JAKARTA: Top Southeast Asian diplomats will on Monday review their regional bloc’s stalled peace plan for Myanmar with frustration growing with its ruling military’s failure to end violence more than two years after it seized power in a coup.
Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are meeting in Jakarta, capital of chair Indonesia, this week to discuss Myanmar, a code of conduct for the South China Sea, the region’s economy, transnational crime and other issues.
Myanmar is a member of ASEAN though its military rulers have been excluded from top bloc meetings since they ousted an elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, triggering violent opposition to their rule.
ASEAN has agreed on a peace plan, known as its five-point consensus, that calls for an end to violence and dialogue among all parties but the generals have paid little more than lip service to it.
“As mandated by the leaders, we would conduct a comprehensive review on the ‘five PC’ implementation and prepare a recommendation for our leaders’ deliberation,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said in opening remarks, referring to the five-point plan.
“ASEAN can only steam forward in full power if we can ensure a peaceful and lasting solution in Myanmar,” she said.
The crisis in Myanmar has raised questions about the effectiveness and unity of a group founded at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s.
ASEAN has for decades operated under the principle of not interfering in each other’s internal affairs and reaching agreement by consensus, but that has left it struggling to help resolve problems like Myanmar, unable to press the generals beyond barring them from its high-level meetings.
Indonesia, which has urged unity amid growing skepticism of the bloc’s credibility, has been conducting behind-the-scenes efforts to find a solution to Myanmar’s turmoil but has little to show for its effort.
ASEAN leaders are due to gather in Jakarta later in the week along with leaders and top from partner countries such as the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and others.
US President Joe Biden will not be attending. Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Asian American vice president, will be taking his place.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang is due to attend.
ASEAN diplomats meet to review stalled Myanmar peace plan
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ASEAN diplomats meet to review stalled Myanmar peace plan
- ASEAN foreign ministers are meeting in Jakarta, capital of chair Indonesia, this week to discuss Myanmar
- Myanmar is a member of ASEAN though its military rulers have been excluded from top bloc meetings
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
