Early on the morning of Myanmar’s February 2021 coup, Mya Aye, a prominent Muslim activist, was one of the first arrested by the new junta regime. Since then, thousands more have been imprisoned or killed by the regime, including dozens of Muslims, like prominent student leader Wai Moe Naing, and other marginalized minorities who have fought against the military junta alongside other ethnic and religious groups. Although the resistance shares a common enemy in the brutal junta, it has yet to fully embrace a vision for a more inclusive country that overcomes Myanmar’s legacy of ethnic and religious discrimination. To broaden its base of support domestically and internationally, resistance leaders should commit to address structural discrimination against minorities in Myanmar.
We marked the one-year anniversary of the start of one of the worst crises in Southeast Asia's recent history on 1 Feb: the military coup in Myanmar. Led by Snr Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the junta government has now spent one year devastating the country, waging a campaign of extreme violence and terror against the population.
The foreign ministers’ meeting this week must seize the moment and return ASEAN to the more principled course it had begun to take before the New Year.
Maung Maung, a leader of the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), said that the People's Assembly had approved sections 1 and 2 of the Federal Democracy Charter and would soon present it to the public.