Open letter to UK Foreign Secretary calling for sanctions on aviation fuel

December 9, 2022

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

A PDF of the letter is available here.

The letter in Burmese is available here.

The Honorable James Cleverly
Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH
United Kingdom

9 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 516 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 horren- dous crimes.

The illegal coup attempt launched by the Myanmar military in February 2021 has led to gross hu- man 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. Civil- ians 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 insur- ance 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 My- anmar. We note the UK Government’s previous actions in support of the Myanmar people’s ef- forts 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 enter- prises 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 verifica- tion services to vessels and infrastructure used to supply aviation fuel to Myanmar. As the Myan- mar 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 imple- mentation 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 air- strikes 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, muni- tions 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.

Signed by 516 Myanmar, regional and international organizations including 312 organizations who have chosen to not disclose their name:

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. Alliance for Democracy in Myanmar (Western USA)
8. Alliance for FREE Burma Solidarity
9. ALTSEAN-Burma
10. Anyar Taw Eain
11. ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
12. Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC)
13. Asian Cultural Forum on Development Foundation (ACFOD)
14. Asian Democracy Network (ADN)
15. Association of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
16. Association Suisse-Birmanie
17. Auckland Kachin Community NZ
18. Auckland Zomi Community
19. Australia Chin Communities Council
20. Ayeyarwaddy Journalist Society – AJS
21. Ayeyarwaddy west Development Organization (Magway Region)
22. Ayeyarwaddy Youth Network
23. Back Pack Health Worker Team
24. Blood Money Campaign
25. Burma Action Ireland
26. Burma Campaign UK
27. Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN)
28. Burma Medical-Association
29. Burman suomalaiset Finland,
30. Burmese American Democratic Alliance (BADA)
31. Burmese Community Group (Manawatu, NZ)
32. Burmese Muslim Association (BMA)
33. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK
34. Burmese Rohingya Welfare Organization New Zealand
35. Cambodian Americans and Friends for Democracy and Human Rights Advocates
36. Campaign for Popular Democracy (CPD)
37. CDM Support Team Mandalay (CSTM)
38. Chin Community of Auckland
39. Chin Human Rights Organization
40. Civil Information Network – CIN
41. CRPH & NUG Supporters Ireland
42. CRPH Funding Ireland
43. Dawei Development Association
44. Delta News Agency
45. Dhanu Youth Organization
46. Doh Atu – Ensemble pour le Myanmar
47. Dooplaya Karen Community Development Group (DKCDG)
48. Educational Initiatives Prague
49. Ethnic Myanmar Communities Council of Australia
50. European Karen Network (EKN)
51. European Rohingya Council
52. Federal FM Mandalay
53. Federal Myanmar Benevolence Group (NZ)
54. Food Not Bombs Kawthoolei လှုပ်ရ
55. Foundation of Khmer Samaki, USA
56. Free Rohingya Coalition
57. Freedom and Labor Action Group
58. Future Light Center
59. Future Thanlwin
60. General Strike Coordination Body
61. Generation Wave
62. Grass-root People

ှားမှု အဖ ွဲ့

63. Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF), Thailand
64. Human Rights Educators Network
65. Human Rights Foundation of Monland
66. Info Birmanie
67. Initiatives for International Dialogue
68. Inlihtan Peninsula Tenasserim
69. Institute for Asian Democracy
70. Inter Pares
71. International Association, Myanmar-Switzerland (IAMS)
72. International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
73. Justice 4 Rohingya UK
74. Justice For Myanmar
75. Kachin National Youth Network – KNYN
76. Kachin State Civilian Movement- KSCM
77. Kachin Women’s Association Thailand
78. Karen Community Association UK
79. Karen Community in Norway (KCN)
80. Karen Community of North Carolina
81. Karen Community of Syracuse
82. Karen Organization of America
83. Karen Peace Support Network
84. Karen Society of Buffalo
85. Karen Swedish Community (KSC)
86. Karen Women’s Organization
87. Karenni National Women’s Organization
88. Karenni Society Finland
89. Karenni Society New Zealand
90. Keng Tung Youth
91. Kyaukse University Students’ Union – KUSU
92. Laiza Youth Committee
93. Let’s Help Each Other
94. LGBTIQ Strike of Mandalay
95. Los Angeles Myanmar Movement (LA2M)
96. Mandalay Regional Youth Association
97. Mandalay Youth Association
98. MeBoun Foundation
99. Metta Campaign Mandalay
100. MIIT Student Strike Column
101. Minbu Farmer Group
102. Minhla Development Organization
103. Mwetaung Area Development Group (MADG) Chin State
104. Myanmar Action Group Denmark
105. Myanmar anti-military coup movement in New Zealand
106. Myanmar Campaign Network (Australia)
107. Myanmar Community Group Christchurch New Zealand
108. Myanmar Community Group Dunedin New Zealand
109. Myanmar Cultural Research Society (MCRS)
110. Myanmar Diaspora Group Finland
111. Myanmar Engineers – New Zealand
112. Myanmar Gonye (New Zealand)
113. Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)
114. Myanmar Students’ Union in New Zealand
115. Myaung Education Network
116. Myaung Medical Team
117. Naphe Development Organization
118. Nelson Myanmar Community Group New Zealand
119. Netherlands-Myanmar Solidarity Platform
120. Network for Human Rights Documentation Burma (ND-Burma)
121. New Zealand Doctors for NUG
122. New Zealand Karen Association
123. New Zealand Zo Community
124. Nway Oo Guru Lay Myar
125. Overseas Mon Association, New Zealand
126. Pakokku Youth Development Council
127. Pwintphu Development Organization (Magway Region)
128. Pyithu Gonye (New Zealand)
129. Rohingya Action Ireland
130. Rvwang Community Association New Zealand
131. Save and Care Organization for Ethnic Women at Border Areas
132. Save Myanmar Fundraising Group (New Zealand)
133. Sea Junction
134. Shan Community (New Zealand)
135. Shan MATA
136. Social Democracy Think Tank, Thailand
137. Southern Youth Development Organization
138. Swedish Burma Committee
139. Synergy Social Harmony Organization
140. Ta’ang Women’s Organization
141. Tamar Institute
142. Tanintharyi MATA
143. Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB)
144. The Free Burma Campaign (South Africa)
145. The Ladies
146. S. Campaign for Burma
147. Union for Civil Liberty Association
148. Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
149. Universities Kachin Literature and Culture Association Yangon (Yangon JLH)
150. Utica Karen Organization
151. Victoria Myanmar Youth
152. White Coat Society Yangon
153. Women’s League of Burma
154. Women’s Peace Network
155. Yangon Medical Network
156. Young People for Social Democracy Movement, Thailand [YPD]
157. Youths for Community-Myaung
158. Zo Community Australia
159. ကျနှား် မ ရ ှားမိသ ှားစု – မန္ရလှား
160. ချမ်ှားမမသ စည်မမိ ွဲ့နယ် လူထသပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
161. ခုန္စ်စဥ် ကယ် အဖ ွဲ့
162. စိနပနှား သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
163. ဆသုိ စ စဉ်
164. တမပဝတီ လူထသပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
165. တိုက်က မ်ဒို အ ှားကစ ှားအသငှား်
166. တိုငှား် ငှား် သ ှားလူငယ်မျ ှား အရထရထသပိတ်ရက ်မတီ
167. ဒရိုို့ မမက န က် (LIOH)
168. ရဒေါငှား် စစ်သည်
169. ရဒေါငှား် တမန် စ စဉ်
170. ရန္ဦှားခ ီှားသည
171. ပည ရ ှားမိသ ှားစု (စစအ
172. မပည်ကကီှားတံခ နသပိတ်ဏ ရ ငဆနက်ျငရှား ပည ရ  ှားစစ်ရ က ငှား် မျ ှား ချိတ်ဆက်ညန္ငိှား် ရ ှားရက ်မတီ)

