MEMBER-NATIONS of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), including the Philippines, were largely silent on Tuesday as the bloc’s recalcitrant member Myanmar convicted their former leader Aung San Suu Kyi for inciting dissent and breaking Covid rules.
Without explicitly stating his position on the issue, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., who has long supported Suu Kyi, insinuated that Myanmar could suffer the consequence of slapping the two-year jail term meted out on Suu Kyi.
“It was not unprecedented,” Locsin tweeted on Tuesday in reaction to a news article that Myanmar meted a lesser penalty on Suu Kyi for “humanitarian consideration,” instead of the four years earlier reported.
Locsin said that for years, Asean had been shutting out Myanmar.
“Years ago, there [was] more emphatic exclusion by ASEAN years back. See definition of the English word ‘consensus,’” he added.
Asean has been operating on “consensus” — an all-or-none style of conflict resolution whereby all members need to approve a position or arrangement. If one disagrees, even if majority approves of it, the position or a specific measure will not materialize.
But a look at the definition of consensus shows it is “generally accepted opinion.”
Filipino diplomats pointed out that in the history of Asean, there were times that they also applied exemptions to achieving a consensus and invoke the “consensus minus one.”
This is what was apparently done recently with Myanmar in the recent Asean Summit in October, Asean-China Summit and Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) in November.
For months, Asean diplomats had been trying to engage with Myanmar after the junta took power in February from democratically elected officials led by Suu Kyi.
The Philippines, along with Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, have demanded for a status quo ante, or return to power of Suu Kyi.
However, other Asean countries were softer on Myanmar. So in April, a consensus was forged together with Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing where parties simply agreed to de-escalate the post-coup crisis in Myanmar. The five-point consensus demanded from Myanmar were: ending violence, constructive talks among “all parties concerned,” the sending of aid to Myanmar, the appointment of a special envoy to facilitate talks, and for the envoy to be allowed visits to the country.
Locsin said Cambodia is now talking with Myanmar on this matter.
“Our brother Cambodia was exercising Asian diplomacy and politeness; innuendo is not news; suspicion is not fact,” he added.
Yesterday, Myanmar’s foreign minister Wunna Maung Lin held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Phnom Penh.
Cambodia will be the chair of Asean next year.
More pointed denunciation
Other members of the international community were more emphatic in condemning the verdict on Suu Kyi.
“The military regime’s unjust conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi and repression of democratically elected officials are further affronts to democracy and rule of law in Burma. I call on the regime to end violence, respect the will of the people, and release the unjustly detained,” US State Department Secretary Anthony Blinken said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Suu Kyi’s conviction was made by a “sham trial.” UN Special Rapporteur on the situation in Human Rights in Myanmar Tom Andres branded the sentencing as a “theatre of the absurd.”
“The conviction of the State Counsellor following a sham trial in secretive proceedings before a military-controlled court is nothing but politically-motivated,” Bachelet said. “It is not only about arbitrary denial of her freedom – it closes yet another door to political dialogue.”
On Tuesday, Locsin lashed out anew at Western countries whom he had earlier accused of damaging the reputation of Suu Kyi, thus emboldening the junta to move against her. He said that while the West helped bring the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to power, they also brought her down by pinning the blame on her for the Rohingya refugee crisis.
“Starting with the moral and mental idiocy of the West in attacking Aung San Suu Kyi for not striking a match after dousing herself with gasoline to protest the fate of Rohingya no country offered to take in but the Philippines; thereby setting her up to be toppled by the Army.
“To think it was the British that imported Rohingya to be indentured labor in Burma. Suu Kyi was impervious as the daughter of Burma’s George Washington, founder of Burma and the Burmese Army which, by the way, introduced democracy to Burma as an experiment,” Locsin tweeted.
As publisher of the English language daily broadsheet TODAY in the nineties, Locsin had gotten Suu Kyi to write a column for his paper, which ran several stories on her party’s efforts to restore democracy in Burma and to block its entry into Asean as long as the unelected junta remains in power.
Uncertain Asean
University of the Philippines Prof. Herman Joseph Kraft, chair of the Department of Political Science, said Suu Kyi’s arrest “not creating any waves within Asean members indicates how uncertain Asean is as far as their position on Myanmar is concerned.”
“There has to be a consolidation there I think in terms of the position of Asean,” Kraft said during the public online briefing held by the UP Center for Integrative Studies.
Former DFA Undersecretary Laura del Rosario said the situation right now “looks like a deja vu” in 1997, when Asean was faced with the dilemma of expanding its members to include Myanmar.
Del Rosario, who is now the president of Miriam College, recalled there was a debate between two opposing camps in the Philippines — one which opposes the membership of Myanmar into Asean because of its human rights track record and another group supporting Myanmar to “help” them transition back to democracy and rule of law.
“The other side (supporter of Myanmar’s membership) won and we were back to where we were in 1997. In other words, we should set standards in Asean when we admit members,” Del Rosario said.
Kraft noted that Myanmar regressing to military rule raises a question on Asean’s credibility before the international community.
“The issue of Aung San Suu Kyi is important. It’s reflective of Asean and Asean’s strategic position. There’s a lot of talk of how irrelevant Asean has become,” Kraft explained.