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China is fast emerging as one of the world's biggest, most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters,
The report shows how Chinese weapons have helped sustain brutal conflicts, criminal violence and other grave human rights violations in countries such as Sudan, Nepal, Burma and South Africa.
'China's arms exports policy is reckless and dangerous, paying no heed to human rights. It is the only major arms exporter that has not signed up to agreements preventing arms exports to human rights abusers.'
China's arms exports, estimated to be in excess of US$1 billion a year, often involve the exchange of weapons for raw materials to fuel the country's rapid economic growth. But it is a trade shrouded in secrecy: Beijing does not publish any information about arms transfers abroad and hasn't submitted any data to the UN Register on Conventional Arms in the last eight years.
The report's main findings include:
More than 200 Chinese military trucks -- normally fitted with US Cummins diesel engines -- shipped to Sudan in August 2005, despite a US arms embargo on both countries and the involvement of similar vehicles in the killing and abduction of civilians in Darfur;
Regular Chinese military shipments to Burma (Myanmar), including the supply in August 2005 of 400 military trucks to the Burmese army despite its involvement in the torture, killing and forced eviction of hundreds of thousands of civilians;
Chinese military exports to Nepal in 2005 and early 2006, including a deal to supply nearly 25 thousand Chinese-made rifles and 18,000 grenades to Nepalese security forces, at the time involved in the brutal repression of thousands of civilian demonstrators;
An increasingly illicit trade in Chinese-made Norinco pistols in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and particularly South Africa, where they are commonly used for robbery, rape and other crimes.
A report by the nasty media? No, a report produced by Amnesty International 09 June 2006
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Analyses from private and some western government experts estimate Hizbollah has stockpiled at least 10,000 of the Katushya. According to sources at the United Nations, Hizbollah claimed a year ago that it had 12,000. John Pike, a defence expert at GlobalSecurity.org, said the organisation had used only about 3 per cent of its arsenal since it began its recent campaign.
The analyses also concur with Israeli assessments that the group has longer-range missiles including the Iranian-made Fajr, with a 45km range, and even possibly the larger 200km-range Zelzal, with the theoretical capacity to reach Tel Aviv.
Hizbollah also displayed signs of increasing sophistication with the firing of a C-802 Silkworm cruise missile, with an anti-jamming capacity, at an Israeli ship last week. The radar-guided missile, which can be fired from land or sea, could have been in China's arsenal in the 1980s and have reached Hizbollah after modification by a third party, possibly Iran, analysts said.
They agreed that the Hizbollah campaign could not have been spontaneous and had been planned, at least as a contingency, for some time.
Hizbollah is said to have received much of its weaponry from Iran and from Syria. Officials at the UN, who asked not to be identified, said missiles had transited through Syria.
Last October, a report by Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, cited evidence of "an increasing influx of weaponry and personnel from Syria" to militia in Lebanon. In February, the UN issued warnings about a large transfer of arms from Syria to Lebanon on January 31, and collusion by the Lebanese army. In March, the Lebanese government maintained that the flow had stopped, a UN official said, but it was unclear whether that was the case.
UN officials have said that at a September 9 meeting last year, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad told militia leaders that there were no red lines limiting their destabilising activity in Lebanon.