This Week in Asia Politics
Bangkok talks spark warnings that Southeast Asian diplomats are legitimising a military regime still waging a bloody war on its own people
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Kolette Lim and Aidan Jones
Myanmar ’s gradual return from the diplomatic deep freeze continued over the weekend as Southeast Asian foreign ministers met their counterpart from the junta-run nation in Bangkok, a re-engagement that analysts warn lends legitimacy to a government still at war with its own people, without any commitment to end the violence.
Thousands have been killed in the nationwide civil conflict resulting from the military’s 2021 coup, a power grab that prompted Asean to take the unprecedented step of barring the junta’s representatives from regional summits after it ignored a five-point peace plan.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has since traded his fatigues for civilian dress , becoming president following an election widely decried as a sham as it offered no genuine challenge to the army’s proxy parties.
Even so, years after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations froze Myanmar out, the election appears to have opened a pathway back into a bloc that, by convention, is loath to interfere in members’ domestic affairs.
