Sri Lanka invites Myanmar junta’s Minister BIMSTEC

Sri Lanka has invited Myanmar’s junta-appointed Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin for a virtual meeting of members of regional body BIMSTEC, which Sri Lanka currently chairs. Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar slammed the move on social media, as Colombo’s outreach comes just over a month after Myanmar’s military seized power in Yangon.

Issue:

• Hundreds of Facebook users identifying as citizens of Myanmar left a trail of critical comments on the official page of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry.
• They urged the Sri Lankan government to stand with the people of Myanmar, and not recognise or accept the military junta as legitimate government.
• Commenting on Colombo’s invitation, Admiral (Retd.) Jayanath Colombage, Secretary to the Foreign Ministry, said Sri Lanka has invited the incumbent Foreign Ministers of all the fellow BIMSTEC members — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Thailand.

Sri Lanka – Myanmar

• Close ties Sri Lanka and Myanmar share close religious and cultural ties, as the majority community in both countries follow the Theravada strand of Buddhism.
• Meanwhile, nearly 40 Sri Lankan activists staged a demonstration outside the Myanmar Embassy in Colombo, in solidarity with Myanmar’s protesting civilians.
• Unless BIMSTEC expels Myanmar, Sri Lanka has no mandate to exclude them.
• Seeking to make a distinction between Colombo’s BIMSTEC summit invite to Myanmar, and its stance on the junta takeover.

BIMSTEC:

• The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization comprising seven Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.
• This sub-regional organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand.
• Initially, the economic bloc was formed with four Member States with the acronym ‘BIST-EC’ (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation).
• Following the inclusion of Myanmar on 22 December 1997 during a special Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok, the Group was renamed ‘BIMST-EC’ (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation).
• With the admission of Nepal and Bhutan at the 6th Ministerial Meeting (February 2004, Thailand), the name of the grouping was changed to ‘Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation’ (BIMSTEC).
• The regional group constitutes a bridge between South and South East Asia and represents a reinforcement of relations among these countries. BIMSTEC has also established a platform for intra-regional cooperation between SAARC and ASEAN members.

The BIMSTEC region is home to around 1.5 billion people which constitute around 22% of the global population with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.7 trillion economy. In the last five years, BIMSTEC Member States have been able to sustain an average 6.5% economic growth trajectory despite global financial meltdown.

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Bay of Bengal:

• The objective of building such an alliance was to harness shared and accelerated growth through mutual cooperation in different areas of common interests by mitigating the onslaught of globalization and by utilizing regional resources and geographical advantages.
• Unlike many other regional groupings, BIMSTEC is a sector-driven cooperative organization. Starting with six sectors—including trade, technology, energy, transport, tourism and fisheries—for sectoral cooperation in the late 1997, it expanded to embrace nine more sectors—including agriculture, public health, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism, environment, culture, people to people contact and climate change—in 2008.