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BANGKOK — The Myanmar military controls an extensive business empire that enables it to avoid accountability and conduct operations with impunity against ethnic groups, contributing to widespread human rights abuses, according to a United Nations report released Monday.
A United Nations fact-finding mission urged foreign businesses and governments to sever ties with more than 140 companies owned or controlled by the military, which has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, murder and rape of Rohingya Muslims.
“The Myanmar armed forces are enabled in a very enhanced way to act outside of civilian control and therefore perpetuate their impunity in their involvement in gross human rights violations,” Marzuki Darusman, the chairman of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar and a former attorney general of Indonesia, said in an interview.
The military’s businesses operate largely out of the public eye and have close ties to state-owned enterprises and large private firms known in Myanmar as crony companies. Together, the armed forces, the state-owned enterprises and the crony companies account for a huge share of the country’s economy.
The United Nations mission argues that if the military did not have these outside sources of revenue, all of its budget would have to come from the government and could be subject to review.
The mission called for a criminal investigation of two crony companies, KBZ Group and Max Myanmar, that donated money to build a border fence aimed at preventing the return of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who were driven from their homes by the military in 2017.
The three-member panel issued a report last year saying that Myanmar’s top generals, including the commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, should face charges of genocide in an international court.
That report detailed horrendous crimes, including throwing babies into fires, slitting the throats of men, and raping women and girls, that it said were part of an organized campaign to drive the Rohingya from Rakhine State in 2017. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh and now live in squalid refugee camps.
Since the exodus, the military, some of its businesses and allied companies have begun constructing new roads and buildings in areas that had been occupied by the Rohingya, the new report said.
The redevelopment will make it difficult, if not impossible, for many of the refugees to return to where their homes once stood and may also constitute violations of international human rights law.
“Private companies with enduring links to the Tatmadaw are financing development projects in northern Rakhine in furtherance of the Tatmadaw’s objective of re-engineering the region in a way that erases evidence of Rohingya belonging in Myanmar, and preventing their return to access their homeland and communities,” the mission said in its 111-page report, using the official name for the Myanmar armed forces.
The United Nations mission encouraged travelers to avoid military-owned hotels and tourism companies, including Myawaddy Travels and Tours Company, Nawadae Hotel and Tourism and the Okkala Golf Resort. Mr. Marzuki said the panel would be developing a more detailed list to assist travelers in their choices.
The Tatmadaw owns and operates two conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and the Myanmar Economic Corporation. The two companies own at least 120 subsidiaries and have close ties to at least 27 more companies, the report said.
Their wide variety of business activities include banking and insurance, tourism, jade and ruby mining, timber, construction, and the production of palm oil, sugar, soap, cement, beverages, drinking water, coal and gas. The companies also have extensive real estate holdings.
Many of the companies are set up to supply goods and services to the military, such as food, clothing, insurance and cellphone service.
Washington imposed sanctions on General Min Aung Hlaing and three of his highest-ranking subordinates for their roles in the atrocities carried out against the Rohingya, barring them and their immediate family members from entering the United States.
One of them, the Tatmadaw’s deputy commander in chief, Gen. Soe Win, is the vice chairman of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited.
Mr. Marzuki said the mission had not been able to determine the military companies’ annual revenue or how much wealth they control. He said the investigation would continue.
“This has been going for the past 50 years,” he said. “Imagine the accumulated resources and reserves.”
The Tatmadaw began battling various ethnic groups soon after independence from Britain in 1948 and has continued ever since. Much of the fighting has been over control of resources, such as the lucrative jade and ruby trade in Kachin and Shan States, in which the military’s companies have a major interest.
The military seized power in 1962 and ran the country, also known as Burma, until 2011, when it started returning some authority to civilians. But under the Constitution, the Tatmadaw is not accountable to any civilian authority.
The mission found that at least 14 companies from seven nations, including Russia, China and North Korea, had provided arms and equipment to the Tatmadaw since 2016.
