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Open letter to UK Foreign Secretary: sanction all companies involved in supplying aviation fuel to Myanmar

December 9th, 2022  •  Author:   550 Organizations  •  9 minute read
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The Honorable James Cleverly
Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH
United Kingdom

13 December 2022*

Open letter to UK Foreign Secretary: sanction all companies involved in supplying aviation fuel to Myanmar

Dear Minister,

To mark International Human Rights Day and in solidarity with the Myanmar people who bravely continue to defend their rights and democracy against the Myanmar military junta, we, the 550 undersigned Myanmar, regional and international organizations, call on the Government of the United Kingdom (UK Government) to immediately take action to ensure no British companies is involved, directly or indirectly, in the supply of aviation fuel to the Myanmar military junta. We further call for your decisive, stronger actions to end the Myanmar military’s onslaught of horrendous crimes.

The illegal coup attempt launched by the Myanmar military in February 2021 has led to gross human rights violations nationwide, and caused an unprecedented human rights and humanitarian crisis. Terrorizing attacks by the junta, most notably airstrikes, have taken more than 2,500 lives and displaced over 1.2 million people, with exact numbers are expected to be much higher. Civilians have been consistently targeted and under constant threat of aerial attacks, including in schools, medical facilities, religious sites and people fleeing for their lives.

The junta’s intensified aerial attacks have been enabled by aviation fuel, supplied and brokered by foreign companies. The supply chain of aviation fuel from foreign ports have direct links to war crimes being committed daily by the junta. We note that British companies have provided insurance services to vessels delivering aviation fuel to Myanmar. As long as the supply chain is allowed to continue, the junta’s atrocities will take more lives and exacerbate the massive displacement. The junta’s countless war crimes and crimes against humanity have been permitted to rage on for the past 22 months. It is time the international community issued a complete ban of arms flow to cut its supply to this international criminal entity.

The UK Government’s commitment to values of democracy and human rights must be reflected in your responses in effective and meaningful actions to address the deepening catastrophes in Myanmar. We note the UK Government’s previous actions in support of the Myanmar people’s efforts to end this illegal attempted coup to protect the rights of the Myanmar people, including sanctions on war criminals and junta-linked businesses, and support for the opening of a National Unity Government’s office in your country who legitimately represents the Myanmar people. We further welcome the UK Government’s delayed support for The Gambia case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice. However, more decisive, practical actions are urgently needed to end ongoing aerial attacks and atrocities in Myanmar. Your government’s pledge to address the conflict-related gender violence must also prioritize women and girls in Myanmar’s plight.

We earnestly appeal to you to immediately sanction Burmese companies and state-owned enterprises involved in the supply of aviation fuel to the junta. We further call on the UK Government to impose an immediate ban on British companies involved in any aspect of aviation fuel supply to Myanmar. It is essential that the UK Government ensure sanctions on the delivery of aviation fuel to Myanmar which covers the provision of services such as insurance, accreditation and verification services to vessels and infrastructure used to supply aviation fuel to Myanmar. As the Myanmar military has previously seized commercial-grade aviation fuel from suppliers, we believe that a complete ban on supplying aviation fuel to Myanmar is essential.

We welcome the role the UK Government has played in seeking the coordination of the implementation of sanctions to date. We request you seek allies such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the European Union to join you in sanctioning aviation fuel supplies to Myanmar. As Myanmar civil society, we are aware that such sanctions on aviation fuel could impact commercial domestic flights. However, we believe that the humanitarian benefit of reducing atrocious airstrikes far outweigh any inconvenience caused by sanctioning fuel supplies.

Lastly, we entrust the UK Government to pass a UN Security Council resolution which places a comprehensive global arms embargo on Myanmar. The resolution must cover all weapons, munitions and equipment, as well as military training and assistance.

As the people of Myanmar sacrifice their livelihood and future for a federal democratic Myanmar which upholds human rights and equality for all, the UK Government must utilize all tools at your disposal to stop atrocities committed by the illegal military junta on a daily basis and protect the lives of Myanmar civilians.

