ASEAN Summit: Rights bodies urge focus on Rohingya crisis

Global and regional rights bodies have urged the leaders attending the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur to confront the worsening human rights situation in Myanmar and address the Rohingya crisis affecting Bangladesh and regional countries.

In separate statements ahead of the summit, they also called for rejecting Myanmar junta's planned sham elections due on December 28.

About two dozen world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, along with top leaders of the member countries -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- are attending the three-day summit and multiple other meetings on the sidelines.

Together, the ten countries have a population of 678 million and a GDP of $3.9 trillion, but also face two crises: the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict and Myanmar's civil war which displaced over 3.5 million people.

More than a million Rohingya have fled from Myanmar since 2017 and continue to do so amid clashes between the Myanmar junta and the rebel group Arakan Army.

Bangladesh has been calling for a sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis as the country faces serious funding shortages, human trafficking and drug smuggling.

In a statement, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said civilians in Myanmar face relentless violence, mass displacement and collapsing services, with over 22 million needing aid and 3.5 million displaced by ongoing airstrikes and destruction.

At the same time, more than 1.3 million Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar endure dwindling aid, food shortages and fading prospects for safe return.

APHR Chairperson Mercy Chriesty Barends said ASEAN can no longer sideline Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis to the margins of diplomacy.

"These are immediate humanitarian and security crises that demand urgent and decisive leadership," Barends said.

Thai MP Rangsiman Rome said ASEAN must reject the sham election, which will only deepen the oppression of the Myanmar people, entrench military impunity and erase any remaining prospects for a genuine democratic transition.

The APHR said the ASEAN heads of state must treat the Myanmar conflict and the Rohingya humanitarian emergency as a regional crisis requiring a coordinated response.

They must promote an inclusive, people-centred federal democracy by supporting 'federalism from below', resourcing locally driven initiatives and bringing the National Unity Government, ethnic actors, women leaders, and civil society into meaningful political dialogue, it said in a statement.

"This is also a call for all Southeast Asian lawmakers and democratic allies elsewhere to champion a people-centred, rights-based approach in all regional and international fora pertaining to the Myanmar crisis and the humanitarian catastrophe confronting Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh," said Charles Santiago, APHR Co-Chair.

In a statement, Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, said the regional grouping was at a crossroads with regard to its Myanmar strategy.

"The military junta has been scoffing at ASEAN's Five Point Consensus since the moment it was signed over four years ago. Now, it wants ASEAN to legitimise a sham election despite the fact that tens of thousands of political prisoners are behind bars, freedom of speech and the press are outlawed and military attacks against civilians continue unabated," he said.

"To recognise the junta's fraudulent election would be to move Myanmar backward and defend the indefensible," Andrews said.

Human Rights Watch Asia Advocacy Director John Sifton said Myanmar's junta has demonstrated neither the intention nor the capacity to organise and hold elections that would even remotely meet international standards.

The military's widespread atrocities in recent years have included crimes against humanity and war crimes, arbitrary detention of opposition politicians and the dissolution and criminalisation of opposition political parties, he said.

"ASEAN and ASEAN partners should categorically reject the idea that free and fair elections can currently be held in Myanmar and refuse to support the elections in any way," Sifton said.