ASEAN should act on Myanmar
Every dictatorship and military junta ends up with its own international supporters. They do its dirty work in ways they believe they can justify. These are the countries that supply them with weapons or hydrocarbons, the firms that exploit government-induced poverty in order to take advantage of cheap labor and the international organizations that decide that — tyranny aside — special consideration is better than confrontation.
This time, the junta is the military regime in Myanmar, which overthrew the civilian government in 2021 and is currently fighting a vicious civil war with an ethnic cleansing dimension against all comers. And the Association of Southeast Asian Nations believes remote diplomacy is better than supporting the civilian population fighting against the regime.
ASEAN describes itself as a meeting place of nations steered by shared values. But those shared values do not appear to be up to much, according to a new leaked document obtained by Fortify Rights. According to the campaign group, the chair of the ASEAN conference, Cambodia, produced the document following an emergency meeting of group foreign ministers in Jakarta on Oct. 27. This was over a year into the coup and civil war in Myanmar and amounts to an intention to support and even rehabilitate the junta.
Among more general points, the document suggests that formal blocks on the Myanmar junta’s participation in ASEAN events should be kept to a minimum, with the intention of “(maintaining) the status quo” in all ministerial meetings except the showiest summits and foreign ministers’ gatherings.
This is not realpolitik, it is the abdication of responsibility to make choices and to apply their meanings plainly and with determination.
If the junta has done the things that ASEAN believes it has done, the junta cannot claim to rule Myanmar or to serve as the Burmese people’s legitimate representative. And yet this is not what the document says.
A military regime engaged in mass slaughter is not a friend or an ally. It is a caged beast trapped in a murderous game of its own making.
This is not a group of men who can be trusted to promote Asian solidarity or stability, yet their wishes are likely to be accepted and humored by a group that is hardly duty bound to accommodate men of violence at the summits of diplomacy.
ASEAN and organizations like it have options: there is a national unity government that has been organized in opposition to the junta. It is not perfect and it includes some who are compromised by past collaboration. But it has as much right to be considered by international bodies to represent Myanmar as the men who are currently clinging on to power by grip on the sword alone.
Rather than appeasing the regime in the vain pursuit of continuity, ASEAN ought to be brave and show resolve.
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington D.C. and the author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide” (Hurst, 2017).