By UCA News reporter
MYANMAR – Global rights group Amnesty International has slammed the Myanmar military junta for bypassing international sanctions to import jet fuel for air strikes and urged supplying companies to stop selling fuel to the regime.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, called Myanmar’s jet fuel imports “reckless” and accused the military of using the fuel to target and kill innocent civilians, the group said in a statement on Jul 8.
“The Myanmar military is relying on the very same Chinese vessel and Vietnamese companies to import its aviation fuel, despite Amnesty International having already exposed that reckless supply chain,” Callamard alleged.
“It is a raw display of both the sheer impunity with which the Myanmar military is operating and the utter complicity of the states responsible, including Vietnam, China, and Singapore,” Callamard added.
Citing satellite images and shipping documentation, Amnesty alleged that at least two to three additional shipments of aviation fuel have entered Myanmar between January and June this year.
Earlier in January, Amnesty had exposed the Myanmar military’s new evasive tactics for importing aviation fuel throughout 2023, following sanctions imposed on parts of its supply chain.
Reports say the junta resorted to multiple purchases and sales of jet fuel by intermediaries in 2023 to avoid sanctions from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Amnesty said that the Chinese-owned oil tanker transported fuel from Vietnam to Myanmar, a typical strategy to bypass sanctions.
The rights group expressed concern about the probable use of jet fuel on civilian targets as the ports are controlled by the military.
The attacks on civilian targets in Myanmar have increased five-fold in the first half of this year, according to a report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar in June.
Citing eyewitness accounts from victims in Saw Township’s Ah Kyi Pan Pa Lon village in central Myanmar’s Magway Region, Amnesty said that the Myanmar military launched an attack on a monastery in the region on May 9.
The 100-year-old monastery was reportedly destroyed in the attacks where the jets allegedly bombed and shot even civilians who were escaping the scene.
The indiscriminate attack was allegedly unleashed under suspicions of the presence of the members of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), the armed wing of the shadowy, exiled National Unity Government.
Amnesty alleged that the shooting of civilians attempting to flee and the bombing of a site of religious, cultural, and historical value suggested that the attack was indiscriminate and must be investigated as a war crime.
“This recent attack joins a rapidly growing list of violations of international humanitarian law in Myanmar including air strikes, ground raids, arbitrary detentions, torture, and numerous other violations targeting civilians,” Callamard said. – UCA News
