Myanmar Assures ASEAN of Detained Leader Suu Kyi's Welfare, Envoy Says

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) received assurances from Myanmar's Foreign Minister on Sunday that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health and will be taken care of, according to ASEAN's special envoy to Myanmar.

Maria Theresa Lazaro, the Philippine Foreign Minister who serves as the bloc's special envoy, has been seeking access to the 81-year-old Suu Kyi, who has been detained since her elected government was overthrown in a military coup in February 2021. The coup plunged Myanmar into a prolonged conflict.

“My recollection of the statement of the Myanmar Foreign Minister on Aung San Suu Kyi is that she’s in good health and that the premise of how he said this is that ‘she is a relative, she’s a sister and therefore we will take care of her’,” Ms. Lazaro told a press conference.

Top diplomats from the 11-member ASEAN bloc met in person with their Myanmar counterpart for the first time since the coup, in an effort to revive a peace initiative that has failed to stop a civil war that has claimed an estimated 1,00,000 lives.

Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence, recently reduced by one-third, on multiple criminal charges that her supporters say were fabricated to keep her out of politics. She has denied any wrongdoing, and her exact whereabouts remain unknown.

Myanmar's military leadership has been barred from high-level ASEAN meetings due to its failure to implement a “five-point consensus” peace plan agreed upon with the bloc, which has seen little progress.

Ms. Lazaro defended the decision to meet with Myanmar Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe and said the bloc was already seeing movement on humanitarian access. “It can’t be done in one stroke. It’s evolving and I think all of these engagements are very important,” she said.

The ASEAN peace initiative faced further uncertainty last week when Myanmar's pro-military parliament passed a motion calling it interference by ASEAN and urging the new civilian-led, army-backed government to reject it. Ms. Lazaro stood by the plan, calling it a framework for engagement to initiate dialogue between warring groups and improve relief efforts. “They reject it or not, I stand pat and I think ASEAN stands behind the five-point consensus,” she said.

Thailand's Foreign Minister, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, said his counterparts “clearly spelt out our expectations” of progress to Myanmar's Tin Maung Swe and called for access to Suu Kyi “so that we can be able to verify the claims” that she was in good health.

Myanmar's Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said Sunday's meeting discussed enhancing relations and “constructive cooperation for the restoration of Myanmar’s full and equal participation in ASEAN”.

A statement by 20 political and ethnic minority groups in Myanmar released on Sunday expressed concern about ASEAN meeting with the foreign minister of a country that was rejecting its peace initiative and said the bloc was not engaging sufficiently with other stakeholders. “It is therefore difficult to reconcile the expansion of high-level engagement with a party that has openly repudiated ASEAN’s own framework,” it said.