Myanmar’s 2024 census was nearly definitely probably the most contentious – and lethal – ever performed.
Enumerators and their closely armed guards from Myanmar’s army had been topic to repeated assaults from opposition teams, as they stumbled via a failed try and doc the nation’s inhabitants between October and December final yr.
One incident in early October noticed seven troopers offering safety for census takers in Mandalay Area killed with an explosive machine. Days later, three extra troopers had been killed when opposition forces hit their automobile with a shoulder-launched rocket in Kayin State within the nation’s east.
“The census was an utter, abject failure,” Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the Worldwide Disaster Group, instructed Al Jazeera.
“However the regime has declared it a marvellous success.”
What is mostly a secular administrative train in inhabitants counting in most components of the world, that Myanmar’s census was met with such violent resistance speaks to its significance within the nation’s democratic trajectory.
Publishing preliminary leads to January, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Inhabitants mentioned the census represents the army authorities’s “dedication to nationwide reconciliation”.
But it surely additionally represents the ultimate step earlier than the army makes an attempt to carry a nationwide election later this yr – the primary since overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically elected authorities in a coup 4 years in the past and igniting a civil struggle.
Whereas the army has painted a possible vote as a return to democratic norms, for Myanmar’s opposition forces, elections are merely an try and legitimise the illegitimate regime that seized energy in February 2021.
The “election might be a sham, it is going to simply be for present”, mentioned Zaw Kyaw, a spokesperson for the presidential workplace on the Nationwide Unity Authorities (NUG), an exiled administration that features lawmakers ousted by the army.
“The army believes that [holding an election] might be an exit technique, and so they can get some legitimacy within the eyes of some international locations by internet hosting a sham election,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“However this election is not going to result in stability. It can result in extra instability and extra violence.”
‘Completely no credible information’
In November 2020, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi led her Nationwide League for Democracy (NLD) occasion to a landslide victory in Myanmar’s normal election, successful 82 % of seats contested within the nation’s nationwide and regional parliaments.
Three months later, within the early hours of February 1, the army would overthrow Aung San Suu Kyi’s authorities, arresting her and different NLD figures. Justifying the coup, the army alleged huge NLD voter fraud within the polls and declared the outcomes void, with out offering any proof of wrongdoing. The coup triggered nationwide pro-democracy protests, morphing into an armed riot that continues to engulf massive swaths of the nation at the moment.
The military-installed authorities – led by Senior Normal Min Aung Hlaing as its prime minister, and extra just lately president – has dominated the nation since 2021 beneath a state of emergency that it has renewed a number of occasions because it battles ethnic armed teams and newer pro-democracy fighters throughout the nation.
On Friday, the army prolonged the state of emergency an additional six months to July 31.
“There are nonetheless extra duties to be carried out to carry the overall election efficiently,” the army mentioned, asserting the extension of emergency rule.
“Particularly for a free and honest election, stability and peace continues to be wanted,” it mentioned.
Myanmar’s army mentioned its aim for the 2024 census was to offer an “correct” voter checklist for the subsequent election.
Such an inventory would forestall the double-counting of ballots and the participation of ineligible voters, stamping out the widespread voter fraud it claims corrupted the vote in 2020.
“The junta produced completely no credible information,” mentioned Khin Ohmar, founding father of democracy and human rights group Progressive Voice.
“The junta’s sham census lacked protection of main swaths of territory and huge segments of the inhabitants, significantly in areas managed by democratic resistance teams or revolutionary forces,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
By its personal account, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Inhabitants mentioned it solely absolutely counted populations in 145 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships, which seems to point the army now controls lower than half the nation.
Regardless of the restricted census information, the ministry mentioned it was “profoundly grateful to the folks of Myanmar for his or her enthusiastic participation”, describing the census as a “resounding success”.
Khin Ohmar mentioned the truth is that members of the general public who participated within the census had been pressured “into offering private information”, typically “at gunpoint”.
“It’s clear that the junta will proceed to make use of these violent ways towards civilians for its sham election,” she mentioned.
“Any public participation is assured to have been coerced by the army junta,” she added.
Myanmar’s army authorities didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark from Al Jazeera.
A disaster of an ‘unprecedented scale’
Simply how excessive stakes elections are for Myanmar’s severely weakened army can’t be overstated.
Whereas proclamations of its imminent demise have been frequent for the reason that coup, the as soon as unlikely aim of a regime-free Myanmar now seems extra achievable than ever because the army has suffered critical setbacks since late 2023.
In October that yr the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of ethnic armed teams: the Arakan Military, the Myanmar Nationwide Democratic Alliance Military, and the Ta’ang Nationwide Liberation Military – carried out a devastating assault on military-controlled territory in northern Shan State.
Setbacks for the regime continued into 2024 with the army experiencing its worst territorial and personnel losses in its historical past. Some 91 cities and 167 army battalions fell to resistance forces in a disaster of an “unprecedented scale”, in keeping with america Institute of Peace.
Plummeting morale has additionally seen a “historic surge in defections” from the military.
