Hello and welcome to the details of UN rights chief says Myanmar polls next month ‘unfathomable’ amid war, repression and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - This photo taken on December 13, 2023 shows members of ethnic minority armed group Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) standing guard in a temple area of a hill camp seized from Myanmar’s military in Namhsan Township in Myanmar’s northern Shan State. — AFP pic
NAYPYIDAW, Nov 11 — With Myanmar in disarray, under heavy bombardment and rights abuses rampant, there is no way it can hold free and fair elections next month, the UN rights chief said Monday.
Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup, sparking a civil war, but is trumpeting elections as an opportunity for reconciliation.
The ruling junta has touted polls scheduled to start on December 28 as a path to peace, but the vote will be blocked from rebel-held enclaves and monitors are dismissing it as a ploy to disguise continuing military rule.
“The situation in Myanmar, unfortunately, does not get enough media attention, and people have been suffering,” Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told AFP in an interview in Geneva.
He said the military had “restricted entirely the civic space, with those who are in opposition being detained, with journalists being killed”, all the time with “heavy bombardments of civilians” and the ongoing civil war, notably in Rakhine State.
“To hold elections under these circumstances is unfathomable,” said Turk.
“How can anyone say that they’re free and fair, and how can they even be conducted when considerable parts of the country are actually not in anyone’s control, and with the military being party to the conflict and having suppressed its population for years?”
Rights groups have said the election cannot be legitimate, with democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi deposed and jailed in the coup, and her vastly popular National League for Democracy party dissolved.
The junta seized power making unsubstantiated claims of fraud in a 2020 election that the NLD won in a landslide.
A many-sided civil war has since consumed Myanmar, with the junta having lost swathes of the country to pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic-minority armed factions.
There is no official death toll for Myanmar’s civil war and estimates vary widely.
Rebel groups have pledged to block the polls from their enclaves.
Protesting against the poll has been made punishable by up to a decade in prison. — AFP
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