The military junta plans to initially hold elections in five townships in Mon State for the first phase of election: Kyaikto, Kyaik Maraw, Chaung zone, Mawlamyine, and Thaton. The military is increasing security in the remaining townships to prepare for the upcoming elections. Even though there have been few battles in Mon State, military activity continues in some townships. The military junta is also conducting military operations and airstrikes under the pretense of holding elections. Meanwhile, revolutionary groups that oppose the elections are also actively fighting against the military junta’s anti-sham election.
The military junta lifted martial law in Ye Township and issued a new local order. The new order shortened the curfew from 6 PM to 6 AM to 8 PM to 4 AM. The junta announced that the period from August 5 to August 11 would be a period of public awareness for people to learn about and comply with the new local order. After this period, those who fail to comply will face action under Section 188 of the Penal Code.[1] Despite the change, a local resident of Ye said
The new curfew primarily affects Ye town, and there have been no changes in the rural areas of the township.The military junta has been conducting military operations in the area east of Union Highway 8, which is under the control of the Karen National Union (KNU) Brigade 6. Since August 4, the military troops entered the village of Ywathit and stationed at the monastery.[2] The local administration has warned residents of the Ayutaung village tract to only bring one day’s worth of provision to their gardens and not to stay there overnight.[3] On August 2, the military also conducted an airstrike near Kyauk Tine village, which is in the KNU Brigade 6 area. On August 9, the military junta used a Yak-130 aircraft to bomb Pinnekone village in the KNU Brigade 1 area. The attack damaged five houses, three cars, and three motorcycles. One civilian was killed and four were injured.[4]
On August 24, the military also bombed the monastery in Chan Myae village, which killed three monks and severely injured five others.
On August 24, the military also bombed the monastery in Chan Myae village, which killed three monks and severely injured five others.[5]
The military is increasing security and conducting militarized operations on major roads connecting to the rest of the state in Mudon and Kyaikmaraw townships. Security has been tightened at the Abit checkpoint on the Mudon-Khlale-Kyar Inn Seik Kyi Road and at the Sapel Gu bridge on the Kyaikmaraw-Kyar Inn Seik Kyi-Payathonsu Road. On September 2, the military used a drone to bomb a revolutionary forces checkpoint at the entrance to Kawdwin village in Kyaikmaraw Township. This attack hit two cars, including a passenger vehicle traveling to Payathonsu, and killed one civilian.[6]
All these actions by the military junta can be viewed as efforts to secure the area for the upcoming elections. On the other side, revolutionary forces have openly declared their opposition to the junta’s elections. Ethnic revolutionary organizations (ERO) in Mon State, such as the Karen National Union (KNU) and the New Mon State Party-Anti-Dictatorship (NMSP-AD), and the state federal units, the Mon State Federal Council (MSFC) and the Mon State Consultative Council (MSCC) are also against the elections, and their armed forces are actively fighting the military junta. The junta’s military operations and attempts to control territory will likely intensify the resistance from revolutionary groups, which could increase the likelihood of fighting in Mon State.
In conclusion, the five townships included in the military junta’s first phase of elections are Chaungzone, Mawlamyine, and Kyaikmaraw, where the military has a strong presence and can likely hold the elections without interference. However, the situation in Kyaikto and Thaton townships remains unstable, with both sides vying for control.
As the military junta continues its operations to secure the remaining townships for the upcoming elections, this is a particularly sensitive period for the safety of the public. It is therefore advisable to stay vigilant and pay close attention to announcements from both the military junta and revolutionary groups.
Translated from RICE Weekly Peace Analysis
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[1] Thanlwin Times, August 7, 2025: ရေးမှာ စစ်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးပယ်ဖျက်ပြီး စည်းကမ်းချက် ၁၇ ချက်ပါတဲ့ ဒေသန္တရအမိန့် ထပ်ထုတ်။ Thanlwintimes
[2] Independent Mon News Agency, August 4, 2025: ရေးမြောက်ပိုင်းတွင် စစ်ကောင်စီမှ လက်နက်ကြီးဖြင့်ပစ်ခတ်ပြီး စစ်ကြောင်းထိုးနေသဖြင့် ဒေသခံအချို့တိမ်းရှောင်။ Independentmonnewsagency
[3] Independent Mon News Agency, September 11, 2025: ရေးဒေသခံများကို ဥယျာဉ်ခြံအတွင်း ညမအိပ်ရန် စစ်ကော်မရှင် ရပ်ကျေးအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှုးများမှ လိုက်လံသတိပေး။ Independentmonnewsagency
[4] Thanlwin Times, August 9, 2025: ကျိုက်ထို ပိန္နဲကုန်းရွာ ဗုံးကြဲခံရလို့ အရပ်သားတစ်ဦးသေဆုံး၊ ငါးဦးဒဏ်ရာရ။ Thanlwintimes
[5] Independent Mon News Agency, August 24, 2025: ကျိုက်ထိုတွင် ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲခံရပြီး၊ သံဃာ ၃ ပါး ပျံလွန်တော်မူပြီး၊ ၅ ပါး ဒဏ်ရာရ။ Independentmonnewsagency
[6] Independent Mon News Agency, September 3, 2025: ကော့ဒွန်းကျေးရွာရှိ တော်လှန်ရေးတပ်ဖွဲ့စစ်ဆေးရေးဂိတ် ဒရုန်းဖြင့်တိုက်ခိုက်ခံရပြီး ခရီးသွားလာသူများထိခိုက်သေဆုံးမှုရှိ။ Independentmonnewsagency
