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Justice For Myanmar

Justice For Myanmar

Myanmar

Sitz: Myanmar

Gegründet: 2019

Website: justiceformyanmar.org

Facebook: justiceformyanmar.org

Bluesky: justiceformyanmar.org

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Justice For Myanmar

„Für ihren Mut und ihre bahnbrechenden Recherchen, die die internationale finanzielle Unterstützung für die korrupte Militärjunta aufdecken.“

Justice For Myanmar (JFM) ist eine anonym arbeitende Aktivist*innengruppe aus Myanmar. Das Ziel von JFM ist, die Finanzarchitektur und Mitverantwortung internationaler Unternehmen offenzulegen, die der Militärjunta in Myanmar den Machterhalt sichern. Mit forensischen Recherchen und der „Follow-the-Money“-Methode weist JFM nach, wie internationale Unternehmen, Investor*innen und Regierungen die Repression stützen – die Folge: Sanktionen, Kapitalentzug und strafrechtliche Ermittlungen in mehreren Ländern.

Angesichts der zunehmenden Gewalt und der Terrorkampagne der Militärjunta agiert JFM anonym. Die Gruppe hat versteckte Militärvermögen aufgespürt, Offshore-Finanzplätze enthüllt und dokumentiert die Verstrickung von Unternehmen bei Menschenrechtsverletzungen und Völkerrechtsverbrechen. Trotz der für sie bedrohlichen Lage in Myanmar veröffentlicht JFM weiter bahnbrechende Recherchen, die das Geflecht der Straflosigkeit durchdringen, und setzen sich unermüdlich dafür ein, das Militär und dessen Machtzirkel zu zerschlagen.

Die Recherchen von JFM haben weltweit strafrechtliche Ermittlungen angestoßen. Zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen in aller Welt stützen sich auf die Erkenntnisse von JFM, um den Einsatz des myanmarischen Volkes für Demokratie, Menschlichkeit und den Schutz öffentlicher Güter zu unterstützen. Die Arbeit der Gruppe beweist: Wahrheit – selbst anonym ausgesprochen – kann die Grundfesten von Macht erschüttern.

Myanmar’s revolution, driven by its people, reminds us that our work is rooted in mass courage and determination to dismantle the brutal and corrupt military.

Justice For Myanmar

Biographie (auf Englisch)

Justice For Myanmar investigates how businesses around the world fuel the Myanmar military economy, exposing financial complicity that undermines the rights and takes the lives of the country’s people by aiding and abetting the military’s human rights violations and atrocities. They publicly reveal these links and campaign to cut resources to the military. Hiding identities to protect themselves and using the “follow the money” method, JFM transforms data into action, triggering sanctions, divestments, and unmasking corporate complicity with the Myanmar military’s acts of torture, killings and asset theft.

A Military Cartel Built on Global Complicity

Formerly Burma, Myanmar gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948 after also being occupied by Japan during World War II. In the decades following independence, Myanmar was primarily ruled by military dictatorships that disregarded democratic processes, perpetrated mass atrocities and plunged the state into persistent civil conflict against ethnic minorities.

In this political landscape, Myanmar’s military seized control of public assets and created vast military conglomerates that have enriched corrupt generals and financed the military’s mass-scale brutality. The military and its allied militias have made billions exploiting natural resources, spurring a global illicit trade that fuels conflict and destroys communities and the environment. And the military and its militias oversee and profit from a highly lucrative, global cyber industry run with trafficked labour from across the world who have been subjected to forced criminality, torture and extortion. The military has therefore long operated more like a criminal cartel than a conventional national armed force: its power is sustained not only through violence and repression but through shadowy financial networks that span borders. Foreign companies have invested billions of dollars in military-linked enterprises, and arms and aviation fuel needed to sustain indiscriminate airstrikes continue to flow into the country. These quiet enablers, including international businesses, banks, and investors, continue to fund and legitimise the junta.

In 2010, the military orchestrated a façade of a general election after almost 30 years of dictatorship, marking a partial opening of the country in the guise of so-called “democratic transition”. However, after a decade of attempts at window-dressing reform, the military staged a coup attempt in February 2021 to overturn the results of the 2020 general elections, which had delivered a decisive victory to the National League for Democracy.

People across Myanmar have been bravely standing up against the coup attempt in a movement that became known as the Spring Revolution. Over 4,700 anti-coup demonstrations were held in Myanmar in the first five months of the coup attempt; however, the military responded by escalating its campaign of terror with extreme violence, cracking down on protests, bombing villages, torturing detainees, and committing atrocities against civilians, especially ethnic minorities, including the Rohingya.

According to the UN, since the coup attempt, more than 7,000 people, including pro-democracy activists and civilians, have been killed by the junta and pro-military militia groups. The military has also arrested nearly 30,000 individuals on political grounds, of whom 22,000 remain in detention, including over 4,000 women and 200 children.

