10/8/2024 Myanmar (International Christian Concern) — As Laos takes on the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeastern Nations (ASEAN) and prepares for its first convening later this week, the situation for religious minorities in Myanmar — a member state — continues to worsen. There, the military is facing serious battlefield losses and has stepped up its attacks on civilian population centers, including a series of airstrikes last month that may have been its most intense since seizing power in 2021. 

ASEAN, founded in 1967 to promote economic cooperation and peaceful cooperation in Southeast Asia, has struggled to formulate an effective response to the situation in Myanmar, where the democratically elected government was overthrown by the military in 2021. While the military has waged war on civilians for decades, the coup has allowed it to intensify its attacks, resulting in at least 5,350 civilians killed and more than 3.3 million displaced, according to the U.N. 

“Over half the population is living below the poverty line, primarily due to military violence,” according to the U.N.’s most recent findings. The junta has arrested more than 27,000 people, with those held “subjected to abusive interrogation, other ill-treatment in detention, or denial of access to adequate healthcare.” 

Highlighting the Tatmadaw’s influence on religion in the country, the military and various armed groups were documented in 226 attacks on religious sites during the reporting period. These included churches, monasteries, and pagodas. 

Amid these atrocities, ASEAN has struggled to formulate an effective response to Myanmar, which has been a member since 1997 but has been pushed to the sidelines since the coup. 

Shortly after the coup, ASEAN adopted a five-point consensus designed to stem the violence in Myanmar and bring peace to what is the world’s longest-running civil war. Just two days after the consensus was reached, Myanmar backed out of the agreement, saying it needed to wait until the country was stable to consider such a plan. Since the consensus, the junta has only increased its attacks, and the plan has failed to produce appreciable results. 

Myanmar is a patchwork mosaic of ethnic and religious groups. Though a strong majority of the population is ethnic Burman, and an even greater percentage is Buddhist, the communities that make up the remainder are well-established, well-organized, and, for the most part, predate the formation of the modern state by centuries. 

Many of those targeted by the regime in the last three years are pro-democracy activists, but it has also targeted the country’s many ethnoreligious minority communities, including the Muslim-majority Rohingya and the Christian-majority Chin people groups. 

Representing an extremist interpretation of Buddhism, the Burmese military has a long history of violence against the people of Myanmar. In the years leading up to the 2016 Rohingya genocide, the government helped to whip up anti-Rohingya disinformation on Facebook, leading to mass killings and displacement of that ethnoreligious minority community. 

Despite controlling a tiny fraction of the country’s 261,228 square mile area, the military announced in September that it would begin conducting a census in October to prepare for general elections in 2025. Many analysts have criticized this effort as an attempt to gather information on opponents in military-controlled areas, given that the military cannot hope to conduct any kind of census in rebel-controlled regions. 

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