Guardian, 18 June 2025 Rare footage of Aung San Suu Kyi inside a Myanmar courtroom and detailed records of her daily prison routine have been seen by the Guardian, offering a glimpse into the life of the country’s ousted civilian leader as she nears her 80th birthday. Since the military seized power in February 2021, little has been […]
‘I stopped counting after three’: the ‘girl sniper’ fighting on the frontline of Myanmar’s civil war
Guardian, 31 March 2025 Anina is, in many ways, a typical teenager. She loves her boyfriend, cartoons and football – she supports Manchester City. Until recently, TikTok dancing brightened her days. “Any kind of dancing,” she says. When the Guardian met her she was about to turn 18 and was on crutches, her ankle twisted […]
Al Jazeera, 15 March 2025 Falam Township, Chin State — In the mountains of western Myanmar, photographs of fallen fighters line the wall of a rebel headquarters – an honour roll of some 80 young men, beginning with 28-year-old Salai Cung Naw Piang who was killed in May 2021. The true toll on the Chin […]
The Times, 4 March 2025 Everyone in the Myanmar resistance knows the brutality of the country’s ruling junta, but even by their standards the cruelty inflicted on Timothy and Isaac was difficult to comprehend. They were found in the town of Falam in the far west of the country, where a battle is raging between […]
April 24, 2025🔹 Frontier Myanmar — Return to LashioCoverage of the evolving conflict and humanitarian conditions in northern Shan State. April 5, 2025🔹 Good Morning Scotland — Myanmar Coverage(Starts at 01:24) — Update on the Myanmar crisis and regional implications. April 1, 2025🔹 BBC Radio 4 Today — Segment on MyanmarDiscussion on developments inside Myanmar amidst intensifying conflict. February 7, 2025🔹 Frontier Myanmar — Fighting for FalamInsight […]
El Pais, 16 January 2025 Si el perfil de Key determinara su destino, estaría trabajando ahora en un laboratorio de innovación tecnológica. Sin embargo, este joven de 25 años, con gafas, meticuloso y experto en informática, entrega su vida en el taller de una selva camuflado con bambú desde donde construye aviones no tripulados. “Hacemos […]
Al Jazeera, 19 October Scattered across the lush, rolling hills of southern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region, rebel fighters stationed at checkpoints inspect cars and trucks traveling towards a nearby town still under the control of the Myanmar military – their adversary. While this is a familiar sight in the region, where the struggle against the military […]
Guardian, 16 September 2024 In April 2022, a little over a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a stream of middle-aged European and American volunteers were passing through Poland on their way into Ukraine. There was the retired attorney delivering sweets to Ukrainian orphanages; the Irish former French Foreign Legion soldier carrying luggage for refugees, and […]
Nikkei Asia, 18 August 2024 TANINTHARYI TOWNSHIP, Myanmar — The fading banner of Aung San Suu Kyi has seen better days. Riddled with bullet holes, it hangs outside the office of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy in Le Thit, a half-abandoned village on the banks of the Tanintharyi River in southern Myanmar. The NLD office […]
Al Jazeera, 17 May 2024 An ex-British soldier and an American fighter are among a small but growing number of foreigners training and fighting alongside anti-coup forces in the war against Myanmar’s military regime. The volunteers say they were inspired by Myanmar’s resistance, which has stood up to one of the most brutal and well-equipped […]
The Telegraph, 16 April 2024 Sitting on flimsy plastic chairs in an old town hall with holes in the roof and flaking paint on the walls, a dozen young people wait patiently for their turn to join Myanmar’s rebel army. As they kill time, they compare notes about the junta-controlled cities and villages they have come from. […]
Nikkei Asian Review, 14 April 2024 In a small workshop in western Thailand, Aung Tin Tun puts the finishing touches to a plastic hoop created by a 3D printer. Filing a stubborn barb of filament, he explains that the hoop will be the grip of a prosthesis that can be attached to a garden hoe, […]
The Sunday Times, 12 April 2024 From the Thai side of the bridge, they are invisible, but everyone knows they are there: Myanmar junta soldiers, about 200 of them, skulking along the bank of the Moei River. Until this week, they were part of the government forces defending Myawaddy, one of Myanmar’s most important trading […]
Al Jazeera, 3 February 2024 Karen State, Myanmar – A young fighter looks out from the upper floor in a concrete skeleton of a church that villagers have been building for two years in this small pocket of southeast Myanmar. The construction work has been a slow undertaking, said 21-year-old Zayar, a member of Myanmar’s Muslim […]
Nikkei Asian Review, 24 November 2024 MYANMAR BORDER, Thailand — The sudden escalation of Myanmar’s civil war, with coordinated resistance attacks across the country’s northeast, has shaken the military establishment and reenergized pro-democracy forces. Rare interviews with wives of serving soldiers reveal that the grip of the dictatorship may be as shaky in its bases, […]
