Published February 1, 2021
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The Australian government has condemned the actions of the Myanmar military after the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in what appears to be a military coup.
However, it’s hard to take the words of our own government seriously when its actions are the complete opposite. They’ve spent at least $400,000 of taxpayer money on funding the very people they’re now condemning. There’s the more than $3 million to a company heavily linked to the Myanmar military. And you expect us to take your words of condemnation without so much as a raised eyebrow? Right.
RFA
Police and local authorities in Rakhine state’s Kyauktaw township on Monday took statements from family members of villagers believed to have been abducted last year by Myanmar military forces, with a military spokesman promising explanations if the army is shown to have been involved, Myanmar sources said.
The 18 men were taken away in two batches in mid-March, 2020 when soldiers from a Myanmar military infantry unit entered their community in Kyauktaw township amid fighting with the rebel Arakan Army (AA), later burning down dozens of homes in the 500-home ethnic Rakhine village tract.
Eight of the 18 Kyauktaw villagers were taken from Tin Ma Thit village on March 13, while the other 10 from Tin May Gyi village were arrested by troops on March 16, all on suspicion of having ties to the AA. The body of one of them was discovered a day later in a river, riddled with bullet holes.
One evening, as Ma Nway and her family were having dinner, soldiers from Myanmar’s armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, came to her house and asked for her husband. According to her account, they blindfolded him, took out their guns and beat him in front of her.
“At the time, I could only cry,” said Ma Nway, an ethnic Arakanese from Myanmar’s westernmost Rakhine State, who prefers not to reveal her identity for fear of reprisals. “I feared they would shoot me, so I held my tongue … I felt like they were the most brutal people in the world.”
Japanese beer conglomerate Kirin says
an investigation by Deloitte was unable to determine if the company has been
funding the Myanmar military through its joint ownership of domestic beer
companies. Critics say Kirin has been complicit in human rights abuses by
partnering with a Myanmar military-owned company.
Editorial
Japanese beer corporation Kirin has
said that an assessment of its ties with the Myanmar military was
“inconclusive” as to the company’s role in human rights abuses and military
operations.
Kirin has faced major criticisms over its joint ownership of Myanmar
alcohol companies with the military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd.
(MEHL). Since 2015, Kirin has held 51% ownership of both Mandalay Brewery
Photo courtesy of Min Aung Hlaing s website
A murky business partnership between the armed forces of Myanmar and Vietnam, with Myanmar’s Mytel telecom company as a nexus, helps funds Myanmar military atrocities in Rakhine state and other conflict zones, an investigative report by human rights activists says.
Mytel, Myanmar’s newest mobile operator established in 2018, provides the military with vast off-budget revenue and a means to access international communications technology, according to the group, Justice for Myanmar.
The group’s 161-page report titled “Nodes of Corruption, Lines of Abuse” says Mytel, owned by Myanmar and Vietnam military holding companies, is a “central node in the military’s network of corruption” that funds operations around Myanmar that lead to human rights abuses.