A proposal to include all ethnic armed groups in the Union Peace Conference in February was rejected before it could be debated by the Union Parliament last week.
MP Mai Win Htoo, who represents Namhsan Township in northern Shan State for the Ta’ang National Party and who proposed the measure, told The Irrawaddy: “There are too many restrictions involved in the Panglong (Union Peace) Conference right now. The government is blocking some ethnic armed groups from the peace talks. My proposal asked the government to relax those restrictions. Let’s bring all the armed groups to the table and talk about peace.”
However, U Kyaw Soe, the director-general of the Union Parliament Office, told the MP that the proposal could not be brought for discussion to the parliament.
“He gave me two reasons,” Mai Win Htoo told The Irrawaddy. “One reason was that the government is already working on this problem, and therefore, it does not need to be discussed in Parliament. The second reason was that peace was not an urgent issue.”
The MP said inclusiveness in the peace conference is key to resolving the conflict in northern Shan State, which has been escalating over the last few months.
At the moment, armed groups must be signatories to the National Ceasefire Agreement before they can attend the conference. Eight groups signed the agreement, drafted by Myanmar’s previous government, in October 2015.
The armed groups now fighting the Tatmadaw in northern Shan State, including the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and the Arakan Army (AA), have not signed the agreement.
Earlier this month, the parliament discussed a proposal to brand these groups as ‘terrorist organizations’.
Mai Win Htoo told The Irrawaddy: “When the issue was to recognize ethnic armed groups as terrorists, then the Parliament said, ‘let’s discuss it.’ But when I put forward a proposal to talk about peace, the Parliament won’t allow it to be discussed. So I feel like we will not achieve peace for our country.”
