YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s military junta has launched a sweeping legal vendetta against the country’s largest independent trade union network, issuing high-treason arrest warrants and cancelling the passports of 27 top executives in a desperate bid to counter its deepening isolation on the global stage.
The Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) released an emergency declaration on Friday, 26 June, fiercely condemning the regime’s administrative assault as a blatant violation of fundamental human rights and international freedom of association frameworks.
According to the brief, the military council has charged CTUM Central Committee members under Section 124-(A) of the Penal Code—a draconian colonial-era sedition law. Concurrently, the junta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs invalidated the passports of 27 union leaders and dispatched official communiqués to foreign ministries globally via its embassies, demanding that overseas hosts immediately restrict the travel and residency rights of the blacklisted activists.
Under Section 124-(A), anyone accused of exciting “hatred or disaffection” toward the legally established government faces penalties ranging from hefty fines to life imprisonment.
However, the labor federation strongly rejected the legal validity of the warrants, emphasizing that an illegal military council heavily implicated in structural war crimes possesses zero constitutional authority to designate itself as a legitimate government.
“The military junta violently seized sovereign state power through illegal means,” the CTUM statement read. “Neither the citizens of Myanmar nor international governments recognize them as a governing body. The global community views them accurately: as murderers, robbers, and terrorists.”
Independent security analysts note that the junta’s sudden legal offensive is a reactionary maneuver triggered by its catastrophic failure to achieve diplomatic legitimacy.
Since the February 2021 coup, CTUM has operated as a critical parallel diplomatic force, systematically coordinating with global labor federations to block junta delegations from occupying Myanmar’s official seats at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN).
Activists maintain that by turning the screws on union executives, the regime is attempting to apply counter-pressure to mute the labor movement’s highly effective lobbying campaigns in Geneva and New York.
Established in 1991 as the Federation of Trade Unions Burma (FTUB), the organization has spent over three decades driving the nation’s underground democratic reforms. Anticipating the military’s regressive maneuvers, CTUM had issued a preventative manifesto on 29 January 2021—just days before the coup—pledging absolute allegiance to the 2020 democratic election results and vowing to resist any form of authoritarian backsliding.
“By attempting to systematically destroy the Right to Freedom of Association (FoA) and Collective Bargaining, the military council is attempting to eliminate the core pillars of a democratic society to prolong its grip on power,” the confederation concluded.
Reaffirming its long-term operational objectives, the union vowed to withstand the regime’s legal terror, pledging to expand its underground domestic networks and international alliances to permanently eradicate military dictatorship and build a federal democratic union.
