Jakarta, CNN Indonesia –
Generals Myanmar reportedly intended to stay away from China and seek to improve relations with United States of America.
The Israeli-Canadian lobby hired by Myanmar’s military junta Ari Ben Menashe said the generals were also trying to leave politics after the coup.
In a telephone interview, Ben-Menashe said he and his company Dickens & Madson Canada were hired by the Myanmar general to help communicate with the United States and other countries he called “misunderstood” with the junta.
He said Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi had since 2016 built ties too close to China for the generals to like him.
“There is a real impetus to move towards the West and the United States rather than trying to get closer to China,” Ben-Menashe said Saturday.
quoted from Reuters.
“They don’t want to be Chinese puppets,” he said.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence official, said Myanmar generals also wanted to repatriate Rohingya Muslims who had fled to neighboring Bangladesh.
According to Ben-Menashe, he held talks after a visit to Naypyidaw to sign an agreement with the military junta’s defense minister, General Mya Tun Oo.
The payoff, he said, would be paid an undisclosed fee if sanctions against the military were lifted.
A military government spokesman did not answer phone calls seeking comment.
Ben-Menashe said he was assigned to contact Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to get support for the plan to repatriate the Rohingya Muslim minority. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled military attacks in 2016 and 2017.
“It’s basically trying to get funds for them to return what they call Bengali,” said Ben-Menashe, using a term some people in Myanmar use for Rohingya, implying they are not from the country.
Conditions in Myanmar itself are increasingly critical. Hundreds of thousands of people have protested in nearly every city in Myanmar for weeks demanding Suu Kyi’s release and return to power.
But these days the police often open fire and disperse the masses with tear gas.
The UN records that at least more than 50 people have been killed and 1,700 people arrested since the fight against the coup took place.
Ben-Menashe said that it was the police who handled the protests, not the military, although there were photos and video footage of armed soldiers present at the demonstration.
He argued that the military was placed to oversee the restoration of democracy after the coup he launched. “They want to get out of politics completely, but this is a process,” he said.
(isa/dea)
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