12 December 2025: The Myanmar military junta’s escalating campaign of pre-election violence is growing deadlier by the day. The international community, including ASEAN and its members, must take urgent action to protect Myanmar civilians from the junta’s intensifying attacks ahead of its fast-approaching sham elections, says the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M).

With its polls slated to begin on 28 December, the junta has accelerated its campaign of deadly aerial assaults on civilian homes, gatherings and infrastructure across vast swathes of territory under resistance control. These horrific acts of terror and collective punishment have killed and injured scores of civilians in the past week alone.

On 10 December–International Human Rights Day–a junta fighter jet bombed a public hospital in Mrauk-U Township of Rakhine State, killing at least 31 people, including women and children, and wounding at least a further 68, many critically. The death toll, which includes patients and hospital staff, is expected to rise. Mrauk-U is one of 14 out of 17 townships in Rakhine State controlled by the Arakan Army, which claimed most of the state in rapid offensives against the junta in 2024.

Less than a week earlier, on 5 December, a junta fighter jet bombed a teashop in Depayin Township of Sagaing Region, killing at least 18 civilians and wounding 20 others. According to sources, dozens of locals had gathered at the teashop to watch a football match between Myanmar and the Philippines as part of the Southeast Asian Games. In May, Depayin Township was the site of another junta atrocity—an airstrike on a school that killed at least 22 students, some as young as seven, and two teachers.

The junta has announced that both Mrauk-U and Depayin are under “martial law” and that no elections will be held in them because they are incapable of conducting them.

The attacks reveal a clear and deliberate pattern of collective punishment against perceived opponents ahead of the sham elections.

“These airstrikes are a tool through which the junta aims to shape and manipulate electoral turnout. By bombing areas outside its control, the junta is also sending a terrifying message to people within its direct reach. This is gerrymandering through atrocities”, said SAC-M Member Yanghee Lee.

Combined with its attacks is the junta’s use of draconian “laws”, including its “Election Protection” law to punish dissent with extreme sanctions, including the death penalty. At least 22,691 political prisoners remain arbitrarily detained by the junta, including many of Myanmar’s democratically elected leaders.

The junta’s elections are a desperate grab for legitimacy. The international community must therefore starve the junta of oxygen by outright rejecting the sham process and its outcome and by refusing to engage with the junta in its current or in any future form.

SAC-M also calls on the UN Security Council, ASEAN and individual States to take clear and direct steps to end the junta’s atrocities by blocking its access to weapons, jet fuel and cash, by demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners, and by holding Min Aung Hlaing and his junta companions to full account for their crimes.

The international community must also formally recognise and sharply increase its support to Myanmar’s legitimate democratic actors. This would align its actions with the principles it so often professes – democracy, equality, justice, human rights, and the primacy of the will and interests of the Myanmar people.