India will send teams to monitor a general election in war-torn Myanmar that is scheduled to start in December, Myanmar state media said on Monday, as New Delhi signals support for a vote that has already been derided by critics as a sham.
Myanmar’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in China, a rare international engagement for the general who had largely been shunned by foreign leaders since leading a coup in 2021.
“At the meeting, they exchanged views on measures to ensure peace and stability in the border regions of both countries, trade promotion, enhancement of friendship and cooperation,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
The military’s ouster of an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi 4-1/2-years ago, on a pretext of election fraud, triggered a devastating civil war that has engulfed large parts of the impoverished Southeast Asia nation.
Myanmar plans to hold the initial phase of the first general election since the coup on December 28, as part of voting that a military-backed interim administration is seeking to conduct in more than 300 constituencies nationwide, including areas currently held by opposition armed groups.
