PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Southeast Asian foreign ministers issued a joint statement
Friday after a series of meetings in the Cambodian capital criticizing Myanmar for its lack of
progress in ending violence there, but with weaker language than several countries had hoped for.
Myanmar’s military-led government, which seized power from elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi
in February 2021, has been accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings, and last week carried
out its first official executions in decades, raising an outcry from several members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and countries around the world.
ASEAN has been trying to implement a five-point consensus it reached on Myanmar last year,
calling for dialogue among all concerned parties, provision of humanitarian assistance and an
immediate cessation of violence, among other things.
Following news of the late-July executions, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah
accused Myanmar of “making a mockery of the five-point process.”
Still, in their joint statement Friday, the foreign ministers only ”expressed our concerns over the
prolonged political crisis in the country, including the execution of four opposition activists,”
while adding they were “deeply disappointed by the limited progress” in the implementation of the
five-point consensus.
Cambodia currently holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, which also includes the
Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei in addition to
Myanmar.
With the ongoing violence in Myanmar, the country was asked not to send any political
representative to the ASEAN meetings. In protest, Myanmar’s military government said it would
send no delegate at all, so was unrepresented in the talks.
But in preliminary discussions leading up to the main meetings, a lower-level representative from
Myanmar expressed objections to the proposed wording of the joint statement, which led to the
exclusion of stronger criticism being proposed by Malaysia, Singapore and others, according to a
diplomat who was involved in the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the
private meetings.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has in the past urged ASEAN to do more to confront
Myanmar, also known as Burma, noted that the executions of the four political prisoners had
occurred despite Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, in his capacity as ASEAN chair, pushing
Myanmar to reconsider.
“I urge my fellow ministers to continue to press the regime to end its brutal violence, to release
those unjustly detained to allow humanitarian access and restore Burma’s path to democracy,”
Blinken said at a news conference after the foreign ministers’ statement was released. “We also
have to increase economic pressure to do more to stop the flow of arms and revenue to the
regime, insist on accountability for the atrocities committed.”
Russia is Myanmar’s top arms supplier, and Blinken took a swipe at Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Myanmar on his way to the ASEAN meetings and calling the country a
“friendly partner.”
“That directly flies in the face of ASEAN’s hard work to bring the violence to an end,” Blinken
said.
Although ASEAN has tried to project itself as a showcase of regional unity with its leaders and
top diplomats locking their hands in an unusual group handshake photo-op in their annual
summits, the diverse bloc has been perennially buffeted by conflicting agendas within.
Following their daylong meeting on Wednesday, they delayed issuing the joint statement due to
differences over the section on Myanmar, the diplomat said.
Cambodia forged a compromise Thursday night which paved the way for the belated release of
the weaker statement on Friday, the diplomat said.
There were concerns that if a compromise was not reached, the contrasting viewpoints on
Myanmar could have blocked the issuance of the statement like in a similar embarrassing incident
about a decade ago when Cambodia also hosted the ministerial gathering, the diplomat said.
In the 2012 meeting, the unresolved impasse centered on whether China’s increasingly aggressive
actions in the disputed South China Sea should be included in the joint statement. Cambodia then
was accused by the Philippines and Vietnam of blocking mention of the increasingly tense
territorial conflicts. It was the first time that the bloc, founded in 1967, had failed to issue a
post-conference joint statement in its history.
The military’s overthrow of Suu Kyi’s government triggered widespread peaceful protests that
were violently suppressed. They have evolved into an armed resistance and the country has slipped
into what some U.N. experts characterize as a civil war.
More than 2,100 people have been killed by the military government since it took power and
nearly 15,000 have been arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners,
a non-governmental organization that tracks killings and arrests.