Myanmar junta takes census despite conflict, boycott calls

YANGON

Census takers guarded by police and soldiers took to the streets of Myanmar on Wednesday for a national survey that anti-junta groups have urged people to boycott.

The ruling junta is pressing ahead with the census even though it has lost control of large areas of the country to armed groups opposed to its rule.

Bloody conflict rages across much of Myanmar, but the junta says the survey is needed to update voter lists ahead of promised elections in 2025.

Teams of enumerators accompanied by soldiers and armed police went door to door in Yangon to fill in the 68-question survey.

"School teachers, local authorities, police and local militias members are taking the census. Militias who attended basic military training are helping for security in their area," a military officer told AFP, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"We have tightened security when taking census because of the threats by terrorists."

The census comes as the junta led by General Min Aung Hlaing reels from battlefield defeats to ethnic minority armed groups and pro-democracy "People's Defense Forces" (PDFs) that rose up to oppose the military's coup d'etat in 2021.

The military has designated many of these groups as "terrorists" but last week issued an unprecedented invitation to its enemies for talks on the country's civil war.

Min Aung Hlaing and other senior junta cadres were among the first to be surveyed as data collection began on Oct. 1. It is scheduled to go on until Oct. 15.