
Thai banks have become the main supplier of international financial services for Myanmar’s military government, enabling it to purchase goods and equipment to carry out its increasingly bloody war against pro-democracy resistance forces and armed ethnic minority groups, a U.N. expert said in a report issued Wednesday.
The report by Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, tracks how the military junta has been able to continue procuring arms by shifting suppliers of financial services and military hardware as previous sources have been blocked by sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and other states.