On January 1, 2026, courts in Myanmar sentenced nine activists, including prominent figure Htet Myat Aung, to up to 37 years in prison for taking part in a protest that called on the public to boycott the December 2025 election.
According to human rights monitors, eight anti-military regime protesters were sentenced to 37 years each at two courts in Mandalay. A ninth activist received a 27-year sentence. The verdicts were handed down on charges of violating election laws and anti-terrorism legislation.
The activists were arrested on December 4, 2025, a day after staging a flash protest in central Mandalay. They urged the public to boycott the election, which ran from December 25, 2025, to January 25, 2026, and also protested military conscription orders while demanding the release of political detainees held since the 2021 coup.
May Hnin, a spokesperson for the Mandalay Coordinating Committee of Anti-Military Regime Forces, said the military junta imprisoned the activists to spread fear and consolidate power. "These sentences are proof that a government that came to power through a fake election can never establish a democratic federal system," she said.
The activists did not appeal, believing their sentences would not be overturned. The military government has not publicly commented on the verdicts.
In July 2025, Myanmar passed a law banning "any act of speech, organization, incitement, protest, or dissemination of materials aimed at undermining any part of the electoral process," with penalties ranging from imprisonment to the death penalty. More than 200 people were prosecuted under this law before the December 2025 election, in which the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won a majority of seats. Opposition parties and independent observers deemed the election neither free nor fair.
