Myanmar Regime Denies ASEAN Request for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Meeting

NAYPYITAW—Myanmar’s authorities have denied a request for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s special envoy to meet its deposed and detained democratic leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, an administration spokeswoman said Tuesday. The military plunged Myanmar into civil war in 2021 when it staged a coup ousting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ending a decade-long experiment with democracy. After five years of military rule, coup leader Min Aung Hlaing this year surrendered his post as armed forces chief to take over as president after tightly restricted elections excluding Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. In late April he announced Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, now 81, would be moved from prison to a “designated residence”—although analysts dismissed the apparent act of mercy as lip service intended to rebrand his unrelenting rule. ASEAN has frozen Myanmar out since the coup but chair nation the Philippines welcomed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s transfer, requesting “brief access” for its Myanmar special envoy. “Aung San Suu Kyi has been prosecuted under the law and is serving sentences,” Myanmar presidential office spokeswoman Khaing Khaing Soe told reporters in Naypyitaw. “Therefore she is not allowed to meet with international representatives.” Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has vanished from the public eye and is serving a lengthy but unspecified sentence on a host of charges rights groups dismiss as fabricated. “Only after her sentence, she might get permission,” Khaing Khaing Soe said, at the presidency’s first press conference since the elections. The Philippines’ Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ASEAN has blocked Myanmar from its high-level summits since the coup, but made little progress with its five-point peace plan to end the war through national dialogue with all sides. Consensus among nations in the bloc is now fraying, analysts say, between those open to seizing on small concessions to bring Myanmar back into the fold and those holding fast on their hardline stance. ASEAN foreign ministers are due to meet in Manila late next month. “If they invite us, we will attend,” said presidential office spokeswoman Khaing Khaing Soe. Min Aung Hlaing presented elections ending in January as a reboot of democracy and a chance for reconciliation in the civil war. However the polls sidelined Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her hugely popular party, punished dissent with prison time, were blocked by rebels in areas they control and resulted in a walkover win for pro-military parties. Despite protests from democracy watchdogs over the integrity of the election, Min Aung Hlaing has already enjoyed warm welcomes on presidential trips this month to India and China.