For more information, please contact:

Signed by 550* Myanmar, regional and international organizations including 314 organizations who have chosen to not disclose their name: 

*The total number of signatories to the open letter was updated on 13 December 2022.

  1. 8888 Generation (New Zealand)
  2. Action Committee for Democracy Development (Coalition of 14 grassroots networks)
  3. Active Youths Kalaymyo
  4. Ah Nah Podcast – Conversations with Myanmar
  5. Albany Karen Community
  6. All Burma Democratic Front in New Zealand
  7. All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF) – Australia Branch
  8. All Young Burmese League (AYBL)
  9. Alliance for Democracy in Myanmar (Western USA)
  10. Alliance for FREE Burma Solidarity
  11. ALTSEAN-Burma
  12. Anti-Junta Forces Coordination Committee – Mandalay (AFCC)
  13. Anyar Taw Eain
  14. ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
  15. Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC)
  16. Asian Cultural Forum on Development Foundation (ACFOD)
  17. Asian Democracy Network (ADN)
  18. Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
  19. Association of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
  20. Association Suisse-Birmanie
  21. Auckland Kachin Community NZ
  22. Auckland Zomi Community
  23. Australia Chin Communities Council Inc.
  24. Australian Karen Organisation (AKO)
  25. Ayeyarwaddy Journalist Society (AJS)
  26. Ayeyarwaddy West Development Organization (Magway Region)
  27. Ayeyarwaddy Youth Network
  28. Back Pack Health Worker Team
  29. Blood Money Campaign
  30. Burma Action Ireland
  31. Burma Campaign UK
  32. Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN)
  33. Burma Lawyer Council (BLC)
  34. Burma Medical Association
  35. Burman suomalaiset Finland
  36. Burmese American Democratic Alliance (BADA)
  37. Burmese Community Development Collaboration (BCDC)
  38. Burmese Community Group (Manawatu, NZ)
  39. Burmese Community Support Group (BCSG)
  40. Burmese Medical Association Australia (BMAA)
  41. Burmese Muslim Association (BMA)
  42. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK
  43. Burmese Rohingya Welfare Organization New Zealand
  44. Cambodian Americans and Friends for Democracy and Human Rights Advocates
  45. Campaign for Popular Democracy (CPD)
  46. CDM Support Team Mandalay (CSTM)
  47. Chin Community of Auckland
  48. Chin Human Rights Organization
  49. Civil Information Network – CIN
  50. CRPH & NUG Supporters Ireland
  51. CRPH Funding Ireland
  52. Dawei Development Association
  53. Delta News Agency
  54. Dhanu Youth Organization
  55. Doh Atu – Ensemble pour le Myanmar
  56. Dooplaya Karen Community Development Group (DKCDG)
  57. Educational Initiatives Prague
  58. Ethnic Myanmar Communities Council of Australia Inc.
  59. European Karen Network (EKN)
  60. European Rohingya Council
  61. Federal FM Mandalay
  62. Federal Myanmar Benevolence Group (NZ)
  63. Food Not Bombs Kawthoolei လှုပ်ရှားမှု အဖွဲ့
  64. Foundation of Khmer Samaki, USA
  65. Free Rohingya Coalition
  66. Freedom and Labor Action Group
  67. Future Light Center
  68. Future Thanlwin
  69. General Strike Coordination Body
  70. Generation Wave
  71. Grass-root People
  72. Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF), Thailand
  73. Human Rights Educators Network
  74. Human Rights Foundation of Monland
  75. India For Myanmar
  76. Industrial Training Centre (ITC) Family Sydney
  77. Info Birmanie
  78. Initiatives for International Dialogue
  79. Inlihtan Peninsula Tenasserim
  80. Institute for Asian Democracy
  81. Inter Pares
