Myanmar's generals sent ASEAN's envoy home without a glimpse of Aung San Suu Kyi, as their aircraft hit a Buddhist ceremony and a stray shell wounded a Thai villager.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro, the bloc's envoy while Manila holds the ASEAN chair, ended a two-day visit on October 29 that took in aid deliveries in Shan State and talks in Naypyitaw with Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe. Myanmar's foreign ministry said the two "held substantive discussions on ways to restore Myanmar's original role and rights within ASEAN". Its statement did not mention the 81-year-old former leader, who the authorities say is held under house arrest in the capital.
Lazaro told the Philippine outlet Bilyonaryo, which travelled with her, that the response she got on Suu Kyi's situation was "quite positive" and that she was doing well.
In reality, the trip lays bare how little sway the bloc holds over a government it still keeps out of its summits. Since taking the presidency in April after a vote critics said was built to entrench military rule, Min Aung Hlaing has worked through his neighbours one by one, and Malaysia this month became his fifth ASEAN host.
Manila's own president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has said the bloc needs "a new approach on Myanmar". Naypyitaw wants its seat back and is paying in gestures rather than concessions.
Suu Kyi has been allowed a meeting with the Red Cross in August, a package from King Charles on October 26 and, on October 22, a 20-minute consular phone call with her son Kim Aris, their first conversation in more than five years. Aris told AFP she sounded "fairly healthy", but said he feared she was being used to polish the image of the men holding her.
Lazaro left an earlier visit in January without seeing Suu Kyi, and a fresh request was turned down at a June 30 press conference by government spokesperson Khaing Khaing Soe, according to The Straits Times.
"Aung San Suu Kyi has been prosecuted under the law and is serving sentences. Therefore she is not allowed to meet with international representatives," the spokesperson said. In August the government said it no longer needed an ASEAN special envoy at all.
The same day Lazaro was dismissed, an airstrike in Sagaing Region in the centre of the country wounded a monk and forced the cancellation of a recitation of the Patthana, a Buddhist scripture, in what local people described as a deliberate attack, Myanmar Now reported on October 30. The outlet also reported that the military had killed its own prisoners of war in Chin State in the Northwest. No casualty figure for either attack has been independently confirmed.
A strike near a market in Rakhine State killed at least 33 people on September 28, and the conflict monitor ACLED counted more than 100,000 conflict deaths by mid-year. The army is also regaining control of highways leading towards the Chinese, Indian and Thai borders, cutting links between resistance-held areas, Myanmar Now reported a day earlier.
A stray shell from clashes between junta and rebel forces also damaged a house in Ban Huay Mahawong, in Tak province's Mae Sot district, and injured one villager, Thai PBS World reported on October 30.
The Thai army's Naresuan Task Force responded by halting goods traffic through unofficial crossings for seven days and closing crossings in Mae Sot and Phob Phra districts to cargo, to keep supplies from reaching either side. The air force sent a surveillance aircraft to the border. The task force nonetheless called the fighting Myanmar's internal affair, a line consistent with Bangkok's close military ties with the Myanmar army.
ASEAN's foreign ministers reaffirmed the bloc's five-point peace plan in July, though Myanmar's parliament has rejected it. Singapore takes the chair on January 1 and has said it wants a "permanent cessation of violence" and the release of all political detainees before Myanmar comes back in from the cold. This week offered neither.
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