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ASEAN to engage with others as Myanmar junta ‘deeply’ disappoints: Communiqué
ASEAN has so far resisted official engagement with Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG), which the junta calls “terrorists”, as well as other elements of the country’s opposition movement.
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Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn (left) speaks next to Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi (center) and Brunei Second Minister of Foreign Affairs Erywan Yusof (right) at a meeting with the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) representatives during the 55th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Phnom Penh on Aug. 2. (AFP/Tang Chhin Sothy)
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SEAN foreign ministers agreed to dispatch the bloc’s special envoy to engage with “all relevant Myanmar stakeholders” after being “deeply disappointed” by the lack of progress by the country’s military rulers to end conflict, according to a communiqué following a regional meeting this week.
The 55th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting was convened in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh under the shadow of heightened tensions between superpowers and a significant breach of trust by Myanmar’s coup regime.
According to a joint communiqué issued on Friday morning, the ministers had extensively discussed the recent developments in Myanmar and placed particular emphasis on the execution of four opposition activists.
The junta previously justified the executions on July 25 while acknowledging that “it would raise criticism”. Dozens of anti-coup activists were sentenced to death as part of the regime’s crackdown on dissent after seizing power last year, although ASEAN’s special envoy was reassured in a recent visit that authorities would not act on them because Myanmar had not carried out an execution in decades.
The executions were also in direct violation of the Five-Point Consensus agreed to by ASEAN’s nine leaders and junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing in April last year, which calls for the immediate cessation of violence, among other things.
The senior general said on Monday ahead of the AMM that the regime would seek to implement at least some of the points in the consensus, albeit without guarantees.
Read also: ASEAN to Ę»closely monitor’ Myanmar until summit
“We were deeply disappointed by the limited progress in and lack of commitment of the Nay Pyi Taw authorities to the timely and complete implementation of the Five-Point Consensus,” the ministers said in the communiqué.
“We agreed that the Special Envoy of the ASEAN Chair on Myanmar shall engage all relevant Myanmar stakeholders at the earliest.”
It is unclear who is meant by these other stakeholders, but ASEAN has so far resisted officially engaging with Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG), which the junta calls “terrorists”, as well as other elements of the country’s opposition movement and representatives of sympathetic ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).
It was also one of the few times in an official document that ASEAN addressed the junta as “Nay Piy Taw authorities”, which observers take to be a delegitimization of the military leadership, marking a potentially major shift in Southeast Asia’s approach to the Myanmar coup crisis.
The ministers also recommended that the ASEAN Summit “assess the progress toward the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus by the State Administration Council to guide the decision on the next steps”, referring to the official junta designation.
The summit is to be convened in Cambodia in November.