  82. International Association, Myanmar-Switzerland (IAMS)
  83. International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
  84. Justice 4 Rohingya UK
  85. Justice For Myanmar
  86. Kachin Association Australia (KAA)
  87. Kachin National Youth Network – KNYN
  88. Kachin State Civilian Movement- KSCM
  89. Kachin Women’s Association Thailand
  90. Karen Community Association UK
  91. Karen Community in Norway (KCN)
  92. Karen Community of North Carolina
  93. Karen Community of Syracuse
  94. Karen Human Rights Group
  95. Karen Organization of America
  96. Karen Peace Support Network
  97. Karen Society of Buffalo
  98. Karen Swedish Community (KSC)
  99. Karen Women’s Organization
  100. Karenni National Women’s Organization
  101. Karenni Society Finland
  102. Karenni Society New Zealand
  103. Keng Tung Youth
  104. Kyaukse University Students’ Union – KUSU
  105. Laiza Youth Committee
  106. Let’s Help Each Other
  107. LGBTIQ Strike of Mandalay
  108. Los Angeles Myanmar Movement (LA2M)
  109. Mandalay Regional Youth Association
  110. Mandalay Youth Association
  111. Matu Chin Community – NSW/UPU Chin Association
  112. MeBoun Foundation
  113. Medical Family Mandalay (MFM)
  114. Metta Campaign Mandalay
  115. MIIT Student Strike Column
  116. Minbu Farmer Group
  117. Mindat Chin Community NSW
  118. Minhla Development Organization
  119. Mon National Council (MNC)
  120. Monywa Peoples’ Strike Steering Committee
  121. Mwetaung Area Development Group (MADG) Chin State
  122. Myanmar Action Group Denmark
  123. Myanmar anti-military coup movement in New Zealand
  124. Myanmar Campaign Network (Australia)
  125. Myanmar Community Coffs Harbour (MCC)
  126. Myanmar Community Group Christchurch New Zealand
  127. Myanmar Community Group Dunedin New Zealand
  128. Myanmar Cultural Research Society (MCRS)
  129. Myanmar Diaspora Group Finland
  130. Myanmar Engineering Association of Australia (MEAA)
  131. Myanmar Engineers – New Zealand
  132. Myanmar Gonye (New Zealand)
  133. Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)
  134. Myanmar Professionals Association Australia (MPAA)
  135. Myanmar Students’ Union in New Zealand
  136. Myaung Education Network
  137. Myaung Medical Team
  138. Naphe Development Organization
  139. Nelson Myanmar Community Group New Zealand
  140. Netherlands-Myanmar Solidarity Platform
  141. Network for Human Rights Documentation Burma (ND-Burma)
  142. New Rehmonnya Federated Force (NRFF)
  143. New Zealand Doctors for NUG
  144. New Zealand Karen Association
  145. New Zealand Zo Community Inc.
  146. NLD Solidarity Association (NSW chapter)
  147. NSW Karenni (Kayah) Communities
  148. Nway Oo Guru Lay Myar
  149. Overseas Mon Association, New Zealand
  150. Pakokku Youth Development Council
  151. Progressive Voice
  152. Pwintphu Development Organization (Magway Region)
  153. Pyithu Gonye (New Zealand)
  154. Rohingya Action Ireland
  155. Rvwang Community Association New Zealand
  156. Save and Care Organization for Ethnic Women at Border Areas
  157. Save Myanmar Fundraising Group (New Zealand)
  158. Sea Junction
  159. Shan Community (New Zealand)
  160. Shan MATA
  161. Sisters 2 Sisters
  162. Social Democracy Think Tank, Thailand
  163. Southern Youth Development Organization
  164. Swedish Burma Committee
  165. Sydney Friends for Myanmar Unity
  166. Synergy Social Harmony Organization
  167. Ta’ang Students and Youth Union
  168. Ta’ang Women’s Organization
  169. Tamar Institute
  170. Tanintharyi MATA
  171. Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB)
  172. The Free Burma Campaign (South Africa)
  173. The Ladies
  174. U.S. Campaign for Burma
