Myanmar: The Myanmar military has been invited to take part in the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) Experts’ Working Group on Maritime Security, co-chaired by Thailand and the United States.

The five-day regional meeting is due to start on February 20, 2023, and will include “tabletop” exercises.

The Myanmar military has been accused of ethnic cleansing against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. The armed forces launched a military operation in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 of the mainly Muslim Rohingya from their homes and into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape, and arson. In 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup.

Along with the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the meeting will include representatives from dialogue partners Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the US.

ASEAN has previously struggled a lot with handling Myanmar, given the ruling generals’ failure to end the violence triggered by the February 1, 2021 coup and create the conditions for dialogue.

The association has barred senior representatives of the Myanmar military from its main summits. But after two years of bloodshed, some member countries are calling on ASEAN to engage with the National Unity Government (NUG) established by the elected politicians the generals removed when they seized power.

In 2022, US President Mr. Joe Biden’s administration formally determined that Myanmar’s military’s violence against the Rohingya minority amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. However, the military has denied claims of genocide, saying its aim was to stop Rohingya rebels from carrying out attacks.

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