(Reuters) -Hunger is rising in Myanmar, the impoverished Southeast Asian country that has been ravaged by conflict since a 2021 military coup ousted an elected civilian government.
Some 3.6 million people are displaced across the war-torn nation, according to the United Nations, and a lack of funding has left millions of vulnerable people without life-saving humanitarian support.
Myanmar is one of the world’s most underfunded aid operations, with only 12% of required funds received, the U.N. says.
WHAT IS THE HUNGER SITUATION NATIONWIDE?
More than 16 million people across Myanmar, about a third of the population, are acutely food insecure, meaning that their lack of food threatens lives and livelihoods, according to the World Food Programme.
They are the fifth-largest group needing aid anywhere in the world, making Myanmar “a hunger hotspot of very high concern,” the agency said.
More than 540,000 children across the country are expected to suffer this year from acute malnutrition – life-threatening wasting that can have severe and lifelong effects – a 26% increase from last year, WFP said.
One in three children under the age of five is already suffering from stunted growth, according to WFP.
HOW BAD IS IT IN RAKHINE?
The western coastal state of Rakhine, where conflict is raging, has been hit particularly hard by the food crisis, with restrictions on aid delivery and the movement of people.
In central Rakhine, the WFP estimates that 57% of families cannot afford basic food, up from 33% in December 2024, while the situation in the hard-to-reach north is probably even worse, it says.
Food prices are as much as four times higher than before the conflict, while many markets are empty and people are unable to travel freely or find jobs to support themselves, according to a WFP official.
The crisis is driving more Rohingya families from Rakhine into Bangladesh, where more than 1 million members of the Muslim minority group already live in crowded refugee camps after a brutal Myanmar military crackdown in 2017 triggered a mass exodus.
Many newly arrived Rohingya refugees are suffering from acute malnutrition, especially children and pregnant and lactating women, the International Rescue Committee says.
Hospital admissions for severe wasting increased by 12% between January and June this year compared to the same period in 2024, and UNICEF treated 1,028 severely wasted children among new arrivals between October 2024 and June 2025, it said.
(Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
Rakhine State stands at a pivotal moment as the Arakan Army (AA) edges closer to seizing control of Myanmar’s strategic western frontier region, a shift in power that could redefine both the country’s civil war and regional geopolitics.
While Myanmar’s military government has clawed back territory elsewhere in the country, the AA now controls 14 of 17 townships in Rakhine, which is situated on the Bay of Bengal in the country’s west and shares a border with Bangladesh.
Flush from victories against Myanmar’s military rulers, the rebel group has pledged to capture the remainder of Rakhine State, including the capital Sittwe, as well as a key Indian port project, and Kyaukphyu, home to oil and gas pipelines and a deep-sea port central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Analysts say the window is open for a decisive offensive by the rebel group.
But the AA’s fight against Myanmar’s military government for self-determination unfolds amid a deepening humanitarian crisis and growing reports of serious abuses by the armed group against Muslim-majority Rohingya in Rakhine.
The Myanmar military’s blockade of supplies to Rakhine – historically known as Arakan – has worsened a crisis in which the United Nations estimates more than two million people face the risk of starvation. Earlier this month, the World Food Programme warned that 57 percent of families in central Rakhine cannot meet basic food needs – up from 33 percent in December.
Thousands of civilians are hemmed in the encircled Sittwe, which is now accessible only by sea and air.
Residents describe skyrocketing prices – pork that once cost $2 now exceeds $13. Local media have reported on desperate people taking their own lives, families turning to begging, sex work increasing, and daytime thefts as law and order collapses.
One resident who recently left by plane told of the growing danger from crime in Sittwe.
“They’re like gangsters breaking into homes in broad daylight. They even take the furniture,” he said.
Inside Sittwe, a source who asked for anonymity told Al Jazeera that the Arakan Liberation Army, an armed group linked to the military, monitors conversations among local people while troops raid homes and check residents for tattoos as signs of AA support.
“The situation is unpredictable,” the source said.
“We can’t guess what will happen next.”
Rakhine State, Myanmar map
A representative of the United League of Arakan (ULA), the AA’s political wing, described Sittwe as “a stark example” of military rule, saying the regime’s leaders have “treated Arakan as occupied territory” for decades.
Rising civilian toll
As the AA advances across Rakhine State, the military government has turned to air strikes – a tactic used nationwide since the generals seized power in 2021.
In Rakhine, the ULA says air raids killed 402 civilians between late 2023 and mid-2025, including 96 children. Another 26 civilians died this year from artillery, landmines or extrajudicial killings, it said.
Air strikes on civilians “cannot produce tangible military outcomes”, a ULA representative said, describing such tactics as “terrorism” in a country where more than 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed in fighting since the 2021 coup.
Amid the grinding conflict, both the AA and Myanmar’s military have also implemented conscription to bolster their forces.
The AA has drafted men aged 18 to 45 and women aged 18 to 25 since May, calling its campaign a “war of national liberation”, while the military has added an estimated 70,000 men to its ranks over its 16-month military draft drive.
Rakhine has also been scarred by ethnic violence, most brutally during the military’s 2017 crackdown that drove more than 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh – atrocities from that time which are now before the International Court of Justice in a case of suspected genocide.
More than a million Rohingya remain in refugee camps along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, with the UN reporting 150,000 new arrivals over the past 18 months.
Reports accuse the AA of abuses against Rohingya civilians that remain in Rakhine, including an alleged massacre of 600 people last year – allegations the AA denies, claiming images of human remains were actually government soldiers killed in battle.
According to the rebels’ political wing, the ULA, “Muslim residents” in its areas of control in Rakhine “are experiencing better lives compared to any other period in recent history”.
The ULA, like the military government, avoids the term “Rohingya” in an attempt to imply the community is not indigenous to Rakhine.
To further confuse an already complex situation, the military has armed members of the Rohingya community to fight the AA, a dramatic reversal after decades of persecution of their communities by Myanmar’s armed forces.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank also warns that Rohingya armed groups are using religious language to mobilise refugees in the camps in Bangladesh against the AA.
But “a Rohingya insurgency against the Arakan Army is unlikely to succeed”, the ICG reports, adding that it could also heighten anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar and damage prospects for the repatriation of refugees from Bangladesh to homes they fled inside Rakhine.
Tensions are also simmering with Bangladesh, which wants the AA – in control of the entire border region between Myanmar and Bangladesh – to accept refugees back into areas under its authority.
Dhaka is also reportedly backing armed Rohingya groups to pressure Arakan forces, while the AA is wary that Bangladesh could support a breakaway zone in Rakhine, threatening its territorial ambitions for the state.
Battle for Chinese-built port
South of Sittwe, a decisive fight looms for Kyaukphyu, the coastal hub linking Myanmar to China’s Yunnan province through twin oil and gas pipelines and a deep-sea port that is part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.
Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst with defence publication Janes, predicts the AA could launch a monsoon offensive between September and October, using cloudy skies as cover against aerial assaults by the military’s warplanes and which would boost its chances of capturing Kyaukphyu.
Davis said munition stocks seized by the AA in 2024 could dwindle by 2026, while Chinese pressure may limit arms supplies used by the rebels from entering northern Myanmar – factors that add urgency to the AA pressing its attacks now.
He estimated 3,000 government troops are defending Kyaukphyu, backed by jets, drones and naval firepower.
With at least 40,000 fighters after its conscription drive – and now becoming Myanmar’s largest ethnic army – the AA could likely commit 10,000 troops to the assault on Kyaukphyu, Davis said.
This photo taken from a boat on October 2, 2019, shows vessels docked at the port of a Chinese-owned oil refinery plant on Made Island off Kyaukphyu, Rakhine State, Myanmar [Ye Aung Thu/AFP]
Based on its track record, Davis believes the AA has a “significant chance” of seizing the port, in what could become “one of the most consequential and costliest campaigns” of the civil war.
About 50 Chinese security personnel remain in Kyaukphyu, according to a Chinese industry source cited by Davis, who believes Beijing has accepted the AA might capture the facility – as long as its assets stay protected.
But Beijing has also intensified its backing of Myanmar’s military rulers in recent months.
The ULA representative said Kyaukphyu is a “sensitive area” for the AA, where it uses “the least amount of force necessary” and maintains a “firm policy of protecting foreign investments and personnel from all countries”.
The AA would “strive to pursue all possible means to foster positive relations with China”, the representative added.
Widening War
India, too, has stakes in Rakhine through the Kaladan transport project, which aims to connect India’s remote northeast regions to the Bay of Bengal via the India-built Sittwe port and river routes running through AA-controlled territory.
That corridor would allow India to bypass Bangladesh and create an alternative trade route for India with Myanmar.
Analysts say taking control of the port, road and river network could allow the AA to tax Indian trade, boosting its finances while also undermining the Myanmar military’s ties with New Delhi.
If the AA does succeed in capturing Rakhine’s coastal ports, the armed group could feasibly control transport and trade gateways vital to both China and India, which would create leverage that no other armed participant in the Myanmar civil war holds.
That could elevate the AA-backed Arakan People’s Revolutionary Government as a regional powerbroker, Davis said.
The Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar says the AA is also deployed beyond Rakhine and now leads the country’s most extensive alliance of armed groups.
“No other ethnic armed group has woven such a far-reaching web of influence among the country’s next generation of fighters,” the institute wrote.
But with the military regaining lost ground in other regions of the country while preparing to hold elections in December – already widely dismissed as a sham – there is a prospect the AA could one day agree to a ceasefire with the military government or continue to fight and potentially be strong enough to face the military alone.
Commenting on such a scenario, the ULA representative called for vigilance against the military’s traditional “divide and rule” strategy.
“War often involves advances and retreats,” said the representative. “This time, we are confident that the resistance forces can achieve meaningful change in the country.”
The end may not be near, but the end is clear—according to those who have kept a close eye on Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, since a military coup toppled its civilian government in 2021. While the fighting between the junta and armed resistance groups was locked in a stalemate for the first two years of the conflict, observers note that the third year has seen the military on the back foot.
The protracted conflict has been estimated to have killed over 50,000 people and displaced around three million. But while much of the violence since the 2021 coup has been marked by a sense of intractability, and global attention has been overshadowed by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, a series of resistance victories in the past year have rattled the Myanmar junta’s once ironclad grip on power, marking what seems to be a turning point.
One of the numerous camps scattered all over the region where between 150,000 and 250,000 internally displaced people have taken shelter after Myanmar military airstrikes and artillery forced them to leave their towns and villages, in Karenni State on Feb. 15, 2024. Thierry Falise—LightRocket/Getty Images
“The end of the war is clear-cut. The only thing that is not clear is the means by which it’s achieved and the timing,” Chris Sidoti, an international human rights consultant and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), tells TIME. “One way or another, at some point the military will collapse.”
