DK sold ship’s engines to Burma

Denmark approved the sale of ship engines for Myanmar’s largest warship in 2018 during the genocide of the Rohingya, according to public access to documents in Politiken. Now Danish politicians are demanding an explanation. “We need to have a briefing on this. This is a case I would very much have liked to have been without,” Michael Aastrup Jensen, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee, told the newspaper. “Of course, it is of no use if Danish companies have been deceived and who, against their will – I assume – have broken the arms embargo on Myanmar,” he adds.
      The marine engines came from the Danish division of MAN Energy Solutions. The company is German-owned and has over 2000 employees in Denmark. According to Politiken, the access to documents shows that it was the Ministry of Justice that approved the sale in February 2018. The Danish Defence Materiel and Procurement Agency (FMI) advised the Ministry of Justice in connection with the sale.
      The military in Myanmar cracked down on the Rohingya in 2017 and since then more than a million have been displaced. Therefore, sanctions were imposed by the UN and the EU to prevent the sale of military equipment to the country. /ritzau/