ASEAN foreign ministers were meetingin Jakarta on Thursday to discuss their options in Myanmar, where the military is using increasingly violent methods to suppress the armed resistance against its February 2021 takeover.
Twenty months on, the junta has not been able to establish full control over the country. Many of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) have joined armed civilian groups called People’s Defence Force (PDF), which are allied to the self-declared National Unity Government (NUG) in exile.
The meet is being held ahead of the ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Cambodia from November 10 to 13, amid unprecedented differences among members of the grouping on how to deal with the regional crisis that has affected all of them in one way or another.
Much of the resistance by the civilian PDFs is in the Chin State and Sagaing Region, which share borders with Mizoram and Manipur. A fragile truce between some EAOs and the military dating back to 2018 has broken down. Many EAOs support the civilian rebellion, and the junta is fighting separate armed groups as well as the PDFs across the country.
On October 23, according to reports from Myanmar, over 60 people were killed in an airstrike by the Myanmar military in Kachin State, in an area famous for its jade mines some 400 km from Kohima as the crow flies.
The strike targeted an open air concert to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Kachin Independence Organisation, whose military wing, the Kachin Independence Army, has been fighting a protracted battle against Myanmar’s rulers. The military has said all casualties were combatants.
While the Myanmar army has routinely used air power against the EAOs, in the months since the coup, it has not hesitated to strike at civilians as well. Attack helicopters have been deployed against PDFs in the Sagaing and Magway Regions.
In Rakhine State, the military is fighting the Arakkan Army (AA), with the violence sometimes spilling over to Bangladesh. The AA, which is fighting for the independence of Rakhine, has kept its distance from the PDFs and the NUG. While the AA is anti-Rohingya, the NUG, comprising parliamentarians who were elected in 2020, has appeared to take a more progressive view on the Rohingya people, officially declaring that they are entitled to citizenship in Myanmar.
V On the political front, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy who was jailed after the coup, has been convicted in multiple cases and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
ThEagle News 