With its chairman’s meaningless remarks and hollow statements, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed Myanmar’s people yet again at its latest summit in Kuala Lumpur this week.
The chairman’s statement on the summit offered no new approaches to dealing with the crisis in the country, which has been beleaguered by a military dictatorship since 2021. Rather, it just dusted off the bloc’s toothless Five-Point Consensus (5PC) as a road map for addressing Myanmar’s ills.
To Myanmar people, the regional grouping’s ongoing obsession with the failed peace plan is beyond frustrating. They simply can’t help wondering why ASEAN leaders remain so delusional when it comes to this “consensus”, which has delivered nothing for Myanmar.
Since ASEAN’s adoption of the 5PC in 2021, the junta has never honored it. First and foremost, the consensus calls for the immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar. This step has never been carried out by the junta. Instead, since then the regime has rained bombs on its own people for rejecting military rule in the country, not to mention committing other atrocities like arson and massacres. Over the past four years, at least 6,231 civilians have been killed by the military, including children, prompting the UN early this year to say that the junta had ramped up its violence against civilians to a level that was unprecedented in the four years since the generals launched their coup.
Rather than taking the junta’s total disregard for its plan as a blatant insult, ASEAN’s leadership doggedly clings to the 5PC as its “main reference to address the political crisis in Myanmar.”
ASEAN’s continued faith in the 5PC in the face of regime’s repeated intransigence is incomprehensible. In light of this, Myanmar people are not sure whether to praise the bloc for its “consistency” or feel sorry for its naivety in dealing with the most ruthless regime on Earth.
Apart from the statement, remarks from the bloc’s current chair, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, sound totally out of touch to Myanmar people.
In April, Anwar met with junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in Bangkok and held virtual talks with Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG). At the summit he described those talks as “significant”, saying both sides were open to engagement while highlighting Min Aung Hlaing’s supposed willingness to engage in peace efforts despite branding the NUG as a terrorist organization.
Significant? The Malaysian prime minister should not harbor any illusions that Min Aung Hlaing is a man of his word.
Anwar should be mindful that he was recently cheated by the junta boss’s vow to honor a ceasefire in Myanmar, as he requested at the same meeting in April. Despite his promise, Min Aung Hlaing ordered his air force to keep bombing daily. In that sense, for Myanmar people, “significant” means “leading to an increase in the junta’s air raids against them”.
In his opening remarks to the summit in Kuala Lumpur, Anwar said ASEAN had been able to “move the needle forward” in its efforts to achieve an eventual resolution to the Myanmar crisis, adding that the steps may be small and the bridge may be fragile, but “even a fragile bridge is better than a widening gulf.”
You should stop daydreaming, Anwar, and stop believing what Min Aung Hlaing tells you. There is not even a “fragile bridge”, given his dishonesty and insincerity. His willingness to engage in peace talks is merely fictional, and an absolutely hollow promise; Myanmar’s generals have historically never been known to genuinely engage in peace efforts, nor honest politics. They only engage or join dialogues as pretexts to ease external pressures—no such talks have ever borne fruit. Ask any ethnic armed resistance organization or opposition politician in Myanmar and they will enlighten you as to how historically untrustworthy the previous generals and Min Aung Hlaing are.
Furthermore, the regional leaders’ statement on an extended and expanded ceasefire in Myanmar can only be greeted with dismay. The leaders further called for “the sustained extension and nationwide expansion of the ceasefire in Myanmar” but the reality is the ceasefire has never existed on the ground, as the junta has consistently violated the truce from the start.
Instead of repeating unrealistic remarks and statements, it would be helpful for Myanmar if ASEAN went beyond the 5PC and took some serious actions against the regime. For example, why doesn’t the bloc crack down on the junta’s aviation fuel supply chain, in which companies of some member states are involved? Without the fuel, the junta’s fleet of fighter jets would be grounded, not to mention incapable of launching air raids against civilians. Why doesn’t ASEAN ban companies in the region that trade with the junta? It could effectively cripple the regime by cutting off key sources of its revenue.
Such moves could not only put pressure on the junta by making it harder for it to survive, but also help move the currently stalled resolution mechanism for Myanmar’s crisis forward. To make that happen, the bloc must first drop its empty rhetoric and take meaningful action.
Be bold, ASEAN!
