THE Philippines has distanced itself from the consensus adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council on Myanmar, even while expressing full support for top civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi who remains under house arrest.
Other countries that disagreed with the UNHRC move were China, Russia, Venezuela and Bolivia. The UN body has called on Myanmar “to release Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials and to refrain from using violence on people protesting against the military coup.” He added that as a sovereign country in a world of sovereign states, “the Philippines cannot stress strongly enough the primacy of national internal efforts towards democratic reforms, and never by the imposition of foreign solutions whether in regional or multilateral contexts, including through this Council.”
In his recorded message to Nazhat Shameem Khan, DFA Teodoro Locsin said: “We reaffirm our support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Myanmar,” while stressing continued support for Suu Kyi.
“The Lady is a deeply and widely admired icon of democracy among the Filipino people who identify with her and her people, given similar struggles against tyranny in the not distant past; struggles that culminated in the complete restoration of democracy by unprecedented and entirely domestic efforts that inspired similarly successful efforts in the rest of the Cold War world.”
The Philippines, Locsin said, “has called for the complete restoration of the status quo ante, on which the full realization of this democratic process can only be achieved.”
Locsin noted that, “Myanmar made important strides towards democratization in the past decade with the political presence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, constitutional constraints on her key political role notwithstanding. This was clear in Myanmar’s engagement in the Universal Periodic Review last month.”
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