Too little and, hopefully, not too late for Myanmar

IT would have come over the weekend as a rude shock to Aung San Suu Kyi and her many civilian colleagues from the democratically elected government of Myanmar, who are now languishing in jail after the pre-dawn coup launched by the Myanmar military in early February. That is, if they received the sad news at all, as even their own precise whereabouts are a matter of wide speculation. And the military junta has blocked major telecommunication links in and out of Myanmar, making online access sporadic at best.

During the weekend, the leaders of the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) gathered at the Asean headquarters in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, ostensibly to discuss and to forge a common stand on the worsening crisis in Myanmar. The summit was the first physical one for these Asean leaders since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. And a lot of high hopes and expectations were riding on the summit as the world frankly watches in horror the escalating killings of civilians by the junta in Myanmar.