To Remain Relevant, ASEAN Must Not Fall for Myanmar Junta’s Ploy

By Khin Oo 21 November 2022

When leaders of the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met on the regional summit final week, there seemed to be progress relating to how they might deal with the Myanmar disaster. The bloc launched an evaluation recognizing the necessity for an “implementation plan” to help the 5-Level Consensus, together with “concrete, sensible and measurable indicators with particular timeline”. A number of days after ASEAN’s evaluation, the Myanmar navy junta granted amnesty to six,000 prisoners together with some distinguished political figures and high-profile foreigners resembling Australian economist Sean Turnell and former British Ambassador Vicky Bowman.

Whereas it could be taken as a diplomatic success for ASEAN and the worldwide group, ASEAN wants to make use of warning, because the Myanmar junta has used this go-to technique of delaying and defusing ASEAN and worldwide efforts to resolve political crises since again within the Nineteen Nineties. The latest launch of some political prisoners will do little to resolve the continuing disaster, as hundreds of political prisoners stay detained, a whole lot of hundreds of individuals have misplaced their properties, and harmless civilians stay vulnerable to being killed by air strikes. Alternatively, this sort of defusing of worldwide stress advantages the junta by permitting it to not solely purchase time but in addition stay targeted on crushing the resistance and sustaining its tight grip on energy, whereas the struggling of hundreds of thousands of Myanmar individuals continues. Myanmar individuals have discovered from the previous that that is simply the junta’s try to defuse stress. Thus, the discharge of some political dissidents may have little affect on individuals’s robust resistance towards navy rule and extra importantly on the struggling of the Myanmar individuals.

Upholding its non-interference coverage, ASEAN faces limitations in coping with the Myanmar disaster. Thus, many criticisms of ASEAN from the worldwide group could also be undue. Nonetheless, the exasperation of the Myanmar individuals in direction of the regional bloc is essentially totally different. Myanmar individuals have achieved every thing they might inside their means to indicate their rejection of navy rule, from voting for civilian politicians within the 1990, 2012, 2015 and 2020 normal elections, to nationwide peaceable protests towards navy rule in 1988, 2007 and 2021. When many years of peaceable means nonetheless didn’t produce the outcomes that they strongly desired, they lastly resorted to the present armed wrestle, becoming a member of forces with ethnic armed resistance organizations who’ve been combating for self-determination and freedom from the navy’s ultra-nationalistic rule for a lot of many years. Myanmar individuals have only a few expectations in relation to worldwide help, as we all know, for essentially the most half, that we should struggle our battle on our personal. Nonetheless, what Myanmar persons are actually hoping and crying out loud for, is for our neighboring nations to not allow additional or inadvertently embolden the Myanmar navy to proceed to commit their horrific crimes with impunity.

Myanmar individuals have each purpose to worry historical past repeating – any de facto recognition of the present navy rule by ASEAN is anticipated to lead to extra many years of navy rule and struggling, that are the Myanmar individuals’s worst fears. Underneath ASEAN’s constructive engagement coverage with the Myanmar navy, which dates to the Nineteen Nineties, the then-military regime was admitted to the bloc in 1997. The admission to ASEAN not solely let the Myanmar generals get away with their horrific human rights violations with impunity, but in addition shielded them from stress from the worldwide group. ASEAN’s constructive engagement was additionally taken for instance to comply with by Western democracies, since Myanmar was seen as transferring in the precise route when the political transition of the 2010s appeared initially to go easily.

The coup in 2021 has proved that in relation to the navy, neither ASEAN’s constructive engagement nor the Myanmar political elite’s appeasement and reconciliation coverage of the 2010s will work. It solely confirmed that the Myanmar navy by no means had any intention to retreat from politics or to let go of its political energy and financial privileges. The continued violent and horrific crackdown on the resistance by the navy has solely made individuals extra decided to finish navy rule as soon as and for all. Nonetheless, the individuals’s robust resistance and rejection of navy rule look like misjudged by outdoors observers and a few ASEAN leaders. Singapore’s Overseas Minister Vivian Balakrishnan just lately described the Myanmar battle as “a struggle for the guts of the Bamar majority, between the Tatmadaw [Myanmar’s military] on one hand and the Nationwide League for Democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Whereas ASEAN may even see navy rule because the norm in politically advanced Myanmar, resistance leaders, Myanmar analysts, and abnormal Myanmar individuals instantly knew, as quickly because the coup occurred, that the really barbaric nature and intentions of the generals would quickly be revealed. With the latest launch of political prisoners, ASEAN should still hope that the Myanmar navy might be satisfied to deliver stability and peace. Nonetheless, over the previous about 18 months for the reason that settlement on the 5-Level Consensus laid out by ASEAN leaders, the Myanmar junta has had no qualms about persevering with its excessive violence towards its personal residents. Only a week earlier than the fifty fifth ASEAN ministerial summit, the Myanmar navy executed 4 political activists. Within the midst of ASEAN’s steady requires the utmost restraint and the tip of all violence, the Myanmar navy continues with its marketing campaign of terror together with latest air strikes on a faculty in Sagaing Area and on a live performance in Kachin State.

