A crucial general election is taking place in Junaid Mohammad's homeland of Myanmar on Sunday, but the Sydney-based structural engineering student will not be tuning in.
He also won't get to have his say.
The 24-year-old Rohingya Muslim, who came to Australia on a humanitarian visa, says democracy has made no difference to the plight of his people.
"The same thing is going to happen, the same thing is going to be repeated, the same assault is going to happen to the minorities," he told SBS News.
The United Nations has described the Rohingya, one of Myanmar's ethnic minority groups, “as the most persecuted minority in the world". In 1982, they were stripped of their citizenship rights, depriving them of rights to education, employment and freedom of movement.
Mohammad Junaid is not able to vote in Myanmar's election. Source: SBS News
When Junaid and his family fled in 2009, the situation there was dire, but today, he says, under the rule of Aung San Suu Kyi, it is far worse.
"They expected much better of Aung San Suu Kyi," he said. "As a kid, I was kind of hoping she would come and take over the reign and things would get better and better and we would be able to live in peace and harmony."
Aung San Suu Kyi set for second term
The Rohingya weren't allowed to vote in the 2015 election that brought Ms Suu Kyi to power, but at the time her victory was touted as a turning point.
Instead, the military unleashed a violent crackdown, forcing around 800,000 Rohingya to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. The International Crisis Group called it "one of the fastest refugee exoduses in modern times".
Last year, Ms Suu Kyi made an extraordinary appearance at the International Court of Justice following allegations Myanmar had committed genocide, a claim she fiercely denied.
Aung Sun Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar's National League for Democracy party. Source: Getty Images AsiaPac
Despite receiving international criticism, the 75-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner remains revered at home and is again expected to win this election by a wide margin.
The national elections will be Myanmar’s first since 2015, which resulted in a landslide victory for her National League for Democracy party. About 38 million people will be eligible to vote.
Nicholas Ross from the Australian National University has been leading a research project on the election. He said Ms Suu Kyi's popularity at home can't be understated.
"They call her 'Mother Suu' or 'Aunty Suu'. People feel a great deal of both sympathy and reverence for her because of her personable story of long struggle and personal deprivation."
Ms Suu Kyi is the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1940 when Ms Suu Kyi was two years old.
She was a fierce campaigner for democracy during the country's political upheaval in the 1980s when the military seized power in a coup and was placed under house arrest for six years.
Mr Ross, a PhD candidate, added that the nation's Buddhist majority have long held little sympathy for the Rohingya.
"The Rohingya don't enjoy an enormous amount of sympathy within Myanmar. People also felt a great deal of sympathy when [Ms Suu Kyi} confronted the international court of justice"
'We've gone backwards'
The majority of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who remain in Myanmar will again be deprived of a vote this weekend.
Human Rights Watch says it includes "the approximately 130,000 Rohingya detained in camps in central Rakhine State since 2012, where they endure the crimes against humanity of persecution and apartheid and other serious rights abuses".
It says voter lists posted around the country are absent from Rohingya camps and villages.
It is among a string of reasons why the international organisation is describing the election as "fundamentally flawed".
State censorship, and restrictions on media freedoms also a concern, said Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"The state of democracy in Myanmar is certainly not where we wanted to be five years after these elections in 2015 that gave us so much hope.
"We've really, really gone backwards."
