https://aseanmp.org/publications/post/open-letter-from-european-and-sout...
BRUSSELS, 29 December 2025 – The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) met with Members of the European Parliament to sound the alarm over the Myanmar military junta’s planned “elections” in December 2025, widely seen as an attempt to legitimize its rule under the guise of a democratic process.
These so-called elections are to be held amid widespread fear, displacement, and indiscriminate violence across a fractured Myanmar. The country’s legitimately elected representatives remain in exile or imprisonment, raising serious doubts as to whether this exercise can, by any measure, be deemed free, fair, or credible.
The purpose of this electoral exercise is singular: to confer false legitimacy upon a regime that inflicts violence upon its own citizens and systematically dismantles the values that bind the ASEAN community. Through this exercise, the junta seeks to construct the illusion of democracy as a pathway to international recognition, economic resources, and military support.
The junta holds no rightful claim to exercise power over the people. Its campaign of terror against the Myanmar people and its systematic destruction of civic life have rendered the State itself a nexus of insecurity for the entire ASEAN region. The regime’s complicity in transnational crimes, including the operation of scam centres exploiting millions globally, and the trafficking of drugs, arms, and people has transformed Myanmar into a hub of criminal enterprise.
ASEAN’s 2021 Five-Point Consensus, grounded in principles of inclusive dialogue, cessation of violence, and humanitarian relief, remains the only viable regional framework for peace. Yet the junta, despite having formally endorsed it, continues to act in open defiance of its obligations, refusing dialogue and escalating attacks against civilians.
There is significant concern that the planned elections, if held under the current conditions could exacerbate the existing climate of violence and thus represent not progress but regression, a direct affront to the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus and to the collective will of the region’s peoples. Moreover, the overt political and material backing of this process by external powers, notably China and Russia, undermines ASEAN’s foundational principle that regional crises must be resolved by regional mechanisms, free from coercive external interference.
We therefore call on ASEAN Member States, the European Union, and all democratic governments to increase pressure on the military regime, exercise scrutiny in recognizing the outcome of the elections, intensify targeted sanctions against the perpetrators of Myanmar’s continuing atrocities, and to support a genuinely inclusive political process that restores the voice and will of the Myanmar people.
Yours sincerely,
MEP Catarina Vieira
MEP Mounir Satouri
MEP Bernard Guetta
MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
MEP Wouter Beke
MEP Marit Maij
MEP Idoia Mendia
MEP Rima Hassan
MEP Merja Kyllönen
MEP Leila Chaibi
MEP Catarina Martins
MEP Nela Riehl
MEP Reinier van Lanschot
MEP Anna Strolenberg
MEP Damian Boeselager
MEP Kai Tegethoff
MEP Marie Toussaint
MEP Cristina Guarda
MEP Saskia Bricmont
MEP Mélissa Camara
MEP David Cormand
MEP Majdouline Sbai
MEP Tilly Metz
Indonesian MP Mercy Chriesty Barends
Malaysian MP Wong Chen
Former Malaysian MP Charles Santiago
