US and Asean will keep up pressure on Myanmar, Blinken says in Malaysia
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said Washington would look for new ways to step up pressure on Myanmar amid persistent post-coup violence and as the country's neighbours consider whether to continue isolating the junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
Malaysia's Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah, speaking alongside Blinken in a press conference, said there was an urgent need for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to find a permanent solution to the situation in Myanmar.
Saifuddin, alongside counterparts from Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, has been at the forefront of calling for Asean to take a harder stance on Min Aung Hlaing so that he will comply with the "five-point consensus" peace plan he had agreed to in April.
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Blinken, asked about the possibility of further punitive measures including sanctions on oil and gas revenues, indicated nothing was off the table. The US last week announced a raft of fresh sanctions on Myanmar but left out fossil fuel revenues.
"I think it's going to be very important in the weeks and months ahead to look at what additional steps and measures we can take individually and collectively to pressure the regime to put the country back on a democratic trajectory," Blinken said.
He added that the US remained committed to supporting Asean's five-point consensus plan, which among other things requires the junta to allow for a regional envoy to hold talks with all sides, including the currently detained ruling party chief Aung San Suu Kyi.
The top US diplomat, who cancelled his trip to Thailand due to a Covid-19 case among his entourage after stops in Indonesia and Malaysia, did not offer a clear answer on whether Min Aung Hlaing would be invited to a planned summit of Asean leaders and President Joe Biden in the US next year.
Saifuddin meanwhile reiterated his previously-stated position for Asean to engage in internal "soul-searching" on the way forward with Myanmar given that its current strategy had not led to Myanmar's crisis being defused.
The grouping had in an unprecedented move decided not to invite Min Aung Hlaing to a November leaders' summit - extending an invite to a Myanmar foreign ministry official instead - as an indirect rebuke for his failure to abide by the five-point consensus.
"The decision was made then that we do not invite the leader of the military junta. But we cannot go on like this, we have to make sure that there are certain ways of doing things," Saifuddin said.
He said while Asean had to abide by its principle of non-interference in member states' internal affairs, it also had a responsibility to "look at the principle of non-indifference".
Asean countries have by and large also avoided any gesture indicating formal recognition of the junta. This collective stance may however shift next year, when Asean's rotating chairmanship is taken up by Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The strongman leader has in recent weeks suggested he prefers engagement rather than isolation with Myanmar. Amid criticism of his softer stance, Hun Sen on Wednesday said he hoped he would be given a chance to mediate the crisis.
"Asean can't be called Asean if there are only nine members. Asean must save itself from the Asean-9 situation," he was quoted as saying by the Cambodianess portal. "Please do not bother me, give me time [to meet the leader of Myanmar]. I am not your teacher and you are not my teacher."
Since the coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), an independent monitoring group, says more than 10,900 civilians have been detained and over 1,300 killed by security forces.
The junta claims these figures are exaggerated and that anti-coup forces including the shadow National Unity Government - classified by the military as a "terrorist group" - had killed hundreds of soldiers.
Along with Suu Kyi, other senior members of the National League for Democracy that had governed Myanmar since elections in 2015 remain in military custody and face criminal charges that rights groups say are trumped up.
Earlier in December, Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were sentenced to four years in jail in the first of several trials. Min Aung Hlaing later commuted the sentence to a two-year detention term on "grounds of humanity".
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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