Myanmar junta arrests two in Yangon for anti-election posters

Myanmar’s military junta arrested two young men in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township last week as part of a crackdown on efforts to protest upcoming elections, according to state media reports. The men, identified as Yan Naing Kyi Win, 23, and Aung Ye Htut, 24, were arrested at their home in eastern Hlaing Tharyar’s Ward 6 on September 18, the reports said. The pair were apprehended in the evening on their way home from work, a member of Yan Naing Kyi Win’s family told Myanmar Now. “Some vehicles blocked them on Kyan Sit Thar Road. They were beaten and arrested,” the relative said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The two men were taken to the police station in eastern Hlaing Tharyar Township and charged under Section 23a of the Law on the Prevention of Disruption and Interference with Elections, an election law decreed by the regime in July, he added. On September 8, a man from the Shan State capital Taunggyi was handed a seven-year sentence under the law for a similar offence. The law carries a minimum sentence of three years in prison, while the severest punishment, incurred in cases involving loss of life, is the death penalty. “Their families haven’t been allowed to see them, so it is unclear whether they have been able to hire a lawyer or take any other legal steps,” according to the relative. “They remain in custody at the police station and are being interrogated. In the latest published photos, they appear to have been beaten so severely that they are barely recognisable.” Yan Naing Kyi Win, was previously arrested following the military coup in early 2021 and was released in 2023. His twin brother, Yan Naung Kyi Win, was also arrested for protesting the military coup, released in 2023, and then re-arrested in December 2024. Both brothers featured in a story published by Myanmar Now in October 2021, detailing how the military coup upended their lives, along with that of another brother and their mother. According to a junta statement released on Saturday, the two men posted anti-election posters throughout Hlaing Tharyar, a largely industrial area on the western outskirts of Yangon. The posters displayed yellow text on a red background alongside a black ballot box containing a bullet. Last month, the regime-controlled Union Election Commission announced that the national poll, to be carried out in three phases, would begin in the last week of December. The first phase will cover 102 townships under the junta’s control, and the results will be declared at the end of January, according to a commission official. The elections, coming nearly five years after the military threw the country into civil war by seizing power in a coup, are widely seen as an effort by the regime to continue it rule.

Myanmar junta arrests two in Yangon for anti-election posters

The two young men face up to seven years behind bars under a new law aimed at silencing critics of the widely disputed poll

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