ASEAN Sends Mixed Signals on Planned Election in Myanmar
7/11/2025 Myanmar (International Christian Concern) — At this week’s ASEAN meeting, Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said it is too soon for a legitimate Myanmar election. Still, he urged stakeholders to move toward holding one.
Myanmar is currently ruled by a harsh military regime that seized power in 2021, and the situation is deteriorating rapidly. While it has repeatedly promised elections, the junta controls only a small fraction of the country, having ruthlessly eliminated participation from political opposition. Analysts and pro-democracy activists urgently warn that any election under these conditions would be a sham designed to grant the military a veneer of legitimacy.
Echoing these urgent concerns, Minister Hasan told reporters at this week’s ASEAN meeting that restoring peace to Myanmar is an immediate priority, even more pressing than holding elections.
“We advised Myanmar that an election is not a priority for now,” Hasan said. “The priority is to cease all violence … so that all parties can sit together.”
Still, in other comments, Hasan called for parties in Myanmar to work toward an environment conducive to elections, suggesting to some analysts that he may be open to accepting the elections currently planned for December 2025 or January 2026.
Myanmar’s military has fought the country’s civilian population for decades in what is now the world’s longest ongoing civil war. Its consolidation of power in 2021 has increased its ability to conduct large-scale military operations, particularly against ethnoreligious minority resistance groups.
Continued Crackdown
According to data released this week by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), the military regime has arrested 29,373 people since 2021, including 620 children. Of that number, 22,186 individuals are still incarcerated. AAPP has verified 6,934 deaths by the regime, with about 3,600 additional deaths suspected but unverified at this time.
In the first 11 days of July, the regime killed 103 people, including 35 women and 68 men. Fifteen of that number were children, AAPP said. Myanmar’s military commonly uses airstrikes to hit civilian areas associated with the political or militant resistance.
In a particularly egregious and urgent example of this deadly pattern, the military began launching airstrikes on civilian areas just hours after a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the country in late March. These swift strikes targeted survivors and rescuers searching desperately for those trapped in rubble. Military planes bombed northern Shan state less than three hours after the earthquake, with more attacks soon following in Karen state, the quake’s epicenter, Sagaing, and areas near the Thai border.
The fact that the military, known locally as the Tatmadaw, would bomb civilians while they were working to rescue each other from the rubble of an earthquake is “nothing short of incredible,” Tom Andrews, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, told the BBC.
It took the junta days to announce a ceasefire. In contrast, the National Unity Government, which opposes the junta, announced that its militia forces would immediately begin a two-week pause in areas affected by the earthquake to facilitate humanitarian activities.
While the ceasefire quickly helped facilitate humanitarian relief, researchers documented dozens of violations by the government, including bombings in more than 20 villages.
Targeting of Religious Minorities
In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released a report criticizing Myanmar’s military government for its systematic repression of religious minorities and urging the international community to increase attention to the plight of the persecuted in Myanmar.
“The country has seen the displacement of over 3.5 million people in recent years,” the USCIRF report noted, “including more than 90,000 in Christian-majority Chin State, 237,200 in Kachin State, and one million Muslim-majority Rohingya refugees.”
The fallout from March’s earthquake, combined with the subsequent airstrikes, has only increased these already high levels of displacement.
Although a strong majority of the population is ethnic Burman, and an even greater percentage is Buddhist, the communities that make up the remainder are well-established, well-organized, and, for the most part, predate the formation of the modern state by centuries.
In many cases, Myanmar’s ethnic minorities have taken on a distinct religious identity as well. About 20% to 30% of ethnic Karen identify as Christians, while other groups, such as the Chin, are predominantly Christian, with more than 90% of their population adhering to Christianity. This overlap of ethnic and religious identity has created a volatile situation for believers.
Representing an extremist interpretation of Buddhism, the Burmese military has a long history of violence against the people of Myanmar, including against ethnic and religious minorities like the Muslim-majority Rohingya and Christian-majority Chin.
The junta is known to abduct children, forcing them to walk ahead of their troops through minefields. In many cases, their victims are members of ethnic and religious minority communities fighting back against the atrocities of a military that has waged a decades-long war of ethnic and religious cleansing.
Despite this support, experts believe that the Burmese military is atrophying rapidly, with as few as 150,000 personnel remaining after the loss of about 21,000 through casualties or desertions since the 2021 coup. This number is significantly smaller than previous estimates of 300,000 to 400,000 and calls into question the junta’s ability to sustain its nationwide military campaign, especially after a series of high-profile losses in recent years.
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To read more news stories, visit the ICC Newsroom
For interviews, please email press@persecution.org
For interviews, please email press@persecution.org