JakartaPost-July 27, 2022
Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors on Tuesday issued a stinging rebuke of the ruling junta’s execution of four political activists, calling it “highly reprehensible” and destructive to regional efforts to de-escalate the crisis. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Myanmar, said it was “extremely troubled and deeply saddened by the executions” as well as by their timing, just a week ahead of the bloc’s next meeting. “While the complexity of the crisis is well recognized and the extreme bellicose mood can be felt from all corners of Myanmar, ASEAN as a whole has called for utmost restraint,” Cambodia, this year’s ASEAN chair, said in an unusually strong statement. “The implementation of the death sentences just a week before the 55th ASEAN ministerial meeting is highly reprehensible,” it said, adding this showed the junta’s “gross lack of will” to support ASEAN’s United Nations-backed peace plan. The military, which seized power in a coup last year, announced in state media on Monday that it had executed the activists for aiding “terror acts” by a civilian resistance movement, Myanmar’s first executions in decades. It was not clear when the executions took place or which method was used. Family members said on Monday they were not informed of their loved ones’ executions beforehand, nor allowed to retrieve their bodies. The executed men were among more than 100 people whom activists say have been sentenced to death in secretive trials by military-run courts since the coup. Authorities had tightened security at the jail where the four men had been held in the biggest city of Yangon, following the global outcry and a demonstration by inmates over their execution, a human rights group said on Tuesday. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/07/26/myanmars-neighbors-dismayed-over-highly-reprehensible-executions.html.