TIME spoke to eight experts, all of whom painted a similar picture of where the conflict stands—and where it may go from here. Here’s what to know:
Feb. 2021
The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, stages a coup to overthrow the civilian government—on the same day the parliament is set to swear in the winners of the 2020 election, in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won by a landslide. As the military accuses the party of election fraud and promises to hold new elections, power is transferred to military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, and the country is declared to be in a year-long state of emergency.
This is met with international condemnation and pro-democracy protests across the country, and the junta in turn responds with a brutal crackdown. (As people took to the streets, more than 500 are killed within two months of the coup.) Thousands of civil servants go on strike as part of a nationwide civil disobedience movement. The junta doubles down on its campaign of intimidation by killing civilians, burning villages in resistance strongholds across the country, and forcibly disappearing hundreds of its critics.
Smoke rises after protesters burn tires as they gather to continue their protest against the military’s coup and detention of elected government members, in Thakeyta Township, Yangon, Myanmar, on March 27, 2021.Stringer—Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
April 2021
A coalition of ousted lawmakers, protest leaders, and ethnic minorities form the National Unity Government, which aims to end military rule, restore democracy, and establish a federal system.
May 2021
The NUG announces its armed wing, the People’s Defence Force (PDF), and calls for a “people’s defensive war” against the junta across the country—a call that’s backed by ethnic armies, which have for decades fought against the military for self-determination in their home states.
August 2021
Min Aung Hlaing names himself the Prime Minister, announces a potential extension to the state of emergency, and repeats his pledge to hold elections.
General Min Aung Hlaing attends a military parade to mark the 78th Armed Forces Day in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, on March 27, 2023. Myo Kyaw Soe—Xinhua/Getty Images
2022
Resistance forces become more united, with many PDF units and ethnic armies forming partnerships to launch joint attacks against junta troops.
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of ethnic armies, launches Operation 1027 in northern Shan state, seizing control of key areas from the military, marking a key victory for the resistance and a turning point in the war.
January 2024
China brokers a ceasefire between the junta and the Three Brotherhood Alliance during negotiations held in the Chinese city of Kunming. While China has refrained from openly criticizing Min Aung Hlaing’s regime, it has also balanced unofficial relationships with ethnic armed groups in a bid to safeguard trade and security along its border with Myanmar.
February 2024
In what’s widelyseen as a sign of desperation, the junta announces mandatoryconscription for all men between 18 and 35 years old and all women between 18 and 27. This sparks panic among young people, many of whom swarm passport offices and embassies in effort to leave the country, while others opt to join the resistance and take up arms against the junta.
People gather outside the embassy of Thailand to get visas, in Yangon on Feb. 16, 2024, after Myanmar’s military government said it would impose mandatory military service.STR/AFP/Getty Images
April 2024
Myawaddy, a border township in the southeastern Kayin state and a strategically important trading hub with Thailand, finds itself at the center of offensives launched by resistance forces and the junta—amid a series of resistance victories.
June 2024
The Three Brotherhood Alliance launches the second phase of Operation 1027 in northern Shan State and Mandalay, after accusing the junta of violating the terms of the China-brokered ceasefire by bombing ethnic militia territory.
September 2024
The embattled military proposes a peace agreement with the resistance, urging them to “solve political problems politically,” but it is widelysnubbed by the NUG and ethnic armies who want the junta held accountable for their brutality and barred from politics.
The disintegration of the junta seems to be well underway, as it faces pressure on all fronts—from rumors of internal strife to territorial losses to fallout from the ongoing humanitarian crisis across the country.
The Tatmadaw may be the most powerful institution in Myanmar and has ruled the country for many of the years since its independence—by decree, political maneuvering, and constitutional provisions—but the military leadership, analysts say, has a history of botching things. After the military seized power in a coup in 1962, Myanmar became internationally isolated, its economy floundered, and insurgencies grew—which ultimately resulted in the resignation of military leader Ne Win in 1988.
“The military has always been totally incompetent,” says Sidoti from the SAC-M. “They destroyed the economy. They have left Myanmar politically infantile. They have exacerbated internal conflicts, and they have not won a single war against any of the ethnic armies with which they have been fighting for 65 or 70 years.”
Indeed, the junta has been steadily losing ground, especially in the north. In the northeastern town of Laukkai, near the Chinese border, nearly 2,500 junta soldiers surrendered in January to the Three Brotherhood Alliance after weeks of fighting; the junta lost its first regional command base when its headquarters in Lashio fell to the resistance in August; and counter offensives launched by the junta this year to wrest back control of lost territories have struggled to make inroads.
A member of the Karenni Resistance Force scouts the movement of the military junta in the frontline of Shadaw township on Feb. 3, 2024. Thu Myae—SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Compared to the resistance forces fighting for self-determination and control over their home region, the junta troops, who increasingly include civilians who were forcibly conscripted to support the war effort, are from the outset less motivated to fight. “I think the resistance has a good chance of winning if they keep up the pressure, because the morale is very different for the resistance. The fighting spirit is strong,” says Mike, a member of the anonymous Myanmar Film Collective, which documents and protests the aftermath of the 2021 coup through film. “[The] junta’s side, they don’t even know what they’re fighting for.”
A key battle lies in the junta strongholds of Mandalay, located west of Lashio, where ethnic groups from the Brotherhood Alliance forces are pushing in. “They’re on the cusp of losing Mandalay, and if they do, then that’s going to be a huge blow to the entire military morale,” says Yanghee Lee, another member of the SAC-M and a former U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.
The junta has also lost control over critical infrastructure. While it still maintains predominant control over airspace, large swathes of the country’s townships that share land borders with China, Thailand, and India are now controlled by the resistance. A SAC-M report in May determined that the junta “does not control enough of the territory of Myanmar to uphold the core duties of the state,” having lost authority in townships spanning over 80% of the country’s territory, which houses nearly 70% of its population. The NUG runs a network of education and healthcare services in resistance-controlled areas, staffed with personnel who refuse to work under the military government. And despite the junta’s tight grip over the internet, people have found ways to bypass censors.
Perhaps most crucially, the economic pressure of the protracted conflict is building: Half the population is in poverty, inflation is soaring, and one in four people are plagued by food insecurity. And since the coup, Myanmar has become the subject of international sanctions designed to punish members of the junta and curb the flow of weapons into the country.
A member of the ethnic armed group Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) keeps watch as people buy groceries at a street market in Kyaukme in Myanmar’s northern Shan State on July 3, 2024.STR/AFP/Getty Images
Such mounting economic troubles may compel the junta to change course. “But one thing we have to remember is the sanctions, of course, affect everyone,” says Amara Thiha, a doctoral researcher of Myanmar politics at Peace Research Institute Oslo. “So economic pressure may [bring the junta to] the table for certain forms of changes, but at what cost? The cost of millions of people.”
The collapse of social and economic order in Myanmar is watched carefully by its neighbors, fearful that instability will spill over. (Immigration and drugs—trafficked to fund rebel weapon purchases—have already surged along the Thai border.) And China, which is mostly concerned about the economic fallout of the Myanmar conflict, has been exerting influence over Myanmar’s ethnic armies while appearing to be running out of patience with the junta, with which it maintains high-level diplomatic engagements.
Members of the TNLA walk next to trucks in Hsipaw on Oct. 15, 2024. Fighters from the Myanmar ethnic armed group have seized another town along a strategic highway to China, the group and a resident said, in the latest setback for the embattled junta.STR/AFP/Getty Images
So how will this end?
The resistance may be making important gains, but it doesn’t mean that defeating the junta will be a walk in the park. Despite a grim outlook for victory, the junta has refused to concede in conflict zones. (In Lashio, where resistance forces have made major advances, the military has resorted to regular, indiscriminate aerial bombardment to destroy the city.) Its desperate conscription drive also has the power to prolong its capacity to fight. And on the other side, ethnic armed groups are unlikely to extend their support outside of their territories and to fight the junta in their strongholds.
“Ethnic armed groups are still not going to be fighting outside their ethnic territories primarily,” says Thomas Kean, analyst on Myanmar at International Crisis Group. “Ultimately, it will be up to PDFs and resistance forces to take the fight to the military in lowland areas, and I think they just don’t have the resources to match the military. That’s going to be a really hard struggle, so I think the military will be able to hold on in those areas.”
Already, the military has been retreating to its strongholds in urban central Myanmar, including Yangon and Naypyidaw. This could result in a scenario where the military retains control over a rump state—a remnant of a once larger territory—while the rest of the country is divided into various ethnic army-controlled regions.
Soldiers from the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) prepare on a map a military operation against the Myanmar military in southern Shan State.
The KNDF, mostly constituted of local young civilians, was created in May 2021, a few months after the coup perpetrated by the Burmese military. Thierry Falise—LightRocket/Getty Images
Another scenario could see the junta completely removed from power, though there are different ways that could come about—whether by complete military defeat and surrender, or more likely, through internal power struggle and external negotiations to cede power.
“It may be that they fight to the bitter end,” says Sidoti. “It may be that there is an internal implosion long before the war is finished and the military recognizes and accepts the inevitable.”
In a sign of desperation, the junta offered an unprecedented olive branch in September, urging resistance groups to participate in elections next year and “solve political problems politically.” That ceasefire proposal was rejected by both the NUG and ethnic armed groups, who have made clear their desire for the military to have no role in politics. The elections promised by the junta, slated for 2025, have also been denounced both domestically and internationally as a sham that would grant the junta the guise of legitimacy but offer little actual democracy.
What experts agree on is that the junta’s leadership turmoil, along with steady defections on the ground, spell impending collapse one way or another. But that won’t be the end of the story just yet.
An unexploded projectile stuck on the roof of a house following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Nam Hpat Kar, Kutkai township in Myanmar’s northern Shan State, on Feb. 4, 2024.STR/AFP/Getty Images
Even when the junta falls, experts warn that democracy—and even stability—in Myanmar will be far from guaranteed.
“On the resistance side, we see all these different groups having a hard time governing territories that they control. They’re very good at fighting against the military, but governance requires a different skillset,” says a photojournalist who spent the first two years of the war embedded with ethnic armed groups in Karenni state and spoke to TIME on the condition of anonymity for their safety. “There hasn’t been any cohesive, collected effort from the anti-military or the resistance side.”
Unlike the NUG, ethnic armed groups appear to be more guided by ethnocentric nationalism than actually implementing a democratic system—such as holding free and fair elections, legitimizing a central administration, and being transparent over their finances, says Amara. “These are the very basic three principles of democracy: election, control and accountability,” he adds. “If you’re putting on these lenses, it is very difficult to say that EROs [ethnic resistance organizations] are functioning on democratic principles.”
