Myanmar may have chem arms

Myanmar is in breach of a global convention banning chemical weapons and may have a stockpile left over from the 1980s, the United States said on Monday.

The southeast Asian nation may still have weapons at a “historic” facility where mustard gas was produced, a senior State Department official told the annual meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The US allegation comes as Myanmar’s military yesterday began a rare court martial of soldiers following a probe into alleged atrocities during a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, a spokesman said, as the country prepares to face genocide charges at an international court in the Hague.

Myanmar officially joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which bans the production, storage and use of chemical arms, in 2015.

“The US has serious concerns that a chemical weapons stockpile may remain at Myanmar’s historical chemical weapons facility,” Thomas DiNanno, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, told the OPCW in The Hague.

Washington had information that Myanmar “had a chemical weapons programme in the 1980s that included a sulphur mustard development programme and chemical weapons production facility”, he added.

“Based on available information, the United States certifies that Myanmar is in non-compliance with the CWC, due to its failure to declare its past chemical weapons programme and to destroy its chemical weapons facility.”

Myanmar has previously faced accusations of storing and using such weapons.

In 2013, a parliamentary report said police had used phosphorus the previous year against protesters at a copper mine in the north of the country, causing severe burns.

In July 2014, five journalists from Myanmar were sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour over an article accusing the military of producing chemical arms.

The previous year, Myanmar’s then quasi-civilian government denied using chemical weapons against rebels from the Kachin ethnic minority during clashes in the north of the country.

The US official said Washington had held talks with Myanmar’s civilian government and military over the issue and “stands ready to assist Myanmar” to destroy the weapons.

Myanmar was the 191st State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 and is monitored by the OPCW for compliance, reported AFP.

In 2005, London-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide accused the former military junta of using chemical weapons against rebels from the Karen community.

RARE COURT MARTIAL

The US allegation comes as Myanmar faces growing international legal pressure over its treatment of another minority -- the Muslim Rohingya, thousands of whom were forced to flee to Bangladesh in a huge military operation in 2017.

Soldiers, police, and Buddhist villagers are alleged to have razed hundreds of villages in the remote western Rakhine state, torturing Rohingya as they fled, carrying out mass-killings and gang-rapes.

Myanmar says the army was fighting a legitimate counter-insurgency campaign against militants who attacked security posts.

Spokesman Zaw Min Tun told Reuters via telephone that soldiers and officers from a regiment deployed to Gu Dar Pyin village, the site of an alleged massacre of Rohingya, were “weak in following the rules of engagement”.

In a statement published on its website, the army said the soldiers being court martialled were involved in “accidents” in Gu Dar Pyin.

The Associated Press reported the existence of at least five mass graves in the village, through interviews with survivors in refugee camps in Bangladesh and time-stamped cellphone videos. Myanmar denied the allegations made in the AP           report.

The country is facing a wave of international pressure over its treatment of the Rohingya, with cases filed against it at courts around the world.

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of a Nobel peace prize for her past defiance of a military junta that had led the country for decades, is set to travel to the Hague for hearings starting in December at the International Court of Justice.

Gambia, a tiny, mainly Muslim West African state, lodged a lawsuit accusing the country of genocide after winning the support of the 57-nation Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Myanmar says the international efforts violate its sovereignty and has vowed to carry out its own investigations into the allegations.

But few have been punished so far. Seven soldiers jailed for 10 years for killing 10 Rohingya men and boys in the village of Inn Din were granted early release last November, after serving less than a year in prison.

Two Reuters journalists who uncovered the murders spent more than 16 months behind bars on charges of obtaining state secrets, before being released in a presidential amnesty in May.