In February 2026, Myanmar’s widely condemned “sham” general elections received public support from Ashin Wirathu, founder of the religious fundamentalist 969 and Ma Ba Tha movements and a figure long associated with incitement against gender rights advocates seeking to combat a patriarchal Bamar-Buddhist vision of Myanmar.
The approval was not accidental. By lending the junta a claim to religious legitimacy, Wirathu illustrated what Asia Centre’s new report, “Religious Fundamentalism in Myanmar: Post-Coup Repression of Gender Rights,” documents at length: that Buddhist fundamentalism functions in post-coup Myanmar not as a parallel force to military authoritarianism, but as an integral component of it.
This alliance predates the 2021 coup. Since the 1960s, successive military regimes have relied on Burmanization and Buddhism. policies aimed at consolidating a centralized and patriarchal Bamar-Buddhist national identity. What has changed since the coup is their re-emergence and coordination in the deployment of this ideological framework.
Among the targets are women, gender and sexual minority (WGSM) rights defenders, who are systematically presented as threats to national culture, religious tradition and social stability – and, therefore, national security. However, until now, this intersection between religious fundamentalism, authoritarian control, and gender rights activism has received little attention.
Aiming to highlight this intersection, the Asia Center report identifies three interlocking mechanisms through which this repression operates.
First, the junta weaponizes legislation – both existing statutes and laws introduced since 2021 – to criminalize WGSM advocacy and expand surveillance. Religious language is incorporated into this legal architecture to reframe state repression as a defense of moral and cultural order.
Second, physical violence against WGSM defenders is carried out by a range of actors, from the security apparatus to militias and civilian crowds, often encouraged or publicly legitimized by fundamentalist monks. These attacks are regularly presented as acts of religious duty.
Third, online spaces have become primary sites of organized harassment: pro-military and Buddhist fundamentalist actors use social media platforms to spread hate speech, carry out doxing campaigns, and coordinate incitement against activists; while the junta has deployed AI-based surveillance to monitor and suppress digital dissent.
In response, WGSM organizations have developed protection strategies across several dimensions: encrypted communications, emergency resettlement mechanisms and digital security training, peer networks for resource sharing and psychosocial support, cross-border partnerships with international donors, engagement with the National Unity Government (NUG) for political legitimacy, and support for advocacy for the incorporation of gender-responsive policies in a possible democratic Myanmar.
These strategies represent real and necessary adaptations among WGSM advocates. But they are insufficient. Security protocols developed primarily for urban organizations in majority contexts translate poorly to the conditions faced by WGSM activists operating in rural areas, those of ethnic minorities, or in areas of displacement or conflict. Meanwhile, civil society support networks remain fragmented along organizational and identity lines, reducing the collective resilience of a movement facing coordinated repression. International funding, already under pressure for some time, contracted further following the withdrawal of US foreign aid in 2025, removing an important source of long-term support for actors on the ground. And while the NUG offers symbolic alignment and limited funding and support, it lacks territorial control, sustainable funding, and the enforcement capacity needed to provide material protection.
The February 2026 elections introduced additional risk. The junta’s decision to institutionalize itself through the electoral process – however illegitimate it may be – has already encouraged international actors to re-engage with junta-linked structures or reduce pressure on the grounds that a political transition is underway. However, Wirathu’s endorsement of this so-called transition underscores a critical point: the religious fundamentalist logic that enabled the repression of WGSM advocates will continue to be exploited.
In this context, the protection of WGSM rights defenders is therefore not a secondary concern in the context of Myanmar’s democratic restoration. It is a direct measure of whether this recovery produces a truly pluralistic political order or reconstitutes a hierarchy in different institutional forms.
Buddhist fundamentalism will not disappear from Myanmar’s political landscape with just a superficial removal of military rule; its networks are too deeply rooted in the legitimization of governance, and its function is too useful to those who benefit from the exclusion of women, LGBTQI+ people and religious minorities from political life. To address this, the pro-democracy movement must treat pluralism, gender justice, and religious freedom not as aspirational additions to a democratic platform, but as structural conditions for it.
This opinion piece is based on Asia Centre’s new report, “Religious fundamentalism in Myanmar: Repression of gender rights after the coup.” Download the full report here. For more information about Asia Centre, visit asiacentre.org.
