Singapore ‘tightens screws’ on Myanmar generals with arms trade crackdown

The UN says Russia, China and India continue to send weapons to Myanmar even as the Singapore route is blocked.

Bangkok, Thailand – Singapore has responded to United Nations pressure by cracking down on sales of weapons through its territory to Myanmar, delivering a serious blow to the embattled generals, who seized power in a coup more than three years ago.

Thomas Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, told Al Jazeera that the city state’s government “immediately responded” to his 2023 report that found Singapore-based entities had become the third largest source of weapons materials to the military and were “critical” to its weapons procurement.

“My subsequent report to the Human Rights Council found that exports of weapons materials from Singapore to Myanmar had dropped by 83 percent,” Andrews said. “This is a significant step forward and an example of how governments can make a difference for those who are in harm’s way in Myanmar.”

Singapore’s crackdown has raised costs for army chief Min Aung Hlaing and his forces at a time when they are facing unprecedented battlefield disasters – struggling to quell opposition against their rule in the country’s heartland, and failing to push back against a coalition of ethnic minority and majority Bamar resistance forces that have forced the military out of territory bordering Thailand, China and India.

In what analysts see as a sign of the generals’ increasing desperation, they have imposed a sweeping conscription law in a bid to boost their ranks.