Appell an die südafrikanische Regierung: Demokratische Gruppierungen des Landes rufen auf „Stoppt die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit mit dem Regime in Myanmar“

„Sehr geehrter Herr Präsident“ – mit dieser höflichen Anrede beginnt der Offene Brief an Cyril Ramaphosa, mit dem er dazu aufgerufen wird, die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit mit Vertretern der Militärdiktatur in Myanmar aufzukündigen. Dabei geht es insbesondere um die Zusammenarbeit mit Personen, die ihrerseits mit der Junta in Myanmar zusammen arbeiten. So etwa den Vertretern der Silver Wave Energy – gerade diese Zusammenarbeit wird von Südafrika aus besonders intensiv voran getrieben. Dementsprechend wird auch die Aufkündigung gefordert – begleitet wird der offene Brief dabei von einer konkreten und ausführlichen Dokumentation über Stand und Verlauf dieser Art von Zusammenarbeit. Siehe dazu einerseits unsere Dokumentation (samt knapper deutscher Zusammenfassung) des offenen Briefes und die Dokumentation dieser Dokumentation wiederum, die die bisherige Zusammenarbeit klar macht.

Appeal to SA government – cut ties to Myanmar junta-linked Silver Wave Energy
– in solidarity with Burmese democracy movement

„Dear Mr. President,
I trust that this email finds you and yours well and safe from covid-19.
I write to you on behalf of the  Free Burma Campaign (South Africa)(FBC(SA)) and with the endorsement of various civil society groups listed below;  on a most tragic day for Burma/Myanmar in which at least 91 people have been killed by the security forces. I have pasted the link to an article and extracts below after I have signed off.
Against the backdrop of the bloodshed today and over the last eight weeks I write to you to draw your attention the Myanmar linked company Silver Wave Energy and the appeal by the FBC(SA) and other undersigned organizations to the SA government to cut ties with Silver Wave Energy.
The details of the appeal are in the attached pdf and Word documents.
I earnestly appeal to you to read the document and to act upon it.
Lastly I would like to request of your good office to notify us of your receipt of this email and to give us a formal response.
I look forward to your positive response.
Yours faithfully,
David P. Kramer, Free Burma Campaign (South Africa) (FBC(SA)“

• South African Federation of Trade Unions, Johannesburg – zwelinzimav@saftu.org.za
• Alternative Information and Development Centre*, Cape Town – brian@aidc.org.za
• Amadiba Crisis Committee*, Xolobeni, Eastern Cape – NonhleMbuthuma@gmail.com
• Free Burma Campaign South Africa, *Johannesburg – dpkramer@yebo.co.za
• GroundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa*, Pietermaritzburg – bobby@groundwork.org.za
• International Labour, Research and Information Group,*Cape Town – dale@ilrig.org.za
• South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, *Durban – desmond@sdceango.co.za
• Women Against Destructive Resource Extractivism (WoMin), Johannesburg – Samantha.Hargreaves@womin.org.za

ATE: 27 March 2021
President Cyril Ramaphosa – presidentrsa/@//presidency//.//gov//.//za/
Minister of Minerals and Energy Gwede Mantashe – Buang.Mokate@dmre.gov.zaMinister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor /- //Minister//@//dirco.gov.za/
Minster of Environment Barbara Creecy – fshaik@environment.gov.zaMinister of Trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel – ministry@economic./gov//.//za/

__________________________

Myanmar’s democratic restoration requires sanctions

We write to request an immediate end to South Africa’s relations with the Myanmar army junta that took power against a democratically elected government on 1 February 2021. Economic sanctions are now urgent, and in the case of one company – Silver Wage Energy – would also correspond to our profound concerns about this country’s oil and gas sector malgovernance, and the need to address climate catastrophe by rethinking offshore fossil fuel extraction.

Myanmar’s democratic restoration requires sanctions

We are acutely aware that democratic forces in Myanmar are suffering extreme repression, with more than 300 known murders of peaceful protesters by security forces over the past seven weeks, including nine on March 25, and the arrest of thousands of non-violent democratic protesters. It is vital to send a signal to both Myanmar’s military leaders and those countries that continue to maintain economic relations with the regime, that South Africa will now take a strong moral and economic stand against the coup. This is what we would expect from any African Union member in the event of a military takeover against a democratic government on this continent, and it is overdue for the South African government – representing us all – to break ties with the Myanmar army regime.
As requested by the country’s democratic movement, some countries are doing so. Although we normally look askew at foreign policy decisions from Washington, DC and London – given the deplorable history of U.S. imperialism and British colonialism, and their often illegal military interventions so far in the 21^st century – it is revealing that these two governments have heeded the call of the Burmese/Myanmar/international solidarity movements. On March 25, both the U.S. Treasury Department and the British government announced sanctions against Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Limited and Myanmar Economic Corporation Limited, which are core firms under the military’s control. Also this week, the European Union imposed sanctions on 11 army officials and will soon target military-related companies.

