A former diplomat
In my opinion, if the person giving the speech (as a minister for Home Affairs) were to be saying what was mentioned in the document then his knowledge of international politics must be very low. A person with an education of high school will have a better understanding of current affairs and international politics.
We can deduce from what he was saying the military regime has in their mind that the use of force - in particular using the military - in quelling civil disturbing is not acceptable nor in accord with international norm. If that is the case, then it's good for us but we have to forewarned the international community that the military regime may be planning to use either police or police in the form of 'riot squads' are still the use of the military in another uniform or in civilian garbs.
The other thing that I've noticed is that they are aware that they might be indicted to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague. In that regard we can exploit their knowledge of this by emphasizing the fact that enough evidence have already been collected and submitted it to the appropriate bodies for further action.
While doing that we should make the point that 'a person cannot claim their innocence just by using the excuse that they were just following orders handed down to them from above. We can quote some cases in that regard. We may need to educate the soldiers by letting them know that they cannot disassociated themselves from what have been regarded their actions as 'crimes' under the Geneva Conventions.
Burma as a country is a signatory the Conventions and even if they claim that they are not there is no room for breach of any part of the Convention because these have become 'customary international law' where no one can commit any breaches.
The minister has very little knowledge of how the UN operates too. He does not grapple the gravity of the UN Presidential Statement. All he seems to know was that because such a statement is 'non binding' he can ignore them. Laughable, don't you think?