“The struggle against the junta and today’s civil war will not be resolved with a big group hug,” reads an op-ed published in January in The Irrawaddy, echoing a sentiment shared by many political observers. “And if care is not taken, regime collapse could simply lead to more war, with the same belligerents but new alliances.”
There have long been differing interests among different ethnic armed groups, which have fought one another before and during the ongoing civil war. Such tensions are likely to resurface. In Shan state, ethnic armed groups which had allied against military forces last year have increasingly found themselves at odds with one another over territorial disputes.
“The thing that holds all this together is a common enemy, the Myanmar military. But beyond that, there’s lots of divisions and disagreements,” says Kean.
Soldiers from the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)—the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), an ethnic Karen movement created in 1947 that is generally considered as the “oldest guerrilla movement in the world”—and members of the KNDF sit in the back of a pick-up truck on their way to a military operation, in Loikaw on Feb. 10, 2023.Thierry Falise—LightRocket/Getty Images
To be sure, there have been sustained efforts to enact a vision of governance in post-junta Myanmar. Many in the resistance have committed to the idea of a federal state—though agreement on the specifics of that vision of federalism remains wanting.
One prominent proposal came in the form of the Federal Democratic Charter introduced just one month after the coup by the National Unity Consultative Council, the advisory body of the NUG. A separate proposal backed by 12 political parties was introduced in February. Neither has managed to garner broad enough support among the resistance.
“The National Unity government and many of the resistance organizations talk about a Federal Democratic Myanmar, and that is a strong and essential commitment, but there has been too little work done so far on fleshing that out, on giving it substance,” says Sidoti. “It needs to be an equal society in which there is a high level of autonomy at the regional level, but international leadership through a national government.”
In at least one state, a hybrid model of governance is already being experimented—to significant success. The Karenni State Interim Executive Council has established administrations in 16 townships across the state, all elected by residents and consisting of leaders representing civil society and ethnic communities. This model of decentralized authority is unprecedented in the state, which before the coup had local leaders appointed by the central government.
“We call it bottom-up federalism,” says Khu Plu Reh, general secretary of the Karenni State Interim Executive Council. “It is very important, the recognition of the self-determination of each ethnic group.”
Khu Plu Reh says he’s not sure if this model can be replicated across the country—only that it is a “very suitable model for the Karenni state right now.” Still, the political innovation has sparked intrigue from other ethnic leaders, who Khu Phu Reh says have contacted them to learn more about their vision of governance.
Soldiers from the KNDF walk along a row of apartments bombarded by the Myanmar military in Loikaw on Feb. 19, 2024. Loikaw was partly seized during an offensive in November 2023 dubbed 11.11.Thierry Falise—LightRocket/Getty Images
There are doubts as to whether the NUG is capable of leading the charge to bring lasting peace to Myanmar. It has limited influence on the ground, where it has partnered with different ethnic armed groups to fight the junta but has not managed to strike a political consensus among its partners.
Many in ethnic rebel groups are cautiously skeptical of NUG leaders, who have not proven to be the biggest champions of ethnic minorities in the country. For all Aung San Suu Kyi’s government was associated with the fight for democracy and human rights, it was also criticized for its conspicuous silence on the military’s brutal campaign against the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in Rakhine state that now makes up one of the world’s largest refugee groups, most residing in exile in camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
Some temporary partnerships with the NUG are already falling apart. In September, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a powerful pro-China ethnic armed group that’s part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, publicly rejected the idea of working militarily or politically with the NUG and said that it would not help anti-junta efforts in the Shan state capital of Taunggyi or Mandalay.
A general view of Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, on July 5, 2024.Sai Aung Main—AFP/Getty Images
Time is ticking for the NUG, whose work analysts say is set to get more difficult as the junta weakens. “The NUG will no longer have this kind of a central power after the military collapses,” says Lee from the SAC-M. “And they cannot wait until, for instance, winning the war, until the military collapses, then think of how to form a new future Myanmar.”
There’s a lot of uncertainty, observers all agree—but there’s also hope. The past three years of fighting the junta have fostered new bonds across different factions of the resistance, even as negotiations among various stakeholders for a post-war Myanmar remain challenging.
“We can see tensions in the future, but the commitment to a Federal Democratic Myanmar now is so widespread and so deeply grounded in the people’s aspirations that there is an opportunity like never before, and there are signs like never before of a commitment to national unity,” says Sidoti. “That’s what needs to be fostered. That can be built on, and I think it will be built on, but it’s going to require hard work.”
BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s security forces arrested the son-in-law of the country’s former longtime military ruler, Than Shwe, for allegedly posting inflammatory statements on his Facebook account, the state-run media said Friday.
Nay Soe Maung, a 67-year-old retired colonel and a former army medical officer, was the latest to be arrested and jailed for writing Facebook posts that allegedly spread inflammatory news.
His arrest came two weeks after he posted criticism of the current military leader and his condolences for the death of Zaw Myint Maung, a senior member of Myanmar’s former ruling party whose government was ousted during the 2021 military takeover.
The state-run The Mirror Daily newspaper said Nay Soe Maung was detained and prosecuted at a police station in Pyigyidagun township in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city on Wednesday.
Friday’s report said people who make incitements or share propaganda and support for opposition groups on social media will be prosecuted under the country’s laws including counter-terrorism, electronic transactions, sedition and incitement.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb.1, 2021. The army’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the military and police responded to with lethal force, triggering armed resistance and violence that has escalated into a civil war.
Myanmar’s military leadership is known for being close-knit, secretive and sensitive.
Data for Myanmar, an independent research group, said in a report last month that about 1,691 people were detained for criticizing the military regime and showing support for opposition groups on social media since the army takeover.
Nay Soe Maung is married to a daughter of dictator Than Shwe, who ruled from 1992 until 2011, when he handed power to a nominally civilian, pro-military government. During his rule, he led a feared junta that brutally crushed dissent and routinely jailed political opponents, including Suu Kyi, the charismatic face of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement.
Nay Soe Maung served as a lecturer and rector of the University of Public Health, Yangon, the country’s largest city, after retiring as army doctor.
Before the army’s 2021 takeover, he had express support for the previous government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and joined peaceful protests on the streets in Yangon after the military arrested her during the takeover.
Days before his arrest, he posted condolences on the death of Zaw Myint Maung, Suu Kyi’s colleague and spokesperson of her NLD party.
(BANGKOK) — Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said as it freed more than 3,000 prisoners under an amnesty to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday.
Those released included several political prisoners, including a member of the Kachin minority who is one of the country’s most prominent Christian church leaders.
Suu Kyi, 78, and Win Myint, the 72-year-old former president of her ousted government, were among the elderly and infirm prisoners moved to house arrest because of the severe heat, military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told foreign media representatives late Tuesday. The move had not yet been publicly announced in Myanmar as of Wednesday afternoon.
Suu Kyi’s transfer comes as the army has suffered a string of major defeats at the hands of pro-democracy resistance fighters and their allies in ethnic minority guerrilla forces. The nationwide conflict began after the army ousted the elected government in February 2021, imprisoned Suu Kyi and began suppressing nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.
Suu Kyi has been serving a 27-year prison term on a variety of criminal convictions in a specially built annex of the main prison in the capital Naypyitaw, where Myanmar’s meteorological department said temperatures reached 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday afternoon. Win Myint was serving an eight-year prison sentence in Taungoo in the Bago region.
Suu Kyi’s supporters and independent analysts say the charges were fabricated in an attempt to discredit her and legitimize the military’s seizure of power.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent group that monitors casualties and arrests, more than 20,351 people arrested on political charges since the 2021 army takeover are still in detention, most of whom have not received criminal convictions.
Suu Kyi’s health has reportedly deteriorated in prison. In September last year, reports emerged that she was suffering from symptoms of low blood pressure including dizziness and loss of appetite, but had been denied treatment at qualified facilities outside the prison system.
Those reports could not be independently confirmed, but her younger son Kim Aris said in interviews that he had heard that his mother has been extremely ill and has been suffering from gum problems and was unable to eat.
News about Suu Kyi is tightly controlled by the military government, and even her lawyers are banned by a gag order from talking to the media about her cases. Her legal team also has been unable to meet with her face to face since December 2022.
Whether the latest move is meant to be temporary was not announced.
Spokesperson Zaw Min Tun did not say where the released prisoners were being moved to in his remarks to U.S.-government funded Voice of America and Britain’s BBC, but there was no indication it might be one of her own former homes.
Before being sent to prison, Suu Kyi was reportedly held in a military safe house inside an army base.
Other prisoners were released for the Thingyan New Year holiday, state-run MRTV television announced Wednesday, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many were political detainees. Aung Myo Kyaw of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said the group had heard of 7-10 people released in Yangon and nine from a prison in the central regions of Magway.
Local media in the northern state of Kachin reported that Hkalam Samson, former head of the Kachin Baptist Convention and chairman of the Kachin National Consultative Assembly, was among those freed. A resident of the state’s capital, Myitkyina, who said he visited the prison to welcome Samson’s release, posted a brief video of the laughing and smiling minister being greeted outside the prison. The visitor asked to remain anonymous to safeguard his personal security.
Samson was a prominent advocate of human rights in Myanmar and in 2019 was part of a delegation that met U.S. President Trump at the White House to discuss the military’s abuse of ethnic minorities. He was detained in December 2022 while preparing to fly to Thailand for a health checkup, and in April last year was handed a six-year prison term after being convicted of violating laws on unlawful association, incitement and counter-terrorism.
Christians make up about 6% of Myanmar’s overwhelmingly Buddhist population.
MRTV said that the head of the ruling military council, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, had pardoned 3,303 prisoners, including 28 foreigners who will be deported from Myanmar. He also reduced sentences for others. Mass amnesties on the holiday are not unusual in Myanmar.
Family and friends gathered outside the gates of Insein Prison, in northern Yangon, waiting expectantly and scanning the windows of buses that brought the released detainees out of the vast complex. Some held up signs with the names of the people they were seeking, in the same fashion as at an airport arrival hall.
Amid tearful reunions, Khin Thu Zar said she was happy, but that she would have to call her family.
“My family still doesn’t know about my release,” she said. She, like many political detainees, had been held on a charge of incitement, a catch-all offense widely used to arrest critics of the government and punishable by up to three years in prison.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s martyred independence hero Gen. Aung San, spent almost 15 years as a political prisoner under house arrest by previous military governments between 1989 and 2010. Her tough stand against military rule turned her into a symbol of the nonviolent struggle for democracy and won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Nay Phone Latt, spokesperson of the shadow National Unity Government, told The Associated Press that all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi and Win Myint, were unjustly detained and should be freed without conditions. The NUG views serves as an umbrella opposition organization.
