing raw materials used to make weapons, while companies in India help import parts and components such as optical sights for small arms like sniper rifles, the report said. .
“States must investigate and, if necessary, initiate administrative or legal action against companies whose products we have identified as enabling DDI to produce weapons used by the Myanmar military in its indiscriminate attacks on civilians,” Chris Sidoti of SAC-M, former said member of the UN’s independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar.
“Foreign companies that profit from the suffering of the people of Myanmar must be held accountable,” he said.
The report also detailed instances of the military’s use of locally manufactured weapons against the people of Myanmar, such as the suppression of peaceful protests against a coup d’état, and warned that companies involved in supplying or supplying essential products to DDI could be found complicit in these and other atrocities committed by the forces national security.
“Myanmar’s military has built a robust arms industry that makes it largely self-sufficient in terms of its ability to produce small arms, light weapons and ammunition, which it uses to violently suppress the people of Myanmar,” said Marzuki Darusman of SAC-M.
“However, DDI’s reliance on external supplies to sustain arms production means it remains vulnerable to external pressure,” said Darusman, former head of the UN’s independent international fact-finding mission in Myanmar.
“UN member states should do everything in their power to limit the access of the Myanmar military to these supplies in order to protect the people of Myanmar, including by adopting targeted sanctions against KaPaSa, its leadership and its intermediary network.”
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