The UN human rights office has said Myanmar is witnessing intensified violence, repression and intimidation in the buildup to military-controlled elections that have been widely branded as a sham to keep the country’s generals in power.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said the elections were clearly taking place in an environment that left no space for free or meaningful participation.
“The military authorities in Myanmar must stop using brutal violence to compel people to vote, and stop arresting people for expressing any dissenting views,” he said.
Myanmar is about to undergo its first election in five years since the military seized power in a bloody coup in 2021 and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government. It marked the beginning of a brutal civil war in the country, with key government figures, including Ms Suu Kyi, imprisoned. A year ago The Independent released a documentary charting her rise and fall.
The first of three voting phases is due to begin at 6am on 28 December and the exercise will continue until the end of January, with most major political parties absent from the ballot.
Those parties that are in the running are all linked to or dependent on the military. Among the 57 parties involved, only six are running nationwide and the rest are running in a single state or region.
More than 200 people have been arrested under the draconian new laws forbidding “disruption” of the poll. Those found guilty of breaking this legislation have received harsh sentencing ranging from 42 to 49 years in jail.
Home affairs minister Lt Gen Tun Tun Naung told a meeting earlier this week that authorities had identified and taken action against 229 people, including 201 men and 28 women, in 140 cases of “attempting to sabotage the election process”, according to the state-run Myanma Alinn newspaper.
Prominent figures, including film director Mike Tee, actor Kyaw Win Htut and comedian Ohn Daing have also been arrested.
They were each sentenced to seven years in prison for “undermining public trust” after criticising a pro-election propaganda film. The 36-minute feature was screened across junta-controlled TV channels, and has been widely panned for demonising opponents of the military regime.
The military has been accused of using a host of pressure tactics to force people to vote in the elections, including threatening them with the seizure of their houses.
One source told the UN: “They are saying to the internally displaced: ‘You guys come back to the town (to vote). If you do not come back, we will continue to bomb you’.”
“Forcing displaced people to undertake unsafe and involuntary returns is a human rights violation,” said the high commissioner.
One of the most glaring absences from this vote will be Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The party saw most of its leadership jailed at the time of the coup, and it was disbanded altogether in 2023.
The party won by a landslide in the 2015 elections that brought Ms Suu Kyi to power, and its margin of victory increased in the 2020 elections.
It was in the aftermath of the election that the army staged the takeover of power in 2021, keeping the NLD from taking a second term, with the excuse that there were irregularities that invalidated the process.
A spokesperson for the military-run government has brushed off the international criticism of the election, saying the international community’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction does not matter for Myanmar.
Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun said: “Those who want to criticise can do so.
“We will continue to pursue our original objective of returning to a multi-party democratic system.”
