The military regime keeps urging armed resistance groups to cooperate with phased general elections that start in December.
For months, the regime has been sending out SMS messages inviting People’s Defense Forces (PDF) and other armed groups to join the political process.
The groups “were invited in the interests of the Union to return to the legal fold, with the expectation of building a Union based on democracy and federalism,” according to a statement carried in the propaganda New Light of Myanmar.
It claimed any resistance fighters who lay down arms will not be harmed. “Understanding the state’s genuine goodwill, members of armed groups […] who returned to the legal fold have been handed back to their parents,” it said.
The regime accused the parallel National Unity Government and its parliamentary wing, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) of “spreading the acts of propaganda,” saying they “misled the public and youth with false hopes and pushed them toward the path of armed struggle.”
The regime has used similar tactics in the past, but only recently has it addressed itself directly to the PDFs rather than ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).
Over the past four years, PDFs have grown to over 200,000 members, mostly young people, operating in many parts of the country either independently or alongside local ethnic armies, chiefly in the Bamar heartland.
Junta media have previously reported cases of individuals laying down their arms at local battalions—which may or may not be true— but there has never been a mass surrender.
In Tuesday’s statement, the regime warned that it is cooperating with “neighboring countries”—a reference to China—and therefore “terrorist EAOs are finding it difficult to maintain their positions, and those identified as PDFs are also facing greater hardship.”
Instead, the junta added, resistance fighters should accept that their cause is lost and “recognize the reality that the setback to democracy has resulted from the path of armed struggle.”
The NUG as well as major ethnic armed groups—including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Karen National Union (KNU), Arakan Army (AA), and Ta’ang National Liberation Army—have all rejected the junta’s planned election as a sham aimed at legitimizing military rule and vowed not to allow polls in territories they control.
