The United Nations General Assembly on Friday called for a stop to the flow of arms to Myanmar and urged the military to respect November election results and release political detainees, including leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The General Assembly adopted a resolution with the support of 119 countries several months after the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in a Feb. 1 coup. Belarus requested the text be put to a vote and was the only country to oppose it, while 36 abstained, including China and Russia. “We must advocate for the protection of all fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, access to information and peaceful assembly which have been repeatedly infringed upon by the military in Myanmar,” Turkey’s Volkan Bozkir, president of the 75th UN General Assembly said in a statement. At the meeting, UN special envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener also warned the 193-member body that “the risk of a large-scale civil war is real” in the country. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are currently fleeing from violence in the country following clashes between the military and ethnic groups.
The vote came on the same day that the Security Council was holding informal talks on the situation in the Southeast Asian nation, where the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi in February