He said it was unacceptable for the military government to resolve its difficulties by playing political games, such as changing prisoners’ places of detention and reducing sentences. The army’s recent battlefield setbacks, including last week’s loss to resistance forces of Myawaddy, a major trading town on the border with Thailand, is seen by many as underlining its increasing weakness.
The January attack in Sagaing killed 17 villagers, including two children, as they attended a Sunday service.
Myanmar’s military should be investigated for war crimes over an air attack last month that killed 17 villagers, including two children, as they attended a Sunday church service, Amnesty International has said.
Amnesty said photo and video analysis, as well as interviews with witnesses, indicated the Myanmar air force had dropped bombs on three locations near the St Peter Baptist Church in Kanan village on the morning of January 7.
The village is in the Sagaing region, not far from Myanmar’s border with India.
At least 20 people were injured.
The damage is “consistent with air strikes”, the rights group said in a statement on Thursday. “The combined photo and video evidence indicates at least three impact locations, with craters consistent with aircraft bombs of approximately 250kg each.”
The Myanmar military has previously denied responsibility for the attack, claiming no aircraft were operating in the area at the time.
But Amnesty said a review of video taken during the strikes showed the “distinctive swept-wing silhouette of an A-5 fighter jet flying over the village”, noting that only the military flies the China-made aircraft. Moreover, satellite imagery from the Tada-U airbase near Mandalay showed active A-5 operations on the airfield while plane spotters had reported the takeoff, flight and landing of an A-5 consistent with that morning’s attack on Kanan.
“The Myanmar military’s deadly attacks on civilians show no signs of stopping,” said Matt Wells, the director of Amnesty’s crisis response programme. “These attacks must be investigated as war crimes and the UN Security Council should refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The perpetrators of these crimes under international law must be brought to justice.”
The bombing caused widespread damage to buildings in the village [Courtesy of Amnesty International]
Myanmar was plunged into crisis three years ago when the generals seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi triggering mass protests that evolved into armed resistance after the military responded with brutal force.
At least 4,485 civilians have been killed since the coup, and violence has become increasingly widespread.
Sagaing has been notorious for brutal assaults by the military, which has launched air attacks and burned villages as part of its long-held strategy known as “four cuts” that aims to separate its opponents from their potential civilian supporters.
At the time of the church attack, Kanan village was under the control of a unit of the People’s Defence Force (PDF), an anti-coup armed group established by the National Unity Government of lawmakers removed in the coup and pro-democracy activists.
‘Toothless statements’
There are growing calls for the international community to do more to address the deteriorating situation in Myanmar where the United Nations estimates at least 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting and millions are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Although the United States and its allies have imposed some sanctions, the response has largely been left to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping that Myanmar joined in 1997.
ASEAN agreed to the so-called Five Point Consensus to end the violence at an emergency meeting with Myanmar army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in April 2021, but the military regime has ignored the agreement and the bloc has done little to make it comply.
“The crisis in Myanmar is escalating rapidly and the Myanmar people urgently need support and protection from the UN Security Council,” Marzuki Darusman, a member of the Special Advisory Council on Myanmar (SAC-M) and former chair of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said in a statement on Wednesday following a closed-door session of the council.
Before the meeting, nine members of the 15-member council issued a statement calling on the military to end its attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure and free all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.
“It is simply not good enough for the Security Council to issue toothless statements and defer to an even more toothless ASEAN. The junta must face justice for its deplorable acts,” Darusman added.
Attacks on religious buildings are war crimes under international law [Courtesy of Amnesty International]
Fellow SAC-M member Chris Sedoti said the Security Council should have referred Myanmar to the ICC long ago.
“If it can’t, or won’t, then others must act to finally bring the perpetrators of grave international crimes in Myanmar to justice through the ICC or a special tribunal,” said Sedoti, who was also part of the fact-finding mission.
In 2018, the mission called for the investigation and prosecution of Min Aung Hlaing and his top military leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over its treatment of several ethnic and religious minorities in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states, including the mostly Muslim Rohingya.
The SAC-M was set up after the coup by a group of international independent experts to support the people of Myanmar in their fight for justice and accountability.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have called for a “Myanmar-owned and led solution” to the crisis in Myanmar that began when the military seized power in a coup three years ago, and has left thousands dead.
The call from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) followed a meeting on Monday of the 10-member grouping’s foreign ministers in Laos, which was attended by an official from Myanmar for the first time in two years.
The ministers also gave their backing to efforts by Alounkeo Kittikhoun, Laos’s special envoy on the crisis, in “reaching out to parties concerned”.
Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the generals removed the elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, and seized power, responding with brutal force to mass protests against its rule and sparking an armed uprising.
More than 4,400 civilians have been killed since and the military is holding nearly 20,000 people in detention, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.
ASEAN, which Myanmar joined in 1997, has been leading international diplomatic efforts on Myanmar but has made little progress since unveiling the so-called five-point consensus to end the crisis at a summit attended by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing shortly after the power grab.
The generals have ignored the plan and have been banned from attending ASEAN’s summits and ministerial meetings.
Laos, a one-party communist state on Myanmar’s northeastern border, is chairing ASEAN this year.
Kittikhoun travelled to Myanmar earlier this month where he met Min Aung Hlaing and the two discussed “efforts of the government to ensure peace and stability”, according to Myanmar’s state media. Neither ASEAN nor Laos have commented on the trip and it is unclear whether he met any anti-coup groups.
The conflict has deepened since an alliance of anti-coup forces and ethnic armed groups began a major offensive towards the end of last year in northern Shan State and western Rakhine.
The alliance claims to have overrun dozens of military outposts and taken control of key towns.
More than 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes over three years of fighting.
The military government has shown no willingness to open talks with its opponents and describes them as “terrorists”. It has also accused ASEAN of interfering in its internal affairs.
Laos stresses engagement
The ASEAN statement did not elaborate on whether the “Myanmar-owned and led solution” would involve discussions with the National Unity Government, the administration established by elected politicians who were removed in the coup as well as supporters of democracy in the wake of the power grab.
The military sent Marlar Than Htike, the ASEAN’s permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry, to the meeting in Laos, accepting for the first time ASEAN’s invitation for it to send a “non-political” representative to meetings.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith welcomed Myanmar’s attendance.
“This time we feel a little bit optimistic that the engagement may work, although we have to admit that the issues that are happening in Myanmar will not resolve overnight,” he said.
“We are sure that the more we engage Myanmar, the more understanding … about the real situation that is happening in Myanmar.”
The crisis has caused friction within ASEAN with some members pushing for a firmer line with the military and engagement with the NUG.
A spokesman from Indonesia, which chaired the grouping last year, insisted Monday’s attendance was not a sign that policy had changed.
“It is true that a Myanmar representative was present at the ASEAN FM meeting in Luang Prabang. The attendance was not by a minister-level or political representative. So, it is still in line with the 2022 agreement of the ASEAN leaders,” Lalu Muhamad Iqbal told the AFP news agency.
Laos’s Foreign Minister Kommasith told reporters that Thailand would provide more humanitarian assistance to Myanmar.
“We think humanitarian assistance is the priority for the immediate period of time when implementing the five-point consensus,” he said, referring to the April 2021 consensus.
The plan calls for the immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.
Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos have a combined population of nearly 650 million people and a total gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $3 trillion.
Laos is the group’s poorest nation and one of its smallest.
It has close ties to China with which it also shares a border.
Lying along the Kaladar River in Chin State, Paletwa is a strategically important city on a major trade route.
The Arakan Army (AA), an armed ethnic group fighting as part of an alliance against the Myanmar military, has claimed control of a key western town near the border with India and Bangladesh.
The AA, which was in an uneasy truce with the military until late October, said it took full control of Paletwa in Chin State on Sunday afternoon, having overrun multiple military outposts.
“There is not a single military council camp left in the entire Palewa area,” it said in a statement on its media page, which was accompanied by photos showing AA soldiers posing with their weapons outside key administrative buildings adorned with the group’s flag as well as weapons, ammunition and military equipment it had seized.
“The entire Palewa region has been successfully controlled by [the] Rakhine Army,” the statement added.
There was no comment from the military on the situation in Paletwa, or any reports in state-run media.
The capture of Paletwa is another setback to the generals who are facing the biggest challenge since they seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February 2021.
#AA 🎉declares #PaletwaVictory! Seizing the last ‘Hnamadar’ & ‘Khan Kha Taung,’ Paletwa is #SAC_free. “Mee Wa” seized after nearly 2 years of attacks. Today, Paletwa is AA-controlled. Salute Arakkha Soldiers for bravery, obedience and seamless cooperation. #3BHA#Operation1027pic.twitter.com/IaCnenjHUa
The AA claims to have about 30,000 troops and is part of the so-called Three Brotherhood Alliance with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’Ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) that launched a major offensive against the military at the end of October.
Known as Operation 1027, the offensive has wrested control of key towns and military outposts near the border with China in the north and given renewed momentum to the anti-coup movement.
Dr Sasa, the minister of international cooperation in the National Unity Government set up by politicians removed in the coup, welcomed the AA capture of Paletwa.
“This is a significant success for the Nationwide Revolution, the Spring Revolution of Myanmar, the fight to free to entire population of Myanmar from the genocidal military dictatorship and to restore Myanmar to the path of an inclusive federal democratic Union for ALL,” he wrote on X.
42nd town to fall
The AA’s advance comes days after China announced it had brokered a ceasefire between the armed groups and the military in northern Shan State. A similar agreement in December quickly collapsed.
The AA has been fighting the military in Rakhine, where a brutal military crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017 is now the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, in an attempt to secure autonomy for its ethnic population.
Just before Myanmar’s national election in November 2020, the AA agreed to a truce with the military but when the generals seized power the AA’s political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), took the opportunity to extend and entrench its power in Rakhine and fighting resumed amid military concern at the AA’s growing power.
Chin State lies north of Rakhine and Paletwa is situated along the Kaladan River about 20km (12 miles) from the border with Bangladesh.
Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Cyber, Tech and Security programme, who has been mapping the advance of anti-coup forces, said the town was the 42nd nationwide to be captured from the military with 16 still being contested.
In addition, 25 battalion headquarters have been captured since the offensive started three months ago, “clearly marking the decisive shift towards offensive warfare by the resistance”, Ruser wrote on X.
