21 November 2025: The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) has again urged the UN and governments to outright reject the junta’s planned sham elections, scheduled to begin on 28 December.

The junta’s planned poll marks a critical juncture in Myanmar’s multi-year crisis and a cynical grab for desperately needed legitimacy.  As the sham elections near, the junta is escalating its extreme violence in an attempt to reclaim lost territory and to punish and coerce a population overwhelmingly opposed to it.

SAC-M has written to key leaders urging them to denounce the elections and to redouble support to Myanmar’s legitimate pro-democracy actors. ASEAN Leaders last month rejected the junta’s plan, asserting that ‘the cessation of violence and inclusive political dialogue must precede elections’ in Myanmar and pressing ‘the importance of free, fair, peaceful, transparent, inclusive, and credible general elections’.

In a letter sent last week to Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, SAC-M called on Australia to lead an international joint statement that, at a minimum, expresses support for legitimate pro-democracy actors and institutions, including the National Unity Government, the National Unity Consultative Council, Ethnic Resistance Organisations and Federal Councils, and that rejects the junta’s planned elections and refuses to recognise the outcome.

See our letter to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong

The letter further urges Australia to take a stronger leadership role on Myanmar by working with ASEAN and like-minded states to increase direct financial and technical assistance to pro-democracy actors and local and community organisations to support coordination, service delivery and institution-building. It also calls on Australia to pressure the UN Security Council to resume its efforts to adopt a strengthened resolution on Myanmar in follow-up to Resolution 2669 adopted in December 2022.

Accused war criminal and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is no doubt emboldened by the Security Council’s failure to enforce Resolution 2669. Since its adoption three years ago, the junta has killed at least 4,838 civilians, according to conservative estimates. It has also manipulated and obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid to disaster-hit areas, including in the wake of catastrophic natural disasters, and has forcibly conscripted thousands of Myanmar youth. Furthermore, at least 22,600 political prisoners remain arbitrarily detained in notorious junta detention facilities.

SAC-M has sent a letter to the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper urging the UK as Security Council penholder on Myanmar to intensify its efforts on a new Myanmar resolution.

See our letter to UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper

The UK has worked steadily to build support for a new Security Council resolution. These efforts must be intensified. A strengthened Myanmar resolution should demand the full and immediate cessation of military offensives across Myanmar and the immediate release of political prisoners. It should also impose embargoes on the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to the junta. Furthermore, the resolution should advance accountability efforts, confirm that democratic processes in Myanmar must accord with the will and interests of the people, and formally place Myanmar on the Council’s agenda through a regular reporting mechanism.

In a live interview with Al Jazeera English last week, Ben Lee, Executive Director of SAC-M, gave a frank assessment of the junta’s impending electoral farce: “It defies logic that these elections could in any way be seen as credible. What they will deliver is more bloodshed and more suffering for the Myanmar people.”

“ASEAN, Myanmar’s neighbours and the international community should outright reject the election and its outcome, but they also need to get behind the legitimate democratic movement in Myanmar,” he added.