Asia Sentinel

While the world for the last three weeks has had China in its gunsights for its economic support of Burma's repressive junta, the fact is that under the radar, half the countries in Asia are helping to prop up the dictatorship, either through government help or through the sub rosa support of their business communities — including Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Thailand and India, among others.  That is a partial list at best, evading sanctions put in place by western governments, many of which ultimately are the end users of the products coming out of Burma in the form of re-exports from China and other countries.

Burmese expatriates and protesters have been holding demonstrations, candlelight vigils, online petitions and other expressions of support in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Finland, the US, the UK and other countries. But in the meantime, business is business. As the pariah government prepared Friday to intensify its crackdown, which so far has killed at least 10 people and probably many more, sealing off Buddhist monasteries and dragging hundreds of nonviolent protesters off to prisons, business appears to be continuing as usual.

On September 23 India’s petroleum minister Murli Deora visited Burma as tens of thousands of protesters thronged Rangoon’s streets. He made no statements or observations to either the domestic or foreign press.  However, during his visit, three bilateral agreements for deep exploration in oil blocs were signed. ONGC Videsh, a subsidiary of India’s state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp has pledged to invest nearly US$150 million for gas exploration in the Rakhaine coast of Burma.

Burma’s extractive industries — crude oil, natural gas, tropical hardwoods, minerals such as zinc, copper, tungsten, lead and others — are far too precious for the region’s businesses and governments to pass up. According to the CIA World Factbook, updated to 2006, Burma’s annual exports amounted to only US$3.56 billion, a paltry amount that is probably grossly underestimated because of the value of vast amounts of timber, rice, narcotics and precious gems such as jade that are smuggled to Thailand, China, and Bangladesh. After China, Thailand and Singapore are listed by Burma’s Ministry of Commerce as the country’s second and third largest trading partners. Among those after the resources, according to Human Rights Watch, are Daewoo International, Korea Gas Corp., Gas Authority of India (Gail), ONGC Videsh, Essar Group of India, and many, many more.

The Thai junta leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin got it about right when he stunned human rights activists with his blunt comments this week that Thailand wouldn't oppose the junta because they would lose out on natural resources.  "In fact, the Burmese government has many friendly nations who stand ready to help, including China and Korea, because Myanmar is a nation with a wealth of natural resources; many superpowers want to go in," the general told TITV. "Therefore, no matter what happens to that country, many countries are secretly protecting it. This is the intelligence of some superpowers with whom we [Thailand] are friendly. If we get involved, our relationship with them may be damaged." (Read more.)

His comments were roundly criticized in the Thai press, including leading English-language daily Bangkok Post.

"Gen Sonthi's comments belie the fragile nature of our own respect for basic human rights and freedoms," the Post said. "While no country, the US and the UK included, has a completely clear conscience to lecture on the rights set out under the UN Charter, defending such brutal suppression of innocent civilians, political opponents and monks is unacceptable."

Even so, Sonthi does have a point. Thailand receives about a third of its natural gas from Burma's Gulf of Martaban. Without it, millions would go without electricity until Thailand switched its power plants to run on costly bunker oil, which would increase everyone's monthly power bills. Burma plays a significant role in Thailand's energy future, just as it does for China and South Korea. So although Sonthi's comments were appalling, he managed to say in public what other leaders would only say in private. Thailand takes a full 38 percent of Burma’s external trade.

 
Singapore in particular is a significant contributor to Burma’s economy and has been virtually since 1988, right after the original crackdown, when Singapore government companies including Singapore Technologies, the state-owned supplier of military arms and equipment, was first into the field according to Andrew Selth, an Australian political analyst and one of the world’s leading authorities on the Burmese military. But more, Singapore Inc, as the country’s government-linked businesses are known, has been investing in hotels, airlines, resorts and other infrastructure. For the 2006-7 financial year ended in March, Singapore was listed by Burma’s Ministry of Commerce as the third-largest trading partner behind Thailand and China, with bilateral trade for the year totaling $1.21 billion. The government is also believed to have provided crowd control equipment and sophisticated telecoms monitoring devices, for which Singapore itself is famous for spying on its own citizens. As Asia Sentinel reported on Sept. 4, Singapore’s banks are believed to be the repositories of vast amounts of laundered cash. Asia World, a Singaporean company, is a major construction contractor, and much of Singapore’s investment in Burma is linked to that company.

Burmese officials, in addition to allegedly squirreling their money away in Singaporean banks, also visit regularly. The 74-year-old junta strongman Than Shwe has been treated for intestinal cancer in Singapore government hospital. According to The Nation newspaper in Bangkok, Than Shwe flew his wife and other members of his family out to Singapore before the current situation in Rangoon got bloody. Soe Win, Burma’s prime minister is being treated in a Singapore hospital today.

