MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th February, 2021) While the leaders of Malaysia and Indonesia are rightly seeking an emergency meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over the Myanmar military coup, the bloc is unlikely to go beyond vague statements and demand an end to the power takeover, Human Rights Watch told Sputnik.
Speaking at a joint presser last week, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo and Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin called for a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers to discuss the crisis in Myanmar.
"The ASEAN member states should urgently meet and demand that the Myanmar military reverse course ... and restore Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy government that the people voted for. However, they are highly unlikely to do anything more than make vague, ambiguous statements of concern because ASEAN is still governed by a rule that prevents any sort of interference in what they term the "internal affairs" of their member states," Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director, said.
According to the rights activist, anti-coup protests across Myanmar will continue, as the previous five decades of the military rule "ran the society and the economy into the ground."
"The Burmese people are not willing to return to that nightmare of military rule because they know the suffering and abuses that path holds for them, so they will use their rights to demand the restoration of the democratic government they overwhelmingly voted for in November," Robertson stated.
He stressed that now it is not the public revolt, but "the military's unfounded, rights violating action" to launch a coup just as the new parliament was about to convene is "the true threat to the stability of the country."
The fact that the takeover took place as Myanmar was to start its vaccination campaign while struggling to fight the pandemic only underscores it, according to the HRW representative.
"If Tatmadaw [militray] commander in chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing was serious in concerns about Covid-19, he should have never destabilized the country by mounting a military coup in the first place. There was absolutely zero chance that a military coup to remove a government elected with more than 80% of the vote would be able to function normally. It was pretty much a given fact that protests would follow to resist any sort of military takeover," Robertson added.
On February 1, the Myanmar military seized power hours before the new parliament was due to hold its inaugural session. The nation's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested alongside other senior officials, after the military accused her party of rigging the November elections.
Protests have since broke out nationwide to demand that the military restore the civilian government, which had been in power since 2015.
