Letter to the Editor
April 26, 2021
In reply to Ruben Torres’ “Workers vs the military in Myanmar” (The Manila Times, April 23, 2021) we must be wary of some pundits parroting the US push for the Philippines to take a stronger stance against the Myanmar February coup (that unfortunately has since seen over 700 protesters dead) in the guise of protecting “democracy” and “human rights.” President Duterte is preventing exactly this rupture from happening in the Philippines, and we should not allow the Western pressures to wean us from our Asean values of noninterference that has kept our region peaceful.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., who has seen firsthand the hypocrisy of the West, has said, “[W]ith Burma (today’s Myanmar), we work with the powers around Burma to see if we can convince the great powers there. Forget the United States! We talk to China, we talk to India, we say, ‘Can we go back to the status quo?’” adding that the Department of Foreign Affairs “will never listen to the West on this issue.”