8/30/2025 Myanmar (International Christian Concern) — The military junta ruling Myanmar declared the Karen National Union (KNU) a terrorist organization in a statement earlier this week. The designation, while not surprising given the decades-long conflict between the KNU and the Tatmadaw, is another sign of the challenges facing the country as the junta prepares for elections later this year.

Many analysts, pointing to regions such as those controlled by the KNU, have concluded that the upcoming elections are a bid by the junta to develop a veneer of international legitimacy, despite being logistically and politically incapable of conducting a truly democratic process.

The junta controls only a small fraction of the country, disenfranchising opposition areas and making it impossible to conduct a representative poll.

Pointing to the broad international consensus on the illegitimacy of the junta’s rule—it seized power from a democratically elected government in 2021—a KNU spokesman indicated that the organization was not worried about the terrorist designation. “You don’t even need to prove anything on who the real terrorists and international criminals are, and who the unlawful associations are,” he said.

The junta has already declared campaigning and public awareness efforts by the KNU to be illegal, and with this week’s terrorist designation, it has made it illegal to associate with the KNU in any way.

In July, the junta enacted a new law imposing the death penalty on anyone who might disrupt or oppose the upcoming elections. Opposition groups, including the government in exile, have called for a boycott of the elections.

While most of Myanmar’s population is ethnic Burman and predominantly Buddhist, the country is home to long-established ethnic and religious minority communities, many of which predate the modern state by centuries.

In many regions, religious and ethnic identities overlap. The KNU represents the Karen people, a minority population indigenous to the country’s south. While the majority of Karen are Buddhist, between 15 and 30% are Christian—far higher than in Myanmar as a whole, where only about 6% are Christian.

The military frequently employs airstrikes on civilian areas linked to resistance efforts. In one of the most chilling examples, the junta launched airstrikes on civilian zones just hours after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the country in late March. The strikes targeted survivors and rescue workers searching for people trapped in the rubble. Northern Shan State was bombed within three hours of the quake, followed by attacks in Karen State—the quake’s epicenter—as well as Sagaing and areas near the Thai border.

The military’s decision to bomb civilians amid earthquake rescue efforts is “nothing short of incredible,” Tom Andrews, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, told the BBC.

In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued a report condemning the junta’s systematic persecution of religious minorities and calling on the global community to increase pressure on the regime.

“The country has seen the displacement of over 3.5 million people in recent years,” the report noted, “including more than 90,000 in Christian-majority Chin State, 237,200 in Kachin State, and one million Muslim-majority Rohingya refugees.”

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