Korea is also a major player, both officially and not. As Asia Sentinel reported in mid-August, Daewoo International Corp., which holds 60 percent of three natural gas fields in Burma, announced that it had found as much as 219.2 billion cubic meters of exploitable gas, the biggest gas reserve that a Korean company has ever discovered. Daewoo International said at the time that it was then in talks with the Burmese government on how and to whom to sell the gas produced there — just about the time the first serious protests got underway in Burma over the five-fold increases in energy prices the government suddenly introduced. The Korean government wants the gas to be liquefied and delivered by ship to Korea, which imports most of its oil and gas. The state-run Korea Gas Corp. has a 10-percent stake in the fields. The remaining 30-percent stake is held by two Indian companies — Oil & Natural Gas and state-owned Gail India Ltd.

According to Daewoo International’s statement, Gaffney, Cline and Associates, an international energy consultant with offices in the UK, the US, Singapore, Australia, Argentina and Russia, certified that three fields in the western sea off Burma have about 4.5 trillion to 7.7 trillion cubic feet of exploitable gas in total. The company discovered the fields between 2004 and 2006. Based on that estimate, Daewoo International said it could supply 600 million cubic feet of gas per day, or 3.7 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year, for 20 to 25 years. The company added it would take less money and time to provide the gas to neighboring countries through pipelines.

In addition, in December 2006, 14 officers of seven Korean companies were charged with allegedly exporting defense equipment and technology to Burma in violation of Korea’s export control laws, using export documents that prosecutors said listed the equipment as for purposes other than military use. The 14 are currently on trial. A government official told Korean media that eight had admitted that they had built the illegal arms factory, but that they didn’t know it was illegal.

In particular, the Korean prosecutors identified Daewoo International Corp and Doosan Infracore as two of the companies, which allegedly struck a deal in 2002 with the Burmese government to manufacture at lest six types of artillery shells in the tens of thousands of rounds. The other companies were alleged to have provided technology and equipment for components of the shells. The contract allegedly covered the weapons plant, related and equipment worth US$133 million.

From Hong Kong, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, the flagship of tycoon Li Ka-shing, operates Myanmar International Terminals Thilawa (MITT), a major port in Burma. It describes these port terminals as “strategically positioned to facilitate and service Myanmar’s international trade.” Kerry Logistics Group, owned by the Kuok Group, is a goods transport logistics company with branches in 12 countries, including the UK. Kerry Logistics also operates in Burma, facilitating the export of Burmese goods. Kerry Logistics is part of the Singaporean conglomerate, Kuok Group. From Japan, Mitsui is a Japanese conglomerate with interests ranging from metals and mining to electronic goods, insurance, clothes and chemicals. Mitsui is in a joint venture with the Burmese regime in the Mingaladon Industrial Park, which was set up to attract foreign investors to Burma. Mitsui OSK Lines a global business concerned with marine shipping and logistics in what it calls a ‘truly borderless transportation network that brings goods to market all over the world’. Rangoon is described as one of the company’s major calling ports. Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, one of Japan’s largest non-life insurers with a workforce of over 13,000 and a net income in 2006 of over 124,000 million yen, maintains a representative office in Rangoon.

From Malaysia, Petronas, the state-owned oil and gas company, has several oil and gas contracts to extract and explore for oil and gas in Burma. In addition, in 2003, Fortune Magazine reported that Malaysian diplomat Razali Ismail, the UN special envoy to Burma, with a remit to nudge the country’s military rulers towards a transition to democracy, was chairman of Iris Technologies, a Malaysian company that is introducing electronic-passport technology at Rangoon’s government-run airport. Razali is also a director of Wah Seong, a Malaysian engineering group that owns a trading company with real estate interests in Rangoon, and of Leader Universal Holdings, a cable, fiber-optics, and telecom-equipment firm that at the time was seeking business in Burma. A Leader spokesman confirmed to Fortune that senior executives were meeting with junta leaders. A fourth company on whose board Razali sits, water treatment group Salcon Engineering, has exhibited at a trade show in Yangon. Razali did not respond to Fortune’s requests for an interview.

With additional reporting by Daniel Ten Kate in Thailand, Eric Ellis in Indonesia, Nava Thakuria in India, and A. Lin Neumann in Korea

Comments (8)

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Bankers,Businessmen,Billionaires, and Bono
written by bookbagwarrior, September 28, 2007

Today's interdependent world will not excuse bankers and businessmen from moral responsibility the way it had in the past 2 world wars for their role in funding behind the scenes...i.e. Hitler's projects etc. Today the world is aware that billionaires, banks, and businessmen can step up and "remove" their money from tyrannical regimes and their supporters such as the one in Burma, should they really want to...and in my view should they get the incentive to...such as having the glaring light of world media on them...It will take the naming and shaming of “money men” behind the junta to begin the path to peaceful change in Burma. What you have done in this site must hit the mainstream media and world consciousness and I and many others are on board for it.

