Campaign News
Fresh controversy has rocked the Chelsea bidding process, reports the Daily Mail. Roman Abramovich is being forced to sell Chelsea after being hit by sanctions from the UK Government due to his close links with Vladimir Putin.
A shortlist of preferred bidders established last month includes a consortium headed by the chair of Bain Capital, LA Dodgers owner Todd Boehly, the Ricketts family and a consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton. All of those bids have been hit by controversy.
Sir Martin Broughton’s bid has been criticised by Burma Campaign UK for his involvement with British American Tobacco and their relationship with the Burmese military.
The military takeover has reignited the ethnic minority group’s seven-decade revolt, reports Nikkei Asia.
Zoya Phan, campaign manager for Burma Campaign UK, believes the Karen are now more unified than ever before, coordinating their actions and political message. “Karen people in Karen National Union areas, outside them, at the Thai-Burma border, inside Thailand, around the world — we are all holding hands together,” she says.
Sir Martin Broughton, who has put in a bid for Chelsea FC, was criticized by Burma Campaign UK head Mark Farmaner, for his involvement in the British American Tobacco Company and the company’s alleged links with the military. The report comes from ChinaCSR.com, which provides news and information on corporate social responsibility and sustainability in China.
Former British Airways and Liverpool FC chairman Martin Broughton has been criticized on Twitter by director Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK for collaborating with the Burmese military, which ruled Myanmar for several decades, with the company British American Tobacco.
The sale of Chelsea has been hit by fresh controversy after Parliament was told to throw out the shortlisted bid from Stephen Pagliuca, the co-chairman of Bain Capital, on the basis the club and Premier League must not be “contaminated” by “despicably corrupt business practice”.
The Telegraph reports that Sir Martin Broughton, who is heading another of the bids, was the target of criticism from Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, regarding his involvement at British American Tobacco and the company’s alleged relationship with the Burmese military.
The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have imposed coordinated new sanctions on Myanmar in response to the military’s brutal crackdown on opponents to its rule, reports Al Jazeera. The sanctions focus on senior military officials, including the newly-appointed chief of the air force and those linked to the arms trade.
“Stopping Burmese military airstrikes is the most urgent priority, and it is very good to see the British government begin the process of targeting suppliers to the air force,” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said as thousands were forced from their homes as a result of almost daily aerial bombardment.
Myanmar will reopen to international tourists on 17 April, the junta government has announced after a two-year shut-down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thailand-based travel news publication TTR Weekly reports that travel firms are not optimistic they will see any bookings. Travellers will be wary of the security risks and are likely to support a boycott of the country. As long as a military junta that usurped power from a democratically appointed government runs the country travellers will go elsewhere.
Burma Campaign UK has just added 28 companies from 12 countries to its “Dirty List”, accused of feathering the nest of the military junta through commercial ventures.
Mya Aye turned 56 on the day that Myanmar’s military junta sentenced him to two years in prison, reports Myanmar Now. He is the father of Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, senior advocacy officer at Burma Campaign UK.
“It’s not strange for a politician to face hardships such as this in life. I will stand my ground no matter what sentence they give me,” he said in a message sent to his daughter before receiving the sentence, which was the maximum allowable for the alleged offence.
Even if her father seemed to accept his fate, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon couldn’t help but be saddened by the outcome. “I just wanted him to spend his birthday at home with his family, eating a good home-cooked meal. It breaks my heart that we couldn’t give him that much, at least,” she said.
As a member of Burma Campaign UK, a group that calls for international pressure on the Myanmar regime, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon is unable to return to her home country to see her father or the rest of her family.
Until his and his family’s shady connections with the Myanmar military were exposed by The New York Times late last year, reports the Irrawaddy, U Jonathan Kyaw Thaung was mostly known as the CEO of KT Group, which operates the TNT port terminal in Yangon. The Times’ story unmasked the Kyaw Thaungs as people who have quietly equipped the Myanmar military.
The port terminal is now struggling to be operational. Shortly before the coup, Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping firm, announced that it would not use the terminal. Before that, a British port operator stopped running the port after the operator was put on Burma Campaign UK’s “dirty list” of international companies doing business with the military. U Jonathan Kyaw Thaung admitted he was struggling to pay the leasing fees to the military.
Burma Campaign UK has published the latest iteration of its ‘Dirty List’, adding 28 new companies said to be linked to the Burmese military and, as such, to human rights violations and the environmental destruction of Burma, reports the Democratic Voice of Burma.
The additions to the list — which now targets 116 entities — are registered across 12 different countries, the majority from Japan and Vietnam.
BCUK director Mark Farmaner says that, despite a May 2021 commitment made by Japan (as part of the G7) to observe an embargo on the sale of arms to the junta, the country continues to do business with the military across other sectors. “So there’s a real inconsistency there at the heart of Japanese policy – that they’ll fund [military companies participating in] arms sales but they won’t fund the arm sales themselves.”