The military coup triggered mass rallies demanding the restoration of civilian rule but when the military responded with brutal force, many protesters took up arms, joining forces with ethnic armed groups on the country’s borders.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar advocacy group that has been tracking the crisis, says at least 4,363 civilians and pro-democracy activists have been killed by the military in the escalating violence, and nearly 20,000 people have been jailed by the regime.
Both sides agree to cease fighting and not harm residents along Myanmar’s northern border with China.
Myanmar’s military government and an alliance of ethnic armed groups have agreed to an immediate ceasefire following peace talks brokered by China.
“China hopes the relevant parties in Myanmar can conscientiously implement the agreement, exercise maximum restraint toward each other and solve the issues through dialogue and consultations,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Friday.
Both sides held talks on Wednesday and Thursday in Kunming, a Chinese provincial capital about 400km (250 miles) from the border with Myanmar, Mao said, adding that they also pledged not to harm residents at the Chinese border.
Myanmar’s military, which overthrew an elected government almost three years ago, has been battling an alliance of ethnic minority armies fighting to end its control of their regions since late October, with intense violence along the northern border with China.
The military confirmed it had agreed to a “temporary ceasefire”.
“We have plans to further discuss and strengthen the ceasefire agreement. We will engage in further discussions between Myanmar and China to reopen the border gates,” spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told reporters.
A leader of one of the rebel groups, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), also said that a truce had been reached, adding that the talks involved an envoy from China.
The clashes in northern Shan state posed the biggest battlefield challenge to the military since the coup and caused concern in China about the prospect of border trade disruptions and a refugee influx.
In talks facilitated by Chinese envoy Deng Xi Jin, the Three Brotherhood Alliance – which launched the Operation 1027 offensive against the military – agreed to “cease fire without advancing further,” the TNLA leader, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks, told the Reuters news agency.
“From the (alliance) side, the agreement is to refrain from offensive attacks on enemy camps or towns. From the military side, the agreement is not to engage in attacks through air strikes, bombardment, or heavy weapons.”
The two other groups in the alliance are the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Arakan Army (AA).
Beijing had also said last month the parties had agreed on a temporary truce and to maintain dialogue.
However fighting continued in northern Shan state and other regions in the country, with the rebels taking control of a key commercial town, Laukkai, on the Chinese border last week.
The United Nations says it fears thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting with some fleeing across the border into China.
Myanmar has been plunged into crisis after the military removed the government of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. Within months, the military’s lethal crackdown on nonviolent protests had sparked an armed uprising that has since grown to an unprecedented scale.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which has been monitoring the crackdown, more than 25,730 people have been arrested for opposing the coup, and almost 20,000 are still in detention.
Annual amnesty marking Independence Day takes place during crisis in the north that poses threat to military rulers.
Myanmar’s military government has pardoned more than 9,000 prisoners, including 114 foreign nationals, to mark the country’s Independence Day.
Friends and families of prisoners gathered outside the high-security Insein Prison in the commercial capital Yangon as the releases were set to start on Thursday and expected to take place over several days.
The identities of those slated for release were not yet known, and there was no indication that any political prisoners would be freed.
Thursday’s announced amnesty, part of an annual release, comes as the government faces a crisis in the country’s north, where ethnic armed groups have captured military and border posts, threatening to block trade with China.
Against this roiling backdrop, the Independence Day celebrations were devoid of the usual pomp and circumstance, and military chief Min Aung Hlaing was notably absent from the proceedings. In a statement, his administration said 9,652 prisoners would be freed.
The military came to power in a coup in February 2001 after ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, brutally suppressing protests and cracking down on all forms of dissent.
Suu Kyi, 78, is currently in prison, sentenced to 33 years on an array of politically motivated charges from corruption to flouting COVID-19 restrictions. Her party was dissolved last year after failing to comply with tough new party registration laws.
Since the power grab, military leaders have been accused of murdering dozens of prisoners and covering up their deaths as escape attempts. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group, more than 25,730 people were arrested for opposing the coup, and almost 20,000 are still in detention.
The AAPP reports that at least 4,277 civilians, including pro-democracy activists, have been killed by security forces. In 2022, the generals drew international condemnation after executing four pro-democracy leaders and activists in the country’s first use of the death penalty in decades.
In a joint operation, the Assam Rifles, the Central Police Reserve Force (CRPF) and the Ambassa police seized marijuana worth Rs 70 lakh from the Ambassa area in Tripura’s Dhalai district, according to an official statement from the Assam Rifles on Sunday. The seized marijuana weighed 160 kilogrammes, it added.
Marijuana is a kind of drug extracted from the cannabis plant. “Based on credible information, a joint operation was launched by the Assam Rifles Battalion in Radhanagar, the CRPF and Ambassa PS. The team seized 160 kg of marijuana worth Rs 70 lakh and one heavy vehicle, said the official statement.
“Seized contents were handed over to Ambassa PS, Dhalai District, Tripura, on December 17, 2023 for further investigation and legal proceedings,” it added. Earlier this month, the Assam Rifles and the Excise and Narcotics Department recovered marijuana worth Rs. 10.73 lakh in the general area of Zote in Assam’s Champhai district and arrested two Myanmar nationals.
The Marijuana was being brought from Darkhai, Myanmar to the Indian side. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In recent months, Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region has been largely free from the conflict and violence that has engulfed much of the country since the military seized power in February 2021.
The delta, hemmed in by the Bay of Bengal, is isolated from other parts of Myanmar where anti-coup forces have expanded, and is without a land border with a neighbouring country, making it more challenging to secure supplies from overseas.
Inside a hangar, a crowd is pressed around a ring in which arms flail, kicks fly, knees crush into ribs, and, occasionally, a head is violently thrust into an opponent’s face. This is Lethwei.
Myanmar’s brutal national sport is dubbed the “art of nine limbs” for each body part that can be employed in the attack: fists, feet, elbows, knees and, uniquely, heads.
Unlike other martial arts in the region, Lethwei is bare-knuckle, with only thin gauze wrapped around the fighters’ fists to protect their hands.
The country’s beleaguered energy network cannot provide power from the grid, so a generator hums throughout the day.
It powers some strip lights hanging above the ring and a sound system, which strains beneath the distorted cries from the ring announcer as each blow lands.
Power Punch, a team of fighters from Yangon, have made the two-and-a-half-hour journey to this small town to take part in the competition.
Their bouts are an opportunity to fight in front of a large audience, build their and their gym’s reputation in the ring, and earn some prize money.
The team comes away with a win, two draws and a loss. The earnings are not substantial, and some of them have just a couple of weeks for their wounds to heal before their next fight in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw.
Sayar Hein, a former fighter and now owner and coach at Power Punch, the experience of a competitive bout is critical for the young fighters, even if they do not win.
“We always speak to the fighters after the fights to determine if they performed well and to correct any mistakes,” he said.
A week ago, one of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed alliances launched a coordinated attack on a dozen military outposts in northern Shan State, along the country’s eastern border with China.
Code-named Operation 1027, the plan is to assert and defend territory against Myanmar military incursions, eradicate “oppressive military dictatorship”, and combat online fraud along the border, according to a statement from its organisers, the Three Brotherhood Alliance.
Made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’Ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA), the alliance is part of a coalition of seven ethnic armed organisations which maintain close ties with China and have bases or territories near the country’s border.
A particular target of the operation is the cyber-scamming industry that has boomed in autonomous militarised zones on Myanmar’s eastern border since the February 2021 military coup, generating billions of dollars for Chinese gangs working in collaboration with the Myanmar military, its proxies and other armed groups.
A United Nations report published in August found that an estimated 120,000 people had been trafficked into the industry in Myanmar, where they are forced to scam people around the world and are subject to abuses including torture, sexual violence and other forms of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.
The industry has ensnared Chinese nationals as victims of both trafficking and scamming, and over the past year, the Chinese government has exerted increasing pressure on the Myanmar military to crack down. In recent months, China also launched a series of cross-border operations resulting in the arrest and repatriation of more than 4,500 people, according to a report published last month by the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, an independent think tank.
While Operation 1027 offers the potential to help advance China’s objectives in relation to the cyber-scamming industry, analysts say it could also give new energy to Myanmar’s anti-coup movement, also known as the Spring Revolution, which aims to remove the military regime and establish a federal democratic union.
Members of the MNDAA walking through Chin Shwe Haw on the border with China after capturing it from the Myanmar military [Source: MNDAA]
The offensive marks the full-fledged entry of the Three Brotherhood Alliance into the war, and public expectations are rising that the operation might ignite enough momentum to defeat the military once and for all.
“Operation 1027 is a big moment for the Spring Revolution, and makes it clear for the Myanmar people and those who stand on the side of truth that our revolution will win,” said Tayzar San, a prominent activist who led the country’s first demonstration against the coup.
“The fact that the Three Brotherhood Alliance is vigorously participating in the fight against the junta has greatly affected the balance of power. The strength of the revolution is rising.”
According to a statement released on Tuesday, the alliance has so far seized more than 80 military bases and taken over the border post of Chin Shwe Haw, while more than 100 military soldiers have surrendered to resistance forces. Footage posted by alliance members on social media indicates that they have also seized large caches of military weapons and ammunition.
‘Beginning of the end game’
The recent surge in fighting comes after roughly 1,000 days of violence and upheaval since Senior General Min Aung Hlaing removed the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Within months, the military’s lethal crackdowns on nonviolent protests had sparked an armed uprising that has since grown to an unprecedented scale.
Several longstanding ethnic armed organisations fighting for autonomy along the country’s borders have openly armed, trained and fought alongside civilian-led forces established to drive the military from power, enduring retaliatory attacks by the military.
But until now, the Three Brotherhood Alliance had maintained a relative distance from the crisis. Instead, its members had quietly supported other groups fighting against the military, while also focusing on their own political and territorial objectives according to Victor, an independent humanitarian adviser from Myanmar with more than 10 years of experience working with ethnic armed organisations.
He said it was only a matter of time before the groups openly entered the war. “The Spring Revolution is an opportunity to eliminate the junta,” said Victor, who asked to use a pseudonym for security reasons. “This is the beginning of the end game.”
The alliance says it has seized more than 80 military bases since the offensive began a week ago [Kokang Information Network via AFP]
Initial reports indicate an escalating humanitarian crisis since the operation’s launch. The United Nations humanitarian office reported on Thursday that at least nine civilians had been killed and 23,000 internally displaced by armed clashes in northern Shan State over the past week.
Despite the needs, however, humanitarian access remains “extremely restricted”, according to the UN report. It said that domestic flights into the town of Lashio had been suspended and major roads blocked and that mobile communication and data services were “markedly restricted”.
People living in northern Shan described a rapidly deteriorating situation to Al Jazeera. They are using pseudonyms for security reasons.
