Serbian Rockets Sent to Myanmar Even After 2021 Coup

The Ilyushin-62M, operated by the Belorussian private air carrier Rada Airlines, took off from Belgrade's international airport a few minutes after midnight on February 9, 2021, loaded with hundreds of Serbian-made 80mm rockets.

After a stop in Egypt, the plane touched down 8,000 kilometres east in Yangon, capital of Myanmar and at the time the scene of a bloody military coup that began on February 1 and would tip the country into civil war.

Those are the facts as established by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, in collaboration with Myanmar Witness, the Center for Investigative Journalism in Serbia, CINS and Lighthouse, on the basis of open source images, videos and documents.

The plane, however, should never have left the runway.

Ignoring widespread reports of violence, killings, and human rights abuses, Serbia allowed the arms shipment to go ahead, despite a requirement that the government revoke any arms export permit should conditions in the destination country change and there be a risk that the arms might be used to violate human rights.

In March 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution expressing deep concern at the threat to human rights in Myanmar from unregulated or illicit arms transfers. The following June, with the military in Myanmar seeking to crush mass protests, the United Nations General Assembly called on all member states "to prevent the flow of arms into Myanmar."

Serbia was among 119 of 193 member states to vote in favour of the non-binding resolution, though it had already issued at least four more arms export licences for Myanmar, two in March, one in April and one in June. It is unclear whether the shipments went ahead.

Belgrade to Yangon,...