The United Nations has released a report entitled “Enabling Atrocities: UN Member States’ Arms Transfers to the Myanmar Military” that lists four countries that continued selling arms to Myanmar following the junta coup in February 2021.
It also lists another five countries that were previously selling arms to the Myanmar military prior to the coup, but that have now stopped.
The four countries still selling arms to Myanmar are: China, The Russian Federation, India and Serbia. Among the arms being supplied are attack aircraft from China, fighter aircraft and air defence systems from the Russian Federation, rockets and artillery shells from Serbia and remote-control weapons stations from India.
The five countries mentioned in the report that were previously selling arms to the Myanmar military that have now stopped doing so were: Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Pakistan and the Republic of Korea.
The UN Security Council has not yet decided to ban arms sales from these countries to Myanmar, according to Thinzar Shunlei Yi, the advocacy coordinator for the Action Committee for Democracy Development, a coalition of 12 community-based social and political networks comprised of diverse backgrounds established in 2013 to build a democratic federal state in Myanmar.
She said: "The UN Security Council has not yet been able to pass a resolution calling for an immediate arms embargo. Cutting arms sales and sanctions can only slow down existing crimes. We have not yet talked about the political environment and the justice that the people deserve.”
The European Union (EU) has also announced sanctions against twenty-two people including military council ministers, the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), the No (1) Mining Enterprise, Tay Za’s Htoo Company and Nay Aung’s IGE Company, in response to the military coup and military dictatorship in Myanmar. According to Thinzar Shunlei Yi, it is a step in the right direction but more sanctions are needed to stop the Myanmar military dictatorship's continued violence against civilians and pro-democracy groups.
"The international community beginning to sanction MOGE, the withdrawal of oil and gas companies from Myanmar, and the addition of the word ‘accountability’ to the UN declaration are all improvements compared to the past,” she said. “It is slowly having an effect, but we have to push as hard as we can to prevent these mechanisms from becoming assassins support mechanisms.”