In a landscape of impunity and global indifference, accountability has remained elusive.

A Hidden Collective with a Clear Mission

Justice For Myanmar was born in 2019, following the military’s campaign of genocide against the Rohingya. Its founders, activists who remain anonymous for their safety, recognised that the military’s commission of international crimes and abuse of power were not just political but deeply financial. They saw that dismantling the military institution and its economic interests was key to ending its impunity and paving the way for a genuine democratic transition and economic justice.

Initially focused on the military’s two conglomerates, JFM’s members began mapping the military’s business empire. Their work intensified after the 2021 coup, as the military illegally seized lucrative state-owned enterprises and public outrage gave rise to a wave of nationwide resistance. Leaks and whistleblower testimonies poured in, and JFM became a trusted conduit for exposing the junta’s financial machinery that enables the Myanmar military cartel to entrench its power, plunder national wealth, and profit from systemic violence.

“The junta does not survive in isolation. It is sustained by global governments, businesses, banks, and arms dealers that continue to fund, equip, and legitimise the military’s attempt to steal power from the people of Myanmar. Those that embolden and enable the junta must be held accountable for their complicity,” Justice For Myanmar said.

Exposing the Cartel: Investigations and Campaigns That Shift Power

Justice For Myanmar’s core tactic is forensic investigation. Using open-source intelligence, leaked documents, and financial data, they trace the flow of money, arms, and influence that sustains the junta. Their use of infographics visualise these networks, making opaque systems legible to activists, journalists, and policymakers.

Their exposés have revealed nefarious dealings from aviation fuel shipments to arms deals, from telecom surveillance partnerships to offshore real estate purchases. JFM collaborates with courageous whistleblowers, journalists and global NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and has published more than 100 investigations since 2020. These reports have led to real-world consequences, including divestments by multinational corporations, sanctions by governments, and criminal probes in countries such as Germany, Thailand, and South Korea.

So far in 2025, JFM’s work contributed to Swiss sanctions on Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), the trading suspension of a Singapore oil company, and Sweden’s exclusion of Bharat Electronics from major pension funds. JFM’s #Airbusted campaign, and parallel Myanmar and global solidarity campaigns, pressured the European aeroplane manufacturer Airbus to divest entirely from AviChina, a subsidiary of China’s AVIC, which had been supplying aircraft and weapons to Myanmar’s military.

Other reports have led to police investigations in Malaysia over the involvement of citizens in Myanmar cyber scam parks, and police complaints against Israeli arms companies for alleged bribery and the aiding and abetting of international crimes. Each report is a scalpel, cutting through layers of complicity to expose the machinery of repression and corruption.

However, the international response has been uneven. While Western democracies have imposed sanctions, ASEAN countries and major investors like China and Russia continue to do business with the junta. JFM campaigns with allies to target these fault lines: pressuring Singapore over arms exports, pushing the Japanese government to stop development assistance that benefits the military, and demanding action to shut down Washington D.C. lobbying efforts by the Myanmar junta to whitewash its image.

Collective Action to Fight the Military Cartel

Myanmar’s current reality is one of escalating violence and shrinking civic space. The junta has intensified surveillance, blocked VPNs, and targeted activists with arrests and torture. Despite this hostile terrain, JFM roots their work in the society they are part of.

Within the Spring Revolution, a popular boycott movement has been driven by ordinary citizens refusing to buy military-linked products. Protesters have held signs in the streets, shops have cleared their shelves of military-owned goods like Myanmar Beer, Red Ruby cigarettes, and Mytel SIM cards, and communities have publicly destroyed these products as acts of resistance.

“This collective action showed the immense courage of the people in the face of violence as the military threatened shop owners at gunpoint to sell their products. It was not just symbolic – the mass boycotts against military products have hit the generals’ pockets and irreparably hurt their corrupt network of businesses,” Justice For Myanmar said.

To help individuals, civil society, companies and governments to investigate and take informed action, JFM is soon launching a searchable database designed to identify and expose companies linked to the brutal and illegal junta.

Undermining the Regime’s Key Pillars

JFM is a driving force within Myanmar’s social resistance, tackling the pillars that support the military cartel.

“Our work is not done in isolation. We are part of a wider movement of communities and people, inside and outside Myanmar, who are determined to hold the military cartel and its enablers accountable and to see a peaceful, federal democratic Myanmar,” Justice For Myanmar said.

One report at a time, they continue to pave the way for justice. Their work proves that truth does not need a name, and accountability does not require a courtroom to begin. In a world where impunity often reigns, JFM reminds us that even the most entrenched systems can be dismantled—if we follow the money and refuse to look away.