Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday urged Myanmar’s Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing to uphold an agreement he made with fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members to end the political crisis in his country, but observers say the entreaty had likely fallen on deaf ears.
Hun Sen, who recently assumed the rotating chair of ASEAN, made the request to Min Aung Hlaing during a video conference, a day after he confirmed plans to invite the junta chief to an upcoming summit of the bloc even though he has yet to implement the so-called Five-Point Consensus, a plan he agreed to last April to end violence in Myanmar.
The call was billed as a follow up to Hun Sen’s Jan. 7-8 trip to Myanmar — the first by a foreign leader since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup — which drew widespread criticism for conferring legitimacy on a regime that has detained nearly 8,800 civilians and killed some 1,500 others, mostly during nonviolent protests of its rule, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.