Myanmar Spring Chronicle – December 08 Scenes
MoeMaKa, December 09 2022
Myanmar military council & the international front
After the news broke that 7 young students who were comrades of the Spring Revolution would be sentenced to death on December 7th, local and foreign protests against the military council emerged.
It is said that the military council’s image has deteriorated rather than improved since the release of a few hundred political prisoners with the amnesty on last Novemberr 17th. The statement by Sean Turnell, an Australian citizen who was freed, that many Myanmar people were suffering a lot and that the military council is a very bad dictator, seems to have gone directly into the international community.
Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn also canceled the plan to go to Myanmar as the third visit of the ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar. The excuse is that they have to attend the ASEAN-EU commemorative summit that will be held in Brussels on December 14th, but it may be due to the fact that the violence and killings of the Myanmar military council still cannot be maintained.
At the Brussels summit, Myanmar people in Europe are promoting campaigns to invite NUG on behalf of Myanmar. I heard that at least 2 NUG Ministers are on a trip to the European region, so it can be considered that the NUG will make an informal visit to the Brussels conference.
It has been announced that the military council will not be invited to the Effective Development Cooperation Summit to be held in Switzerland. On December 7th, the Swiss Embassy in Yangon officially informed that Myanmar had not been invited to the meeting.
The announcement came after speculation that the military council had been invited to the Effective Development Cooperation Summit to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from December 12th to 14th. So the speculation was not true.
At the same time, when the US House of Representatives announced the approval of the US military budget NDAA, it was reported that the Burma Act, which will help Myanmar, was also covered.
On December 8th, Union Minister U Htin Lin Aung announced that the United States added more support for Myanmar in the National Defense Authorization Act 2023 (NDAA) this year.
At the same time, Nikkei Asia reported that the US would downgrade diplomatic relations with Myanmar, quoting the sayings of a spokesperson from the US State Department. The news has been coming out since November 8th, and the news outlets have been publishing and writing.
England’s diplomatic relations have been dealing with the military council on a limited basis since last year, and now, at the end of 2022, it can be seen that American diplomatic relations with the military council have gradually declined.
According to reports, the United Nations will increase and effectively deliver food aid to the war-torn areas due to the military council. The World Food Organization (WFP) said on Wednesday that it has received six and a half million euros from the European Union to provide humanitarian aid to Myanmar, which is facing food insufficiency and shortages.
According to the data, the international response to the Myanmar issue is a response to put more pressure on the Myanmar military council. As allied countries of the Myanmar military council, Russia is withdrawing from the war in Ukraine, and China itself has eased its strict ‘Zero-Covid Policy’ due to public protests.
The military council itself is working to expand the 2023 election and the ceasefire with the ethnic armed groups in order to make a change on the political front. In any case, I believe the international community will pay more attention to the will of the Myanmar people as long as the people’s determination to demolish the military dictatorship and establish a federal democratic union is not diminished.