On March 26, the National League for Democracy’s spokesperson Dr Sa Sa explained the importance of the resurgence of these targeted punishments: These sanctions target the source of wealth and income of military Generals who have killed innocent people and committed ethnic cleansing against the Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Shan, Mon, Rakhine, Chin and Rohingya. These same Generals are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They have repeatedly committed these crimes over many years. Specifically, in 1988 and 1997 when they killed hundreds of innocent unarmed students. In 2007 when they stood against peace-loving Buddhist monks during the Saffron revolution. In 2017 against the Rohingya population and now again in 2021, where they have killed more than 300 on the streets of Myanmar and illegally detained more than 2500 including democratically elected leaders, our State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and our President, U Win Myint.
These same military Generals have stolen both our country’s wealth and our freedom by their smoking guns. These two holding companies, Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) have for many years been the means by which the military Generals have plundered our nation’s riches and wealth for their own advantage. They continue to use this wealth to kill, destroy and wipe out the people of Myanmar.

We have been calling on the world to take targeted coordinated tougher sanctions, both economically and diplomatically. Without these, the military Generals will never understand what they have done. They have no regard for the sanctity of life, human rights, democracy, justice and international law. They have turned the military into a project to protect themselves rather than the people. They have used the armed forces to keep themselves in power at the expense of the people. They are content to live in a nation where they can murder people on the streets, and as long as they are in power, my people, the people of Myanmar, have no future.

The international community must continue to use all the power it has to weaken and stop the Tatmadaw military Generals, whose illegitimate actions cannot be allowed to be repeated again and again in the history of Myanmar. The threat to their personal finances, to the world and to their income, matters more to them than the freedom of our people, peaceful and courageous people of Myanmar.
Through stronger, tougher, coordinated, targeted sanctions, the military Generals, their families and their supporters will finally start to bear some of the consequences of their crimes. I therefore, urge all heads of governments and states around the world, to please follow the leadership of the USA and the UK, cooperating together and imposing targeted, stronger and tougher sanctions against the illegitimate military regime, the individuals in charge, the military companies and their subsidiaries, including sanctions on their business on financial, insurance services, oil and gas, timber and Jemstone. – https://www.facebook.com/DrSasa22222 

Silver Wave Energy’s questionable offshore oil and gas exploration rights

In South Africa, there is one Myanmar-controlled company associated with the military we must draw your attention to: Silver Wave Energy (SWE), founded by Minn Minn Oung. In 2015, he met President Jacob Zuma to continue SWE’s deal-making in our offshore oil and gas sector, which dates to 2009 when the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PASA) accepted its applications for exploration rights (in the pink areas to the left), /even though SWE had no direct experience in such deep-water conditions. /The firm’s turnover has typically been $10 million/year; project development typically costs in excess of $5 billion.
Something extremely odd was taking place in PASA, because in early 2010, the WikiLeaks publication of U.S. State Department Cables already revealed that Minn Minn Oung had very tight relations with the Myanmar junta, which was the basis for his own expertise in state capture. He made no bones about this, the WikiLeaks revelations make clear. The period from 2009-18 may be accurately termed “eight lost years,” but far more than economic progress was lost: the South African government lost its integrity in dealing with the then-dictatorship, by giving this small military-linked Myanmar company such vast offshore rights to explore for oil and gas.

Currently, while Zuma is dodging testimony before the Zondo Commission, we don’t know the extent to which the extraordinarily large SWE holdings can be explained by state capture of the South African state. Minn Minn Oung still glowingly publicises his 2015 visit with Zuma. And personal gifts to Zuma from Silver Wave and the Myanmar military regime were reported in the /Mail&Guardian /(7 October 2011) and /City Press /(25 January 2015), though we suspect far more insidious relations existed between Pretoria and Naypyidaw at the time.

We also understand that energy parastatals (e.g., the Central Energy Fund and PetroSA) were so badly governed during the 2010s that their boards were fired and, finally, Zondo Commission investigations for corruption have begun. We endorse the National Prosecuting Authority’s increased attention to this sector’s vulnerability to malgovernance, for the world has witnessed large multinational oil, gas and coal corporations overtly influencing public policy nearly everywhere they operate, especially where climate-denialist government policies are so evident in these firms’ home countries. In short, because good governance is so rare in the resource-cursing fossil-fuel sector, it is obvious to us that Silver Wave should be an immediate target for the South African government, as the first step in cutting ties to the Myanmar military regime and its economic power base.

