Outgoing Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai met with detained Myanmar leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during an unannounced visit to Naypyitaw on Sunday.
The meeting took place at Naypyitaw Prison, where the ousted State Counselor is being held in solitary confinement. A high-ranking military official who is a member of the Myanmar regime’s governing State Administration Council accompanied Don.
Neither the Myanmar junta nor the Thai government have issued a statement about Don’s meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
The meeting came ahead of the ongoing ASEAN meeting in Jakarta, where foreign ministers from member states are discussing the Myanmar crisis. The regional bloc is divided over how or whether to reengage with the country’s ruling junta.
The Thai foreign minister is the first outsider to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi since her detention on the first day of the coup in 2021. She is now in solitary confinement in a prison in Naypyitaw after a junta court sentenced her to 33 years’ imprisonment. The junta has rejected several requests by ASEAN and UN special envoys on Myanmar to meet her.
At today’s ASEAN meeting Don is expected to brief regional diplomats about his meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Observers noted it is strange that the junta permitted the outgoing Thai foreign minister to see Myanmar’s ousted leader after rejecting the same request from ASEAN and UN envoys specifically mandated by the regional bloc to hold such a meeting.
Given the outgoing Thai government’s close ties with the regime and its foreign minister’s recent attempt to lobby ASEAN to fully reengage with the Myanmar junta leaders, analysts are worried that both are trying to use Daw Aung San Suu Kyi politically.
The junta has been unable to take full control of Myanmar, mostly due to a popular armed resistance led by the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and its allied ethnic armed groups. The NUG is made up of elected lawmakers from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and their ethnic allies. Most Myanmar people consider the NUG as their legitimate government.
NUG Deputy Foreign Minister U Moe Zaw Oo questioned the junta’s motivation for allowing the visit. “Given the close ties between the junta and the Thai government, we are doubtful about the appropriateness of the meeting, assuming it actually happened,” he told The Irrawaddy.
Analysts speculated that the status of the NUG was very likely a hot topic during Don’s meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. They also questioned the timing of the visit, coming on the heels of talks brokered by Don to reengage with the junta, and just before the ASEAN gathering this week.
If the foreign minister was able to extract a criticism of the NUG from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, they said, he would surely use it at the ASEAN meeting to justify Thailand’s push for the bloc to reengage with the junta.
But that would be highly unlikely, they said. They pointed to her public support for the anti-regime resistance movement in a message she delivered through Sean Turnell—her Australian economic adviser who was detained by the regime on spy charges—when the two attended a trial hearing together last year.
“She also expressed how proud she was, especially of the young Burmese people. She was really proud of how the people were prepared to defend and fight for democracy, even though their exposure to democracy was very brief,” Turnell told News 10 ABC after his release late last year.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been aware of the armed resistance movement since she was under house arrest in 2021. But she has kept tightlipped about the issue. Her silence has left regime leader Min Aung Hlaing jittery; he even said in December that year that she could keep up to date about the ongoing political situation, including the establishment of the NUG and the violence that has wracked the country, through her legal team. “She has a chance to comment on the unfolding issues via her lawyers,” he said.
