Pan-Southeast Asian Agreement Aims to Stop Spillover of Myanmar Violence

VOA

By Ralph Jennings
April 24, 2021

President Joko Widodo, center, accompanied by other Indonesian officials, delivers a press statement following a meeting of ASEAN leaders at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 24, 2021. (Courtesy Indonesian Presidential Palace)

TAIPEI - Saturday's strongly worded call from a bloc of 10 Southeast Asian nations for an end to post-coup violence in Myanmar moves the region a step away from unrest infecting other countries and a step toward peacemaking, analysts say.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued a five-point consensus calling for “immediate cessation” of violence in Myanmar, “utmost restraint” by all actors there and the start of peace talks. An ASEAN envoy will help mediate dialogue in Myanmar, the consensus said, and the group will offer humanitarian aid. Myanmar is a group member.

Some countries will officially recognise Myanmar's shadow government in the coming days, says new minister

Myanmar Now
Published on Apr 16, 2021

Lwin Ko Latt did not name the countries but said they included Western nations and a country that experienced the Arab Spring

Monks in Mandalay protest against the military regime and show support for the CRPH on February 27 (Myanmar Now)

Several countries are preparing to officially recognise Myanmar’s National Unity Government as the legitimate leaders of the country, a minister from the newly formed shadow cabinet said on Friday.

Lwin Ko Latt, who has been appointed minister for home affairs and immigration, said the countries’ governments were preparing to announce their endorsements in the coming days.

Summit: Burmese military open to ASEAN delegation visits

Thaiger

Neill Fronde
Saturday, April 24, 2021

Today’s ASEAN summit in Jakarta has yielded progress regarding the situation in Myanmar with Burmese junta leader Min Aung Hlaing stating he’s not opposed to a special envoy being created and dispatched to Myanmar. The military leader also said he would consider several other steps proposed by the leaders of the Asian nations. With leaders or representation from most countries of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, today’s meetings carried high expectations to work towards some sort of resolution.

The women of Myanmar: ‘Our place is in the revolution’

Aljazeera

Umayma Khan
25 Apr 2021

Some 60 percent of protesters against the military coup are women who fear their hard-won rights hang in the balance.

Protesters against the military coup in Myanmar are surrounded by women’s clothes which have been hung in the streets to keep soldiers and police away [Stringer/Anadolu]

Every day at sunrise, Daisy* and her sisters set out to spend several hours in the heat cleaning debris from the previous day’s protests off the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.

Protests have erupted around the country since the military seized control of the government after arresting democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on February 1, and declared a year-long state of emergency.

Chance for Asean to stop Myanmar military rulers

NEWSTRAITSTIMES

April 24, 2021

This handout photo taken and released by Dawei Watch on April 23, shows protesters holding signs calling for the arrest of Myanmar armed forces chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during a demonstration against the military coup in Dawei. -AFP pic/Dawei Watch

LETTER: Southeast Asian leaders must unite to push the Myanmar junta to end horrific abuses against ordinary people and ensure it does not recognise the military as the country's legitimate rulers.

Asean is holding a Special Summit on Myanmar in Jakarta, today, to discuss the crisis brought about by the Tatmadaw's (military) coup in February. Junta leader and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who stands credibly accused of being one of the chief architects of the genocide against the Rohingya, is expected to attend the meeting.

Rohingya youth killed in ‘gunfight’ with BGB at Ghumdhum border

Dhaka Tribune

Abdul Aziz, Cox’s Bazar
April 23rd, 2021

Representational image. BIGSTOCK

The alleged gunfight took place in the early hours of Friday

A Rohingya youth named Mohammad Ibrahim was killed reportedly in a gunfight with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) members on Bangladesh-Myanmar border at Ghumdhum in Naikhongchhari, an upazila in Bandarban adjacent to Cox's Bazar district.

BGB says the deceased was a yaba peddler. He was from Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhiya, Cox's Bazar.

Ramadan For The Rohingyas is Another Sad Story

albawaba
April 22nd, 2021

About 600k ethnic Rohingya escaped to Bangladesh due to cruelty in Myanmar. (Shutterstock)

Highlights

“Ramadan in Bangladesh is just a religious commitment for us with no celebration.”

Painfully estranged from their homeland, the holy month stirs up memories of harmony and festivity for one of the world’s most persecuted peoples.

Also Read: Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar Still Ongoing - Burma Rights Group

Maryam Begum, 35, was busy passing her time feeding her two-year-old child on the eve of iftar, the end of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Begum’s congested makeshift tent, made of tarpaulin sheets in the Cox Bazaar camp in southern Bangladesh, is located on the slope of a hill from where the crimson glow of the setting sun is clearly visible.

