Arms export law raises concern

Five-thousand machine guns, six rocket launchers and thousands of RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launchers. Back in 2000, the Czech government surreptitiously issued licenses to local arms makers Česká Zbrojovka and Moravia Arms for the sale of these and other weapons to Zimbabwe, a friendly neighbor of the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, where the weapons could not be exported directly due to international embargoes. The affair was enough to scandalize international watchdog groups and the local public, which did not find out about the deals until they leaked to the media five years later.

Questionable arms trading policy is an issue of historic proportions for the Czech Republic, once the world's eighth-largest weapons exporter. Although intensive reforms and post-Soviet demilitarization have since taken the Czechs off the arms trading hot list, lawmakers remain reluctant to inject greater transparency into the business.

On May 15, the Chamber of Deputies approved a government-proposed amendment to a 1994 law on the export of military materials. The ostensible aim was to reduce bureaucracy and synchronize Czech legislation with EU law.

Industry experts hoped the long-awaited legislation, at just over 23 pages, would also deliver on its promise to increase transparency. However, observers from both sides of the debate - arms dealers as well as watchdogs - claim the new legislation achieves little in this regard.

While the total volume of licensed Czech arms exports reached 477 million euros in 2007, a year-on-year increase of 64 percent according to Industry and Trade Ministry figures, "It continues to happen in a completely nontransparent manner," said František Janda of international human rights NGO Amnesty International. "The state continues to limit public access to information regarding arms exports, which we see as a big problem."

Of particular concern is a seemingly negligible, nine-word phrase that disappeared from the original draft amendment as it made its way through the lower house.

The phrase would have extended state permit requirements from parties involved in "business transactions," which must be documented in written form, to those engaged in mere "information exchange or advertisement" pertaining to the deal.

Its elimination opens up a legal loophole that enables an unvetted third party to organize transaction chains leading to dubious end users, said Janda. For example, a Czech negotiator who lacks a trading permit because he has a communist history and ties to rebel militant groups could use one of the 150 registered local dealers as a "white horse," Janda said. "The negotiator could then arrange the entire deal verbally."

To support the likelihood of this scenario, Janda points to a report by Czech secret services (BIS) that states illegal arms deals are often "crumbled up in a chain of transactions via several companies."

"At the start, the equipment is taken apart and sold in parts, which are then reassembled," the report states. "At first glance, it is impossible to tell the deal will be illegal."

To address this threat, Amnesty International lobbied policymakers, urging MPs to "pay special attention" to the bill during its readings in the Chamber of Deputies.

However, the end result was "the complete and utter victory of the weapons lobby, across the political spectrum," said Green Party MP Kateřina Jacques, who worked in tandem with Amnesty International to propose changes to the draft amendment, which were later rejected.

During the first reading, Jacques suggested the draft amendment be sent to the parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs, where its human rights implications could be assessed. "Even this got rejected," she said.

Instead, the draft went to the Defense Committee, whose members later deemed Jacques' attempts to increase public access to information on arms deals as "too vague." It was during its dissection by the Defense Committee that the controversial nine-word phrase vanished from the draft by way of an anonymous amendment motion.

"What is interesting is that nobody is willing to say how the [motion] got there," said Jacques. "Everyone just ambiguously referred to it as a government initiative."

While neither would take responsibility for proposing the change, Defense Committee members Luděk Severa of the Christian Democrats and Antonín Seďa of the Social Democrats both said concerns over the phrase's disappearance were unjustified.

The potential for arms export negotiations by an unauthorized third party is eliminated by a different clause in the draft amendment that makes the "brokering" of deals without a license punishable, said Severa.

However, Janda pointed out that, because local arms exports operate on a two-part system of general permits and transaction-specific licenses, "It is necessary to eliminate the third-party threat at the first step - the permits. After that, it is too late."

B., a licensed local arms dealer, disagrees. Instead of placing companies in a choke hold by over-regulating, legislators should simplify the process and enforce end user agreements on an EU-wide level, he said.

"Even needing a special license goes against European legislation. Ideally, the manufacturer would be able to negotiate directly with the government and leave out the middleman. Requiring a license only creates a fruitful environment for corruption."

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at
features@praguepost.com