YANGON: International media will be allowed to cover Myanmar’s upcoming junta-run polls, election authorities said Wednesday, an apparent invitation for foreign press to scrutinize the deeply disputed vote.
Myanmar’s junta has “shattered the media landscape” with censorship and intimidation since staging a 2021 coup that sparked a civil war, Reporters Without Borders says.
Local journalists bore the brunt of the crackdown while foreign media quit the country en masse, with AFP the only international news agency maintaining a full in-country bureau.
The junta has touted polls starting December 28 as a path to peace, but the vote will be boycotted in rebel-held enclaves and monitors are dismissing it as a ploy to disguise continuing military rule.
The junta-stacked Union Election Commission said in a statement “both local and international news media will be allowed to cover” the election, due to unfold in phases over a matter of weeks.
The junta-run information ministry “will scrutinize and endorse eligible international media organizations,” said the notice in state newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar.
It is not clear what that process will entail and which media outlets will be approved for access to a country which has been largely cut-off by the military coup.
Myanmar’s media landscape blossomed during its decade-long democratic thaw, with new domestic outlets springing up and foreign journalists rushing in.
Since the military took back power many of those outlets have shut, moved to rebel-held areas or operate from exile in neighboring Thailand.
Myanmar ranked third among the world’s leading jailers of journalists in 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Rights groups have said the election cannot be legitimate with democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi deposed and jailed in the coup, and her vastly popular National League for Democracy party dissolved.
Protesting against the poll has been made punishable by up to a decade in prison.
Diplomatic sources have told AFP the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will not send election observers for the vote.
Numerous rights groups lobbied the 11-nation bloc to hold back monitors, lest they lend legitimacy to a vote which they say will be neither free nor fair.
Myanmar invites foreign media coverage of junta-run election
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Myanmar invites foreign media coverage of junta-run election
- The junta stacked Union Election Commission said in a statement “both local and international news media will be allowed to cover” the election, due to unfold in phases over a matter of weeks
Ukraine’s Zelensky: We have backed US peace proposals to get a deal done
- “The tactic we chose is for the Americans not to think that we want to continue the war,” Zelensky told The Atlantic
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had sought to back US peace proposals to end the war with Russia as President Donald Trump seeks to resolve the conflict before November mid-term elections.
Zelensky, in an interview published by The Atlantic on Thursday, said Kyiv was willing to hold both a presidential election and a referendum on a deal, but would not settle for an accord that was detrimental to Ukraine’s interests.
“The tactic we chose is for the Americans not to think that we want to continue the war,” Zelensky told the US-based publication. “That’s why we started supporting their proposals in any format that speeds things along.”
He said Ukraine was “not afraid of anything. Are we ready for elections? We’re ready. Are we ready for a referendum? We’re ready.”
Zelensky has sought to build good relations with Washington since an Oval Office meeting in February 2025 descended into a shouting match with Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.
But he said he had rejected a proposal, reported this week by the Financial Times, to announce the votes on February 24, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion. A ceasefire and proposed US security guarantees against a future invasion had not yet been settled, he said.
“No one is clinging to power,” The Atlantic quoted him as saying. “I am ready for elections. But for that we need security, guarantees of security, a ceasefire.”
And he added: “I don’t think we should put a bad deal up for a referendum.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Zelensky is not a legitimate negotiating partner because he has not faced election since coming to power in 2019.
Zelensky has said in recent weeks that a document on security guarantees for Ukraine is all but ready to be signed.
But, in his remarks, he acknowledged that details remained unresolved, including whether the US would be willing to shoot down incoming missiles over Ukraine if Russia were to violate the peace.
“This hasn’t been fixed yet,” Zelensky said. “We have raised it, and we will continue to raise these questions...We need all of this to be written out.”
