Cambodian Prime Minister in Burma, first visit to junta by foreign leader

Published on : 01/07/2022 – 05:05

Despite calls to cancel his visit, the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, goes to Burma on Friday January 7 for talks with the junta. This is the first visit by a foreign leader since the military-led coup almost a year ago.

He planned to stay there two days in an attempt to “ease tensions” as chaos has reigned in the country since the coup d’état of 1^er February 2021 which toppled Aung San Suu Kyi and ended a 10-year democratic parenthesis. More than 1,400 civilians have been killed in the military crackdown on dissidents, according to a local rights association, and numerous anti-junta militias have sprung up across the country.

There are “all the ingredients for a civil war” in Burma, warned Prak Sokhonn, the head of Cambodian diplomacy, who in 2022 holds the rotating presidency of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations ).

Hun Sen will travel with his foreign minister, and meet with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, according to a Cambodian government statement.

On Wednesday, he called for a ceasefire, saying “all parties concerned must stop the violence”.

A demonstration against the visit of Hun Sen

International NGOs and anti-junta activists urged the Phnom Penh strongman to give up his visit, but instead assured that he was ready to extend his trip if necessary.

On Thursday, a demonstration against the visit of Hun Sen, who is one of the world’s oldest rulers, took place in the Saigang region in the northwest of the country, and Amnesty International condemned the trip, saying that ‘it could do more harm than good.

“If Hun Sen is serious about helping, he should cancel this trip and get ASEAN to take strong action to address the country’s dire human rights situation, rather than indulging in empty gestures.” , said Emerlynne Gil, the NGO’s deputy director for Southeast Asia, in a statement.

Little diplomatic progress

International powers exerted diplomatic pressure on the Burmese junta, officially called the State Administration Council (SAC), and even traditional allies of the generals, like China, gave them half-hearted support.

Often accused of immobility, ASEAN tried to raise its tone against the Burmese military, by agreeing last year on a “five-point consensus” accepted by the junta and supposed to lead to the restoration of dialogue .

But a visit by the Asean envoy was postponed after the junta refused to let him meet Aung San Suu Kyi, deprived of his liberty.

In return, the bloc excluded the leader of the Burmese junta from a summit last October, in a rare gesture for the organization often criticized for its sluggishness.

Few signs of progress have been made since, and the atrocities continue, with the latest example of the massacre of 30 people blamed on the military on Christmas Eve.

With AFP