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Following an unprecedented legal challenge by Myanmar nationals, the New Zealand government has delayed issuing a visa to a member of the Myanmar junta, who applied for permission to attend the forthcoming New Zealand–ASEAN Dialogue later this week, reports the Myanmar Accountability Project.
One of those behind the legal challenge, Su Dali Than, said after the High Court hearing in Wellington, “the government has conceded that our ground-breaking legal action caused them to pause issuing a visa to the Myanmar representative, whose identity has not been revealed. That means the message will have been conveyed to the regime that governments will engage seriously in legal challenges to their illicit rule.”
Although the High Court turned down the application for an immediate ban on allowing in a junta agent, this decision casts doubt on whether a junta official will attend and buys time before this week’s meeting for further pressure to be brought on the New Zealand authorities.
“The people of Myanmar will fight in the courts and through peaceful street protests, any attempt by the junta to gain legitimacy by sending agents to international meetings,” said one of the complainants demanding a visa ban, Hla Aye, who attended the court hearing. “We call on the New Zealand government to pause its decision indefinitely on a visa for the junta, which is committing atrocity crimes against our people on a daily basis.”
Spokesman for New Zealand’s Labour Party, Phil Twyford told journalists, “This legal action has confronted the government with the fact that they are considering letting into our country a representative of an internationally condemned, unelected regime on which it has imposed sanctions and travel bans, as recently as February this year. This action has revealed the Government has waited until the last minute before the ASEAN meeting to make a decision on the visa and is pretending it has no choice but to issue the visa because Myanmar has put up an official with diplomatic immunity. People won’t be fooled by this. All along unfortunately, this Government has abdicated New Zealand’s sovereign right to determine who enters the country, and badly let down New Zealanders, who care about human rights and democracy in Myanmar.”
New Zealand was one of the first countries to condemn the military coup in 2021, imposing sanctions and travel bans and suspending high-level political engagement with a regime that has killed nearly five thousand people and imprisoned over twenty-six thousand, in what the UN Rapporteur has characterized as “a reign of terror”.
Chris Gunness, Director of the Myanmar Accountability Project, which supported the ground-breaking legal challenge said “whenever we hear of the junta attempting to attend international meetings, we will mount legal cases against them. Today we have sent a powerful signal to one of the world’s most hated regimes that showing its face at global conferences can only backfire and lead to further consolidation of
its pariah status. We have also sent a message to governments that they will be called out when they engage with an unelected regime which is reviled and isolated on the world stage.”
