Diplomatic darling of Oz academe Chit Win joins Myanmar’s dark side

Chit Win was widely tipped to be a critical link between the Australian and Myanmarese governments in the years to come.

Kyaw Zwar Minn flashes the Hunger Games salute of the protesters outside the Myanmar embassy in London on Thursday. Picture: AFP

He was the star PhD candidate of the Australian National University’s Myanmar Research Centre, a bright foreign ministry official with such a promising future that the Australian government deemed Chit Win worthy of a full scholarship to study his country’s democratic transition.

But this week Myanmar’s deputy ambassador to Britain has played a starring role of a very different kind, one in which the incumbent Kyaw Zwar Minn was locked out of the London embassy for criticising the military coup, and Dr Chit Win appointed by the junta as his interim successor.

Those who knew Dr Chit Win during his time at ANU from 2013 to 2017 have described the civil servant as incredibly bright, pragmatic, personable and ambitious, a man who saw himself one day as foreign minister.

He cultivated contacts across Australia’s academic world and, as a senior Myanmar foreign ministry official, was tipped to be a critical link between the two governments in coming years. That still may be true if the junta that seized power on February 1 remains in power and Dr Chit Win retains a senior place in its regime.

Some have even suggested Dr Chit Win could help Australia secure the release of detained Sydney economist Sean Turnell, a long-time policy adviser to deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was charged last month with breaching the Myanmar’s official secrets act.

But the Australian-educated official’s role in this week’s events has sparked mass condemnation within Myanmar, where more than 615 people have been killed by security forces determined to stamp out opposition to the coup.

The ANU declined to comment on Friday, though the university’s Myanmar student alumni issued a statement excoriating Dr Chit Win’s “cowardly servitude to the illegitimate military authority”. It has demanded the university and the Australian government cut all connections with the former student and his family.

Chit Win.

“We say SHAME ON YOU Dr Chit Win. He is an Australian Leadership Award recipient. He holds a PhD from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU,” the statement said.

“As a scholarship awardee he has agreed to apply his skills and knowledge pursued through the study and research opportunities … to drive change and contribute to the development of Myanmar. His co-operation with the military junta is fundamentally nullifying democracy, justice and the will of the Myanmar people.”

The ousted ambassador — a career military officer before his London appointment in 2014 — had already been recalled by the junta for urging the release of Ms Suu Kyi and ousted president Win Myint. But he dug in.

“Since then he stopped following instructions from the foreign ministry, and has been meeting with many diplomatic counterparts and Myanmar community to discuss the current situation in Myanmar hoping to find a peaceful solution,” a spokesman for Mr Kyaw Zwar Minn said outside the embassy on Thursday.

On Wednesday, however, embassy staff loyal to the military staged a coup of their own, locking the ambassador out of the Mayfair mission after he went out.

Outside the embassy, the ousted diplomat urged the British government not to recognise Dr Chit Win as the junta’s new ambassador, warned embassy staff were being threatened with “severe punishment if they don’t continue to work for the military generals”, and said he feared he would be killed if forced back to Myanmar.

The British Foreign Office condemned the “bullying behaviour towards” Mr Kyaw Zwar Minn and during a meeting on Thursday offered him asylum “while he decides his long-term future”. But it also said it can no longer recognise him as ambassador because it had been officially advised in an April 7 letter from the embassy that Dr Chit Win was the new head of mission.

Australia’s former Myanmar ambassador Nicholas Coppel told The Weekend Australian he knew Dr Chit Win as an “articulate and hardworking, professional public servant” who had been seconded from his position as deputy director of Myanmar’s foreign ministry to director of the Office of the National Security Adviser to Ms Suu Kyi.

Mr Coppel urged critics to consider the complexity of the situation the diplomat likely faced, along with thousands of other civil servants confronting an invidious choice between defying a murderous junta or risking the fury of the civil disobedience movement.

“They have got financial commitments, family responsibilities. To pick on particular individuals and demand of them that they declare their allegiance one way or another is a little rough,” he said.

“Chit Win has come to prominence because of what has happened to his ambassador. But what of every other Myanmar diplomat? Is each one of them going to be singled out?”