Al Jazeera, 11 August 2023 Demoso, Eastern Myanmar – The rebel commander studies a chicken bone in a search for clues as to the fate of his coming attack against the Myanmar military. Scraggly bearded Reh Du, 27, frowns. The signs from the bone are mixed. Nevertheless, his underlying confidence in the plan of attack against […]
The Observer / Guardian, 4 June 2023 On a busy strip in eastern Myanmar, restaurants with bomb shelters serve sizzling plates of beef washed down with Belgian beer and French wine. Teenagers mingle in snooker halls, women relax in beauty salons and revolutionaries get inked in tattoo parlours. From dawn, steaming bowls of noodle soup are […]
Nikkei Asian Review, 12 April 2023 Mizoram, India — A sudden chill stirred three pregnant refugees as the sun disappeared behind the mountains of Mizoram state, on India’s northeastern border with Myanmar. Sitting outside their makeshift home, a tarpaulin tunnel sheltering 160 people, Then Nun Mawi said she had suffered cramps so bad that she […]
Al Jazeera, 7 March 2023 Mizoram, India – Aung Pyae paces outside the hillside clinic on India’s remote border with Myanmar. The crackle of gunfire between his former comrades in the military and pro-democracy fighters a few hundred metres away in his homeland has eased, and all Aung Pyae can hear now are the moans of […]
The Telegraph, 24 December 2022 One year on from the mass killings, survivors and relatives of the dead recount the horrors Esther spent last Christmas Eve in a state of nerves waiting for her two children as they made their way across conflict-torn Myanmar. The next day, on Christmas, she learnt she would never see […]
The Guardian, 30 November 2022 Will Malaysia’s YTL, US-based BlackRock and Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings answer questions about environmental damage? Most Malaysians know the YTL Corporation. Take the high-speed train from Kuala Lumpur International airport to the centre of the capital – YTL built it. Make a phone call in the country and it […]
The Telegraph, 10 October 2022 It was a long month. As Htay Mo trekked through rivers and across mountains thick with jungle, sleeping rough and relying on handouts, the word of a haven kept her going. The 26-year-old – who navigated landmines, snakes and soldiers as she carried her disabled son to safety – was […]
Nikkei Asian Review, 3 August 2022 In the grand lobby of a Yangon hotel, a senior Myanmar tourism official told me she was meeting government officials to “rebrand” the country to focus international attention on pristine beaches instead of conflict and military atrocities. It was March 2018, and Myanmar was governed by an elected civilian […]
Guardian, 26 July 2022 On Monday night at 8pm, the familiar, defiant sound of clashing pots and pans returned to the streets of Yangon. In the aftermath of last year’s coup, the same din was heard nightly as people demanded the return of democracy – until the military launched brutal crackdowns against any such acts […]
Nikkei Asian Review, 11 May 2022 In a different world, Wat Fah Wiang Inn would symbolize the power of faith to transcend the borders between two largely Buddhist nations. Trust and tolerance, not guns, would hallmark this monastery straddling the Myanmar and Thailand border in the hazy Shan Hills, which stretch from Yunnan in China […]
Guardian, 20 April 2021 To be with children, to care for elderly relatives, to find work: civilians tell why they are leaving safe countries for a war zone As the war crept closer to Odesa, Ann heeded the pleas of her friends abroad and fled to Holland. A month later, as she tried to calm […]
Guardian, 7 June 2021 Journalism has been outlawed in all but name since the coup, with reporters and editors fleeing the country or leading double lives to survive As a cyclone rolled over the Bay of Bengal on 24 May, American journalist Danny Fenster, 37, contemplated the brooding skies near a terminal window at Yangon […]
Guardian, 31 March 2021 Freed protesters and a journalist detained by the junta describe beatings and squalid conditions Released from detention in Myanmar, protesters and journalists have described beatings, squalid conditions and cruelty under the military dictatorship that is opposed by most of the population. Hnin, 23, was arrested along with 400 other young people in […]
Guardian, 28 March 2021 From soldiers randomly shooting passersby in the street to imminent economic collapse, anxieties have been plentiful in Myanmar since its military seized power on 1 February. But unease was surging ahead of Armed Forces Day on Saturday when the military was expected to meet protesters with a brutal crackdown. These expectations were more […]
Guardian, 15 March 2021 Two journalists reflect on the danger, fear and uncertainty that now characterise life in the country – and the risks people are taking to access information ‘It is strange to write about joy amid the daily killings’ It started with people nervously waiting outside a KFC for the first brave activists […]
