As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba visits the UK asking for support against the threat of invasion by the Russian dictatorship, Burma Campaign UK today accused him of hypocrisy for continuing to arm and equip the genocidal Burmese military.
Dmytro Kuleba claims Ukraine is a bastion of support for human rights and democracy at the same time as assisting in the commission of the most serious human rights violations under international law.
Ukraine is one of the few countries which continues to supply arms and equipment to the Burmese military, even after the genocide of the Rohingya and the military coup on 1st February 2021.
Ukraine has long supplied equipment to the Burmese military, and agreed a new military cooperation agreement with the Burmese military in 2019, even after United Nations investigators found the Burmese military was committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against ethnic minorities in Burma, and called for a global arms embargo. The UN report is available here.
Ukraine’s hypocrisy even extended to supporting a UN General Assembly Resolution in June 2021 which called for an end to the flow of arms to the Burmese military, at the same time as equipping them. The resolution is available here.
Earlier this year Burma Campaign UK received an aggressive phone call from the Ukrainian Embassy in London after we placed them on a list of countries with military co-operation agreements with the Burmese military. We told them we would remove them from the list if they wrote to us stating they were not supplying arms and equipment or any form of training to the Burmese military. Despite repeated follow up letters and emails to the embassy in London they did not respond again.
In September 2021 Justice For Myanmar published a report detailing the role of Ukraine in arming and equipping the Burmese military. Their report is available here.
Burma Campaign UK calls on British government ministers and members of Parliament and the Lords who met with Dmytro Kuleba to write to him and ask him why Ukraine refuses to impose an embargo on the supply of arms and equipment to the Burmese military.
“Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is justified in asking for British support against Russian aggression, but is a total hypocrite for arming and equipping the Burmese military at the same time,” said Mark Farmaner. “The Russian regime and the Ukrainian government have one thing in common, they both arm and equip the Burmese military and are complicit in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.”