Choices for ASEAN

ASEAN’s present evaluation reveals that with the intention to stay related, the bloc might want to present unity and management within the Myanmar disaster. After giving the good thing about the doubt to the navy council for the previous 18 months, the bloc now has a possibility to tackle contemporary outlooks and approaches to develop the implementation plan. The regional bloc is now at a essential juncture – with quite a bit at stake, amid the continued deepening of the struggling of the Myanmar individuals, it has an opportunity to be on the precise aspect of historical past, and save its repute and relevance. ASEAN has three very totally different choices: 1) keep its previous method of constructive engagement with the Myanmar navy; 2) take a politically impartial method with efficient help on humanitarian help; and three) take a brand new route, and take heed to the individuals of Myanmar for a change.

The primary possibility, constructive engagement with the junta, has been a default possibility for the bloc. It has raised the query of the relevance of the bloc and had a unfavorable affect on ASEAN’s unity and management. To the individuals of Myanmar, such engagement solely emboldens the junta and inadvertently sharpens the weapons that kill harmless Myanmar residents and deepen their struggling. And the worst nightmare could be the regional bloc’s de facto recognition of the junta after its sham elections in 2023.

The second possibility, politically impartial help on humanitarian help, as additionally talked about within the latest evaluation, if taken cautiously, would possibly have the ability to ship urgently wanted humanitarian help. ASEAN could possibly take a politically impartial method, with out straight participating with the junta’s State Administration Council (SAC) or the Nationwide Unity Authorities (NUG). Nonetheless, this humanitarian help might solely obtain a lot, contemplating the tempo and depth of atrocities that the junta continues to commit. This in a means solely prolongs the individuals’s struggling with occasional reduction supplied alongside the best way.

The third possibility is to take a totally new route, an unprecedented one for ASEAN, by listening to the individuals of Myanmar for a change. It additionally means listening to the individuals’s representatives—these whom the individuals of Myanmar have chosen to guide their determined try to overthrow the navy. This consists of the management of the NUG, the Nationwide Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).

Myanmar has already skilled the tough actuality of navy rule underneath generations of generals from the identical establishment for half a century. The navy has a file of failing the nation as a key driver of battle and division, and mismanaging the financial system leading to poverty for almost all of the inhabitants. The junta’s atrocities for the reason that coup have opened all of the previous wounds and brought about contemporary struggling.

Not one of the choices will probably be simple for ASEAN. Will probably be much more troublesome for the Myanmar individuals to understand if ASEAN continues falling for the junta’s ploy whereas our lives are at stake—the lives of Myanmar people who find themselves additionally part of the ASEAN group. And the unhappy actuality is that there are solely very restricted choices for Myanmar individuals: to dwell underneath navy rule, be killed and impoverished, or take away the navy from the political sphere as soon as and for all. Individuals have discovered the exhausting means that there’s a value to pay for peace, stability and prosperity. That’s all Myanmar persons are making an attempt to realize in the present day and all they’re combating for. That’s the very purpose why the latest navy coup has solely made the individuals extra decided to interrupt this vicious cycle of navy coups and finish the navy’s makes an attempt to deceive the individuals and the world as “transitioning to a disciplined democracy.”

It’s due to this fact extra essential than ever that ASEAN not fall for the junta’s ploy at any time when the generals attempt to defuse the stress for a brief time period in order that they’ll stay in energy so long as they want. With a extra knowledgeable method to dealing with the Myanmar disaster, ASEAN might nonetheless have a constructive affect or perhaps a monumental likelihood to be on the precise aspect of historical past. That might not solely save Myanmar but in addition reclaim the bloc’s unity and management function within the area.

Khin Oo is a public coverage analyst and researcher on the political financial system of Myanmar.