China is helping Myanmar’s military to strengthen its control over the helpless civilians by providing them with “fighter aircraft”, and this clearly shows that Beijing doesn’t value human rights when it comes to furthering its own interests, Mekong News, Myanmar-based news agency reported.
Earlier, in October, Irrawaddy, a newspaper in Myanmar run by the opposition had claimed that the country had ordered several FTC-2000G midrange fighter jets from China.
A group of about eight air force pilots, eight technicians and at least two armament officers travelled to China via Kunming in June 2022, to take training in flying the aircraft and operating the weapon platform on board.
Although the news about the delivery of the aircraft was kept confidential Aero time, a Web magazine, quoting the local and international media in December 2022, reported that the first shipment of six latest-generation fighter jets known as Mountain Eagles had been delivered.
Irrawaddy has reported that the aircraft reached Myanmar in June 2022. The celebrated defence publication Janes has reported that regional intelligence sources have confirmed the delivery.
Close on the heels of this piece of information has come to the disturbing news that the military of Myanmar is increasingly turning to airstrikes in villages in Myanmar with deadly results to try to crush stiff armed resistance two years after its seizure of power, reported Mekong News.
Myanmar Witness has compiled 135 “airwar incidents” from July to December 2022. The number of airstrikes has increased since September. Significantly, on January 10, 2023, one of the five bombs dropped by the Myanmar air force at Mount Victoria on the headquarters of the rebel Chin National Front dropped in the neighbouring Champai district of Mizoram.
“As the Myanmar military struggles to exert control over areas of resistance, air strikes have become a key part of their offensive,” the Myanmar Witness report has said.
“The military is putting the population of Myanmar in a precarious position, destroying homes, schools and places of worship which should be safe for civilians.” The underground National Unity Government said in a statement in January 2023, that 460 civilians, mostly children, have lost their lives in the airstrikes, as per the report in Mekong News.
With the European Union imposing an arms embargo on Myanmar as well as a ban on the supply of weapons that can be used for internal repression or for monitoring communications and the United States barring any commercial transactions with the military of Myanmar, its major cronies and agents, combat aircraft supplied by China have come in handy for the military rules of Myanmar to kill civilians.
Amnesty International said in a statement in November 2022 that these “airstrikes have devastated families, terrorized civilians, killed and maimed victims,” and appealed to “supplies, shipping agents, vessel owners and maritime insurers to withdraw from a supply chain that is benefitting the Myanmar air force.”
The appeal does not seem to have cut any ice with the merciless Communist Party of China rulers in Beijing, Mekong News reported.