The Southeast Asian bloc Asean was told yesterday by Myanmar’s foreign minister that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ‘a sister’ who was in good health and would be looked after, Asean’s special envoy to Myanmar said.
Maria Theresa Lazaro, the Philippine foreign minister, has been pressing for access to 81-year-old Suu Kyi, who has been held since her elected government was toppled in a 2021 military coup that plunged the country into conflict.
“My recollection of the statement of the Myanmar foreign minister on Aung San Suu Kyi is that she’s in good health and that the premise of how he said this is that ‘she is a relative, she’s a sister and therefore we will take care of her’,” Lazaro told a Press conference.
Top diplomats of the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations met in person with their Myanmar counterpart yesterday for the first time since the coup, in an effort to kick-start a peace initiative that has failed to halt a civil war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.
Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence, recently commuted by one-third, on a multitude of criminal charges that her allies say were fabricated to keep her out of politics. Suu Kyi has denied wrongdoing and her exact whereabouts are unknown.
Myanmar’s leadership has been banned from top-level Asean meetings over their failure to implement a ‘five-point consensus’ peace plan agreed with the bloc, which has made barely any progress.
Lazaro defended the decision to call a meeting with Myanmar Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe and said the bloc was already seeing movement on humanitarian access.
“It can’t be done in one stroke,” she said. “It’s evolving and I think all of these engagements are very important.”
The Asean peace initiative was placed in further doubt last week when Myanmar’s pro-military parliament passed a motion calling it interference by Asean and urging the new civilian-led, army-backed government to reject it.
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