No no no
..why would SG want to sell items that are suitable
for countering civilian unrest' when since 1998, there is already a
small arms factory in Burma which can make these items.
South China Morning Post
Wednesday July 22 1998
Singapore weapons factory for junta
WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok
Singapore has supplied Burma's military regime with an arms factory
that
was designed and prefabricated by the island state's own weapons
maker.
The weapons made in the factory - thought to be EMERK-1 assault
rifles with
a bull-pup configuration, which shortens their length, had already
started
to be issued to soldiers guarding the controversial Yadana gas
pipeline,
according to the latest issue of the authoritative magazine Jane's
Defence
Weekly.
Singapore has previously supplied the regime with weapons at a
critical
time and has also built a cyber-war centre in Rangoon capable of
telephone,
fax and satellite communications.
The purpose-built arms factory was created by Chartered Industries
of
Singapore.
Although no official announcement has been made, the plant is
understood to
have arrived in Rangoon in 40 containers aboard the
Singapore-registered
vessel Sin Ho in February.
A decade ago - near the height of nationwide pro-democracy protests
led by
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi - Singapore shipped tonnes
of
ammunition, mortars and other war material to Burma.
The shipments were marked as coming from a subsidiary of
Chartered
Industries of Singapore - Allied Ordinance, Singapore.
Chartered Industries is the weapons arm of Singapore Technologies
which
supplied the regime with its highly efficient cyber-war
centre.
The supplies were sent only weeks after the junta emerged following
the
retirement of the old dictator, Ne Win.
They included rockets manufacturered under license in Singapore,
but
exported without authorisation from Sweden.
Only China is more important to the dictatorial military regime
than
Singapore, which has frequently defended not only its links to
Rangoon, but
the junta itself.
Last November, Singapore tried to water down a United Nations
General
Assembly resolution critical of the regime's refusal to recognise
the
overwhelming victory of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy
in 1990 elections and widespread human rights abuses.
"Our position is different. We have concrete and immediate stakes,"
argued
the Singapore representative, Bilahari Kausikan, in a letter to the
Swedish
mission which drafted the resolution.
Singapore had used weapons sales, military training and
intelligence
co-operation to "win a sympathetic hearing at the very heart of
Burma's
official councils", said Jane's Intelligence Review in March.
At about the time the small arms factory was arriving in Rangoon,
Burma's
intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, told a co-ordinating board
for the
Myanmar-Singapore Joint Ministerial Working Committee that his
officials
should "give priority to projects arranged by Singapore".
