Activist group Justice for Myanmar has called on Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) members to shun Myanmar junta’s December 15 conference in Naypyitaw and to permanently exclude the regime from the program.
The members are Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam along with China’s Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
JFM said it welcomed the decision by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which acts as the GMS secretariat, not to attend the Naypyitaw conference and its refusal to provide any support.
The junta’s investment minister, Kan Zaw, who is sanctioned by the US and EU, will host the conference at the Grand Amara Hotel which is part of the junta-linked conglomerate International Group of Entrepreneurs owned by Ne Aung, the brother of the junta’s naval chief, JFM stated.
Kan Zaw has been sanctioned for securing junta finances.
JFM said China’s finance minister, Lan Fo’an, Cambodia’s foreign minister, Sok Chenda Sophea, Laos’ planning and investment minister, Khamjane Vongphosy, Vietnam’s planning and investment minister, Nguyen Chi Dung, and Thailand’s deputy finance minister, Julapun Amornvivat, had been invited to the ministerial conference.
The steering committee which will organize the conference included a member of the military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), which is sanctioned by the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia, it said.
Myanmar’s police, which is responsible for crimes against humanity, including killings and torture, will provide security, the activist group stated.
The junta is providing the accommodation for delegates, their flights between Yangon and Naypyitaw and hosting a gala lunch, it added.
JFM said the conference takes place as the junta continues to commit mass killings, carry out indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling, torture and mass displacement, leaving more than 2.5 million homeless.
“It is unfathomable that the GMS program and its members are not only inviting the illegal junta to participate but are even appointing it as host of a ministerial conference,” JFM spokeswoman Yadanar Maung said.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing attended the online GMS leaders’ summit in Cambodia in September 2021. He defended the February coup, said the 2020 general election was rigged and that the coup was constitutional, according to JFM.
Min Aung Hlaing endorsed the GMS Strategic Framework 2030, which aims to promote investment and tourism that could generate revenue for the junta, it added.
Laos hosted last year’s ministerial conference and the junta endorsed the GMS Regional Investment Framework for 2023-25, in which the junta proposed US$208 million in energy, information and communications technology, tourism and agriculture, mostly to be funded by unspecified development partners, the group stated.
The GMS business council is chaired by Zaw Min Win, chair of Myanmar Industries Alliance, which invests in the mobile operator Mytel with MEC, JFM said.
Allowing a junta crony to head GMS’s investment wing shows the regime is using the program to boost income, it said.
The JFM called on the ADB to reconsider its institutional support for the GMS program while it legitimizes Myanmar’s junta.
With ADB’s assistance, six countries initiated the program in 1992 to enhance economic relations.
