SINGAPORE'S SHAMEFUL SECRET
Quick search on google threw up this article from
http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galleryfiles/2800/2863.htm
You can see a pic there and see if this is the weapon you saw on
Straits Times. This is what I hate about the unscrupulous Singapore
arms industry.
EMEC / MYANMAR HEAVY INDUSTRIES EMERK-3 rifle and MA-1
carbine.
Burma (official name: Myanmar) is a south-east asian country ruled
by an extreme right-wing dictatorship, held by a fascist military
council. Human rights are infringed day by day, oppositors are
imprisoned and simply disappear from the face of the earth, public
protest demonstrations, even when pacifical, are usually suppressed
with the use of lethal force. This has made Burma the object of an
UN armaments embargo, furthermore Burma is one of the countries
blacklisted by the US Department of State and Department of
Commerce, this meaning that NO american company can sell ANYTHING
to Burma. Unfortnately, according to the NGO "Free Burma Coalition"
and to the authoritative JANE'S DEFENCE publishment, Burma has
founded an its own arms industry.
EMEC (The Electro Mechanical and Engineering Corps of the Burmese
Armed Forces) are in charge to engineer new weapons. The KA-PA-SA
state-owned armaments factory located in Rangoon has acquired from
a now defunct italian firearms manufacturer, in 1945, the right to
manufacture the TZ45 submachinegun, there known as the BA52. Long
before the arms embargo struck Burma, a german engineer, called
FRITZ WERNER, established there plants to manufacture G3 battle
rifles; after the embargo, the factory was taken over by the
military government, who renamed it MYANMAR FRITZ WERNER COMPANY
(despite of their names, however, ALL the burmese arms factories
are state-owned), where G3 rifles are still produced, and from
where come out also G3 rifles converted under project of EMEC to
feed from STANAG M16-style magazines and fire the .5'56x45mm-NATO
ammunition. It's however known that EMEC has HOWEVER its own
production plants, known as MYANMAR HEAVY INDUSTRIES ORGANIZATION.
It's also known that countries such as Israel and Singapore often
sell illegally firearms manufacturing technology to this
country.
A major scandal happened when it was known that a controversial oil
duct built in Burma was patrolled by guards armed with a new
bull-pup rifle, called EMERK-1 and manufactured by EMEC - MYANMAR
HEAVY INDUSTRIES ORGANIZATION. Before this, a chinese company
called NG CHUNG-KEUNG, subsidiary of NORINCO, had shipped to Burma
under burmese governmental request some exemplars of the new
NORINCO QBZ-97 .5'56mm bull-pup assault rifle for evaluation. The
burmese trialers were positively impressed by this weapon, but the
communist chinese government didn't really wanted to sell firearms
to an extreme right-wing dictatorship, and thus the shipment of the
new QBZ-97 rifles to Burma were halted and further ones completely
canceled.
So the burmese engineers took over the exemplars of QBZ-97 still
illegally remaining on the country, and modified the project of the
weapon to allow it to be manufactured with some minor modifications
with the machineries they had, illegally sold to Burma by
Singapore. It's also known that the EMERK-1 is slightly similar to
the Steyr AUG, and that israeli IMI engineers who previously had
worked to the IMI TAVOR project traveled to Burma to counsel their
burmese colleagues; little is known about this EMERK-1 bull-pup
rifle, except that it is in the hands of "élite" burmese troops,
it's a "melange" of the chinese NORINCO QBZ-97, the singaporean
ST-KINETICS SAR-21, the austrian STEYR AUG and the israeli IMI
TAVOR, that it's manufactured in both AR and SAW variants and that
the burmese troops that have it, especially governmental guards,
don't like it because it's prone to jammings and stoppages.
Instead, the MAIN weapons system of the Burmese Armed Forces is
well-liked by its users. The EMERK-3 Rifle System, as posted in
this pic smuggled from Burma, is an illegal copy / updated version
of the israeli IMI GALIL assault rifle, manufactured under
supervision of israeli consultants and with the use of israeli and
singaporean mahineries shipped to Burma in violation of the UN/USA
embargo.
The EMERK-3 rifle is nothing but a GALIL rifle with fixed stock. In
this picture is also equipped with a BA203 40mm grenade launcher, a
slightly modified illegally produced version of the american M203
grenade launcher, which makes JANE'S and FREE BURMA COALITION
observers think that machineries to manufacture this launcher were
also illegally shipped to Burma from USA companies, but most
probably the responsible for this new embargo violation is
Singapore, which has obtained the license to manufacture the
american M203 to equip with it national-manufactured rifles such as
the M16-S1 (singaporean copy of the AR15 assault rifle, now out of
production), SAR-80 and SR88 weapons systems and the new SAR-21
bull-pup long firearms cache. When mounted on the EMERK-3 rifle,
this M203-lookalike grenade launcher features also a new barrel
cover for the rifle, equipped with a grenade peepsight.
The EMERK-3 RIFLE is appearently identical to the IMI GALIL
exception made for some very little external carachteristics, so
that the GALIL specifics are assumed to be valid for this rifle
too.
The MA-1 CARBINE is a shortened copy of the EMERK-3 rifle, with a
folding metal buttstock. The barrel is shorter that the one of the
EMERK-3 rifle, and the similarities with the GALIL are much more
pronunciated. The MA-1 features a ventilated handguard.
Both the EMERK-1 bull-pup rifle and the MYANMAR FRITZ WERNER
COMPANY / EMEC prototype .5'56mm G3 version feed from STANAG
M16-Style magazines, while the EMERK-3 rifle and the MA-1 carbine
feed from GALIL-style 30-rounders. Other details about the burmese
firearms production are scarce. This picture was ripped off from a
website which a few days later disappeared from the web (shutdown
by the burmese government, maybe?), and the burmese authorities by
themselves are prone to use ALL ways to keep their domestic weapons
production secret.
