Tag: myanmar

No Surprise: Burma Army Leads Stilted Elections

The first round of Burma (Myanmar)’s three-phase elections began on December 28, 2025, under a framework imposed by the military junta that seized power in January 2021. With major opposition parties barred, voting canceled in 65 of the country’s 330 townships due to ongoing fighting, and further cancellations expected, the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party is leading, an outcome critics say was predetermined.

The results defy logic. If the people wanted to be ruled by generals, they would not have been fighting the military for the past eight decades in what is widely recognized as the world’s longest-running conflict.

Opposition groups argue the vote is neither free nor fair and serves to legitimize continued military rule through tightly controlled elections that exclude major parties and suppress dissent, prompting several groups to call for a boycott.

The military government said more than six million people voted in the Dec. 28 first phase, claiming a turnout of about 52 percent of eligible voters in participating areas and calling it a success. The Union Election Commission said the USDP won 38 seats in the 330-seat lower house, with results still pending.

Party leader Khin Yi, a former general and police chief closely aligned with junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, was declared the winner in his Naypyitaw constituency. Naypyitaw is the military-built administrative capital established after the coup.

According to a senior USDP official speaking anonymously, the party has secured 88 of the 102 seats contested in the first phase, including 29 constituencies where it ran unopposed. The Shan Nationalities Democratic Party and the Mon Unity Party each won one seat. The official also claimed the USDP captured about 85 percent of contested regional legislature seats, though full results will only be known after later phases.

Myanmar’s parliament consists of two houses with 664 total seats, and the party controlling a combined majority can select the president and form a government. Under the constitution, the military is guaranteed 25 percent of seats in each chamber, giving it decisive built-in power regardless of election outcomes. Only six parties are competing nationwide with any realistic chance of parliamentary influence, with the USDP far ahead of its rivals.

Voting is being held in three phases because of ongoing fighting across the country. The first round covered 102 townships, with additional voting scheduled for Jan. 11 and Jan. 25, while 65 townships are excluded entirely due to conflict. Although thousands of candidates from dozens of parties are nominally contesting seats, political competition remains tightly restricted.

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What Are the Burma Scam Centers, How Much Have They Stolen from Americans, How Do They Affect the Revolution, and What Is the US Doing About It?

The Myanmar military junta continues to run extensive criminal enterprises that finance its war and atrocities, with cyber scam compounds at the center of its revenue stream. These scam centers are massive penal-colony-style compounds where trafficked workers conduct global cyber fraud operations, primarily “pig butchering” schemes that build trust with victims before stealing their life savings.

Between 2020 and 2024, victims worldwide lost roughly $75 billion to Southeast Asian cyber scams, with hundreds of thousands of trafficked individuals from multiple nationalities forced to work in compounds across Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar), and Laos.

These networks rely on U.S.-based social media, websites, and hosting services to lure Americans into cryptocurrency schemes before redirecting the funds into fake platforms and laundering the money overseas. Authorities noted that in some countries the scam industry is so large it accounts for nearly half of the national GDP, with Americans losing an estimated ten billion dollars per year.

Since the coup in 2021, Burma has become the regional epicenter of cyber scams, with more than thirty scam enclaves along the Thai border and nearly one hundred along the Chinese border. These operations are driven largely by Chinese transnational criminal networks that use front companies such as Trans Asia and Troth Star to finance, expand, and manage the compounds. Some of these same companies partnered with junta-aligned Border Guard Forces on major scam hubs such as Huanya and KK Park, both of which have repeatedly targeted American victims.

Scam centers operate openly because the Myanmar military and its Border Guard Forces protect and profit from them, allowing the compounds to avoid the airstrikes routinely inflicted on civilian and resistance areas. Multiple investigations confirm the junta’s central role in this transnational criminal ecosystem.

Phone geolocation data from 2024 shows frequent movement between Myawaddy scam compounds and government buildings in Naypyidaw, indicating a direct operational relationship between organized crime and the military regime. Junta-aligned armed groups are permitted to impose informal taxation on the scam industry in exchange for land, security, transportation, and logistical support.

Several of the most active scam sites are in Karen State, including the Tai Chang compound near Myawaddy, which sits on territory controlled by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army. Another powerful Karen militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, plays a central role in sustaining the criminal economy. The DKBA provides security for multiple compounds and has been directly involved in abusing trafficked workers forced to run the scams.

Victims report beatings, electric shocks, being hung by their arms, and other violent treatment. Scam revenue funds DKBA activities, and the group collaborates with Chinese organized crime in drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and money laundering.

The flow of scam revenue strengthens the junta’s allies and prolongs the war in Burma. The United Nations estimates that at least 120,000 people are trapped inside these compounds, facing forced labor, torture, and killings for failing to meet scamming quotas. Even as resistance organizations unite against the regime, the scam industry continues to thrive because it remains one of the junta’s most lucrative and protected sources of income.

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Update from the War in Burma – Displacement Crisis Intensifies, The UN Has Done Nothing to Help

The story in brief: The war in Burma (Myanmar) has displaced 3.5 million people, now living in IDP camps that receive little or no international support and remain targets of government airstrikes. The UN is fully aware of the crisis but, apart from issuing reports, has done nothing to help.

U.S. aid cuts had little impact on these people, since almost no international or government assistance was reaching them in the first place. Now it appears the international community will tolerate, and even legitimize, the junta’s planned election, which has barred pro-democracy and opposition parties. Donald Trump was right to criticize the UN as ineffective and to cut U.S. aid. However, targeted U.S. aid should be restarted, and a UN peacekeeping mission launched, to save lives.

On August 11, six families arrived at the Catholic church in Mese, Karenni State, Burma seeking food and assistance. They had endured a three-week ordeal through the jungle to escape fighting near their home village in Pekhon, where government forces and the allied Pa-O National Army (PNO) were killing civilians, seizing rice fields, and burning entire villages. This was part of an intensified government campaign to retake territory held by ethnic resistance forces ahead of a sham election the junta hopes to legitimize by claiming that a greater share of the population and the country’s territory are represented.

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