Campaign News
The most recent UN report outlines how European companies have helped fund military operations in Burma by entering into business ventures with firms controlled by key members of the military. The UN is now urging the international community to sever all ties to these companies and implement a global arms embargo.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, told the London-based Byline Times: “To date, the only sanctions the British Government has supported is stopping a small number of junior military personnel from taking holidays in EU member states. The holiday ban doesn’t even apply to military head Min Aung Hlaing. It’s astonishing that the British and other governments are so resistant to stopping companies financing the military.”
The Burmese military has exploited a large network of business ties to fund “brutal operations against ethnic groups”, a United Nations fact-finding mission said in its latest report. It calls on the international community to sever all ties with the military and impose financial sanctions, an arms embargo and a consumer boycott.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, told Al Jazeera that while there is no single measure that will make the military change, “targeting their financial interests is an essential part of the pressure that needs to be applied.” He said the report shows that foreign governments no longer have an excuse for inaction.
“Members of the international community try to defend their inaction by saying their options for leverage on the military are limited”, Mark Farmaner said. “This report exposes that as a lie.”
The US State Department announced that it has barred several senior Burmese military officials from entering the United States, over a lack of accountability for atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said the ban would have little effect and more needed to be done to hold those guilty of atrocities to account, such as an ad-hoc tribunal or sanctions.
“Essentially this is a holiday ban,” he said. “Limiting Min Aung Hlaing’s holiday options is not a proportionate response to genocide.”
The United States has issued sanctions to Min Aung Hlaing and three more top military leaders over what it called “gross human rights violations” during the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslim minority. The leaders and their immediate families are barred from entry into the US, reports the New Mexico-based public broadcasting service KRWG.
“It is the military as an institution which needs to be targeted,” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, tweeted. “The military will not change its behaviour because a small number of its members have reduced holiday options.”
The United States has imposed sanctions on Min Aung Hlaing and three of Burma’s highest-ranking generals for their roles in the atrocities carried out against Rohingya Muslims since 2017. The four generals and their immediate family members will be barred from entering the US.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said the travel ban was far too weak a response. He said the United States could have brought the generals before an ad hoc tribunal, backed an arms embargo or imposed stronger sanctions on military-owned companies.
“Essentially this is a holiday ban,” he said. “Limiting Min Aung Hlaing’s holiday options is not a proportionate response to genocide.”
Burma’s bid jointly with Thailand to host the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2021 has been met with a chorus of criticism, reports Myanmar Mix, as activists and politicians raise human rights concerns in Rakhine state.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, was surprised by the decision to accept the bid, “even by FIFA’s low standards. You have to wonder if terrible human rights records are a FIFA requirement for hosting world cups,” he said. “If Myanmar and Thailand were to win the bid a big concern of Burma Campaign UK’s would be any military companies involved in sponsorship.”
Aung San Suu Kyi’s status has sunk to a new despicable low, according to the National, after she met prime minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, and agreed with him that “one of the greatest challenges … is migration [and] continuously growing Muslim populations”.
“We thought that Aung San Suu Kyi would move in the areas she could with a parliamentary majority,” Burma Campaign UK’s Mark Farmaner is quoted as saying. “Things like releasing political prisoners, repealing repressive laws, creating a free press, trying to improve the economy, environmental issues – she hasn’t done any of those things. Even the limited expectations we had have not been met.”
Coconuts Yangon reports that Aung San Suu Kyi, meeting Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, agreed with him that “one of the greatest challenges” facing their countries is “migration” and how to “co-exist” with “continuously growing Muslim populations.”
“Aung San Suu Kyi seems more comfortable with Europe’s right-wing populists than the countries which spent years supporting her struggle for democracy while she was under house arrest,” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, told Coconuts Yangon.
Burma Campaign UK on Wednesday called on Facebook to ban nearly 30 pages belonging to the Myanmar military and military-backed companies, reports the Irrawaddy.
Although Facebook had previously removed military pages, fake accounts and military mouthpiece pages, the statement said, more than 25 military and military-backed companies’ pages are still hosted on the platform.
“Whether the Facebook pages are spreading military propaganda or promoting military-owned businesses, either way they are promoting part of an institution accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Burma Campaign UK director Mark Farmaner said in the statement.
Facebook now has 18 million local users in Burma and is a parallel space for the conflict in Rakhine State, reports the website Coda Story.
In late 2018, and again in early 2019, Facebook announced it had dismantled sweeping “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” (CIB) campaigns directly traceable to the military. “Aung San Suu Kyi’s State Counsellor Information committee [Facebook] page was full of hysterical posts about terrorists and implying on a daily basis that the [aid agencies were] assisting [Rohingya rebels],” said Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK.