Mizzima-Sept 7
Justice For Myanmar has condemned the Vietnamese regime for inviting war criminal and illegal junta head Min Aung Hlaing for an official visit. The visit ran from September 4 to 6 and was a continuation of Vietnam’s longstanding business and defense ties with the Myanmar military, spanning telecommunications, aviation fuel, the supply of military equipment and military training. Min Aung Hlaing attended a Myanmar-Vietnam business forum, which the NGO says will only further Vietnamese corporate complicity with the junta. Vietnam’s biggest state investment in Myanmar is the Mytel telecoms operator, a joint project between the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence-owned Viettel Global Investment, the military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar cronies. Mytel is highly lucrative for MEC, which Min Aung Hlaing oversees. Justice For Myanmar’s earlier analysis of confidential profit projections from Mytel’s operating company, Telecom International Myanmar Company Limited, show that the Myanmar military may be entitled to receive over US$700 million in dividends over ten years for their share in the military-controlled mobile network operator. Beyond financing the Myanmar military, Mytel also serves strategic military and surveillance purposes. As Justice For Myanmar exposed in 2020, the Viettel subsidiary Viettel Construction led the building of at least 38 Mytel towers in military bases. Most are in ethnic areas and house military units that are directly perpetrating grave human rights violations. At least four of these towers are located in arms manufacturing compounds of the Myanmar military. The Myanmar army’s signals directorate is also operationally linked to Mytel and the mobile operator uses the military’s network of fiber optic cables. Mytel additionally plays a significant role in the junta’s digital dictatorship. As Justice For Myanmar has exposed, Mytel implemented a commercialized version of China’s Great Firewall from Geedge Networks in its Yangon and Mandalay data centers, enabling the tracking of network traffic at the individual level and the geographic location of mobile subscribers in real time. This gives the junta an enhanced capability to effectively track down, arrest, torture and kill human rights defenders, journalists and revolutionary forces across the country. Read more at:
