Myanmar has ordered the head of East Timor’s diplomatic mission to leave the country within seven days, state media quoted the Burmese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying yesterday, in an escalating row over a criminal complaint filed by a rights group against the Burmese armed forces.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021, when the military ousted the elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking a wave of anti-junta protests that have morphed into a nationwide civil war.
Myanmar’s Chin state Human Rights Organization (CHRO) last month filed a complaint with the East Timorese Department of Justice, alleging that the Burmese junta had carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity since the 2021 coup.
Photo: AFP
In January, CHRO officials also met East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, who last year led the tiny Catholic nation’s accession ASEAN, of which Myanmar is also a member.
CHRO filed the complaint in East Timor because it was seeking an ASEAN member with an independent judiciary, as well as a country that would be sympathetic to the suffering of Chin State’s majority Christian population, its executive director Salai Za Uk said.
“Such unconstructive engagement by a Head of State of one ASEAN Member State with an unlawful organization opposing another ASEAN Member State is totally unacceptable,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar quoted the foreign ministry as saying.
A spokesman for the Burmese junta did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Early this month, CHRO said East Timor’s judicial authorities had opened legal proceedings against the Burmese junta, including its chief, Min Aung Hlaing, following the complaint filed by the rights group.
The Burmese foreign ministry said East Timor’s acceptance of the case and the country’s appointment of a prosecutor to look into it resulted in “setting an unprecedented practice, negative interpretation and escalation of [public] resentments.”
East Timor’s embassy in Myanmar did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via e-mail.
The diplomatic spat comes as the Burmese military faces international scrutiny for its role in an alleged genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya in a case being heard at the International Court of Justice.
Myanmar has denied the charge.
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