Burma Campaign UK today welcomed new EU sanctions on No2 Mining Enterprise and 6 individuals announced yesterday, but criticised the incredibly slow pace of the introduction of new sanctions.

The EU has the right policy of sanctioning on an ongoing basis sources of revenue and arms and individuals linked to human rights violations, but EU member states are not prioritising the implementation of their own policy.

“At this pace, it will be decades before the EU gets round to sanctioning those committing human rights violations and most sources of revenue and arms to the military,” said Anna Roberts, Executive Director of Burma Campaign UK. “Why has it taken two and a half years to sanction such an obvious source of revenue like a mining enterprise which receives revenue from rare earths?”

There is no ‘silver bullet’ sanction which will by itself have a major impact on reducing revenue to the Burmese military. It is, therefore, essential that the EU, UK USA, Canada and others maximise the breadth of targeted sanctions to chip away at sources of revenue and arms. It is the cumulative impact of such sanctions which will maximise their effectiveness.

“If you set out to try to minimise the impact of sanctions, this is the way you would do it, uncoordinated sanctions implemented at an incredibly slow speed with gaps of months in between, giving the military time to try to find workarounds before the next random sanction,” said Anna Roberts. “Since the USA organised a sanctions coordination meeting there has been less coordination and the UK is missing in action.”

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