India needs to take action on Myanmar coup

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 2/25/2021 11:40:22 AM


New Delhi, Feb 24 On February 1, Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, seized power from the civilian government in a coup nearly three months after the general election returned a landslide mandate for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The military justified the takeover on its unproven assumption that the election results were fraught with massive irregularities. It has also arrested Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and dozens of other civilian leaders. Since then, fierce protests have gripped almost all corners of Myanmar, with various segments of the population – from young students to industrial workers to Buddhist monks – joining a civil disobedience movement against the military coup. The scale and depth of the protests this time are truly unprecedented, surpassing even the 1988 and 2007 uprisings against the junta. On February 22, thousands, defying warnings by the military, thronged the streets in various cities and towns in a nationwide general strike dubbed as the “22222 Revolution” — a bittersweet throwback to the bloody 8888 Uprising of August 8, 1988. domestic opposition, there is also a surge in calls for the international community to act. This primarily entails imposing targeted sanctions on the Tatmadaw leadership (which the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada have already done) and choking its sources of funding. Analysts have argued that one of the main reasons the military took over from the elected government was so that it could protect its own financial interests and “unscrutinised economic domination.” There is much truth in this, given that the Tatmadaw has long maintained an elaborate network of for-profit businesses through two main conglomerates: Myanmar Economic Cooperation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL). The bulk of the profits go directly into the military’s out-of-budget coffers as well as the senior leadership’s pockets. This has given the Tatmadaw the financial heft required to dominate politics in Myanmar and also sustain its totalitarian regimes without depending on foreign aid. Moreover, the Tatmadaw, over the years, has forged commercial relationships with foreign companies seeking profitable returns in Myanmar’s gradually liberalizing economy. Such partnerships have only strengthened its financial clout. In fact, a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2019 by a Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar concluded that these foreign companies, through their commercial partnerships with the Tatmadaw, have contributed to “violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” in Myanmar. Indian companies, too, feature in this unenviable list of foreign entities doing business with the Tatmadaw. According to a “Dirty List” published by Burma Campaign UK (BCUK), eight Indian companies have (or had) commercial relations with the Tatmadaw and associated entities. These include both private and stateowned firms who have either sold military hardware to the Myanmar military or have business ties with military-owned firms. Of these, three are stateowned: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), and Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL). All of them have manufactured (or refitted) military-wares for the Tatmadaw, including Shyena lightweight torpedoes, helicopters, and a submarine. Among the private companies, Tata Group and Larsen and Toubro (L&T) have built troop carrier vehicles and torpedoes for the Tatmadaw, respectively. Of the other private Indian firms, Adani Group and Infosys currently have contractual commercial relationships with MEC and MEHL, as also noted by the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission. While Adani is developing the $290 million Ahlone International Port Terminal 2 along the Yangon River on land leased from the MEC, Infosys is doing business through its EdgeVerve Systems with Myawaddy Bank, a subsidiary of MEHL.

 

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