  175. Union for Civil Liberty Association
  176. Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
  177. Universities Kachin Literature and Culture Association Yangon (Yangon JLH)
  178. Utica Karen Organization
  179. Victoria Myanmar Youth
  180. We Pledge CDM (Australia)
  181. White Coat Society Yangon
  182. Women Advocacy Coalition Myanmar (WAC-M)
  183. Women’s League of Burma
  184. Women’s Peace Network
  185. Yangon Medical Network
  186. Young People for Social Democracy Movement, Thailand
  187. Youths for Community-Myaung
  188. Zo Community Australia Inc.
  189. Zomi Association Australia Inc.
  190. ကျန်းမာရေးမိသားစု – မန္တလေး
  191. ချမ်းမြသာစည်မြို့နယ် လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  192. ခုနှစ်စဥ်ကြယ် အဖွဲ့
  193. စိန်ပန်း သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  194. ဆီသို့ စာစဉ်
  195. တကသကျောင်းသားဟောင်းများအင်အားစု
  196. တမ္ပဝတီ လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  197. တိုက်ကွမ်ဒို အားကစားအသင်း
  198. တိုင်းရင်းသားလူငယ်များ အထွေထွေသပိတ်ကော်မတီ
  199. ဒို့မြေကွန်ရက် (LIOH)
  200. ဒေါင်းစစ်သည်
  201. ဒေါင်းတမန် စာစဉ်
  202. နွေဦးခရီးသည်
  203. ပညာရေးမိသားစု (စစ်အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင်ရေး ပညာရေးစစ်ကြောင်းများ ချိတ်ဆက်ညှိနှိုင်းရေးကော်မတီ)
  204. ပြည်ကြီးတံခွန်သပိတ်
  205. ပွင့်ဖြူလယ်ယာမြေကွန်ရက်
  206. ပုဂ္ဂလိက မူကြိုဆရာ၊ ဆရာမများအဖွဲ့
  207. ဘာသာပေါင်းစုံ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  208. ဘုရားကြီး ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  209. မကွေး CDM Network
  210. မကွေးလူထုတိုက်ပွဲကော်မတီ
  211. မန္တလာတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူများသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  212. မန္တလေး ကုန်စည်ဒိုင်သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  213. မန္တလေး၊ တက္ကသိုလ် ဒီဂရီ၊ ကောလိပ် ဆရာ၊ ဆရာမများ၊ ဝန်ထမ်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  214. မန္တလေးတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသား ကျောင်းသူဟောင်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  215. မန္တလေးမြို့အခြေစိုက် လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  216. မန္တလေးမဟာမိတ် သပိတ်တပ်ပေါင်းစုစစ်ကြောင်း
  217. မန္တလေးလူငယ် သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  218. မန္တလေးအင်ဂျင်နီယာ တပ်ပေါင်းစု
  219. မန္တလေးအင်ဂျင်နီယာများအဖွဲ့
  220. မန္တလေးအရပ်ဖက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ
  221. မြစ်ကွေ့ – လူထုတော်လှန်ရေးစာစဉ်
  222. မြတောင် သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  223. မြန်မာ့မီးရထား တိုင်းအမှတ် (၃) CDM ဝန်ထမ်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  224. မွတ်စ်လင်မ်လူငယ်များအဖွဲ့
  225. မဟာအောင်မြေမြို့နယ် စုပေါင်းလူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  226. မီးဒုတ် စာစဉ်
  227. ယင်းမာပင်-ဆားလင်းကြီး ကျေးရွာပေါင်းစုံ လူထုသပိတ် ဦးဆောင်ကော်မတီ
  228. ရွှေပြည်သာသပိတ်ကော်မတီ
  229. သံဃသမဂ္ဂ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  230. သပြေညို သတင်းလွှာ
  231. သမဝါယမတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသူ၊ ကျောင်းသားများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  232. အ.ထ.က (၇) ကျောင်းသူ၊ ကျောင်းသားဟောင်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  233. အ.လ.က (၁၂) ထခွဲ၊ အခြေခံပညာကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂ (အ.က.သ)
  234. အဖမ်းဆီးခံပြည်သူများ ကိုယ်စားပြုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  235. အောင်ပင်လယ် ပင်မသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  236. အောင်မြေသာစံ ပညာရေးကျောင်းပေါင်းစုံ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း

Additional 314 organizations have chosen to not disclose their name.


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