Malaysia: Lead ASEAN To Forge Bloc-Wide Aviation Fuel Embargo On Myanmar Junta

(KUALA LUMPUR, May 22, 2025)—Malaysia must use next week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and the ASEAN Troika meeting to spearhead coordinated and decisive regional measures to apply maximum pressure on the Myanmar military junta to end its mounting atrocities, Fortify Rights said today. Such measures should include an immediate region-wide embargo on aviation fuel and arms to the Myanmar military junta and continue to exclude illegitimate junta representatives from ASEAN.

The biannual ASEAN summit will be held in Kuala Lumpur on May 26 and 27, 2025. Ahead of the summit, ASEAN will hold two meetings focused exclusively on Myanmar: a Troika meeting attended by Laos, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and a separate meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers. The Troika mechanism brings together ASEAN’s past, current, and incoming chairs to coordinate policies and ensure consistency over several years, especially in response to the crisis in Myanmar.

“For years, ASEAN has issued vacuous statements while the Myanmar junta kills, maims, and terrorizes civilians,” said Yap Lay Sheng, Human Rights Specialist at Fortify Rights. “As ASEAN chair, Malaysia has the rare chance to abandon the bloc’s failed five-point consensus and overhaul its disgraceful response to Myanmar.”

Shortly after the Myanmar military coup, ASEAN adopted the five-point consensusin April 2021 to deal with the situation in Myanmar. The five-point consensus calls for an immediate end to violence, dialogue between parties, mediation by an ASEAN envoy, provision of humanitarian assistance by ASEAN, and access for the envoy to meet all parties.

Since October 2021, ASEAN has excluded the Myanmar junta’s representative from the meetings due to the junta’s failure to abide by the five-point consensus. The regional bloc must continue to extend its exclusion of Myanmar junta representatives from meetings across all ASEAN mechanisms, said Fortify Rights.

“The five-point consensus is a toothless pledge that has clearly failed to curb the junta’s crimes,” said Yap Lay Sheng. “Myanmar’s post-earthquake crisis is worsened by an intransigent junta that keeps flouting its own ceasefire. ASEAN must pivot away from the five-point consensus to a bloc-wide embargo on aviation fuel and arms to finally clip the wings of the junta’s warplanes.”

Despite a ceasefire announced by the junta after the deadly March 28 earthquakes struck Myanmar, Fortify Rights has documented repeated airstrikes by Myanmar military jets on civilian populations, including in disaster-hit areas, striking schools, monasteries, churches, and mosques where earthquake-affected civilians are sheltering. On May 12, a junta airstrike leveled a school in the Sagaing Region, the epicenter of the earthquake, killing at least 22 children and two teachers and wounding more than 100 other civilians. These attacks contravene international humanitarian law prohibiting direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects, and the junta’s own self-declared “ceasefires”.

Although targeted sanctions by governments, including the United States, had aimed to block the Myanmar junta’s access to aviation fuel, weapons, and related material, the military regime continues to access supplies on the international market and has long used them in lethal attacks on civilians.

Since the adoption of the five-point consensus in 2021, the junta has flouted every point. The Myanmar military has carried out indiscriminate airstrikes across the country, targeting civilian populations and infrastructure in defiance of international humanitarian law. In July 2024, Fortify Rights documented the abduction and forced conscription of Rohingya refugees from camps in Bangladesh—acts that may constitute human trafficking. Widespread violence since the 2021 coup has displaced civilians across the region, including to Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Fortify Rights has previously called for ASEAN to abandon the five-point consensus, which has failed to halt mounting atrocities in Myanmar. ASEAN leadership has, in October 2024, itself recognized the “substantially inadequate progress” in implementing the five-point consensus. However, the bloc decided to “[m]aintain the 5PC [five-point consensus] … to address the political crisis in Myanmar.” After the recent earthquake in March, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim again reaffirmed the centrality of the five-point consensus as ASEAN’s preferred policy vehicle, saying, “[W]e should … persuade them [junta and opposition] to at least accede to … the five-point consensus.”

Although ASEAN leaders blame the junta for noncompliance with the five-point consensus, they must not remain passive on the sidelines. ASEAN must now pivot and adopt an enforceable bloc-wide aviation fuel and arms embargo on the junta and sustain it through the multi-year Troika mechanism, said Fortify Rights today.

This year’s ASEAN Troika, comprising Laos as past chair, Malaysia as current chair, and the Philippines as incoming chair, will convene ahead of next week’s summit to discuss Myanmar. The Troika mechanism must maintain an enforceable embargo on aviation fuel and arms on the junta that is sustained over multiple years. With Singapore also set to take the ASEAN chair in 2027, the 2026 Troika—comprising leading ASEAN members Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, who have all been critical of the junta’s track record—has an unparalleled opportunity to coordinate a long-lasting, multi-year pressure on the junta into 2027.

“Next week’s summit is a critical test of Anwar Ibrahim’s credibility,” said Yap Lay Sheng. “Malaysia must lead ASEAN to move beyond empty consensus-building and implement concrete measures to cut off the junta’s capacity for violence.”

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