Open Letter by 333 Organizations including New Myanmar Foundation Urging ASEAN to Uphold Democratic Representation of the Myanmar People and Exclude Myanmar Military Junta at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting

Jul 20, 2024 | Announcement

Open Letter by 333 Organizations including YE Urging ASEAN to Uphold Democratic Representation of the Myanmar People and Exclude Myanmar Military Junta at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting

Youth Empowerment endorsed in the open letter signed by 333 revolutionary forces and civil organizations urging ASEAN to uphold democratic representation of the Myanmar people and the exclusion of the Myanmar Military Junta from all meetings at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and related events including the upcoming meeting that will be held from July 21 to 27 in Vientiane, Laos.

Specifically, we are seeking your commitment to:

exclude Myanmar military junta members from all ASEAN meetings and events;
ensure that the people of Myanmar are represented by their democratically elected leaders, the National Unity Government, in all ASEAN meetings and events.

We are concerned that members of the illegal military junta may have been invited to some events associated with the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. Recalling ASEAN’s decision to exclude the junta leadership from high-level meetings since October 2021, inviting junta representatives to events related to the upcoming ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting would effectively grant them a ‘back-door entrance’ to these high-level meetings. As you know, ASEAN adopted this position in response to the junta’s failure to implement ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus, which called for a cessation of violence and dialogue towards a peaceful resolution of the crisis following the junta’s attempted coup.

It is evident that multiple ASEAN member states and dialogue partners are opposed to, or at least deeply concerned about, the involvement of military junta representatives in ASEAN meetings and events. ASEAN and its member states have taken actions against the Myanmar military junta, efforts that have been welcomed by the people of Myanmar. However, further serious action is urgently needed from ASEAN, namely excluding the military junta from all ASEAN meetings and events and ensuring that the people of Myanmar are represented by their democratically elected government.

-Photo credit goes to Defend Myanmar Democracy.