ADF under gun to cut aid to Myanmar

Australia is one of only 13 countries to have maintained military assistance to Myanmar since the coup.

A soldier guards a man detained during a protest in Mandalay against the coup on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Australia is under international fire over its continued military assistance to Myanmar — one of only 13 countries in the world still doing so — after at least 38 people, including four children, were killed in the deadliest day of the junta’s crackdown against pro-democracy protests.

The killings on Wednesday came a day after ASEAN urged the Myanmar military to stop using lethal force against its citizens, who have continued to protest the February 1 coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi despite the escalating bloodshed.

Protesters returned to the streets on Thursday as international condemnation grew over the violence, which has now claimed the lives of more than 50 civilians, while some 1500 people have been arrested.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the killings had left his country “appalled and revulsed”, while French President Emmanuel Macron called for an “immediate end of the repression in Myanmar”.

Describing Wednesday’s violence as “the bloodiest day since the coup happened”, UN special envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener urged all countries to work together to “stop this situation”. “We need a unity of the international community, so it’s up to the member states to take the right measures,” she said.

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet demanded the military stop its “vicious crackdown”. She said it was “utterly abhorrent that security forces are firing live ammunition against peaceful protesters across the country”.

The US, UK, EU, Canada and New Zealand have all announced targeted sanctions against junta leaders and their business allies since they seized power and announced a 12-month state of emergency. But Australia has said only that it is reviewing its assistance to the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw. Questions put to the government about that position on Thursday were not answered by the time of publication.

Australian businesses in Myanmar have also been slow to respond, with energy giant Woodside announcing just last Saturday that it was reviewing all business decisions there. The Australian Myanmar Chamber of Commerce had refused to publicly comment on the coup until Wednesday night when it issued a statement expressing “serious concern over the increasing use of violence” against peaceful protesters.

Australia is one of only 13 countries — along with Russia, China, North Korea, Belarus and Pakistan — that still provides training assistance or co-operation to the Tatmadaw, Burma Campaign UK said on Thursday.

“Countries entering into training and co-operation agreements with the Burmese military are complicit in the violations of international law the Burmese military are committing,” executive director Anna Roberts said, in a statement in which she urged all 13 countries to “immediately halt” their programs.

Human Rights Watch described Australia’s assistance program to the Tatmadaw on Thursday as “totally unacceptable”, and said its review of that aid “should have been concluded 30 seconds after the soldiers started shooting down protesters on the streets”.

Justine Chambers, director of the ANU’s Myanmar Research Centre, says the government’s position is complicated by its efforts to secure the release of Sean Turnell, an Australian economic adviser to Ms Suu Kyi detained in Yangon six days after the coup, and to get him and other stranded Australian nationals out of the country.

“Until those negotiations are dealt with, the Australian government is not going to be the hardest advocate on these issues,” she told The Australian. “Having those lines of communication is really important, and not a lot of Western embassies have them with the military at the moment.”

Dr Chambers said the fact that Australian Defence Force vice-chief David Johnston was able to speak with his Myanmarese counterpart, Vice Senior General Soe Win, last month was “significant and shows the level of the relationship we have with Myanmar”.

“It’s easy to have a moral standpoint but at the end of the day the Australian government is focused on getting Sean Turnell out of the country.”

But Chris Sidoti, an Australian lawyer and former UN investigator on Myanmar, said those communication lines had neither prevented Professor Turnell’s detention nor secured his release, and it was time to suspend Australian assistance to the Tatmadaw.

“It is only worth a few hundred thousand dollars a year but the generals have loved the legitimacy and acceptance it has given them,” said Mr Sidoti, part of a three-person UN Fact Finding Mission that recommended in 2019 that Tatmadaw commanders be charged with genocide for atrocities against Rohingya civilians. “I supported the Australian government’s approach for over 20 years but … the coup has convinced me it is now time to abandon it. Sean’s situation is very sensitive but I don’t see any evidence that the moderate Australian approach is doing him any good.”