International legal assessment International law strictly limits the death penalty to the “most serious crimes”, understood as crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing (ICCPR, Article 6(2); Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 36). Offences such as digital currency transactions, operating unauthorised online businesses, or recruitment-related offences do not meet that threshold. The Bill, therefore, violates the substantive limits imposed by international law on capital punishment. That violation is even more acute in Myanmar, where the absence of judicial independence and due process means that any death-eligible offence is embedded in a system structurally incapable of delivering fair and reliable adjudication. In that context, these provisions do not simply prescribe disproportionate penalties; they create a legislative mechanism through which the military can legally execute individuals involved in alternative financial networks, informal governance structures, or other forms of resistance under the guise of anti-fraud enforcement. Conclusion The Anti-Online Fraud Bill is not a genuine public safety measure. It is a repressive security instrument that uses the language of cybersecurity and transnational crime to legitimise mass surveillance, censorship, financial coercion, and extreme criminal punishment under military rule. Rather than addressing online fraud through targeted and proportionate means, it creates a legal framework for monitoring private communications, disrupting alternative financial systems, criminalising digital dissent, and insulating abusive enforcement from challenge. Its practical function is therefore not the eradication of cybercrime, but the dismantling of the digital and economic pathways through which people in Myanmar have sought to protect themselves, organise resistance, deliver humanitarian support, and circumvent military control. As one of the first major legislative drafts advanced by the “new” government made up of former military commanders, the Bill is also politically significant. It signals a deeply regressive governance agenda in which digital autonomy, financial self-organisation, and civic resistance are treated as threats to State security. In doing so, it further confirms that the military’s priority is not the protection of the public but the consolidation of coercive control. Recommendations • Myanmar military regime: Withdraw the Anti-Online Fraud Bill in its entirety. Any response to online fraud should be grounded in legality, necessity, proportionality, and independent oversight, and must not be used to expand surveillance, criminalise expression, or punish the use of alternative financial and digital networks. • International governmental organisations, diplomatic missions, international financial institutions, and foreign and international police: