Reuters reported from New York that the United Nations General Assembly called on Friday (June 18) to stop sending weapons to Myanmar and urged the Myanmar military to respect the results of last November election and release political prisoners including leader Aung San Suu Kyi. .
The UN General Assembly passed this resolution with the support of 119 countries. The Myanmar military launched a coup on February 1 to overthrow the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Belarus requested that the text of the resolution be put to a vote and became the only country to vote against it, while 36 countries including China and Russia abstained.
“The risk of a large-scale civil war is real,” Christine Schraner Burgener, the UN Special Envoy for Myanmar Affairs, told the UN General Assembly after the vote was completed. “Time is of the essence. The opportunity to reverse the military takeover situation is shrinking.”
Among the countries that abstained from voting, some believed that the crisis was an internal matter of Myanmar, some believed that the resolution was useless, and others complained that the resolution did not adequately solve the plight of Rohingya Muslims. About four years ago, the suppression by the Burmese army forced nearly 1 million Rohingya to flee Myanmar.
Olof Skoog, the EU’s ambassador to the United Nations, believes that this UN resolution sends a powerful message. “It delegitimizes the military government, condemns the abuse and violence of the military government against its own people, and shows that the military government is isolated from the world,” he said.
Earlier Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged the UN General Assembly to take action. He told reporters: “We cannot live in a world where military politics has become the norm. This is totally unacceptable.”
The Burmese military stated that the takeover of power was because the Aung San Suu Kyi government refused to resolve what the military said was fraud in the November elections. International observers said that the vote was fair.
Split opinions within ASEAN
The original draft of the UN resolution used stronger language to call for an arms embargo on Myanmar. According to a proposal seen by Reuters last month, nine Southeast Asian countries wanted to remove the phrase arms embargo.
The compromised text “calls on all member states to prevent the flow of weapons into Burma.”
The General Assembly resolution is not legally binding, but it has political influence. Unlike the 15 members of the Security Council, no country in the UN General Assembly has the right to veto.
According to data from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the military government has killed more than 860 people since the coup. The military government claimed that the actual figure was much lower than this figure.
The UN resolution called on the Myanmar military to “immediately stop all violence against peaceful protesters” and end restrictions on the Internet and social media.
The UN General Assembly also called on Myanmar to quickly implement the five-point consensus reached by the military government and ASEAN in April this year to stop violence and open dialogue with opposition figures.
ASEAN led the main diplomatic effort to find a way out of the crisis, but there was a disagreement among ASEAN member states over the UN operation on Friday.
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam voted in favor. Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, representing the elected civilian government overthrown by the army, also voted in favor. Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand abstained.
Jue Mo Tun said that he was disappointed that the United Nations General Assembly passed a “diluted” resolution so long after the Myanmar coup d’etat. He added: “No country should support the military government. This is very important.”
(This article is based on a report from Reuters.)
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