Fossil fuel exploration and development must cease

Silver Wave should be told that no further exploration will be occurring in offshore South African oil and gas fields, in any case. Given the extent of our economy’s addiction to fossil fuels – and the apparent worsening of that addiction through new offshore and onshore gas finds, as well as the proposed national gas pipeline, recent increases in coal exports, the Durban port-petrochemical expansion, the tripling of Durban-Johannesburg oil pipeline pumping capacity, and a potential 3300MW coal-fired power plant at Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone, to accompany the disastrous (and corrupted) Medupi and Kusile power plants still under construction – you will forgive us for questioning your government’s commitment to addressing the climate catastrophe.

Indeed we fear that some in government will sabotage South Africa’s international obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. For example, we note that attempts made by some signatories below to question oil, gas and coal extraction by invoking the climate crisis are regularly dismissed by state officials as irrelevant, even within Environmental Impact Assessments. Yet while such high levels of state subsidies and parastatal investment are continuing in fossil fuel and other high-carbon industries, the Finance Minister has thrown the 2021 school year into turmoil by denying tertiary education students the financing they need – a clear case of diabolical priorities that fuse current fossil fuel profiteering with disinvestment from our future human welfare. Subsequent generations will look back at this government and wonder how such irresponsible priorities have been arrived at.

Likewise, we regularly question government’s concern for local environmental conditions, since fossil fuels are directly linked to worsened morbidity and mortality in a manner that can be termed environmental racism. Especially during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, when concern is still peaking about airborne diseases and high particulate matter that weaken our immune systems (especially those of the elderly, women and children), it is long overdue to halt the destructive blasting, mining, smelting, refining, transport, and combustion of fossil fuels.

Therefore we insist, on behalf of our most vulnerable citizens and future generations, that government ups its game, and joins the rest of the world’s more enlightened countries in committing to halt fossil fuel exploration and development, or otherwise face the risk not only of becoming a rogue regime – comparable to pre-1994 anti-apartheid sanctions, once an international carbon tax is imposed on economies like ours – but also of accounting for “stranded assets” and “unburnable carbon” that the major Western coal, oil and gas companies are now experiencing, including financial-sector sanctions and divestment against these firms.

Act now on behalf of the citizenry and environment, to sever ties with Silver Wave Energy

This letter is the first stage of our appeal to you in government, /to break ties with Silver Wave Energy and the Myanmar coup regime – and especially to revoke any offshore oil and gas exploration and development permits given to Silver Wave Energy. /In other words, we ask you as anti-apartheid era veterans to /follow the same request that during the 1960s-90s the leaders of the African National Congress – from Luthuli to Mandela – made of the international community: /sanctions.
We will continue, if we do not hear back urgently in the affirmative, to publicise the South African government’s hypocrisy and callous disregard for the international sanctions solidarity request of Dr Sa Sa and his government in exile, for human rights, for environmental sanity, and for fossil fuel sector governance, as the Silver Wave Energy case illustrates. Such failings are regularly witnessed in so many of the relations we see between our government and fossil fuel companies, but in particular it is the continuation of the suspicious 2010s generosity the Zuma government offered to Silver Wave Energy that we will be highlighting to the rest of our own society, and the world.

We will, conversely, celebrate our post-Zuma government’s commitment to not only advancing human rights and environmental /rhetoric, /but also practice, /if these indefensible relations with Silver Wage Energy are severed immediately/.

Sincerely, South African Federation of Trade Unions, *Johannesburg – zwelinzimav@saftu.org.za Alternative Information and Development Centre, Cape Town – brian@aidc.org.za, Amadiba Crisis Committee*, Xolobeni, Eastern Cape – NonhleMbuthuma@gmail.com,  *Free Burma Campaign South Africa, *Johannesburg – dpkramer@yebo.co.za, *groundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa*, Pietermaritzburg – bobby@groundwork.org.za, *International Labour, Research and Information Group,* Cape Town – dale@ilrig.org.za, *South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, *Durban – desmond@sdceango.co.za, *Women Against Destructive Resource Extractivism (WoMin), *Johannesburg – Samantha.Hargreaves@womin.org.za

• Siehe dazu: KPTU verbreitet 10-Punkte-Programm zur „Solidarität mit Myanmar“ und fordert dazu auch die südkoreanische Regierung auf…