Philippine foreign secretary says ASEAN has not endorsed any phase of Myanmar’s post-coup polls as the bloc maintains pressure on the junta

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) — packed with retired officers and described by analysts as a military puppet — won more than 85 per cent of elected lower house seats and two-thirds of those in the upper house in the poll’s first two phases.

Critics say the polls are neither free nor fair, and are designed to legitimise the power of the military after it ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

Myanmar opened the final round of its month-long election on Sunday, with the dominant pro-military party on course for a landslide in a junta-run vote critics say will prolong the army's grip on power.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to further strengthening its longstanding relations with Myanmar, stressing the need to broaden cooperation across trade and economic engagement, education, culture, capacity-building and people-to-people exchanges.

According to the CHRO, the Myanmar military has conducted around 1,000 against in Chin State since July 2022, leading to the destruction of over 4,500 homes and damaging or destroying 78 churches.

Earthquake in Myanmar: An earthquake of magnitude 3.8 struck Myanmar on Monday, December 8 , according to the National Center for Seismology (NCS). In a post on X, the NCS said that the earthquake occurred at a depth of 80 kilometres at 10:18 AM.

Victims of Myanmar junta atrocities, led by rights groups, urge Catholic-majority Timor-Leste to support accountability for war crimes in Chin state, citing a shared history of suffering.

Taken together, the Iranian deliveries to Myanmar’s military have helped shift the dynamic of the five-year civil war, which pits the junta against an array of rebel groups, none of whom have a conventional air force or a ready supply of weapons as powerful as the bombs and missiles launched by fighter jets.