JAKARTA: The United States plans to impose more sanctions against entities in Myanmar in the coming days to make it harder for the country’s military junta to purchase weapons, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday.
“We are committed to continuing to ratchet up the pressure on the junta and make it harder for them to generate revenue, which is fuelling its war machine,” State Department counsellor Derek Chollet told reporters while on a visit to Indonesia.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup and has since detained democratically elected officials including Aung San Suu Kyi. Violent crackdowns against public opposition to junta rule have also ensued.
Describing Myanmar as “on the path to becoming a failed state in the heart of Southeast Asia”, Chollet said the United States has so far imposed sanctions on 80 individuals and more than 30 entities in Myanmar, and added that “we will be doing more”.
To resolve the long-standing political conflict and see the country return to democracy, Russia must stop supplying it with weapons, he added.
“One way that can happen is if Myanmar, the junta, is no longer able to import arms, and we would make a very large step in that direction if Russia were to stop supplying arms,” Chollet said.
Since the coup, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has excluded the junta’s leader and junta-appointed ministers from its meetings, a measure which Chollet said the United States “strongly” supports.
“The regime needs to fully understand that as long as it’s continuing to prosecute such a brutal campaign against their own people, they will suffer the consequences for that — and that will include further isolation in the international community,” he added.