Min Aung Hlaing Wins Back ASEAN Neighbours Despite War — SkimNews
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- Min Aung Hlaing visited Malaysia last week with a red-carpet welcome and honour guard — the fifth ASEAN nation to host him since he became president in April, following Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, with his spokesperson naming Indonesia and Brunei as possible next stops.
- Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pledged ASEAN reintegration and announced Myanmar agreed to repatriate its ~193,000 nationals (mostly Rohingya) at its own cost; Min Aung Hlaing said he would dispatch navy ships "because the weather is favourable."
- Min Aung Hlaing has also visited China, Russia, India and Belarus since April, while the US has begun direct talks focused on shutting down scam centres that have defrauded Americans of billions, Reuters reported, despite existing US sanctions over the 2017 Rohingya crackdown Washington calls a genocide.
- Myanmar's civil war is in its fifth year, with monitoring groups estimating 100,000 killed and 3.5 million displaced; the military's air campaign continues, including a September 28 strike on a market in Rakhine State that killed an estimated 50 people.
- China, India and Thailand have led a regional push for junta recognition over spillover from fighting, disrupted trade and refugee flows, while Russia and Belarus remain major arms suppliers — a dynamic Tampadipa Institute's Khin Zaw Win summed up as "convenience."
- Myanmar's military allowed an August 3 ICRC visit to Aung San Suu Kyi — her first photographs in years — a "low-cost, high-optics gesture rather than a real political opening," according to University of Sydney researcher Sai Kyi Zin Soe.
- The Philippines and Singapore, as ASEAN's current and incoming chairs, will decide whether the bloc continues re-engagement or pushes back on the junta, per Phil Robertson of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, who urged targeted sanctions including an aviation fuel ban.
Why it matters: Malaysia's reversal broke what one Nottingham analyst called a 'dam of opposition' to the junta, with five of ASEAN's 11 nations now hosting Min Aung Hlaing. The diplomatic rehabilitation confers international standing to a leader accused of crimes against humanity, while the air campaign — including the September 28 Rakhine market strike that killed an estimated 50 — continues with no deterrent effect.
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