Singapore weapons factory for junta

South China Morning Post
Wednesday, July 22 1998
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, with the help of Israeli consultants.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".