The People of Myanmar Have Rejected the Generals. ASEAN and the World Must Do so as Well

TIME

BY ALEX AUNG KHANT
APRIL 23, 2021

A poster showing de-facto leader of Myanmar's military government, General Min Aung Hlaing, is torn in half on railings outside the country's embassy, on 8th April 2021, in London, England.

Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images

Myanmar’s political turmoil started much earlier than the coup d’ état that took place on Feb. 1. For the past ten years, the military has put on a grand show of relinquishing its power, and certainly appeared to do so when Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) won elections five years ago. But all of that was merely superficial, as the military-drafted Constitution of 2008 reserved a quarter of parliamentary seats for military officers, and gave the generals control of three key ministries—Defense, Border Affairs and Home Affairs.

Myanmar’s genocidal military is still a friend to Israel

+972 MAGAZINE

By Eitay Mack 

April 23, 2021

Public pressure has forced Israel to halt arms sales to the brutal military junta, but the state’s political support remains strong.

Myanmar's military marches in a parade in the city of Naypyidaw, Myanmar, March 27, 2021. (Mil.ru/CC BY 4.0)

The message that the world was silent during the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust is routinely cited by the State of Israel and its Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. And yet, Israel itself is complicit in silence surrounding a present-day atrocity: the crimes committed by the Myanmar military junta, which Israel is supporting with weapons, training, and political backing. Although legal, media, and public pressure has forced some change in Israel’s defense export policy to Myanmar, political support for the junta has remained strong.

Why India is struggling to respond to Myanmar crisis

THE WEEK

By Mandira Nayar 

May 02, 2021

The nights have been endless in the Rohingya camp in Delhi since the Myanmarese military overthrew the country’s democratically-elected government on February 1. Watching the images of the violence on their tiny phone screens, the 360 residents in the camp testify that their decision to flee their home was justified. “The world never believed the Rohingyas,’’ said a young man who left Myanmar nine years ago. “Now, the truth is out for everyone to see.”

စစ္ေတြဂ်မားဗလီကိစၥ ရခိုင္လူထုအလႊာကို ခြဲျခမ္းၾကည့္ ၿခင္း (Opinion)

MOE MYINT
24 April 2021

ရခိုင္ပညာတတ္ေတြနဲ႔ သာမန္လူထုၾကား၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ မဘသနဲ႔ခင္ညြန႔္၊ ေနဝင္းမွိုင္းမိေနတဲ့အုပ္စုၾကား ကြာ ဟခ်က္ အရမ္းႀကီးတာကို ဒီရက္ပိုင္းမွာ သတိထားမိလာပါတယ္။ ဒီကိစၥကိုေျပာတာနဲ႔ ဆြမ္းႀကီးဝိုင္းေလာင္းၾက မယ္၊ ေတြ႕ရာသခ်ိဳင္း ဓါးမဆိုင္းဆိုသလို ေျပာဆိုၾကမွာ က်ေနာ္တြက္ဆမိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ အရဲစြန႔္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေရးလိုက္ပါၿပီ။

-အထူးသျဖင့္ စစ္ေတြၿမိဳ့လယ္ေခါင္က ႏွစ္ေပါင္းရာေက်ာ္ရွိတဲ့ ကိုလိုနီေခတ္ဦးပိုင္းက ဂ်မားဗလီအေၾကာင္း ေၿပာၾကရာမွာ စတင္လာတဲ့ ကိစၥပါ။ တိုးတက္တဲ့အျမင္ရွိတဲ့ ရခိုင္အလႊာေတြက ဂ်မားဗလီကို ယဥ္ေက်းမွု အေ မြအႏွစ္အျဖစ္ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားသင့္ေၾကာင္း အႀကံျပဳတာကို ဗလီမို့လို ဘာလို့လုပ္ရမလဲဆိုတဲ့အျမင္နဲ႔ ျပန္ၿပီး ရိုင္းျပၾကတာပါ။ 

မြန်မာ့အရေး အာဆီယံထိပ်သီး အစည်းအဝေး သဘောတူ ညီချက်အပေါ် အမြင်များ

ဧရာဝတီ

25 April 2021

စစ်တပ်က အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက် အလွန်ဆိုးဝါးသော အခြေအနေများကို ရင်ဆိုင်နေရသည့် မြန်မာပြည်ကို တစုံတရာ ကုစားနိုင်ရန်ဆိုသော ရည်ရွယ်ချက်နှင့် အာဆီယံနိုင်ငံက ခေါင်းဆောင်များ စုပေါင်းပြီး အဖြေရှာရန် ကြိုးပမ်းသည့် မြန်မာ့ အရေး အာဆီယံ ထိပ်သီးခေါင်းဆောင်များ အစည်းအဝေးကို မနေ့က အင်ဒိုနီးရှားနိုင်ငံ ဂျကာတာမြို့တွင် ကျင်းပခဲ့သည်။

Do or die moment for ASEAN in Myanmar

ASIA TIMES
By NILE BOWIE

APRIL 23, 2021

Bloc's extraordinary Myanmar crisis meeting on April 24 could be the last diplomatic chance to prevent a regional catastrophe

Milk Tea Alliance Indonesia in action during Solidarity for the Myanmar People in front of the ASEAN Secretariat building in Jakarta on March 12,2021. Photo: DasrilRoszandi / NurPhoto via AFP

SINGAPORE – When Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders meet in Jakarta to discuss the worsening political crisis in Myanmar on April 24, it will mark the first time that the regional organization holds a highest-level meeting to address a specific situation of concern involving one of its members.

