Myanmar's NUG, analysts criticize Thailand for hosting junta foreign minister

• Published date: 23 December 2022
• Publication title: ASEAN Tribune

23 December 2022 (Prime Minister's Office of Malaysia) Myanmar's shadow government, analysts and human rights groups have lambasted the Thai government for holding a meeting on the post-coup crisis there that included the Burmese junta's foreign minister.

The meeting in Bangkok on Thursday yet again exposed a sharp divide in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as member-states opposed to the Burmese junta - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore - were notably absent.

Regional analysts say the meeting hosted by Thailand was a deliberate attempt to deepen a schism within ASEAN between authoritarian governments and the regional bloc's more democratic nation-states.

ASEAN as a bloc decided to exclude any representative from the Myanmar junta from its meetings after the military regime reneged on a five-point consensus that it had 'agreed to' in April 2021 for setting the country on a pathway to peace.

Kyaw Zaw, the spokesperson for Myanmar's civilian, shadow National Unity Government said the Burmese people 'had clearly and definitively said and shown that they do not want the military' in politics.

'The Myanmar crisis will not be solved by meeting with the junta representatives but will increase the instability and violence in Myanmar,' Kyaw Zaw told the Burmese Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews.

'Thailand should have known about it. The leaders of the Thai government should know and understand it as well. I would like to say if you want to help and solve our country's crisis, our people's will should be included, considered and accounted for [in] any such meeting.'

Thailand said it hosted the talks to discuss the crisis in military-run Myanmar, where the army overthrew an elected government on Feb. 1, 2021.

Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the meeting was 'an effort to support ASEAN attempts' to help Myanmar on the path back to peace and normalcy.

'Because it has been over a year now that ASEAN has not had a chance to discuss or listen directly at the ministerial level from Myanmar,' the ministry spokeswoman, Kanchana Patarachoke, told a press conference Friday.

She said the meeting was 'not a hindrance or obstacle to ASEAN's attempts.'

On the contrary, Kanchana said, it was aimed at producing a resolution to the situation in Myanmar.

Top diplomats from Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, as well as the deputy foreign minister of Vietnam attended the meeting hosted by Thai Foreign Minister Don...