“The mission finds that any foreign business activity involving the Tatmadaw and its conglomerates M.E.H.L. and M.E.C. poses a high risk of contributing to, or being linked to, violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” the report said, using the initials for Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and the Myanmar Economic Corporation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/...BIe7Yt3gBUBTHFeMMPHSqBadtyKKrmwW7dxYHTq8j138Y
A United Nations fact-finding mission urged foreign businesses and governments to sever ties with more than 140 companies owned or controlled by the military, which has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, murder and rape of Rohingya Muslims.
“The Myanmar armed forces are enabled in a very enhanced way to act outside of civilian control and therefore perpetuate their impunity in their involvement in gross human rights violations,” Marzuki Darusman, the chairman of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar and a former attorney general of Indonesia, said in an interview.
The military’s businesses operate largely out of the public eye and have close ties to state-owned enterprises and large private firms known in Myanmar as crony companies. Together, the armed forces, the state-owned enterprises and the crony companies account for a huge share of the country’s economy.
The United Nations mission argues that if the military did not have these outside sources of revenue, all of its budget would have to come from the government and could be subject to review.
The mission called for a criminal investigation of two crony companies, KBZ Group and Max Myanmar, that donated money to build a border fence aimed at preventing the return of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who were driven from their homes by the military in 2017.
The three-member panel issued a report last year saying that Myanmar’s top generals, including the commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, should face charges of genocide in an international court.
That report detailed horrendous crimes, including throwing babies into fires, slitting the throats of men, and raping women and girls, that it said were part of an organized campaign to drive the Rohingya from Rakhine State in 2017. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh and now live in squalid refugee camps.
Since the exodus, the military, some of its businesses and allied companies have begun constructing new roads and buildings in areas that had been occupied by the Rohingya, the new report said.
The redevelopment will make it difficult, if not impossible, for many of the refugees to return to where their homes once stood and may also constitute violations of international human rights law.
“Private companies with enduring links to the Tatmadaw are financing development projects in northern Rakhine in furtherance of the Tatmadaw’s objective of re-engineering the region in a way that erases evidence of Rohingya belonging in Myanmar, and preventing their return to access their homeland and communities,” the mission said in its 111-page report, using the official name for the Myanmar armed forces.
The United Nations mission encouraged travelers to avoid military-owned hotels and tourism companies, including Myawaddy Travels and Tours Company, Nawadae Hotel and Tourism and the Okkala Golf Resort. Mr. Marzuki said the panel would be developing a more detailed list to assist travelers in their choices.
The Tatmadaw owns and operates two conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and the Myanmar Economic Corporation. The two companies own at least 120 subsidiaries and have close ties to at least 27 more companies, the report said.
Their wide variety of business activities include banking and insurance, tourism, jade and ruby mining, timber, construction, and the production of palm oil, sugar, soap, cement, beverages, drinking water, coal and gas. The companies also have extensive real estate holdings.
Many of the companies are set up to supply goods and services to the military, such as food, clothing, insurance and cellphone service.
Washington imposed sanctions on General Min Aung Hlaing and three of his highest-ranking subordinates for their roles in the atrocities carried out against the Rohingya, barring them and their immediate family members from entering the United States.
One of them, the Tatmadaw’s deputy commander in chief, Gen. Soe Win, is the vice chairman of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited.
Mr. Marzuki said the mission had not been able to determine the military companies’ annual revenue or how much wealth they control. He said the investigation would continue.
“This has been going for the past 50 years,” he said. “Imagine the accumulated resources and reserves.”
The Tatmadaw began battling various ethnic groups soon after independence from Britain in 1948 and has continued ever since. Much of the fighting has been over control of resources, such as the lucrative jade and ruby trade in Kachin and Shan States, in which the military’s companies have a major interest.
The military seized power in 1962 and ran the country, also known as Burma, until 2011, when it started returning some authority to civilians. But under the Constitution, the Tatmadaw is not accountable to any civilian authority.
The mission found that at least 14 companies from seven nations, including Russia, China and North Korea, had provided arms and equipment to the Tatmadaw since 2016.
“The mission finds that any foreign business activity involving the Tatmadaw and its conglomerates M.E.H.L. and M.E.C. poses a high risk of contributing to, or being linked to, violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” the report said, using the initials for Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited and the Myanmar Economic Corporation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/...BIe7Yt3gBUBTHFeMMPHSqBadtyKKrmwW7dxYHTq8j138Y
