Myanmar’s junta and a key opposition group have indicated they would extend a ceasefire to support more aid efforts after a devastating earthquake, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said yesterday, following rare high-level talks with the ruling military.
Myanmar has been in the throes of an expanding conflict since the military, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, ousted an elected government in 2021 and formed the State Administration Council (SAC) to run the country.
In late last month, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hit the country, killing more than 3,600 people and creating a humanitarian crisis.
Photo: Prime Minister`s Office of Malaysia, AFP
Anwar, who is also the chair of the ASEAN regional bloc, has since Thursday held talks with Myanmar’s junta chief and the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) that is battling the military, seeking to curb the ongoing conflict to push aid into the country.
“There will be a ceasefire and no unnecessary provocations, because otherwise the whole humanitarian exercise would fail,” Anwar told reporters in Bangkok.
“My initial exchange with both the SAC prime minister and NUG has been very successful,” he said.
After the earthqake, Myanmar’s junta announced a 20-day ceasefire on April 2, following a similar move by the NUG, with more than 3.5 million people already displaced by the civil war and an economy in tatters.
However, the junta has continued military operations in some areas, including airstrikes, the UN and other groups said.
In his talks with the NUG, Anwar said he had conveyed that ASEAN would continue dialogue with it and the junta, and humanitarian aid would be provided to required areas, irrespective of who was in control.
“We understand that ASEAN, in its role as a regional body, may seek to engage with all actors involved in Myanmar’s situation,” a NUG spokesperson said. “However, it is crucial that such engagement does not grant legitimacy to the military junta led by Min Aung Hlaing.”
Anwar’s move to directly engage with the junta, after years of ASEAN barring Myanmar’s generals from its meetings for their failure to comply with its peace plan, could provide a potential opening to resolve the protracted conflict, analysts said.
In particular, Anwar should extend his dialogue process to include four of Myanmar’s oldest ethnic armed organizations that control swathes of the country’s borderlands, said Fuadi Pitsuwan, a political science academic at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.
Saw Taw Nee, spokesman for the Karen National Union, a major ethnic outfit that holds territory along the Thai-Myanmar border, urged ASEAN to change its approach and reach out.
“ASEAN leaders must give credit and recognize us,” he said.
The renewed move to intensify dialogue in Myanmar also comes amid a junta plan to hold a general election in December, an exercise derided by its critic as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies.
In Bangkok, Anwar underlined the need for an inclusive, free and fair election — a message he said that had been delivered to the junta, which wants to press ahead with the election plan without delay.
Still, some analysts warned that ASEAN must be cautious.
“Min Aung Hlaing has shown that he cannot be trusted,” Chulalongkorn University political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak said. “So ASEAN under Anwar has to be careful not to get taken for a ride.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS