MANILA, Philippines — Southeast Asian leaders said Sunday that Myanmar has failed to comply with a 2021 peace plan and that its military and other armed groups continue to attack civilians, prompting them to extend a ban on Myanmar's leader attending the bloc's annual summits.
The stern rebuke by leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, who opened their annual summit meetings in the Philippine capital on Sunday, came after a review of the progress on the five-point peace plan by the country's military-backed government. Myanmar is a member of the 11-nation regional bloc.
ASEAN leaders approved the plan in April 2021 to try to ease the violence that erupted after the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The army's takeover triggered widespread pro-democracy protests that were brutally quashed, leading to armed resistance and a civil war that has spread over much of the country.
The leaders reiterated “deep concern” over insufficient progress in implementing the peace plan. They urged all parties and stakeholders in Myanmar, "in particular the armed forces, security forces and armed groups to de-escalate violence and stop targeted attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure and enhance trust-building efforts.”
Last month, a United Nations rights investigator said the military-backed government in Myanmar was intentionally attacking civilians to terrorize them and force them into submission.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent organization that keeps detailed tallies of arrests and casualties linked to the civil war, more than 8,600 people have been killed and 32,406 arrested by Myanmar’s security forces as of Friday.
The leaders said the ban on Myanmar’s leader and foreign minister attending ASEAN summit meetings would continue “until there is meaningful progress in the implementation” of the peace plan. The plan calls for, among other things, an immediate end to hostilities and the start of a dialogue mediated by the regional bloc’s special envoy.
Under the ban, Myanmar can be represented only by lower-level career diplomats, including at the ongoing ASEAN meetings in Manila. Myanmar was due to hold ASEAN's rotating chair this year and host its multiple regional meetings, but because of the civil strife, the role passed to the Philippines.
“There’s still certain bombings and displacement of Myanmar people so step-by-step, we give it to them, how they’re going to tackle this issue, and we’ll monitor that,” Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro, ASEAN’s current special envoy to Myanmar, said in a news conference in Manila.
The three-day ASEAN summit, which includes scheduled talks with world leaders led by U.S. President Donald Trump, will focus on conflicts, including the civil war in Myanmar, according to drafts of post-summit communiques seen by The Associated Press.
Min Aung Hlaing, who led the overthrow of Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021 as the then-army chief, was sworn in as president in April following an election held in phases in December and January. Critics dismissed the polls as a sham designed to consolidate the military’s grip on power while ostensibly restoring civilian rule.
Since then, he has visited five ASEAN member states, including Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, in a diplomatic outreach to reengage Asian countries and the international community in his effort to win political legitimacy. Despite those visits, he has remained largely isolated internationally.
ASEAN has not discouraged those visits to its member states, but its leaders underscored that the peace plan remains “the main reference for addressing the political crisis in Myanmar.”
Depending on “sustained and concrete progress in the implementation” of the peace plan, “ASEAN may consider the gradual restoration of Myanmar’s full political representation,” the leaders said without elaborating.