Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has hailed recent visits by Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing to fellow ASEAN countries as part of a “new approach” to resolving the country’s crisis.
In an interview with The Straits Times published Saturday, Marcos claimed credit for a recent engagement by various ASEAN governments with the putschist regime of Min Aung Hlaing.
Marcos conceded that ASEAN’s previous insistence on its Five-Point Consensus peace plan for Myanmar and refusal to engage with Myanmar’s regime at the political level were “absolutely correct.” But he added they were “not working.”
“Nothing’s happening, so we had to do something else,” he told the daily.
This prompted the Philippines during its 2026 chairmanship of the bloc to propose a “new approach” at the ASEAN Summit in Cebu in May, he said without going into detail.
He then pointed to coup leader Min Aung Hlaing’s recent visits to Malaysia and Cambodia as signs of progress, describing them as “shoots coming out of the ground” that had “not happened before” and would eventually lead to a “complete resolution.”
“Asked if ASEAN was moving towards recognizing the Myanmar government, Marcos said the grouping has to move towards that if it is going to play a part in resolving the conflict in the country,” the Straits Times wrote.
Since appointing himself president in April and rebranding his regime, Min Aung Hlaing has also visited ASEAN members Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, while reportedly being invited to Indonesia and Brunei.
However, the diplomatic engagement Marcos cited has yet to lead to any reduction in violence on the ground. In some cases, Min Aung Hlaing’s trips coincided with aerial massacres on civilians at home.
In the latest major atrocity, a military airstrike on a crowded market in Rakhine State on Sept. 28 killed at least 50 people, while further air raids in the state targeted locations where displaced people were sheltering. A week later the putschist leader was being welcomed in Kuala Lumpur.
ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus consist of ending violence, beginning dialogue among all parties, appointing an ASEAN special envoy, and ensuring that humanitarian assistance those in need. It was adopted in April 2021 in response of the military coup. However, the regime led by Min Aung Hlaing has since ignored the framework, and most recently the regime’s new rubber-stamp Parliament rejected it altogether.
The conflict since the 2021 coup has killed an estimated 100,000 people and internally displaced about 3.8 million as of June 2026.
“Shaking hands with war criminals is a threat to humanity,” Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a Myanmar democracy and human rights activist, told The Irrawaddy. “We are watching to see whether the ASEAN leaders will show accountability if their re-engagement with the regime does not work out.”
Some ASEAN members are standing firm. Timor-Leste, the bloc’s newest member, has supported Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement and initiated legal proceedings against the military regime in February over alleged war crimes. And Singapore, which stands to take over the rotating chairmanship at year-end, affirmed this summer that there can be “no political representation” for Myanmar at ASEAN meets.