While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has excluded the Myanmar junta’s senior leaders and foreign minister from its summits, the bloc is still engaging with the regime, with other ministers routinely attending meetings organized by the grouping.
Recently, the junta’s sports and youth affairs minister, former Brigadier-General Min Thein Zan, was invited to attend the ASEAN sports ministers’ meeting and related meetings in Chiang Mai, Thailand from Aug. 30-Sept. 2.
Min Thein Zan was part of the 23rd intake of the Defense Services Academy, and was a classmate of Lieutenant General Nyo Saw, who oversees the Myanmar military’s businesses.
Min Thein Zan’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Min Kyi, served Myanmar’s first military dictator Ne Win as secretary of the International Relations Department of the country’s first regime led by the Burma Socialist Programme Party. On orders from his boss, Min Kyi applied to the UN to get Myanmar listed as a Least Developed Country (LDC).
ASEAN has released one statement after another urging the Myanmar regime to implement the bloc’s peace plan, known as the Five-Point Consensus. But outside of summits and foreign ministers’ meetings, Myanmar junta officials have continued to appear at the bloc’s meetings.
Last month, junta Home Affairs Minister Yar Pyae attended a meeting in Laos, which will assume ASEAN’s rotating chair for 2024. He has also traveled to Indonesia, the current ASEAN chair. Junta officials at other levels are also attending meetings and events in fellow ASEAN countries as usual.
As for Thailand, it continues to support the Myanmar regime. The Thai military chief has held talks with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, while outgoing Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai sponsored an informal meeting on Myanmar in Pattaya in June, and met jailed civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. He is the only foreign government representative to have met her since her detention in February 2021. The two countries also celebrated the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations last month.