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Singapore Inc
written by JK, September 28, 2007

SINGAPORE isn't just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras on Orchard Road. It also does a useful trade keeping Burma's military rulers and their cronies afloat.... read more from The Age - Australia

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just goes to show
written by nanheyangrouchuan, September 29, 2007

The most prominent people in this world are completely morally bankrupt.

The real role model are the people who earns an honest day's pay and raise their kids right.

Bankers, businessmen and billionaires could all disappear tomorrow and the world would be a better place.

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Aung San Suu Kyi is the present, legitimate Prime Minister of Burma.
written by John Francis Lee, September 30, 2007

So many of our problems can be traced back in time to a moment's indecision or equivocation at their origin.

The Thai Court's decision to allow Thaksin to flout the law at the very inception of his regime as the moment of equivocation that led the country to its present sorry straits. Certainly it was the United States Supreme Court's to stop the counting of votes in Florida seven years ago that led my country down the slippery slope.

In 1990 the people of Burma went to the polls and elected the National League for Democracy, by a landslide, and with it Aung San Suu Kyi as their Prime Minister.

The thugs, the Generals, staged a coup against the new government and now seventeen years later they are still murdering the Burmese people for staging peaceful demonstrations protesting seventeen years and more of incompetent rule by the autocratic "soldier kings" as the Buddhist
monks have termed them.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the present, legitimate Prime Minister of Burma.

Her government should have been recognized seventeen years ago. Our failure, the failure of all the peoples of the world, was not to insist that our governments recognize the will of our brothers and sisters in Burma at their moment of triumph. The tragic turn was that moment of
indecision and equivocation that sentenced the Burmese people to all the misery and hardship of the past seventeen years, leading up to the persecutions and murders of the blameless in Burma today.

There is no statute of limitations for a capital crime and so there is no statute of limitations for the crime of murdering the legitimate and legal institutions and aspirations of an entire people.

I call on my government, the United States of America, on the government of Thailand and the governments of the ASEAN nations, on the governments of the European Union, of the Canadian and Russian governments, of the Mexican government and all those of South America, of the governments of Africa and of the Arab countries to recognize the government of Aung San Suu Kyi as the one and only legitimate government of Burma. The butchers of Tien An Min Square and the world's largest democracy are apparently equally lost causes.

Certainly our governments must deal at some low level with the thugs who have the guns, who hold de facto power in Burma.

But it needs be made clear before the United Nations and the world that the thugs in Pyinmana are an illegitimate force, that they are pirates who have occupied the seat of government in Burma by means of a criminal act. That they do not and cannot speak for the Burmese people, that no contracts made with the present illegitimate government in Burma have any force whatsoever, that all the world is awaiting the downfall of the bloody, illegitimate regime.

And for the ascent of the elected government in Burma and of her Prime Minister, Aung San Suu Kyi.

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...
written by Andrew, September 30, 2007

Small niggle: Tom Crampton broke the Razali story in the IHT in May 2002

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Razali\'s business interests in Burma/Myanmar
written by Thomas Crampton, September 30, 2007

Thanks for the heads-up, Andrew.

Yes, following my first story on Razali in 2002, I did actually get a reaction from him:

"The fact that my company is involved in discussions with the Myanmar government is not a conflict of interest because I have not negotiated it myself," Razali said, using the name the junta has given the country.

Last month, shortly after Razali's seventh visit to Rangoon as a UN special envoy, Burma's state-controlled news organizations made oblique references to a deal involving the sale of electronic passports to the Burmese government by a company Razali heads and partly owns. Razali said his company and its products had not come up in any discussions he held with the military government's top generals.

"If you ask me the direct question whether I negotiated with any leader of the government of Myanmar, the answer is clearly no," Razali said. "I am so busy when there that I don't even have time to brush my teeth twice."

First story: http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/05/07/t1_24.php
Second Story: http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/05/07/a4_12.php

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Good work, John!
written by Antares, October 04, 2007

I refer to both John Berthelsen, author of this well-researched indictment of an ugly Bottom Line and also to John Francis Lee, who left an impassioned and truthful comment that resonates with all of us who can still see the horizon of decency despite the hideous proliferation of highrise atrocities wherever we look. Throughout my travels around Asia I have yet to meet human beings as gentle, friendly, and honest as the Burmese. Indeed, no nation on earth can match their purity of soul - and that is something a billion Bill Gates cannot buy - or regain once lost. I envision that from these
turbulent days on earth a beautiful new Bottom Line will emerge wherein attaining Buddhahood (and Bodhisattvahood) will be everybody's aspiration; and young people will no longer want to become Bankers, Billionaires, and Bullies. And the most serious problem humanity is left with is how to recycle the mountain of stormtrooper uniforms nobody wants.

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sdfd
written by omar7, July 16, 2009

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