The case hardly registered in the UK media. The ousted Myanmar ambassador to London, Kyaw Zwar Minn, was summoned to Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 30 May to face charges of trespassing in the ambassadorial residence. It was initiated by representatives in London of the junta that overthrew Myanmar’s democratic government in February 2021.
Following the coup, Mr Minn came out in support of the democracy movement. He was then locked out of the embassy by diplomats supportive of the junta. Since then they have waged a campaign of threats and intimidation against him and his family in an attempt to drive him from the diplomatic residence, Myanmar House, in Hampstead. But he remains there, a custodian of the house for Myanmar’s democrats.
The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, had the power not to authorise the case in the “public interest”. He could have done so quietly before it came to court. He decided instead to authorise the prosecution and to allow a military cabal that has killed thousands of unarmed civilians to use the English courts to seek to expel from his house an ambassador hand-picked by the government led by the imprisoned democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
This is a U-turn for which the Labour government must be held to account.
The UK’s policy has been consistently to condemn the coup and in UN resolutions, including at the Security Council where the UK is the influential “penholder”, the UK government has repeatedly demanded respect for democracy and human rights. It has been the UK’s policy, along with our major allies, to impose sanctions on the coup leaders and their cronies. It has been Britain’s policy to speak out in support of a democratic transition.
Lord Hermer’s decision is upending this, undermining Britain’s decades-long policy of supporting Burma’s courageous democracy movement. This dates back to the 1988 student-led revolution that propelled Aung San Suu Kyi onto Burma’s political stage and into the international spotlight. It is a betrayal of her and the people of Myanmar, along with their unshakable aspirations to live in a democratic state.
Given Britain’s responsibilities as a former colonial power, Lord Hermer’s decision is shamefully ahistoric. Moreover, it is hard to comprehend how he imagines that it is in Britain’s national interest to give the Myanmar junta a free pass into the English courts, particularly at a time when the UK’s legal system, like all of Britain’s public sector, is cash-strapped and overwhelmed.
I urge parliamentarians on both sides of the house to raise questions about why the government is allowing an international pariah to use up precious public resources.
Outside the confines of UK politics, Lord Hermer’s decision sends deeply unhelpful messages to key audiences.
The diplomatic community has so far refused to accept the credentials of the junta at the UN General Assembly, whose credentials committee has moved instead to allow the democratic ambassador to remain in his General Assembly seat. If Mr Minn is forced to leave Myanmar House, the junta will undoubtedly make hay with the decision, using it to bolster its battered public reputation.
To those promoting international justice – such as the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, which has demanded an arrest warrant for the Burmese dictator, Min Aung Hlaing – the optics are outrageous: a democratic ambassador in the docks of an English court when it should be the junta that’s on trial.
Last but not least, it sends a signal to the people of Myanmar that Britain is an unreliable friend in this hour of unprecedented suffering. The UN estimates that 20 million people, a third of the country, are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. An additional two million have been profoundly impacted by the earthquakes at the end of March.
Myanmar is facing a crisis of accountability. The junta is launching repeated indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes in non-junta areas, including on civilian survivors of the earthquakes: atrocity crimes committed with complete impunity.
We all have a responsibility to end this and close Myanmar’s yawning accountability gap, in whichever way we can. The UK government and the Attorney General in particular have an opportunity to do the right thing and send a powerful signal that they stand by justice and accountability: and more important, that they stand by the embattled people of Myanmar.
Christopher Gunness is director of the Myanmar Accountability Project, which brings criminal cases against war criminals from Myanmar