In the city of Lashio, Ah San said on Friday that she could hear explosions but knew little about what was happening. “It’s not easy to get accurate information because I can’t leave my house. I can only use the phone, and the connection is often interrupted or cut,” she said. “I can’t do much, so I’m just staying here with worry and uncertainty.”
In the town of Kutkai, Awng Awng said on Saturday that he had lost electricity and that the fighting had blocked road access. “It seems like everyone in the town is stuck,” he said. “ People in the town aren’t safe to flee outside of the town, and those outside of the town can’t flee into the town either. It feels like the whole town has become an IDP [internally displaced people] camp.”
La Zing, who lives in the border town of Mong Ko, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that about 100 households from nearby villages had already fled, and that the situation in the town was increasingly precarious. “If the fighting continues, it will only get harder for us to live here,” he said. “Locals will face food shortages and suffer a lot.”
Myu, from the border village of Hpawng Hseng, said on Sunday that he had fled the village along with about 100 other households and that they were camping out near the border. “This morning, when I went to check on my home, I could see the remnants of exploded weapons,” he said. “Some houses and our church have already been destroyed.”
Although people interviewed by Al Jazeera were not aware of anyone who had yet crossed the border due to a barbed-wire fence that China erected during the pandemic, one source said that they might attempt to break through if the situation became desperate enough. “We are holding round pliers to cut the border fence if an urgent case arises,” they said.
Faced with a rising crisis at its border, China’s public security minister Wang Xiaohong visited Myanmar this week, meeting the military’s home minister on Monday and coup leader Min Aung Hlaing the next day. According to the Myanmar military-run media, they discussed the situation in northern Shan, bilateral cooperation and plans to jointly take action against various criminal operations.
China maintains billions of dollars worth of infrastructure investments in Myanmar and has, since the coup, continued to engage diplomatically with the military while also serving as one of its biggest arms suppliers.
Chinese officials have also convened several meetings with a coalition of powerful ethnic armed organisations based in the country’s north, including Three Brotherhood Alliance members. A statement released by the coalition in March welcomed China’s “mediation to end internal conflicts in Myanmar”.
According to Jason Tower, Myanmar Country Director with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), China has shown a “growing willingness … to flex its muscles in influencing all of the actors involved in the revolution or the conflict in Myanmar” since the coup. “It’s important to look closely at how China is going to use that influence,” he added.
But even more than the conflict, he suggested that the cyber-scam crisis has become a dominant issue for China over the past year. “The Chinese are now very proactive on this issue,” he said. “The military junta hasn’t taken it seriously.”
Victor suggested that these dynamics offered a timely opening for the Three Brotherhood Alliance to launch its operation. “At the moment, China is really focusing on eliminating all of the online gambling and trafficking,” he said. “When the Three Brotherhood Alliance entered into the war, they used that [as an entry] point.”
But at its core, he said that the operation targets the beliefs of the people, who “are very hungry, since the Spring Revolution started, for coordinated military attacks on the junta”.
‘We are all revolutionaries’
Within hours of the operation’s launch, other resistance groups had committed their forces to the campaign.
“We are proud to participate in Operation 1027 along with the Three Brotherhood Alliance,” Ko Lin Lin, the nom de guerre of a spokesperson for the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, told Al Jazeera. Established in April 2021, the BPLA has since developed a close relationship with the Three Brotherhood Alliance and is now fighting alongside its forces.
Members of the BPLA took part in sniper training with the Arakan Army earlier this year [BPLA]
Also joining the operation are forces under the command of the National Unity Government, a civilian administration made up of activists and politicians who oppose the coup. Last Friday, its defence ministry released a statement calling on all resistance actors and the entire Myanmar public to “fully engage in the elimination of military dictatorship and wholeheartedly commit to the establishment of a Federal Democratic Union,” while “maintain[ing] their unity throughout this journey”.
Victor said that the enthusiasm of Myanmar’s diverse resistance groups had served to “motivate the people who are fighting on the ground”, as well as inspire donations from the public. “It is a kind of rebirth of the spirit of the Spring Revolution,” he said.
Key will be how some of Shan State’s most powerful ethnic armed groups respond to the operation.
Since long before the coup, the state was racked by infighting between ethnic armed groups over competing territorial claims, economic interests and ethno-nationalist sentiments, according to Sai Wansai, a political analyst from Shan State. He told Al Jazeera that if the groups were able to come together and find common ground, they could play a pivotal role in the outcome.
The most powerful of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations is the United Wa State Army, which controls an autonomous territory on Myanmar’s eastern border and has so far taken a public stance of noninterference regarding the coup.
Since the launch of Operation 1027, it has reaffirmed this position but has also offered humanitarian assistance and refuge to hundreds of people displaced by the fighting. On Wednesday, it released a statement calling on parties to resolve their differences through political negotiation, while adding that it would deal “a devastating blow” in response to any incursions into its airspace or territory.
USIP’s Tower said that this and other developments indicate a potentially “unprecedented” level of coordination between Myanmar’s armed groups. “This has brought a new level of energy to resistance forces,” he said.
So far, the operation has also seen an outpouring of support from the Myanmar public.
“The military junta is already isolated and disintegrating, but Operation 1027 showed that the revolutionary groups have become more organised and united,” said activist Tayzar San. He added that the revolution is “not just on the battlefield”, but that the public should actively participate in any way they could, including through civil disobedience, protests, international advocacy and financial support.
“We, the Myanmar people, have to realise that we are all revolutionaries and comrades,” he said.
Myanmar’s military is facing a sustained assault from the new alliance of ethnic armed groups and anti-coup fighters in the country’s north [AFP]
For civilians in the midst of the fighting, a desire to see the military fall is also tinged with the fear of what might lie ahead. The generals have had no qualms about unleashing their full firepower on civilians, in addition to their armed opponents.
“My greatest concern is that the military will retaliate by dropping bombs everywhere,” said Myu, in Hpawng Hseng. “Even if our people win at this point, it might not be safe for us to return home without lasting peace.”
In Kutkai, Awng Awng also expressed concern about the risks to civilians, but nonetheless pledged his support for the operation. “Although we, civilians, are facing many hardships, we can endure all of it … because this is a part of our revolution,” he said. “We understand that this is for our cause.”
Jauman Naw and Hpan Ja Brang contributed to this report.
In this photo taken on Oct. 10, 2023, a man looks at a forest fire as it approaches houses in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra in Indonesia.
Al Zulkifli | AFP | Getty Images
Damage from the global climate crisis has amounted to $391 million per day over the past two decades, a report showed.
Wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events attributable to climate change have incurred costs averaging over a hundred billion per year from 2000 to 2019, a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications showed.
“We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%) of this is due to human loss of life,” scientists wrote in the report. The remainder stems from the destruction of property and other assets.
The years with the highest amount of losses were 2008, followed by 2003 and then 2010 — all of which were driven by high mortality events, the research said.
The estimates of the losses were calculated by combining the economic data of these losses, along with how much global heating has exacerbated weather events.
The research, however, notes that there is an underestimation of the true costs of climate change due to the difficulty of measuring indirect losses. Examples cited include productivity losses arising from a heatwave, mental health impacts borne by people, or the loss of access to education and jobs if a place of employment is damaged.
Locals watch fire approach the village of Pournari, in the area of Magoula, some 25km southwest of the Greek capital Athens on July 18, 2023.
Spyros Bakalis | AFP | Getty Images
Lack of data from lower-income countries could also add to the underestimation of true costs, the study noted.
“While the limitations of this approach are significant, this research demonstrates how a more global approximation of the human induced extreme weather event economic costs could be constructed,” the researchers noted.
They called for an increase in adaptation policies to minimize these climate-change attributed costs, such as the building of flood protection or improving early warning signal systems heralding extreme weather events.
Other organizations have also tried to quantify losses incurred by climate disasters.
The World Meteorological Organization estimated that between 1970 and 2021, there were nearly 12,000 reported climate disasters that resulted in 2 million deaths and economic losses amounting to $4.3 trillion, largely from developing countries.
“The planet is far off track from meeting its climate goals,” the WMO said in a September report, adding that rising global temperatures have been accompanied by more extreme weather.
Search and recovery team members check charred buildings and cars in the aftermath of the Maui wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, on August 18, 2023.
Yuki Iwamura | Afp | Getty Images
Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global heating to well below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But that seems to be a slipping target.
“The chance of the annual mean global near-surface temperature temporarily exceeding 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years is 66% and is increasing with time,” WMO forecasts.
Earlier this month, activists urged Indonesian authorities to investigate potential sales by state-owned arms makers to Myanmar via an alleged shell company owned by the son of a junta minister.
The allegation is far from the first or only such case that has shed light on a covert regional trade network funneling crucial resources to the Myanmar junta, which seized power in 2021 and plunged the country into violent civil unrest.
The coup two years ago drew condemnation from countries across the world, and the United Nations General Assembly passed a non-binding arms embargo prohibiting the supply of weapons to a junta-ruled Myanmar in 2021.
Since then, however, the global community as a whole has been criticized by observers for the little international attention paid to the ongoing crisis in Myanmar. Myanmar’s neighbors in Southeast Asia, which some argue hold the most power to influence the junta through political and economic pressure, have proven particularly disappointing.
Today, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) remain among Myanmar’s top trading partners and arms suppliers—just behind China and Russia, fellow pariahs that have long made clear their endorsement of the junta and have strengthened ties with Myanmar since the coup.
But while ASEAN countries have officially refused to recognize the legitimacy of the junta and condemned military-led violence in Myanmar, their own governments and companies based in the region have struggled to stop quietly supporting the junta—whether through lucrative business dealings or facilitating the flow of arms—even as the human costs of the civil unrest continue to mount.
Logistical challenges
Only five of the nine ASEAN states (excluding Myanmar) supported the U.N. arms embargo in 2021. But abiding by it, even for countries with presumably the best enforcement and monitoring systems, has proven challenging.
In May, over 130 Singapore-based companies were identified in a U.N. report as being involved in the flow of arms and related supplies to Myanmar’s military, allegedly shipping $254 million of supplies between February 2021 and December 2022—an amount not far behind the flow from Russia and China.
“Arms dealers operating out of Singapore are critical to the continued operation of the Myanmar military’s deadly weapons factories,” Thomas Andrews, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said when the report was published. He added that the Myanmar junta and its arms dealers “have figured out how to game the system,” setting up shell companies to circumvent sanctions.
In response to the U.N. report, Singaporean authorities argued that many of the supplies listed were “dual-use” items—including spare parts, computers, medical equipment, and construction material—that can be used in both military and civilian settings. While Singaporean authorities have banned the trade of dual-use items that could potentially be used by the Myanmar military, its foreign minister said that they would need more details on the transactions referenced in the U.N. report to ascertain their connection to weapons production in Myanmar.
