Irrawaddy-July 17
Myanmar’s junta-controlled foreign ministry has condemned the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for not mentioning its alleged efforts to restore democracy by “peaceful means” in a statement on the bloc’s recent meeting. ASEAN foreign ministers gathered in Jakarta last week for their 56th meeting. High on the agenda was Myanmar’s post-coup crisis and how to deal with the junta to halt the violence. The junta’s foreign minister was not invited as the regime leadership has been excluded from high-level ASEAN meetings since late 2021 for failing to honor the bloc’s peace plan, known as the Five-point Consensus (5PC). In the Joint Communiqué of the 56th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, the bloc states that the 5PC remained its main reference to address the political crisis in Myanmar.
“We strongly condemned the continued acts of violence, including air strikes, artillery shelling, and destruction of public facilities and urged all parties involved to take concrete action to immediately halt indiscriminate violence…” it added, referring to atrocities mostly committed by the regime. The regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on Friday, saying Myanmar categorically rejected the statement as it only included “unfair and one-sided facts without reflecting the efforts of the member state to restore a genuine democratic system by peaceful means.” The ministry’s statement said Myanmar could not accept “country-specific paragraphs” in any ASEAN statement as this contradicts the bloc’s principle of non-interference in members’ internal affairs. The junta ministry also lamented that facts it provided for the statement were also ignored despite it having “faithfully engaged” in the joint communiqué’s drafting process as “a responsible member state.” Observers wondered what “peaceful means” the military regime was referring to in its alleged attempts to restore democracy. In reality, the junta is conducting air raids, artillery strikes, arbitrary arrests, and killings in response to a nationwide uprising against the military’s 2021 coup to topple a democratically elected government. As of Friday, when the foreign ministry claimed peaceful efforts to restore democracy, it had killed 3,793 people – mostly for their anti-regime activism. Read more at:
