New Zealand under fire for legitimising Myanmar junta

Myanmar junta officials have been invited to participate in two events led by New Zealand in the coming weeks, Myanmar Now has confirmed, despite its lack of legal status as a government and its rejection by the Myanmar people. In April, New Zealand will host a meeting of senior officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the nation’s capital city, Wellington. The 31st ASEAN-New Zealand Dialogue is set to take place on April 18 and 19 and is the first face-to-face ASEAN meeting New Zealand has hosted since 2019. New Zealand is hosting the meeting in its capacity as an ASEAN dialogue partner. A New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson told Myanmar Now that the junta had been invited to participate in the Wellington meeting because Myanmar is an ASEAN member and that it is up to ASEAN to decide who is represented in New Zealand. When asked if New Zealand had any concerns about engaging with the junta as if it were the government of Myanmar, the foreign affairs spokesperson pointed to its response to the coup, which included the suspension of high-level bilateral engagement, travel bans against senior junta members, and an assurance that aid does not flow through the junta. “However, New Zealand has limited engagement with Myanmar in the context of New Zealand’s position as an ASEAN Dialogue Partner, as Myanmar remains an integral member of ASEAN,” the spokesperson said. The junta has also been invited to a May meeting of defence officials that New Zealand is co-chairing with Laos. The ASEAN Regional Forum Defence Officials Dialogue and Inter-Sessional Support Group Meeting on Confidence Building Measures and Preventative Diplomacy is set to take place from May 8-10 in Vientiane and will involve defence personnel from across the region. The ASEAN Regional Forum is a grouping of 27 countries for diplomatic and security cooperation and is comprised of ASEAN member states, the bloc’s dialogue partners, and other countries in South Asia and the Pacific, including North Korea. Richard Schmidt, Deputy Secretary for Policy and Planning of the New Zealand Ministry of Defence, told Myanmar Now that the junta was invited to the defence meeting in accordance with protocols since Myanmar is an ASEAN member. “As an ASEAN Strategic Dialogue Partner, New Zealand does not, and cannot, take unilateral decisions on the membership of ASEAN, or the participation of ASEAN Member States or ASEAN Dialogue Partners in ASEAN-led forums. Further questions are therefore best directed to the convenors.” Myanmar Now also wrote to current ASEAN chair Laos to ask why the junta was invited to events as the government of Myanmar but did not receive a reply. New Zealand is working to strengthen its ties with Southeast Asian countries and ASEAN as it prepares to mark 50 years of dialogue relations in 2025. According to a New Zealand foreign ministry internal briefing from December 2023 disclosed on the ministry’s website, it is seeking to upgrade its relationship with the bloc to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.” The document focuses on diplomatic and economic opportunities for New Zealand and does not mention the crisis in Myanmar. Bilaterally, it signals New Zealand’s focus on Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, stating, “Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar also matter, but their economic and strategic weight does not currently justify prioritising them for increased political attention.” Myanmar’s publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG) as well as civil society organisations have slammed New Zealand’s legitimisation of the junta. NUG deputy foreign minister Moe Zaw Oo told Myanmar Now that the junta should not be allowed to represent the junta at any event since they do not represent Myanmar. “It is very important for the international community including New Zealand and ASEAN to not recognise or legitimise the terrorist military junta in any way at all,” he said. “Doing so would embolden the terrorist acts being committed by the military junta right now inside the country.” Naw Aung, a spokesperson for Defend Myanmar Democracy, a Myanmar civil society group campaigning to prevent the junta from representing Myanmar internationally, said that the NUG should be invited to the meetings instead of the junta as the NUG has a democratic mandate. “The military junta is not a government, it is an unelected criminal group attempting to take control of the country. So, anyone appointed by the junta is totally illegitimate as a representative of Myanmar,” he explained. In April 2021, ASEAN formulated a Five Point Consensus on Myanmar which included an immediate end to violence and dialogue among all parties to the internal conflict in Myanmar, which the junta flouted after initially appearing to agree. Despite this, ASEAN has invited the junta to represent Myanmar in most meetings and activities, with the exception of meetings of heads of state, foreign ministers and defence ministers. Last year, Myanmar civil society groups joined together to call on ASEAN to review and reframe the Five Point Consensus with, amongst other things, an action plan to end the junta’s violence through an arms embargo, targeted sanctions and international accountability, and formal engagement with legitimate stakeholders including the NUG. However, since Laos took over the rotating chair, the junta has increased its engagement as if it were the government, sending the permanent secretary of its foreign ministry to the ASEAN foreign minister’s meeting in January. Last week, a junta representative chaired a meeting of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration Task Force that discussed a work plan with assistance from Germany, Australia, China, Japan and India.

New Zealand under fire for legitimising Myanmar junta

The junta has been invited to participate in two ASEAN-related events led by New Zealand, including an upcoming meeting in Wellington

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