The Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) expresses its grave concern and alarm over reports from Myanmar’s state-run media claiming that Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, during his visit to Nay Pyi Taw, “vowed to send election observation teams” to monitor the junta’s planned sham election.

BWI calls on the Malaysian government to immediately and publicly refute this dangerous and deceitful claim, which the junta is using to provide legitimacy for its fraudulent electoral exercise. To remain silent would be to lend credibility to the regime’s propaganda; it is a betrayal of the Myanmar people’s struggle for democracy and a mockery of Malaysia’s own democratic values.

We reiterate, the planned poll on 28 December is not an election. It is a charade that will be held under the barrel of a gun. The junta has outlawed political parties that won over 80 percent of parliamentary seats in the last democratic election and has imposed repressive laws that punish dissent with death. To even contemplate observing such a process is to legitimise tyranny and is an insult to its victims.

This false claim also places Malaysia at odds with its democratic allies. Just last week in Bangkok, representatives from the EU, United States, and United Kingdom reaffirmed their collective rejection of the junta’s so-called election and underscored the urgency of global solidarity with Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. If unchallenged, the junta’s statement risks aligning Malaysia not with democratic partners but with pariah states like Russia, China, and Belarus, that sustain the regime’s brutality.

Any diplomatic validation will only embolden the junta to continue its indiscriminate slaughter of the Myanmar people. This is a regime that has launched airstrikes on disaster-hit regions in the days following an earthquake, violating its own declared ceasefire. The path to peace does not lie in endorsing the junta’s sham election but in demanding an end to its war crimes, restoring the rule of law, and unconditionally returning power to the civilian government rightfully elected in 2020.

BWI demands that the Malaysian government take two immediate actions:

• Issue a public statement refuting the junta’s false claim that Malaysia will send election observers.
• Declare unequivocally that Malaysia, as ASEAN Chair, will neither recognise nor legitimise the junta’s illegal and fraudulent election.

BWI and the global trade union movement stand firmly with the people of Myanmar. We expect all democratic and legitimate governments to do the same.