173. ပငမ်ို့ ဖြူလယယ ရမမကန    က်
174. ပုဂ္ဂလိက မူကကိ ဆ ၊ ဆ  မမျ ှားအဖ ွဲ့
175. ဘ သ ရပေါငှား် စံု သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
176. ဘု ှားကကီှား မငမ်ှားချမ်ှားရ  ှားသပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
177. မရက ှား CDM Network
178. မန္လ တကက သလ် ရကျ ငှား် သ ှားရကျ ငှား် သူမျ ှားသပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
179. မန္ရလှား ကုနစည်ဒငိ သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
180. မန္ရလှား၊ တကက သလ် ဒဂ္ ီ၊ ရက လိပ် ဆ  ၊ ဆ  မမျ ှား၊ ဝနထမ်ှားမျ ှား သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
181. မန္ရလှားတကက သလ် ရကျ ငှား် သ ှား ရကျ ငှား် သူရ ငှား် မျ ှား သပတ်စစ်ရ က ငိ           ှား
182. မန္ရလှားမမိ ွဲ့အရမခစိုက် လူထသပိတ်စစ်ရ  က  ငှား်
183. မန္ရလှားမ မိတ် သပိတ်တပ်ရပေါငှား် စုစစ်ရ က ငှား
184. မန္ရလှားလူငယ် သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
185. မန္ရလှားအငဂ္ျငန
186. မန္ရလှားအငဂ္ျငနယ တပ်ရပေါငှား် စု ယ မျ ှားအဖ ွဲ့

187. မန္ရလှားအ ပ်ဖက်အဖ ွဲ့အစည်ှားမျ ှား
188. မမစ်ရက ွဲ့ – လူထရတ ်လ နရ ှားစ စဉ်
189. မမရတ င် သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
190. မမနမ မီှား  ထ ှား တိုငှား် အမ တ် (၃) CDM ဝနထမ်ှားမျ ှား သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား

191. မ တ်စ်လငမ်လငယ်မျ ှားအဖ ွဲ့
192. မ ရအ ငရမမမမိ ွဲ့နယ် စုရပေါငှား် လူထသ
193. မီှားဒတ် စ စဉ်
194. ရ မပည်သ သပိတ်ရက ်မတီ
195. သဃသမဂ္ဂ သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်ပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား

196. သရမပညိ သတငှား် လွှေ
197. သမဝေါယမတကက သလ် ရကျ ငှား် သူ၊ ရကျ ငှား် သ ှားမျ ှား သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
198. အ.ထ.က (၇) ရကျ ငှား် သူ၊ ရကျ ငှား် သ ှားရ ငှား် မျ ှား သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
199. အ.လ.က (၁၂) ထခ ၊ အရမခခပည ရကျ ငှား် သ ှားမျ ှားသမဂ္ဂ (အ.က.သ)
200. အဖမ်ှားဆှားီ ခံမပည်သူမျ ှား ကိုယ်စ ှားမပ သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား်
201. ရအ ငပငလယ် ပငမသပတ်စစ်ရ က ငှားိ
202. ရအ ငရမမသ စံ ပည ရ ှားရကျ ငှား် ရပေါငှား် စံု သပိတ်စစ်ရ က ငှား
203. တကသရကျ ငှား် သ ှားရ ငှား် မျ ှားအငအ ှားစု
204. မရက ှားလူထတိုက်ပ ရက ်မတီ

Additional 312 organizations have chosen to not disclose their name.