Four years after coup, Myanmar regime prepares for ‘violent, messy’ polls

Myanmar’s 2024 census was almost certainly the most contentious – and deadly – ever conducted.

Enumerators and their heavily armed guards from Myanmar’s military were subject to repeated attacks from opposition groups, as they stumbled through a failed attempt to document the country’s population between October and December last year.

One incident in early October saw seven soldiers providing security for census takers in Mandalay Region killed with an explosive device. Days later, three more soldiers were killed when opposition forces hit their vehicle with a shoulder-launched rocket in Kayin State in the country’s east.

“The census was an utter, abject failure,” Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group, told media.

“But the regime has declared it a marvellous success.”

What is generally a mundane administrative exercise in population counting in most parts of the world, that Myanmar’s census was met with such violent resistance speaks to its significance in the country’s democratic trajectory.

Publishing preliminary results in January, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population said the census represents the military government’s “commitment to national reconciliation”.