British police have reportedly charged Myanmar’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom with trespassing on a diplomatic premises, over his occupation of the country’s ambassadorial residence in London.
On February 1, 2021, when Myanmar’s military seized power, Myanmar’s then-ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn denounced the coup and pledged his loyalty to the opposition movement. He was immediately dismissed by the junta and locked out of the London embassy by pro-military staff, but refused to leave the ambassador’s official residence in northwest London. There he has remained for more than four years, refusing to turn it back over to the embassy, which is occupied now by officials loyal to the junta.
According to a report published by Reuters yesterday, Kyaw Zwar Minn was charged by London police last week with trespassing on a diplomatic premises and has been summoned to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 30.
The charge marks a shift in the U.K. stance toward the diplomatic standoff over the residence. As Reuters notes, some U.K. officials praised Kyaw Zwar Minn’s principled stand amid the surge of outrage following the 2021 coup, but the envoy’s continued occupation of the London premises has presented it with a tricky dilemma, which the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale pinpointed in an April 2021 report.
According to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, Landale wrote, an ambassador’s job officially ends once the host country has been informed of the change. By accepting that Kyaw Zwar Minn has been dismissed by Naypyidaw, as it is arguably bound to do under the Vienna Convention, Landale wrote, “it will face accusations that it is tacitly accepting the authority of the regime in Myanmar. And this is something it does not want to do.”
In a statement yesterday, Chris Gunness of the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP) urged the Attorney General’s Office to intervene and halt the case, describing it as “a blatant attempt by Myanmar’s dictatorship to manipulate the English courts in its on-going attempt to gain legitimacy for its illegitimate rule.” He added, “it is clearly not in our national interest to allow a junta which the U.K. has condemned and sanctioned to seize diplomatic property in London, not least because it undermines Britain’s policy of supporting democracy in Myanmar.”
However, while the U.K. has refused formally to recognize the military junta and imposed several rounds of sanctions on key military and business entities, it has not been willing to take the step of formally recognizing the opposition National Unity Government, which is spearheading the resistance to military rule – a step that human rights groups (including MAP) have urged it to take since immediately after the coup.
Instead, it has chosen Option C: kick the can down the road in the hope that time might resolve the situation in a way that will avoid an open confrontation. When the military junta requested that the U.K. government eject Kyaw Zwar Minn by force, London declined to do so, instead urging Kyaw Zwar Minn to find alternative accommodation. But the envoy has refused to budge, on one occasion informing the British authorities that he will only hand over the property to a representative of “the legitimate, elected government of Myanmar.”
This has seemingly left the U.K. authorities with no choice (at least in their own reckoning) but to steadily intensify the pressure on Kyaw Zwar Minn to leave the ambassadorial residence of his own accord. No doubt British officials will be hoping he spares them the awkwardness of a protracted court case.
