“There’s little chance of a return to normalcy soon.”
More than two years after the military in Myanmar launched a coup d’etat that seized power from the duly elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, earnest efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to mediate the internal conflict appear to have achieved meager results.
In fact, while the head of Myanmar’s military junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, had agreed to most of the proposals put forward by ASEAN leaders during a summit in Jakarta in April last year to resolve the crisis, it appears that the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar military is called, had basically overruled him and opted to pursue a scorched-earth policy against all those opposed to it.
The junta chief had agreed to the proposal of the regional grouping for the immediate cessation of violence, the start of constructive dialogue among all parties, access to humanitarian assistance, and the appointment of a special ASEAN envoy who would be allowed to visit the country.
He did not agree, however, to calls for the release of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.
As things now stand, therefore, Myanmar is still in the grip of civil war, with the military having killed more than 1,500 civilians and arrested more than 12,000 during mass protest actions. The junta has also launched air strikes and pursuit operations against armed rebels in the hinterlands, killing more civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands, creating a serious humanitarian crisis.
A covert group of activists calling themselves Justice for Myanmar recently came out with a study focusing on the ASEAN governments and businesses that have supplied arms, funds and investments to the Myanmar military.
An Indonesian state-owned enterprise, PT Pindad, exported bullets to Myanmar in 2020. Pindad has a cooperation agreement with an arms brokerage company owned by the son of the Myanmar military junta’s planning and finance minister.
A subsidiary of a Thai company, PTT Public Co. Ltd, whose majority shareholder is the Government of Thailand, is an operator and investor in multiple gas exploration projects in Myanmar. In 2017-18, the Myanmar government received over USD$40 million for one of these gas projects alone and these funds now flow to the military junta.
Viettel Global, a telecommunications company owned by the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, is a joint investor in mobile telephone company Mytel, alongside a Myanmar military conglomerate.
Mytel provides a major source of revenue for the Myanmar military. The study also said a Philippine arms manufacturing company, United Defense Manufacturing Corporation (UDMC), supplied firearms to Myanmar as the military launched its campaign of genocide against the Rohingya in August 2017.
As we reported earlier, the Ayala Corporation, the Philippines’ oldest conglomerate, has also established a foothold in Myanmar since 2019 with an investment of $237 million, or more than P12 billion, in the Yoma Group. This business group is engaged in multiple sectors such as real estate, banking, automotive, health care, power, and tourism, among others.
A fugitive from China who holds Cambodian citizenship is said to be the main investor in the Yatai City project in Shwe Koko, a huge real estate, casino and entertainment development in Myanmar with its own cryptocurrency. Yatai City is being developed as a joint venture with the Karen State Border Guard Force, a militia group under the command of the Myanmar military.
Meanwhile, the financial sector of Singapore is a key source of support for the business activities of the Myanmar military and its partners. Singapore’s stock exchange has been used by Emerging Towns & Cities Ltd (ETC) to raise funds for a property development that pays millions of dollars in rent to the quartermaster general of the Myanmar army, whose office is tasked with the procurement of weapons.
According to Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung: “ASEAN and its member states are implicated in lining the pockets of the terrorist junta and supporting its grave crimes….ASEAN governments and companies must immediately end business with the military junta and its partners, and stop supplying arms and equipment to the terrorist military.”
The group is also urging ASEAN’s dialogue partners, namely Australia, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union, to “impose targeted sanctions against the military junta, its businesses and partners.”
At the rate things are going in Myanmar, there’s little chance of a return to normalcy soon.
With Myanmar’s military junta engaged in killing unarmed protesters in the cities and search-and-destroy operations against armed rebels in the rural areas, it is clear that the time has come for the international community to act with dispatch to stop the human rights violations and hasten the country’s transition to return to democratic rule after many years of military dictatorship since the 1960s.
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