Myanmar expels East Timor envoy after rights group complaint against junta
Feb 16 (Reuters) – Myanmar ordered the head of East Timor’s diplomatic mission to leave the country within seven days, the foreign ministry said on Monday, state media reported, amid a growing row over a criminal complaint filed by a rights group against Myanmar’s armed forces.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021, when the military overthrew the elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking a wave of anti-junta protests that escalated into a nationwide civil war.
Myanmar’s Chin state Human Rights Organization (CHRO) last month filed a complaint with the justice ministry of East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, alleging that the Myanmar junta has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity since the 2021 coup.
In January, CHRO officials also met with Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta, who last year spearheaded the small Catholic nation’s accession to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member.
Salai Za Uk, the group’s executive director, said the CHRO filed the complaint in East Timor because it was seeking an ASEAN member with an independent judiciary and a country that would sympathize with the suffering of Chin State’s majority Christian population.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for the Head of State of an ASEAN Member State to engage in such unconstructive engagement with an illegal organization that opposes another ASEAN Member State,” the foreign ministry said, as quoted by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar. he said.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s junta did not respond to calls seeking comment.
In early February, the CHRO said East Timor’s judicial authorities had taken legal action against the Myanmar junta, including Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, following a complaint by the rights group.
Myanmar’s foreign ministry said East Timor’s acceptance of the case and the country’s appointment of a prosecutor to review the case resulted in “unprecedented practice, negative comments and escalation of (public) resentments.”
Timor-Leste’s embassy in Myanmar did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The diplomatic row comes as Myanmar’s military faces international scrutiny for its role in the alleged genocide of the minority Muslim Rohingya in a case heard at the International Court of Justice.
Myanmar denied the accusation.
(Reporting by Reuters Staff, Editing by Devjyot Ghoshaland Raju Gopalakrishnan)
