US urged to enforce jet fuel sanctions on Myanmar junta

By Admin 09 Jul 2024

DMG Newsroom
9 July 2024, Sittwe

Justice For Myanmar and The Sentry have urged the United States to enforce jet fuel sanctions on Myanmar to effectively curtail the capacity of Myanmar’s military regime to continue its indiscriminate and deadly airstrikes.

“We are calling for the US to deploy the strong regulatory tools it has already put in place and to leverage the credible intelligence it is receiving from civil society,” the two organisations said in a statement on July 8.

The junta’s brutal aerial war against Myanmar civilians has intensified, said the statement, which urged the US Treasury Department to “finally use its jet fuel determination to sanction Chinese-flagged ship HUITONG78, Vietnamese petroleum storage terminal operator Hai Linh Co. Ltd and all other entities and individuals involved in the supply of jet fuel to the junta.”

The US Treasury Department adopted a series of measures in August 2023 targeted at the jet fuel supply to the junta, the two organisations noted, while adding that no new jet fuel sanctions have been imposed after almost one year.

Oliver Windridge, director of illicit finance policy at The Sentry, said the US Treasury Department “must act and sanction these enablers of the Myanmar junta’s air force to show that it is not bark only but that it will use its teeth. These actions can disrupt the supply chain fueling the junta’s air assets and deter international actors from participating in this murderous supply chain.”

The military regime continues to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with total impunity more than three years after the 2021 coup, said Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Ma Yadanar Maung.

“This is continuing amid a lack of international action to cut off the junta’s jet fuel supply chain. The US has the power to act to disrupt the junta’s access to jet fuel,” she said.

Justice For Myanmar describes itself as “a covert group of activists using research, data visualisation and reporting to expose the companies and criminals profiting from brutality, war crimes and mass-scale suffering.” The Sentry is an investigative organisation that tracks corruption globally.