More Trouble Brewing for Mandalay Beer
covering burma and southeast asia
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
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More Trouble Brewing for Mandalay Beer


By Maung Maung Oo DECEMBER, 2001 - VOLUME 9 NO.9


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Currently, Myanmar Beer is in the leading position in Burma’s beer market. At almost the same time, the army-run Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), a sister company of UMEH, set up another joint-venture brewery called Dragon Brewery Co., Ltd. and started producing SKOL Beer. After about two years of trying to recoup her assets through the courts in Burma, Win Win Nu fled to Singapore and took her case to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which has an untested dispute-settlement mechanism designed to protect foreign investment. But Asean was unable to help her, although the Burmese generals’ violation of the Asean treaty was obvious. Eventually, she took her case to the International Court of Justice. Not surprisingly, the Burmese government has not mentioned so much as a word about Mandalay Beer in its state-run media. The people inside the country only found out about this case when foreign-based media reported it. Last month, the Burmese Embassy in Singapore sent a notice to Win Win Nu, which demanded that she face a lawsuit at Rangoon Divisional Court. "There is no point in going to Rangoon, because there is no law," she said. "No judges in Burma have the power to evaluate this case impartially. They have to do everything that the generals order," she added. According to sources close to the generals, the Burmese government doesn’t care whether they win or lose at the International Court of Justice, but they want to get credit from people inside the country. They want to show the people that they are right. For this reason, they sued Win Win Nu in Rangoon with their unfair allegations. Although they might lose in The Hague, they can be sure that they will win in Rangoon Court, as she won’t dare to come back to Rangoon. As for Win Win Nu, who still holds a Burmese passport and pays tax to the Burmese government, it is sure that she will become an exile in Singapore and that the Burmese generals will put her name on the list of "destructive elements against the state". "If I go back to Rangoon, they will skin me alive," she concluded.


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