But while the wealthy city-state is taking the heat, experts caution that it may represent just the tip of the iceberg of ASEAN’s dealings with the Myanmar junta. “We know Singapore is doing this kind of thing because Singapore … is very transparent. We got the data,” Amara Thiha, a doctoral researcher specializing in Myanmar politics at Peace Research Institute Oslo, tells TIME. “But there may be other countries doing it but we don’t have the data and they don’t have the compliance.”
“Putting a sanction is not an issue,” he adds. Enforcement and monitoring of such a mechanism is the “very expensive” part.
The technical difficulty in enforcing an arms embargo with a regional neighbor may be partly why all nine ASEAN states (besides Myanmar) originally sought to water down the U.N. General Assembly resolution on Myanmar’s arms trade in May 2021—especially the part calling for “an immediate suspension of the direct and indirect supply, sale or transfer of all weapons and munitions” to Myanmar. ASEAN’s request was ultimately not heeded, and the arms embargo was included in the resolution weeks later. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam ended up voting yes to the resolution, while Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand abstained).
“It seems to me that ASEAN does not really feel certain that they can fully enforce [the embargo],” says Pinitbhand Paribatra, an associate professor of political science at Thailand’s Thammasat University.
Political will
The other major reason for ASEAN’s—officially unexplained—attempt to dilute the U.N. resolution has more to do with political considerations, experts say. Torn among a diversity of economic and political interests, as well as the bloc’s longstanding principles of non-interference and non-binding agreements, ASEAN has defaulted to a notoriously soft stance on the Myanmar crisis.
“ASEAN likely felt that if it were to be the main player dealing with the coup leaders, its support for an arms embargo would’ve killed any goodwill it might’ve had with the coup leaders,” Tan See Seng, a research advisor at Singapore-based think tank S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, tells TIME.
Meanwhile, Amara points to the intertwining economic interests linking ASEAN states to Myanmar that would have been impacted by the arms embargo. “A lot of ASEAN countries are trading with Myanmar, both state and non-state actors,” he says, adding that for these ASEAN states, restrictions that may impact trade with Myanmar are “not aligned with their interests.”
Thailand, whose military and business elites have long maintained close personal ties with their Burmese counterparts, has continued collaborating publicly with Myanmar on military operations and energy projects. Meanwhile, MyTel, a mobile carrier jointly launched by the Vietnamese and Myanmar militaries in 2017, remains one of Myanmar’s biggest telecommunications providers.
The result of these uneven economic and political connections with Myanmar have led to a divided ASEAN.
On one hand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines have been unequivocal in their condemnation of the unrest in Myanmar, urging stronger measures against the junta. But on the other hand, Thailand and Indonesia, the current chair of ASEAN, have forged on with “quiet diplomacy” with Myanmar—to limited success. In June, Thailand, under its then-caretaker government led by former military leader Prayuth Chan-ocha, set up informal regional peace talks with the Myanmar junta—only to be snubbed by the more critical ASEAN states.
Amid the cacophony of diplomatic strategies within the bloc, what concerted responses ASEAN has come up with have so far been inevitably weak: the Five-Point Consensus, cobbled together months after the coup, called for, among other things, an end to violence, dialogue among stakeholders, and humanitarian aid to Myanmar. But it has been largely ignored by the junta, even after it initially agreed to the terms.
Lina Alexandra, who heads the international relations department at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, tells TIME that ASEAN needs to move beyond its traditional consensus-based decision-making process.
“For anything to move in ASEAN, it has to go through consensus by all members. In this Myanmar context, it does not make sense,” she says, since the bloc is now dealing with the very junta that they are trying to curb.
As violence continues unabated in Myanmar, with the junta repeatedly accused of targeting civilians, ASEAN released a statement in September that “strongly condemned the continued acts of violence in Myanmar.” It was summarily dismissed by the junta as “one-sided.”
Such toothless condemnations by ASEAN have only added to the chagrin of activists concerned about the persisting humanitarian crisis in Myanmar.
“ASEAN lacks leadership at the very top,” Yadanar Maung, a spokesperson at Justice For Myanmar, tells TIME. “Their failed collective response to the region’s most pressing crisis allows ASEAN governments to continue business as usual with the illegitimate Myanmar military junta.”
JR Ching, chief financial officer at Yoma Strategic Holdings, discusses the conglomerate’s product portfolio and how its performance compares with that of other developers.
President Jose Ramos-Horta insists East Timor is on track to join the ASEAN bloc, which seeks to resolve the crisis in Myanmar.
National representatives from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and member-to-be East Timor are meeting in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, this week.
The four-day summit, which started on Tuesday, is also attended by United States Vice President Kamala Harris, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and other prominent politicians.
East Timor’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has said he may reconsider joining ASEAN if the bloc does not renew efforts to end the conflict in Myanmar following the military coup in 2021.
Thailand’s outgoing military-led government broke ranks with the bloc, which had collectively decided to suspend Myanmar’s generals from top meetings, and embraced the neighbouring country’s regime with support from China.
Last month, Myanmar’s coup leaders expelled East Timor’s top diplomat in Yangon after the Timorese joined a long list of countries in meeting with Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), set up by the now-removed elected lawmakers, most of whom are associated with jailed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Al Jazeera spoke with East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta on the developments, the future of his country in ASEAN and the situation in Myanmar.
Al Jazeera: In January this year, you said there were no obstacles to your country’s accession to ASEAN. What has changed since then?
Jose Ramos-Horta: There has been no change. We are on track to join ASEAN and working hard with our ASEAN and other partners to implement a roadmap. The preference for us is to join in 2025, which will give us two years to reach the milestones laid out in the roadmap adopted by ASEAN leaders.
Al Jazeera: We have been hearing about threats to pull back your ASEAN bid if the Myanmar crisis is not addressed adequately. Where are those threats coming from if you say things are on track?
Ramos-Horta: We cannot blame ASEAN’s failures in dissuading the military to go back to its barracks and to respect the democratic rights of the people of Myanmar, to explore democracy, to free prisoners and stop killing civilians, as we cannot blame the UN Security Council for the war in Ukraine and the inability of the UN to resolve the crisis there.
Our prime minister was expressing his frustration and ours, of ASEAN countries and the wider international community in regards to the failure of the military in Myanmar to live up to the pledges contained in the five-point consensus that the top model agreed with ASEAN leaders. The military in Myanmar seems not to realise the enormous harm they are doing to their own country, their own people and to the credibility of ASEAN.
Al Jazeera: So you’re saying that there are frustrations but you are not threatening to withdraw your ASEAN bid?
Ramos-Horta: Absolutely not. We are very grateful to ASEAN leaders. We want to join. This is in our national interest, goal and commitment. We will work with ASEAN partners to assist the bloc in addressing the problems of Myanmar, but from within ASEAN, not outside it.
Al Jazeera: You have said your involvement in the Myanmar issue has been out of personal interest, and you have a friendly relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains in detention. After the attacks on the Rohingya, she faced heavy criticism for not speaking out. Has that changed the way other countries engage with the crisis in Myanmar? Perhaps the West and others have taken a step back?
Ramos-Horta: It seems to me that those who criticise and demonise Aung San Suu Kyi did not understand that she had zero power over the military. She was neither the president nor the prime minister. She was a foreign affairs minister with zero power or control over the military. Instead of targeting the military for their crimes against the Rohingya, they were singling her out.
That was my criticism of those who, instead of focusing on the military which was responsible for launching the attacks on the Rohingya, were demonising Aung San Suu Kyi. I could not agree with that and I still don’t agree with that.
Al Jazeera: You’ve said ASEAN is facing challenges in getting the Myanmar military to implement the deal. There are issues due to the US-China rivalry and the war in Ukraine. Are you concerned that with all of these divisions and other structural issues, ASEAN is perhaps becoming less relevant?
Ramos-Horta: No, ASEAN will remain vital. It is an energetic area – 700 million people and $4 trillion economy and a very strategic space and waterways. The rivalry, which was always there, will continue. Going back to the Vietnam War and insurgencies of the 1960s, ASEAN leaders were able to navigate these storms and build ASEAN and bring prosperity and stability to the region. I am confident that they will eventually be able to stabilise the situation in Myanmar. The military in Myanmar is not winning this war. They control only 30 percent of the country. Twenty years ago, the fight was between the national armies. Today, it is between the people and the military, and the military will not win this war. I would only hope that Russia and North Korea stop supplying weapons to Myanmar.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Mohammad Jalil still has nightmares recounting the harrowing journey he took last October on a rickety boat in the Bay of Bengal.
Jalil, a 26-year-old Rohingya refugee from Bangladesh’s Kutupalong camp, paid around $1,500 to an agent who promised him a safe journey to Malaysia.
A month later, he found himself on board an overcrowded fishing trawler drifting aimlessly on a fierce sea for about a week.
“We had no food and the children were crying in hunger. The people who were in charge of the trawler beat us mercilessly. On the ninth or 10th day – I can’t remember – the boat sank,” Jalil told Al Jazeera.
He, along with a few others, swam for hours before being rescued by the Bangladeshi coastguard.
“Some women and children couldn’t make it and drowned,” he said. “All my money is gone. I have lost everything.”
Mohammad Jalil made an unsuccessful bid to flee to Malaysia last year [Faisal Mahmud/Al Jazeera]
Jalil, however, is lucky to be alive.
The United Nations says 2022 was one of the deadliest years for the Rohingya at sea after nearly 400 refugees perished while making treacherous boat trips from Myanmar and Bangladesh across the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
Jalil’s close shave with death and his desperation to flee Bangladesh underscores the plight of nearly a million Rohingya, most of whom fled their native Myanmar on August 25, 2017 after its military launched what the UN described as a campaign with “genocidal intent” against the mostly-Muslim minority.
As the Myanmar military began to kill Rohingya men, rape women and burn their villages that day, more than 750,000 of them fled to neighbouring Bangladesh where they were sheltered in the southern Cox’s Bazar district – now the world’s largest refugee camp.
Since then, the refugees observe August 25 as “Genocide Day” to demand justice and seek safe and voluntary repatriation to their homes in Myanmar, which is facing a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
‘Caged bird’
The risky sea ventures to Malaysia and other Southeast Asian nations are just one of many reminders that the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh lead a precarious existence, losing hope of safely returning to their now military-ruled homeland and being shunned by the rest of the world.
Jalil thought he could start a new life in Bangladesh when he arrived in 2017. But in the last six years, he says he has found himself in a tight corner with no work and no way of moving outside the barbed wires of the refugee camps.