Guardian, 20 March 2021 On the barricades and in border hideouts there is a growing mood to take the fight to the military after the coup that has left more than 200 dead. As an adolescent, Aung, 27, wanted to enlist in the Myanmar military until his family spelt out the horrors of the institution. Now, he […]
Guardian, 21 February 2021 Witnesses have described the moment Myanmar’s security forces opened fire on protesters, killing two people, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Sunday in defiance of the military. A young man and a teenage boy are believed to have been killed in Mandalay on Saturday when […]
Guardian, 15 February 2021 Since the coup, people in Yangon have been patrolling the streets to protect neighbours from overnight military raids and criminals by Lorcan Lovett Sitting next to a makeshift barricade of bamboo and recycled metal, Aung Than, 30, a tour operator, says he is ready to die for his street. “A life on […]
Guardian, 12 February 2021 In previous years on Union Day – the Myanmar public holiday marking the agreement between ethnic leaders on 12 February 1947 to forge a unified country – Khin* had worn her traditional htamein, a snug maxiskirt. But since it would prevent her from running away if the police opened fire, this year she opted […]
Guardian, 10 February 2021 The Myanmar military took power last week on the promise of “restoring eternal peace” to a country riven by seven decades of ethnic conflict. Since the takeover it has made remarkable progress in uniting the deeply divided country against a common enemy: itself. In Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, strangers greet each other with […]
Guardian, 2 February 2021 In Myanmar, if you want to drive evil from your home, you bang pots and pans. Yangon’s streets were filled with the din of clashing metal in 2007, when monks called for an end to military rule, and before that, in 1988 when the former president Sein Lwin, or the “butcher of Rangoon”, […]
Guardian, 22 October 2020 When Hla, 19, tried to go back to work seven months ago after having a baby, there were no jobs. Hundreds of garment factories in Myanmar had closed after western fashion brands cancelled orders due to the pandemic, leaving thousands of women jobless. As lockdown gripped Yangon, her marriage broke down, her husband […]
Nikkei Asian Review, June 2020 In 1987, when Khin Khin San was 13, she began selling bowls of mont ti fish soup under the shade of a tamarind tree in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, where the rice noodle dish is fishier and fierier than elsewhere in the country. Sometimes she would hawk mont ti with […]
The Sunday Times, May 2020 Burma is historically familiar with ethnic strife. But now the land of maroon-robed monks is confronting discord of a different kind, as politicians, doctors and spiritual leaders turn on each other in a ferocious row about sex. The trouble erupted over a plan to update sex education in schools, a […]
Myanmar’s lockdown will hit the urban poor hard. That’s inspiring charitable donation — and labor strikes.
(Vice Asia, December 2019) When martial artist Khin Cham Myae Thu began teaching free self-defence classes four years ago, she had no idea how important the weekend gatherings would become to members of Yangon’s LGBTQ community. She had been arming her neighbours with the skills they needed to defend themselves during summer classes but when […]
(Southeast Asia Globe, July 2019) 13-year-old Ei Ei Thein knows little of school life – she’s never been. But she could not have been more proud of the borrowed uniform she wore during a recent visit to one of the many scrap-dealers scattered through the slums circling Yangon. A pile of bottles spills beside her […]
(The Diplomat, June 2019) The moment Kay Khine Tun, 22, was arrested at her nursing job in Yangon Children’s Hospital, her father readied for an exhausting battle with his former employer, the Myanmar Army. “The military has no shame at all,” said Sein Mya, a 53-year-old taxi driver, as he spooned half a dozen sugars […]
(Nikkei Asian Review, October 2018) NGWE SAUNG, Myanmar — From a beachside perch next to a group of sunburned Japanese surfers, betelnut seller Let Let Khine studies a reedy figure being swallowed by a meter-high swell. It is the first time she has seen anyone on a surfboard. The surfer, her son Myat Thura Aung, […]
(Nikkei Asian Review, July 2018) LONE TON, Myanmar — A punchy cadence echoes from a one-story school building toward verdant mountains — the familiar sound of children reciting lines to learn a language. But in this part of northern Myanmar, speaking Shan-ni, the local dialect, only a decade ago was seen as taboo, and treated […]
Al Jazeera, 23 November 2024 Myanmar-Thailand border – At a secret gathering above a cafe in a town on the Myanmar-Thailand border, Ko Aye examined the inside of an Android phone alongside 10 fellow defectors from Myanmar’s military and police forces. The trainer, an ex-captain in the Myanmar army, guided the group through the process of […]
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