To: Member States of the United Nations General Assembly United Nations Secretary-General 4 September 2025 Open letter: UN General Assembly must denounce Myanmar military junta’s sham election, support Myanmar people’s democratic aspirations Your Excellencies, We—206 Myanmar, regional, and international civil society organizations—call on the Member States of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to adopt a resolution that categorically rejects the Myanmar military junta’s sham election and explicitly supports the Myanmar people’s ongoing efforts to establish bottom-up federal democracy. In this vein, we urge the UNGA to ensure that Ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun retains his credentials as the Permanent Representative of Myanmar. We also urge the UNGA to end the mandate of the Special Envoy on Myanmar, and the Secretary-General to immediately assume a leadership role in addressing the crisis. First, we call on the UNGA to adopt a resolution on Myanmar at its upcoming 80th Session that unequivocally denounces the junta’s sham election, as well as its violence and other coercive tactics to compel participation in this farcical exercise. Despite changing its name from “State Administration Council” to “State Security and Peace Commission,” the junta has neither the legal right nor the political legitimacy necessary to conduct any electoral process in Myanmar. The junta also severely lacks the effective territorial and administrative control over Myanmar necessary to conduct an “election.” The military junta’s plan to hold a so-called election on 28 December 2025 is illegal. It is also a deliberate ongoing attempt to manufacture legitimacy while intensifying its campaign of violence, repression, and atrocity crimes against civilians. During the past two months, the junta has escalated lethal airstrikes, artillery shelling, and scorched-earth operations in areas where it lacks territorial and administrative control to the democratic resistance movement, targeting schools, monasteries, hospitals, homes, and internally displaced person camps. This is a concerted and murderous effort to terrorize entire communities and claim territory to prop up its sham election. On 17 August 2025, the junta bombed the town of Mawchi in Pasaung Township, Karenni State, killing at least 32 people including several children. Since late June, the junta has unleashed near-daily airstrikes on Pasaung Township, killing at least 52 civilians in two months. The junta’s heinous attacks on civilians also foreshadow further violence and manufactured instability to coerce participation in its sham election—consistent with the Myanmar military’s track record of exploiting human suffering and repressing political opposition to consolidate power. During Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the then military regime obstructed relief efforts while forcing through its sham constitutional referendum. Today, the same tactics are evident. Following the massive Sagaing earthquake on 28 March 2025, the junta blocked humanitarian aid from reaching quake-devastated communities, while launching at least 982 airstrikes and artillery attacks, as of 16 June, in quakeaffected areas and beyond. At the same time, the junta is systematically deregistering and barring numerous political parties through repressive measures such as its so-called “Political Party Registration Law.” Second, the UNGA should also urge the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, including elected representatives, journalists, members of the Civil Disobedience Movement, and other human rights defenders. The junta’s continued detention of more than 22,000 political prisoners underscores its complete disregard for human rights and the rule of law, compounded by its systematic infliction of torture, ill-treatment, and sexual and gender-based 1