Asean should be careful in engaging with murderous Myanmar regime

THE leader of the military junta that now controls Myanmar, Chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is scheduled to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit taking place in Jakarta on Saturday, April 24. This is an extremely problematic development that we view with grave concern, as the occasion could easily become an endorsement of the Myanmar military’s brutal seizure of power and suppression of dissent.

The Myanmar military overthrew the government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1 after alleging widespread fraud in national elections held in November, which Suu Kyi’s party won in a landslide. She and numerous other government officials have been detained and charged with various crimes, and the military has carried out a campaign to violently suppress the widespread protests that have erupted in the wake of the coup.

As of Monday, at least 737 people have been killed in demonstrations that have been attacked by army and police forces. The junta has also sought to suppress information, arresting at least 65 journalists — including several foreign journalists, the latest being a Japanese reporter detained on Sunday, April 18 — revoking the licenses of at least five local media outlets in Myanmar and blocking access to the internet in most of the country.

The military coup and its subsequent campaign to forcefully crush dissent has been widely condemned by the international community, and several governments have imposed sanctions against top military brass, their families and army-linked businesses.

However, in spite of the Myanmar insurrectionists’ representing the polar opposite of basic ideals shared by the rest of the Asean countries, the regional bloc has shown a disturbing — but unfortunately, not unexpected — reluctance to condemn the junta’s actions.

The problem lies in the somewhat unique relationship among the Asean member states, something that is ordinarily a key source of the group’s strength but now may prove to be a liability. Much of the harmony and stability among the Asean countries, despite some challenging differences between them, comes from the bloc’s principle of noninterference in member-states’ internal affairs.

This has allowed for a remarkable degree of cooperation and has kept disputes from becoming more serious conflicts. The Asean members are secure in the knowledge that whatever happens on a regional basis, for good or ill, their national sovereignty and as the case may be, the security of their leaders’ positions will not be threatened. The principle is based, in part, on the notion that the good of the regional community must take precedence, and can only be maintained by communication and engagement.

That is a respectable point of view, but it should not be absolute, particularly in the case of the current state of affairs in Myanmar. Put bluntly, the illegitimate and violent regime in Myanmar is using Asean to find validity. Even if no other nation will recognize the junta, the endorsement of the Asean, even if given tacitly, is quite significant; after all, the bloc collectively is the third largest population in the world, and the world’s sixth-largest economy.

The other Asean leaders should remember that they represent the interests of the 600 million people who put them in their positions and not their own interests. Validating the violent overthrow of a duly elected government and the murderous suppression of dissent will only undermine their individual mandates as well as the moral authority of the Asean as a group.

Shutting out Myanmar’s erstwhile leadership entirely may indeed be unwise because that would limit the Asean’s ability to contribute in any way to solutions to Myanmar’s crisis. But the Asean leadership must make it clear to General Hlaing and his colleagues that any engagement is not an endorsement and is a necessity only to deliver the message that what they have done, and continue to do, in their country is unacceptable. What consequences that message should carry is still open to debate but that the message should be given is beyond question.