Within the context of diminishing management and more and more strong violent resistance, critics say holding a nationwide election is a fantastic notion.
The regime’s Election Fee Chairman Ko Ko mentioned in December the polls can be held in just below half of the nation’s 330 townships nationwide. However even this determine seems unduly optimistic.
Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance teams and anti-military authorities ethnic armed organisations more and more see the army as there for the taking.
Whereas the ousted NLD administration, in authorities between 2015 and 2021, tried to strike a steadiness between civilian and army rule in the course of the nation’s short-lived democratic experiment, a return to the pre-coup established order of army officers in authorities is not an possibility.
“Our most important aim [in 2025] is to remove the army dictatorship,” the NUG’s Zaw Kyaw mentioned.
“The army is weaker than it has ever been in Myanmar’s historical past,” he added.
Regardless of the inherent safety dangers, Horsey of the Disaster Group believes nationwide polls look “more and more probably” this yr.
Time can also be ticking for Min Aung Hlaing, Horsey says, as grumbling grows louder from throughout the army institution.
“There may be strain from throughout the elite to carry these polls. They don’t need Min Aung Hlaing ensconced as dictator-for-life. Most don’t relish the prospect of him sticking round eternally,” Horsey mentioned.
“He’s consolidated all energy in his personal fingers and so they desire a slice of the motion,” he mentioned.
The army’s most influential patron, China, “has additionally been pushing very onerous”, Horsey added.
“[China] has little interest in electoral democracy, however they don’t like [Min Aung Hlaing] and assume elections might be a approach of diluting his energy. Even perhaps bringing extra cheap, predictable and amendable folks to the fore,” he mentioned.
One group not pushing for elections in Myanmar is the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The ten-member bloc, of which Myanmar is a member, has been bitterly divided on the difficulty. However ASEAN international ministers issued a joint assertion in January telling the regime that holding an election amid an escalating civil struggle shouldn’t be a “precedence”.
‘Violent, messy’ and ‘weird train’
Underneath Myanmar’s military-drafted 2008 structure, authorities are mandated to carry elections inside six months of the state of emergency being lifted – at present set for July 31 – with November the standard month to take action.
However for the overwhelming majority of Myanmar’s embattled inhabitants, what month the army will maintain the sham polls is irrelevant.
Holding “elections are an absolute anathema to most individuals” in Myanmar, the Disaster Group’s Horsey mentioned.
“It’s seen as – and is – an try [by the military] to wipe away the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide victory 5 years in the past,” he mentioned.
“That’s one thing that individuals simply is not going to settle for and they’re going to resist.”
Such resistance was already evident within the assaults disrupting the census, and Horsey believes the elections will equally be a “violent, messy, incomplete course of”.
“Who of their proper thoughts would marketing campaign, open occasion places of work, and take part within the election? There’s going to be ambushes, assaults, assassinations – it’s going to be very very harmful,” he mentioned.
“It’s going to be a weird train, one thing that nobody else, I believe, would recognise as an election.”
Whereas Horsey mentioned there was a “consensus” amongst most resistance teams that civilians concerned within the census shouldn’t be attacked, he believes the stakes are larger for the elections and polling stations will “completely be seen as a respectable goal”.
The NUG’s Zaw Kyaw mentioned whereas there’ll “positively” be assaults on army targets by the Individuals’s Defence Pressure (PDF), there might be “no assaults on civilians” taking part within the vote.
However even when violence concentrating on civilians is proscribed, punitive motion of varied varieties will nearly definitely be taken towards these deemed to be collaborating with the army regime.
Through the census, 9 enumerators, largely feminine academics, had been arrested and held for greater than a month by PDF fighters in Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi Area.
Bo Sea, a Tanintharyi PDF spokesman, instructed Al Jazeera that whereas the group recognises some civilians are pressured into taking part in election preparations, these deemed keen collaborators will face “much more extreme” punishment than census individuals.
“We take into account these folks as collaborating with the junta’s election course of as accomplices,” he mentioned. “There might be civilian academics and election officers concerned. Their participation means they’re aligning themselves with the junta,” he added.
Bo Sea isn’t alone.
Ko Aung Kyaw Hein, a spokesman for the PDF in Sagaing Area in Myanmar’s northwest, mentioned those that “help the terrorist army council [in carrying out the elections] might be prosecuted beneath counterterrorism legal guidelines”.
Bo Than Mani, chief of the Yinmarbin PDF, additionally in Sagaing Area, instructed Al Jazeera his unit will “disrupt” the election, however denied it could conduct violent assaults towards these taking part.
What is obvious, not less than to these in Myanmar’s resistance, is that no matter how the nationwide elections play out, it represents a determined act by a determined, sinking army regime.
“Their morale is on the lowest,” Zaw Kyaw mentioned.
“I can’t predict when the collapse will occur. It might occur tomorrow. It might occur in months. It might occur in a yr,” he mentioned.
“However positively the army will fall. Nobody can cease the army from falling down.”
Extra reporting by Hein Thar.
