Oct. 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Burmese military junta has rejected this Friday the request made the day before by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to apply without delay the peace plan designed by the organization as the main international mediator in the Burmese conflict.
In their meeting on Thursday, the ASEAN countries declared their weariness after the lack of progress after the coup d’état carried out by the military in February of last year; one that put the country’s democratically elected leaders in jail and unleashed a wave of military repression against dissidents, followed by an armed uprising by both armed rebel groups and self-proclaimed popular resistance volunteers.
The ASEAN countries told the Burmese authorities that “the time had come to act”, promoting “concrete measures, practices and deadlines” to put an end to a “critical” and “fragile” situation due to “the complexity” of the conflicts “prolonged” in the country.
In response, the military junta has indicated that any international pressure maneuver “will end up generating more negative than positive implications,” according to a statement from the Burmese Foreign Ministry reported by the opposition-linked newspaper ‘The Irrawaddy’.
In its note, published on its Facebook page, the Ministry assures that “the State Administrative Council”, the official name of the board, “has been trying to restore democracy in Burma since a coup that it describes as” the assumption of responsibility by the Condition”.
The Ministry also recalls that Burma was not present at Thursday’s meeting in Jakarta (Indonesia), so any statement made there “is not in line with the principles enshrined in the ASEAN Charter” and the board, therefore, Therefore, “it is not obliged to comply with the terms” resulting from the meeting.
The Ministry once again describes the Government of National Unity, made up of former members of the Burmese government, now in exile, as a “terrorist organization” which it accuses of carrying out “violent activities to disrupt their efforts” for peace.
“Despite the challenges and undue pressure from inside and outside the country”, the Government of Burma maintains that it continues to cooperate to “materialize” the ASEAN peace plan, the so-called five-point consensus that calls among other aspects to the opening of a dialogue process, to the end of armed violence and repression, as well as to the resumption of the process for the entry of humanitarian aid into the country.
The Burmese opposition, it should be remembered, accuses the Junta of the death of almost 2,400 people in its repression operations since the coup and estimates that more than 12,000 are illegally detained awaiting trial, according to the NGO Association for the Burma Political Prisoners (AAPP).
This same week, the military junta was forced to make another public statement to deny its involvement in a bombing against a music festival in the state of Kachin, in the north of the country, which would have left at least 75 civilians dead, according to reports. this Thursday the armed rebel group of the Army for the Independence of Kachin (KIA, for its acronym in English).
