Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: More than 45 firms from the United States, Europe and Asia have been helping Myanmar’s military in manufacturing weapons being used in human rights abuses against its own people, according to a report by former United Nations experts.
The report titled “Fatal Business: Supplying the Myanmar Military’s Weapon Production” was prepared by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) and revealed that companies from 13 countries – including France, Germany, the United States, India, Russia, China and Singapore – have been providing supplies to the Myanmar military that are “critical” to the production of weapons in the country. The foreign support has made the Myanmar military largely self-sufficient in manufacturing a wide range of weapons, it said.
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Weapons produced in Myanmar have been previously used and are still being used by the country’s military to commit widespread human rights abuses that amount to the most serious crimes as per international law, the report added.
Firms supplying raw material, parts, components
The supply by foreign companies includes raw materials, parts and components, end-items, high-precision Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines and associated technology. The material is acquired by the Myanmar junta’s Directorate of Defense Industries (DDI), commonly referred to as KaPaSa, and is used to make weapons such as guns, ammunition and landmines that are primarily being used to quash resistance to the coup, the report said.
“Foreign companies were enabling the Myanmar military – one of the worst human rights abusers in the world – to produce a large number of weapons it uses to commit daily atrocities against the people of Myanmar,” the SAC-M’s Yanghee Lee, a former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar, said in a statement.
Lee said that foreign firms and their home countries have moral and legal responsibilities to ensure their products are not facilitating human rights abuses against civilians in Myanmar, adding that failing to do so makes them complicit in the barbaric crimes of Myanmar military.
After seizing power via a military insurgency in February 2021, the Myanmar Junta has allegedly killed more than 2,730 people and arrested over 17,200 others in a bloody crackdown against the opposition.
SAC-M is an independent group of international experts working to support the Myanmar people with regard to human rights, peace, democracy, justice and accountability.
