Friday, October 26, 2007

George Yeo's answers in Parliament

15 Singapore has very few defence interactions with Myanmar. But we have to maintain links with the military because it is a key institution. These are largely limited to interactions at multilateral events such as ASEAN-related meetings, international defence exhibitions, and sports activities like the Army Half Marathon. As far as defence sales are concerned, it is established policy of the Government not to divulge details publicly. Myanmar is not subject to any UN arms embargo. If there is any UN sanction against Myanmar, Singapore will of course abide by it. Nevertheless, I can say that over the years defence sales to Myanmar have not been substantial, and have always been carefully limited to items that are not suitable for countering civilian unrest. There have not been any defence sales to Myanmar in recent years and, going forward, we will continue to behave in a responsible manner.


That is what Mr George Yeo replied to one of many questions. The minister didn't deny sales of defence items, instead stressed that the sales items are not suitable for countering civilian unrest. But what kind of military items are not suitable for beating and shooting people? The tanks and SAMs may be.



Ms Sylvia Lim: Mr Speaker Sir, what concerns me is to what extent Singapore might be implicated in somehow propping up the military authorities in Burma or Myanmar in their oppressive tactics. And the reason I ask this, there have been some press reports recently as well as in the past. Just to cite one example, a Melbourne newspaper called The Age last month came up with an article called "Web of Cash, Power and Cronies" which reiterated in fact, soft contents from earlier articles in Jane's Intelligence Review in 1998. And the content of those articles basically is to say that Singapore has in fact been much involved in shipping ammunitions and other military equipment to Myanmar and also been instrumental in helping to set up a cyber centre where intelligence equipment was subsequently used to monitor activists. So, I would like to ask the Minister to comment on these articles, whether there have been some activities as such, in the past, to what extent it has minimised now. Such clarity I think would be very important for us.

REPLY

Minister: On the question of military sales, I've given a full answer earlier. It's been insubstantial. We've always made sure they were items which could not be used against civilians and there has been no sales in recent years. I shouldn't go on beyond that because it is our established policy not to divulge details of military sales. We have replied to the Australian newspaper. As for the reports about helping them establish a listening facility to monitor civilian dissidents, there's no truth in that. We have made repeated clarifications to Australian newspapers. They have printed our replies, but somehow the journalists who wrote subsequently ignored those replies we've made. As for their accusations about us being involved in drug money laundering, it goes back quite a long time to Dr Chee Soon Juan. We've clarified again and again but they keep being recycled and that article you've referred to contains some of that recycled hash.

The answer is the same as answered before. But, let's see what he has said before. In answer 16,


16 Ms Eunice Olsen asked whether the Government would consider granting humanitarian assistance to the Myanmar people. We would certainly do so if there is a request from Myanmar. Singapore has provided significant technical assistance to Myanmar for human resource development over the years. To date, we have trained more than 6,000 Myanmar officials in several areas, including English language, tourism, IT, civil aviation and telecommunications. We do not intend to stop such assistance. Under the Initiative for ASEAN Integration, we have established a training centre in Yangon. Should one day the Myanmar Government open up and request further assistance from us, we will certainly do all we can.



That was an admission that Singapore has helped trained Myanmar officials. The training included IT and telecommunications, which can be used against monitoring activists in and out of the country. It is also mentioned a training centre was set up in Yangon. Isn't this be the cyber centre an australian newspaper mentioned? I believe it is the one. 6000 officials in for training and a training centre is more than good enough to monitor large webs of activists around the world. Moreover, never in the history of Burma, the military had intention to help general public, let alone training 6000 officials for them.



Q&A source: BEYOND SG

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

That 'troublemakers' word is from the perspective of the Burmese government. You have to see the context.

If you read the whole paragraph you will see he is stressing that junta cannot hope to go back to status quo or business as usual. My 2 cents!!!!