Is Northern Ireland arming the Junta?
A local angle on the extraordinary scenes we're witnessing in Burma is suggested by Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland director. He writes:
Could Northern Ireland be helping to arm the military dictatorship in Burma? That's what Amnesty International fears, given the UK's lax arms export controls and the fact that at least two local companies help manufacture components or software which go into a type of attack aircraft believed to have been sold to Burma. The local firms, named by Amnesty, are involved in the supply of engine control systems and ejector seats which are reportedly used in Chinese K-8 attack jets and sold on to Burma. The Government - and, locally, OFMDFM - could do more than posture on Burma and actually tighten up the loophole-ridden controls that currently don't prevent UK-based companies, even if unwittingly, from helping to arm the dictators.
See for Amnesty's report, "Northern Ireland: Arming the World", which we examined on a recent edition of Sunday Sequence.
Comments
Is Amnesty not taking this all too far? Our NI based electronics and manufacturing companies need to be able to export their goods.
If they make ejector seats - which are a good thing in themselves - can they really be held responsible if a third party puts them in a plane which they sell on to a fourth party to do evil?
Or what if a company in NI made circuit boards for aircraft avionics? If they sell those to a broker on the open market, those components might end up in an airliner or in an attack aircraft. They have no control over these things, that is the nature of a free economy.
Does Amnesty have any clue as to how impossible it is to control the market? Or do they recommend a Soviet style command economy?
The logic of their view is that if I use a Stanley hammer (which I have bought in a DIY shop) to kill someone, Stanley are responsible for having armed me.
Aren't there though not enough markets worldwide without selling to countries with miserable Human Rights records like China and Myanmar?
To me the Stanley Hammer analogy falls down because a Chinese K-8 Karakorum light attack jet in the wrong hands is potentially much more lethal.
There have been many arms and other product embargoes enacted successfully around the world, e.g. South Africa. Our economies didn't collapse because of them.