AMY CHEW
Amid the pomp and pageantry of ASEAN Summit 2025 in Malaysia, hidden from sight are 179,400 Myanmar refugees sheltering in Malaysia, according to UNHCR – with Rohingyas making up more than half the number.
The 1 February 2021 military coup staged by junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, which deposed the democratically-elected government and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, has plunged the country into a civil war and left the junta controlling just over half the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had won more than 82% of the votes during the November 2020 elections, three months before the coup.
The civil war sent thousands of its citizens fleeing to neighbouring countries. This after 2017 violence in Rakhine State saw nearly one million Rohingya flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, with small groups later seeking refuge around the region.
The growing number of refugees underscores Myanmar’s worsening crisis which has cost thousands of lives, numbers that continue to rise as the junta carries out deadly airstrikes on civilian and insurgent targets in an effort to retake lost territories, according to human rights groups. The conflict monitoring nonprofit organisation ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data) said that between January and May 2025, the military conducted 1,134 airstrikes, compared to 197 in 2023 and 640 in 2024 during the same period, reported Nikkei Asia.
Myanmar as it stands is a huge destabilising factor in Southeast Asia.
In Malaysia, the refugees are everywhere – working in restaurants, food stalls, supermarkets, construction sites – helping to keep the wheels of Malaysia’s economy turning, like millions of migrant workers.
The men are terrified of being deported back to Myanmar as they are highly likely to be detained, beaten and in the worst-case scenario, tortured and killed upon returning home.
The junta views deportees with deep suspicions and often accuse them of being supporters of the People’s Defence Force (PDF), the armed wing of the National Unity Government (NUG), the shadow government which comprise elected lawmakers.
Returning Burmese now face forced conscription to fight against the PDFs and other armed insurgents as the civil war drags on.
The continuing violence underscores ASEAN’s limits in ending the war. It’s “five-point consensus”, which calls for all violence in Myanmar to be halted immediately, has been ignored. The junta remains intransigent, confident in the backing it receives from China, Russia and India. The world’s opinion count for nothing.
In a rare meeting with the junta in Yangon a few years back, a senior military officer’s words to me were revealing of their mindset. He said: “So what if the world sanctions us? We have been sanctioned all our lives. We have Russia and China. We also manufacture some of our own weapons.”
A damaged school building following a bombardment carried out by Myanmar’s military at the Ohe Htein Twin village in Tabayin township, Sagaing Region, on 14 May 2025 (AFP/Getty images)
In an effort to legitimise the military’s rule, the junta is now planning to hold elections on 28 December, a process which human rights activists and Myanmar’s opposition leaders have dismissed as a sham. More than 22,000 political prisoners remain imprisoned, including the 80-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi who is believed to be held in solitary confinement.
Suu Kyi’s younger son, Kim Aris has raised the alarm that his mother is seriously ill and has no access to proper medical care. He worries she may die in prison.
The junta has also dissolved some 40 political parties. Candidates for the elections are seen as largely handpicked by the junta.
The military junta has asked ASEAN to send observers for the elections.
Sending observers are akin to legitimising the elections, with nothing to suggest they would meet even the most basic conditions for free and fair elections.
Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan told reporters earlier this month the decision on sending observers to Myanmar will be a collective ASEAN decision and that it would be discussed at the summit. Some ASEAN countries are believed to be opposed to sending observers for the elections, among them Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, according to sources close to the talks.
Thailand had publicly said it believed in sending observers.
Over the weekend, Hasan said ASEAN could not stop the general elections in Myanmar but its foreign ministers want the contest to be fair and inclusive.
Hasan earlier set clear benchmarks for the elections – stressing that the elections must adhere to democratic principles and involve all political parties and violence must be halted.
However, following a meeting by ASEAN leaders on Sunday, a statement was issued denouncing the “continued acts of violence in Myanmar against civilians” and urged all parties involved to take concrete action to immediately halt indiscriminate violence, ensure the protection and safety of all civilians and create a conducive environment for the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and inclusive national political dialogue.
There was no mention of sending observers, a sign that no consensus was reached.
Sending observers are akin to legitimising the elections, with nothing to suggest they would meet even the most basic conditions for free and fair elections.
The human rights violations in Myanmar are horrific. In a report in August, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recounted gruesome details of atrocities and killings by the military, including torture and beheadings.
One of the more notorious documented attacks occurred on 17 October 2024, when the military entered Si Par village in Sagaing Region. Witnesses described seeing three male bodies that had been beheaded and eviscerated, with some body parts charred and either left in piles or spread across the village. One villager recounted: “They chopped the bodies like when we chop the chicken. The head, the legs, the arms, and they also opened their stomachs. The heart was put on a plate.”
Rejecting the junta’s request for observers is one pressure point which ASEAN can apply on the junta who is bleeding cash and investments.
Members of Myanmar’s Union Election Commission showing a voting machine in Naypyidaw in September ahead of the December election (AFP via Getty Images)
The junta is seeking recognition for the elections to give its rule a veneer of legitimacy to gain acceptability so that business can carry on as usual. The sham election would also make it easier for foreign investors to pour money into the country while turning a blind eye to its human rights violations with little to no consequences.
Currently, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Myanmar in response to the coup. On Friday, 308 trade unions, civil society, and human rights organisations from across the ASEAN region and international community issued a statement “calling to our governments” to outrightly reject the junta’s election, saying it is a ploy to manufacture a façade of legitimacy for its rule of terror. They called on Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to demonstrate moral leadership as the 2025 ASEAN chair and that his voice must be “the loudest” as he is seen as a lifelong champion of free and fair elections who has personally endured political persecution
Myanmar as it stands is a huge destabilising factor in Southeast Asia – the coup left parts of the country lawless, providing fertile ground for the proliferation of scam centres where more than 120,000 people have been trafficked and enslaved there, according to the UN. Many of the workers are subjected to torture. Some have ended up dead.
The schemes, which have cheated people around the globe of billions of dollars, have been thoroughly integrated into Myanmar’s conflict economy, and the ruling junta permits and facilitates the scam projects to enrich military allies, according to a September report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Myanmar’s political chaos has also seen a surge in narcotics and illegal weapons flowing out from the country.
ASEAN has a rare opportunity to apply pressure on the junta to get it moving in the right direction. Failure to do so will result in Burmese civilians and the rest of ASEAN paying the price – in the form of refugees, human trafficking, enslavement in scam centres, financial losses and increased drug addiction and gun violence emanating from a lawless, dictatorial Myanmar.
The article was published in the lowyinstitute