Non-interference in domestic affairs has traditionally been one of ASEAN’s basic operating principles, along with decision-making by consensus. As such, Saturday’s summit is seen as a test of the grouping’s code of constraint as regional leaders find themselves under mounting pressure to engineer a workable, face-saving resolution before the crisis spirals further out of control.

Burma and Bangladesh - Regional Crisis Response Fact Sheet #4, Fiscal Year (FY) 2021

Situation Report
Source :USAID
23 Apr 2021

Bodies of three Rohingya found with throats cut in Cox's Bazar camp

bdnews24.com
Cox's Bazar Correspondent, 
Published: 24 Apr 2021 

The bodies of three people, including a married couple, have been found with their throats slashed in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar's Ukhia.

The Armed Police Action Battalion (APBN) recovered the bodies from the Kutupalong Rohingya Camp 2 East in Rajapalong Union on Friday.

The dead have been identified as Nurul Islam, 33, his wife Mariam Khatun, 26, and sister-in-law Halima Khatun, 20, all residents of the camp, according to SP Naimul Haque, captain of APBn's Cox's Bazar-14 unit.

ASEAN Won’t Save Myanmar

FP

BY OREN SAMET |

APRIL 23, 2021,

The organization isn’t designed to solve problems—particularly not one as thorny as the post-coup unrest in Myanmar.

Protesters take part in a candlelight demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, on April 3. STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Ever since Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, staged a coup against the country’s civilian government on Feb. 1, leading to a seemingly irrepressible popular uprising, foreign-policy experts have continued to search for potential international solutions to the deteriorating situation. With major Western powers like the United States possessing limited leverage over the Tatmadaw, and China and Russia stymieing a robust response at the international level, many have looked to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to play a more significant role.

Daily Briefing in Relation to the Military Coup

AAPP

April 23, 2021

Updated 23 April 2021

As of 23 April, (745) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) compiled and documented (6) fallen hero today. These (6) heroes from Mogok Town in Mandalay Region and Pakokku Town in Magwe Region were killed on previous days but documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.

As of April 22, a total of (3371) people are currently under detention; of them (79) are sentenced. 1118 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.

A light for Myanmar's darkness

csmonitor

By the Monitor's Editorial Board

April 22, 2021

Democrats still free after a military coup have set up an alternative government, relying on the attraction of liberty and rights more than resistance to a violent regime.

 Support of a new, democratic government in Myanmar known as the " National Unity Government"  or NUG, celebrate with balloons in Yangon, April 17.

The dictator of Myanmar, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is set to meet with other leaders of Southeast Asia on Saturday in Indonesia. The gathering may be the only place where the man who led a Feb. 1 coup against an elected government might feel some legitimacy. Most of the region is run by autocrats.

His trip to faraway Jakarta is revealing in how quickly the people of Myanmar have rushed to set up a parallel government, one rooted not in the power of guns but in an unprecedented unity in guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens, including ethnic minorities.

Myanmar Issue: ‘Business as usual approach’ won’t do

The Daily Star

Diplomatic Correspondent

April 22, 2021

Says Shahriar Alam about int’l community

The business as usual approach of the international community has encouraged Myanmar to flout the decisions of international mechanisms and continue mass atrocities on ethnic minorities with a greater sense of impunity, said State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam.

He said despite allegations of genocide against Myanmar, many of the countries increased their bilateral trade, investment, and development assistance to the Southeast Asian country, which is now in deep crisis following the military coup in February, nearly four years after a military crackdown caused an influx of 750,000 Rohingyas to Bangladesh.

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Food aid operation begins to reach two million affected by Myanmar crisis

UN News
22 April 2021
Peace and Security

UNICEF/Kaung Htet According to WFP, food prices have risen sharply since the start of the political crisis in Myanmar. Pictured here, a grandmother washes vegetables to prepare a meal at her home in the country’s Shan state. (file photo)

Two million people facing growing food insecurity linked to the ongoing political crisis in Myanmar are to receive nutrition assistance, amid rising “hunger and desperation”, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday.

The operation will focus on poor townships in Myanmar’s main cities “and other areas where population displacement has recently taken place” since the 1 February coup, WFP said in a statement.