Please see quotes below from APHR Co-Chairperson Charles Santiago, responding to ASEAN Chairman’s Statement on the crisis in Myanmar following the recent ASEAN Summit:
“ASEAN’s feeble statement on the illegal Myanmar junta’s continued atrocities, even after an attack on their own aid convoy, is an indictment of the bloc’s ability to play a key role in what is the most urgent crisis facing the region. ASEAN’s approach is rooted in cowardice and is an insult to the pro-democracy movement as the junta continues to terrorize a largely unarmed civilian population.”
“If ASEAN and the Indonesian Chair continue to hide behind the Five-Point Consensus, which their own statement tacitly admits has been an unmitigated failure, then they are enabling the Myanmar junta to remain in power and carry on with the slaughter of their own people. Indonesia only has a few months left in its chairmanship and this latest statement does not give any hope that there will be any significant changes to ASEAN's approach to Myanmar."
“Unless ASEAN wants to go down in history as an impotent and irrelevant organization, it needs to seriously reexamine and reformulate the Five-Point Consensus with all stakeholders, including the NUG and ethnic minorities, complete with enforcement mechanisms to ensure that massacres such as the one in Sagaing do not recur with impunity.”
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