"ASEAN foreign ministers are preparing to hold virtual talks with a representative of Myanmar’s military on Tuesday, as anti-coup protesters returned to the streets in the main city of Yangon defying fresh threats from Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan, in a televised interview late on Monday, said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will tell the military it is appalled by the violence in Myanmar and call for the release of the country’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and for the two sides to talk. “Instability in any corner of Southeast Asia threatens and affects the rest of us,” he said, adding that the coup will cause “grievous damage to Myanmar’s society and economy”. The military’s February 1 power grab has plunged Myanmar into chaos, drawing hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of cities and towns across the country as doctors, teachers and other civil servants stop work in protest against the coup. In the bloodiest crackdown yet, security forces opened fire on protesters on Sunday, killing at least 18 and wounding dozens more. The killings triggered widespread international condemnation, including from the United Nations and a group of ASEAN legislators who said they were “alarmed at the scale of arbitrary arrests and surge in violence in Myanmar”. ASEAN, which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, also renewed its efforts to open a channel between Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders. Philippine foreign minister, Teodoro Locsin, indicated on Twitter that ASEAN would be firm with Myanmar and said the regional group’s policy of non-interference in a member’s internal affairs “is not a blanket approval or tacit consent for wrong to be done there”. He also called Aung San Suu Kyi “Burmese democracy’s only hope”. ‘Illegitimate military-led regime’ But ASEAN’s effort to engage with Myanmar’s military was met with a fierce rebuke from groups in the anti-coup movement. Sa Sa, a representative of a committee of deposed legislators, said ASEAN should have no dealings with “this illegitimate military-led regime”, while the alumni of ASEAN youth programmes in Myanmar said the bloc should be talking to the international representatives of Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration, not to the military government. “ASEAN must understand that the coup or the re-election promised by the military junta is utterly unacceptable to the people of Myanmar,” it said it a letter to ASEAN. Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said ASEAN member states were in a difficult position..."