Myanmar Coast Guard

The Myanmar Coast Guard (Burmese: မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်ဖွဲ့) is a maritime law enforcement agency formed to safeguard Myanmar's ocean-based blue economy including marine tourism, maritime trade, deep seaport services, offshore oil and natural gas production and marine fishing, to prevent illegal trespassing in the seas, and to maintain the rule of law at sea.[2] The Myanmar Coast Guard has a constabulary role in the protection of maritime interests, provides search and rescue for victims in the sea, and works toward sea environmental conservation, monitoring a wide range of activities underwater and above water in Myanmar's water territory.[3]

Myanmar Coast Guard
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်ဖွဲ့
Racing stripe
Racing stripe
Ensign
Ensign
Agency overview
Formed6 October 2021 (2021-10-06)
Employees30+300 personnel
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdictionMyanmar
Operational structure
Overviewed byMinistry of Defence
HeadquartersYangon
Agency executive
  • Brigadier General Ko Ko Kyaw[1], Director General

History

Background

Until the 2020s, Myanmar was one of the few Asian countries that did not have a force dedicated to offshore patrol.[2] Maritime security was ensured by the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Police Force's Maritime Police. Operational demands eventually outstripped their abilities, and the superior operational and diplomatic benefits of a paramilitary organization were recognized.[4]

On 14 March 2019, Myanmar's deputy defence minister submitted a proposal to the Pyithu Hluttaw to establish a national coast guard.[5] The then-civilian government was making efforts to "civilianize" national security affairs and therefore wanted to establish the coast guard under either the Ministry of Transport and Communications or the President's Office.[4] However, according to the 2008 Constitution, all of Myanmar's armed forces are controlled by the Chief of Defence Services.[6]

Establishment

Initiated by the Aung San Suu Kyi-led NLD government in 2018,[7] the Myanmar Coast Guard was formally established on 6 October 2021[8] at Thilawa Port in Thanlyin[9] by Min Aung Hlaing, the ruling junta of the country since the February coup.[10] It operates under the Ministry of Defence, in close cooperation with the Myanmar Navy, the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Rural Development, the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development and the Myanmar Police Force. The new force's remit is to guard Myanmar's 1930 km of coastal territory and its territorial waters, which encompass 23,070 km2 and about 1000 islands.[7]

Vessels

The Myanmar Coast Guard started out with four former Navy patrol vessels.[11] These vessels bear the pennant numbers P 311, P 312, P 411 and P 412.[1]

Patrol vessels
Type Builder No Start using date Arms Remark
PGM 43 class Marinette Marine, Wisconsin; last two by Peterson Builders, Sturgeon Bay, WI,  United StatesP-411
P-412		1959-19611x25mm Twin Barrel AA Gun, 2xMA15 Machine Gun

Fast Patrol Vessels
Type Builder No Start using year Arms Remark
5 series classMyanmar Naval Dockyard MyanmarP-311
P-312
P-313		2013-20142x25 mm Twin Barrel AA Gun, 2x14.5 mm Single Barrel Gun (DI)

References
  1. "Myanmar inaugurates coastguard service with initial fleet of four vessels". Janes.com. Archived from the original on 11 October 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  2. "မြန်မာကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်ဖွဲ့ ဖွဲ့စည်းနိုင်ရန် စတင် လေ့လာ ဆောင်ရွက်နေ". Frontier Myanmar (in Burmese). 5 September 2018. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  3. "The Unique Role of The Myanmar Coast Guard". The Global New Light of Myanmar. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  4. Htet Naing, Zaw (13 March 2019). "ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်ကို ကာကွယ်ရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာနအောက်မှာ ဖွဲ့ရန်စီစဉ်". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 24 May 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  5. "ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ် ဖွဲ့စည်းရန် စီစဉ်နေ". The Myanmar Times. 13 March 2019. Archived from the original on 29 October 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  6. "New coastguard Myanmar looks improve maritime security". Archived from the original on 29 October 2021. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
  7. "Myanmar Junta Launches New Coastguard". The Irrawaddy. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
  8. "ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်ဖွဲ့သစ်ဖွင့်ပွဲ စစ်ကောင်စီအကြီးအကဲတက်ရောက်". VOA Burmese (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 2021-11-19. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
  9. "စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်သွားမည့် သန်လျင်တွင် ပေါက်ကွဲမှုဖြစ်၊ စစ်သား ၂ ဦး သေ". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 2021-10-19. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
  10. "မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ပထမဆုံး ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ် ဖွဲ့စည်းခြင်းနှင့် တပ်တော်ဝင် အခမ်းအနားကို သီလဝါ အမှတ် (၃) ဆိပ်ခံတံတား၌ ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ပြီး ကမ်းခြေစောင့်တပ်အား စစ်ရေယာဉ်လေးစင်း လွှဲပြောင်းပေးအပ်". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 2021-11-09. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
  11. "Myanmar junta leader inaugurates armed coast guard". CNA. Archived from the original on 2021-10-30. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
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