Perhaps
murder in Belgium, Sweden
and Taiwan is a tool of
western arms sellers
By
Jonathan
Power
April 2, 2002
LONDON - No other main line, legitimate, business is
as corrupt as the arms trade. That the obvious needs to
be said again is only because of two more scandals that
have surfaced, both involving murder, and still the
countries that are responsible for 90% of the world's
arms sales continue to allow their arms companies to do
their dirty business with only minimalist controls and
interference.
First, on March 19th came the suicide of a former
Belgium government minister who for ten years had been
awaiting trial for the murder of a one time deputy prime
minister, André Cools. Cools, it has been
suspected, was killed to prevent him denouncing the
illegal same of documents to an arms manufacturer. It was
an offshoot of the same long running scandal that brought
down the Belgian secretary-general of Nato over alleged
bribes paid to the Socialist Party by Agusta, the Italian
helicopter group and Dassault, the French plane
maker.
Then two days later a furore erupted in Taiwan over a
government report that alleged that France betrayed
Taiwan's confidence by passing top secret information to
China about the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The
allegations now coursing through Taiwan's outspoken press
have many layers: from evidence that prominent political
figures in Beijing were paid to mute their protest over
the deal to suggestions that the decision to switch from
buying the frigates from South Korea to the French
company Thomson-CSF were shaped by payoffs. Already the
former foreign minister of France, Roland Dumas, has been
convicted of taking money improperly from his lover who,
working as an arms lobbyist, was trying to influence him
to drop his objections to the frigate sale. But this is
not the all of it. A captain in the Taiwan navy, Yin
Ching-feng who had investigated irregularities in the
frigate deal was murdered and left on a beach in 1993. At
the time military coroners quickly announced his death as
suicide but in an independent autopsy arranged by his
widow it was found he had had his head bashed in. Now the
new government report recounts that military
investigators had withheld evidence that would have
proved his death as murder.
The whole arms sales industry is as seedy as it comes
and its recent history of malfeasance alone is enough to
fill volumes. Still unexplained, yet with reason to
suspect arms companies or their lobbyists, are the death
of an investigative British journalist in Chile and that
of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.
Shortly after the death of Olof Palme allegations
swirled through the Swedish and Indian media about the
arms manufacturer Bofors paying bribes to senior Indian
government officials, including prime minister Rajiv
Gandhi himself. Although it has proved impossible for
Indian investigators to make all the connections and we
may never know exactly what went on and whether Palme was
implicated even in an indirect way it still leaves a
nasty taste in many Swedish mouths today. Fourteen years
ago, not long after Palme's murder, I interviewed his
successor, Ingvar Carlsson and some of the top officials
charged with regulating arms sales. All came out with the
same mantra: " we need exports as our arms manufacturers
couldn't make it otherwise". It seemed then as it does
today that nothing, not even murder, could shake the deep
political foundations of the arms business. And this as
true for the U.S. or the U.K and France as it is for
Sweden.
The economic commentator of the Financial Times,
Samuel Brittan, who has spent a distinguished
journalistic career puncturing the economic posturing of
western governments has now joined battle with the arms
industry. "The supposedly clinching argument", he writes,
"is that if Britain does not sell arms to odious
dictatorships, the orders would go instead to other
countries that will take the jobs instead". This, he
believes, is bogus economics. There is no great lump of
labour engaged in making specific products like arms.
Jobs are constantly changing in any advanced capitalist
economy. In Britain alone well over 3 million people
leave the unemployment registry each year, well over half
to new jobs or training for new jobs. In comparison
Britain's arms exports employ a mere 130,000 workers.
Even if arms, as they do, often provide a high marginal
return, the resources involved can still be shifted to
other exports.
Yet in country after country the arms exporters give
the appearance of holding their governments by the tail.
Despite early promises Prime Minister Tony Blair has
delayed for years the introduction of legislation to
overhaul Britain's arms exports. While Canada has
suggested a ban on arms sales to any "non-state actors"
like rebel groups, terrorists and crime syndicates the
Bush Administration has resisted a blanket prohibition,
fearing that it would impinge on future efforts to
provide covert military aid in foreign conflicts.
Ironically, one example that used to be given was the
"successful" role in aiding the resistance to the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Need one say more?
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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