ASEAN Urged to Cancel Myanmar Junta and Russia-Led Joint Military Exercises

The ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) has been urged to immediately cancel the Myanmar junta and Russia’s scheduled counter-terrorism military exercises to be held in the coming months under the auspices of an ADMM platform.

The ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group on Counter Terrorism, co-chaired by the Myanmar military junta and Russia, has scheduled the exercises for August and September with a table-top exercise in Myanmar and a field training exercise in Russia, according to advocacy group Justice for Myanmar (JFM).

The counter-terrorism working group is part of the ADMM-Plus grouping, which comprises ASEAN defense officials and those of its eight dialogue partners.

The exercises will involve military training that coordinates a response to a simulated terrorist attack and will help the Myanmar military increase the capabilities of elite troops engaged in a campaign of terror against the country’s people, the JFM said in a report.

“ASEAN has not only failed to take action in support of human rights and democracy in Myanmar but is actively aiding the junta’s criminal conduct through direct military support like the planned military exercises. This makes ASEAN complicit in the junta’s atrocity crimes,” the activist group said.

Since the coup in February 2021, the Myanmar military junta has killed at least 3,692 people, arrested more than 23,000 more, burned down over 70, 000 civilian houses and displaced 1.5 million people, according the Assistance Association of Prisoners and other advocacy groups.

On June 6 and 7, representatives from ASEAN member states, as well as representatives of ASEAN dialogue partners China and India, attended the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group on Counter-Terrorism’s final planning conference for the joint military exercises in Khabarovsk, Russia. All other dialogue partners—the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand—boycotted the meeting.

The working group has been led by Major General Aung Myo Thant, Deputy Chief of the Myanmar military’s Armed Forces Training, and Major General Grigorii Tiurin of the Operational and Strategic Command of Russia’s Eastern Military District since 2021.

The junta has long used the working group for propaganda purposes and to seek regional support for its attacks against the legitimate National Unity Government (NUG), People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and ethnic revolutionary organizations, JFM said.

In the meetings on June 6 and 7, the Myanmar junta also distributed propaganda in English, Russian and Chinese to attendees describing the NUG and PDF as “terrorists” who attack civilians, according to the junta news reports.

“Rather than helping to resolve the Myanmar crisis, ASEAN’s actions are worsening it and causing real harm,” JFM spokesperson Yadanar Maung said, while calling for the immediate cancelation of the scheduled exercises, a ban on the junta from all meetings, and recognition and support of the NUG as the legitimate government of Myanmar.

The spokesperson added that the fact these military exercises are planned is testament to the shocking failure of Indonesia as ASEAN chair to uphold basic principles of democracy and human rights.

“If, under Indonesia’s leadership, the exercises do go ahead, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and the incoming Thai government should boycott the exercises and stand with the people of Myanmar in support of human rights and democracy.”