Suu Kyi to meet president, military chief tomorrow
YANGON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will meet President Thein Sein and military chief Min Aung Hlaing tomorrow, their first meeting since she won an historic election earlier this month, a senior government official told Reuters.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won the vote with a landslide and needs to forge a working relationship with the powerful military for her government to run smoothly.
Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner who is barred from becoming president under the military-drafted constitution, invited the military chief and the president to meet just days after the Nov. 8 election to discuss national reconciliation. The NLD will be the dominant party when Myanmar’s new parliament sits in February, while the armed forces will be the largest opposition group. The constitution guarantees unelected members of the military a quarter of seats in both houses. Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing also has three powerful ministries guaranteed under the charter. This gives him a strong hold on Myanmar’s sprawling bureaucracy.
Suu Kyi will meet the president at his official residence tomorrow morning and the military chief in his office in the afternoon, Zaw Htay, a senior official from the President’s Office, said yesterday.
The meetings will be closed to the media, he said. Win Htein, a senior member of the NLD, also confirmed the meetings but declined to give any details about what would be discussed.
53 recruits release
Meanwhile, Myanmar’s military released 53 children and young people from service yesterday as part of an effort to rid its ranks of underage soldiers, the United Nations said. Human rights groups have long accused Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, of abuses such as using child soldiers, forcibly recruiting conscripts and confiscating land.
Since the military handed power to a semi-civilian government in 2011, it has taken some steps to professionalise the armed forces, including the release of soldiers recruited while under the age of 18. “Today’s release is the result of continued efforts of the Government of Myanmar and the Tatmadaw to put an end to the harmful practice of recruiting and using children,” said Renata Lok-Dessallien, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar, in a statement. “I am delighted to see these children and young people returning to their homes and families. We are hopeful that institutional checks that have been put in place and continued efforts will ensure that recruitment of children will exist no more.” The military has released 146 underage recruits this year and 699 since it signed a joint action plan with the U.N. in 2012 to end the use of children in the military. The UN it had no estimate for the number of underage soldiers in Myanmar. Experts believe Myanmar’s military to be between 300,000 and 350,000 strong, but the military does not release data on its size. Lok-Dessallien also called on armed ethnic groups to stop recruiting child soldiers. The UN Secretary-General has listed seven such groups as being “persistent perpetrators” in the recruitment and use of children in their operations.
They include the powerful Kachin Independence Army, which controls large swathes of Myanmar’s northern Kachin State, and the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Operating on the Myanmar-China border, the UWSA is regarded as the largest and best equipped of Myanmar’s armed ethnic groups.
The announcement of the release comes amid fighting between the military and ethnic groups in the eastern Shan State, as well as in Kachin. Activists from Shan State last week accused the military of bombing schools and Buddhist temples, firing on civilians and raping women during its recent offensives. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that up to 6,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in Shan and another 1,200, including 500 children, in Kachin. — Reuters