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Asian Angle | Asean has options to tackle Myanmar’s crisis. Now can it muster the will?
- The people of Myanmar are paying the ultimate price for rejecting authoritarianism and must not be left to face the consequences alone
- Asean has options in its diplomatic toolbox; its next steps will demonstrate its relevance and if its oft-proclaimed centrality holds true
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In a display of utter contempt for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Myanmar’s military leadership has completely ignored and brushed aside the bloc’s appeal to refrain from violence and seek a peaceful solution to the current crisis engulfing the country.
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Instead, Myanmar’s security forces have – since the February coup 1 and an informal Asean ministerial meeting on March 2 – unleashed further violence on peaceful protesters exercising their democratic rights, resulting in more than 200 citizens dead and counting, with scores more injured. They have also continued with arbitrary detentions of protesters and an unrelenting assault on the country’s hard-earned pillars of democracy, including the media, worsening the situation for an economy and population already reeling from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet, the world has also been witness to a population determined to demonstrate the resilience of their democratic impulses and their refusal not to return to the authoritarian years of the past. In doing so, the people of Myanmar are paying the ultimate price. They must not be left to face the consequences alone.
The imperative for concrete action from Asean hardly needs emphasis. In the face of the most egregious abuses of human values by the junta, can or should the bloc stand aside?
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How Asean addresses the crisis in Myanmar will demonstrate its relevance and whether its oft-proclaimed centrality – well justified in the past – continues to hold true today.
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