“I felt like a caged bird. I learnt that those who had made it to Malaysia were earning well. That’s why I risked all my savings. Now I am back to square one,” he told Al Jazeera.
Journalist Kaamil Ahmed interviewed hundreds of such refugees for his book, I Feel No Peace, and found that they have almost lost hope of returning safely to Myanmar.
“They also believe they can’t live dignified lives in the refugee camps,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera. “These refugees are utterly stateless and marginalised wherever they are.”
In December 2021, Bangladesh shut down all the refugee-run schools in which Rohingya children were being taught the Myanmar curriculum up to Grade 10. Nur Kabir, who ran the largest of these schools, told Al Jazeera his students are now passing their days doing nothing.
“What will they become when they grow up? Why can’t our children deserve better?” the 28-year-old teacher asked.
Shamsud Douza, the Additional Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told Al Jazeera the refugee-run schools taught in Bangla language, which the Bangladesh government prohibits in order “to keep Rohingya from integrating and remaining permanently in the country”.
“We want their [Rohingya] safe and voluntary return to their homeland,” Douza said. But he also admitted that several repatriation attempts have failed and prospects of a safe repatriation in the near future are “very dim”.
Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya community leader, told Al Jazeera they are not living a “dignified life” in the camps. “We still long for our homelands but we fear the situation there is not at all suitable for our return.”
Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya community leader at the Bangladesh camps [Faisal Mahmud/Al Jazeera]
Meanwhile, the patience of the host community is thinning. A 2019 survey conducted by the UNDP revealed that two-thirds of the residents of Cox’s Bazar believe they are suffering due to the Rohingya influx.
“Four years later, things have gotten even worse,” Saikat Rafi, an NGO worker posted in Cox’s Bazar, told Al Jazeera.
Rafi, who works with both the refugees and the host community, said the latter has become more hostile as they feel the Rohingya are “getting foreign donations” and yet “stealing their jobs”.
Matlub Ali, a construction worker at Cox’s Bazar, alleged the refugees have cut barbed wires at nearly 150 places in the sprawling camps and sneak out to offer their labour at half the price. “We can’t get jobs because of them,” he told Al Jazeera.
Half a million children at risk: Charity
The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps rely almost entirely on food aid as they are not allowed to leave the camps or formally work. Since March this year, the World Food Programme assistance to a million refugees was cut by a third to just $8 per month due to a funding shortfall.
As a result, the health and well-being of more than half a million children are at risk due to recent drastic cuts in food assistance, Save the Children charity said in a statement on Thursday.
“Even before the first food ration cuts, 45 percent of Rohingya families were not eating a sufficient diet and malnutrition was widespread in the camps, with 40 percent of children experiencing stunted growth,” the charity said.
“The humanitarian response is at breaking point,” it said, adding that the children are “in danger of becoming a lost generation”.
“They cannot remain stateless and unprotected, living their lives in isolated limbo. The international community should demonstrate it has not turned its back on them – and to properly fund the humanitarian programmes in the camps,” it added.
The Bangladesh government, however, says hosting the refugees is putting a strain on its economy. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year said the cost of running the camps is more than $1.2bn annually and only 48 percent of the pledged $881m assistance from the UN was met.
Regina de la Portilla, the UNHCR spokesperson in Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera the reduction in funding will have “a direct impact on people already living with minimum services”.
‘Permanent fixture within Bangladeshi territory’
In a statement earlier this week, the Human Rights Watch said the UN and concerned governments should continue to underscore that conditions for the safe, sustainable and dignified return of Rohingya to Myanmar do not currently exist.
The rights group added that the UN Security Council’s “inaction and government aid cutbacks are leaving Rohingya in even more desperate straits”.
“Rohingya on both sides of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border are trapped in stateless purgatory, denied their most basic rights, awaiting justice and the chance to go home,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Moving ahead with repatriating Rohingya now would mean sending refugees back to the control of a ruthless and repressive junta, setting the stage for the next devastating exodus,” Bauchner said.
“Building conditions for the voluntary, safe, and dignified return of Rohingya will need a coordinated international response to establish rights-respecting civilian rule in Myanmar and achieve justice for past atrocities.”
Dr Delwar Hossain, director of East Asia Study Center at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera the world’s attention has already moved from the Rohingya refugees and they possibly have become a “permanent fixture within the Bangladeshi territory”.
Hossain said the resurgence of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – where most Rohingya lived before 2017 exodus – has opened a dangerous fissure in Southeast Asia that threatens to divide the two most important religious faiths in the region: Buddhism and Islam.
“Faiths that have lived peacefully in this region for millennia have never had such high tensions. If it persists, it could pose a greater threat to the social stability of the whole region,” he said.
I was born in 1986 in a village in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State marked by green farms and cows ploughing the fields.
It was before the military began imposing apartheid-like conditions on the state’s minority Rohingya population.
As a child, I recall my Rakhine peers bullying our Rohingya classmates, but I lacked the political awareness to understand why. And for the most part, the Rohingya and the Rakhine majority to which I belong could still live side by side.
I was raised by a single mother who struggled to support me with her wages as a farm labourer and who sent me to Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, to live with my uncle when I was 12 years old. At first, I felt lost among the cars, tall buildings and unfamiliar food, but I soon found my place when I joined a youth movement associated with the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy.
Widely popular at the time, the party was also outlawed by the military regime and, in 2001, when I was 15, I was arrested on charges of incitement. I served five years in the country’s notorious Insein Prison before I was released in a prisoner amnesty.
Fearing rearrest, I fled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I busied myself with work and studies. I also made friends from different countries, from whom I learned about the human rights violations that the Rohingya had faced under successive military regimes in Myanmar.
I also learned about some of the reasons the Rakhine and the Rohingya had grown apart, including unfounded military propaganda portraying the Rohingya as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh who threatened to overtake the country’s majority Buddhist population and establish a Muslim state.
In 2012, I returned to Myanmar to visit friends and relatives in the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe. The military had begun a transition toward semi-civilian rule, but while Western governments celebrated a country on the verge of positive change, my state was on the brink of a crisis.
In early June, weeks after I arrived, riots erupted across the state’s central and northern townships, where most of the Rohingya in Myanmar are concentrated. Rakhine and Rohingya mobs burned each other’s homes and religious buildings and attacked each other’s communities with rudimentary weapons, while smaller minorities were caught in the crossfire.
The riots quietened down a week later but resumed in October; by the time they ceased in November, thousands of buildings lay in ruins, and the death toll stood at more than 80. Both the Rakhine and the Rohingya lost their homes, belongings and loved ones, but the Rohingya also lost their freedom of movement, and in Sittwe, more than 100,000 were forced into camps and a ghetto where they remain to this day. A deep divide had taken hold, and the two communities were not even talking to each other.
I was shocked and distressed, as well as motivated to do something about it. So I decided to dedicate myself to promoting trust, understanding and cohesion in my society and established my own organisation in Sittwe less than a year later.
At the time, my goal seemed about as impossible as demolishing a mountain with the seed of a palm fruit, to use a Burmese saying. People avoided me in the local tea shops, and even my own friends stopped talking to me. My work was also dangerous. A prominent Rakhine politician sent me death threats and Rakhine nationalist groups threatened my teammates as well.
But giving up was never an option. Instead, we started at a basic level – building trust and understanding among ourselves and encouraging our communities to see diversity as a strength. We also brought together local youth through sports, music, art, storytelling and civic education, among other tools.
Just as we were making progress, however, another crisis hit in 2016 when the military began its “clearance operations” against the Rohingya in Rakhine’s northern townships. By the end of 2017, the military had killed more than 6,700 people and driven 720,000 to flee to Bangladesh. Even talking about social harmony and peace was risky. The military also cut off most travel to northern Rakhine, and we had to relocate some of our work.
My state again erupted in violence in 2019, this time between the Myanmar military and the autonomy-seeking Arakan Army, which draws most of its support from ethnic Rakhine. The military’s retaliatory attacks brought immense suffering on Rakhine people but also marked a turning point between Rakhine and Rohingya communities, as they began to come together over shared experiences of oppression.
Then the military seized power in a February 2021 coup. Ever since, civil society organisations, including my own have faced a dramatically tighter civic space in which to operate. Fearing arrest or worse, we have had to self-censor and avoid gathering in large groups.
At the same time, the military’s attacks against people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have sparked a countrywide awakening to Rohingyas’ plight and an unprecedented coming together in solidarity. Although Rakhine has been spared much of the post-coup turmoil, people have nonetheless suffered from the country’s economic crisis as well as around two months of renewed clashes between the military and Arakan Army.
We’re still a long way away from achieving a truly just, equitable and harmonious society in Rakhine State. Discriminatory policies against the Rohingya remain in place, including restrictions on their movement and access to services.
At the same time, I have seen increasing signs that diverse ethnic communities want to live side by side in peace. Informal trade has gradually resumed between the Rakhine and Rohingya communities, while Rakhines have increasingly hired Rohingyas for manual labour, and some Rohingyas have opened street stalls in Sittwe. Rohingyas are also now informally venturing to the popular Sittwe beach and reconnecting over food and juice with Rakhine friends they hadn’t seen in more than a decade.
Rohingyas working for humanitarian organisations in Sittwe’s camps can visit their offices in town to meet with colleagues, and Rohingya youth can come into town for initiatives offered by civil society organisations, including my own. Although Rohingyas still need military permission to visit public hospitals, they can now informally access private clinics, and in May of 2022, Rohingya students enrolled in Sittwe University for the first time since 2012.
This May, when Cyclone Mocha hit the Rakhine coast, it brought another test to the state’s diverse people.
The real death toll remains unknown due to the limited civic space and access to information in Myanmar, but available estimates indicate that more than 150 people died in the storm, mostly Rohingyas. Communities of all backgrounds also lost homes, farmland and livestock.
In the face of this disaster, even more signs emerged that the Rohingya and Rakhine communities are reestablishing the tattered threads of mutual reliance that had once made up the state’s social fabric.
Although more than two dozen United Nations agencies and international nongovernmental organisations have a presence in Rakhine, they have been unable to respond directly to the cyclone’s devastation because the military has denied humanitarian access to affected areas.
Instead, Rakhines and Rohingyas joined in clearing roads, while many Rakhines hired Rohingyas to help them repair their homes. Rakhine student groups and civil society organisations provided cyclone relief to all ethnic communities. At my own office, my Rakhine, Rohingya and other colleagues came together to clear the debris and fix the damage.
Now, as the longer-term efforts to address lost livelihoods and damaged infrastructure set in, all ethnic communities must proactively work hand in hand to support the most vulnerable and affected – both to strengthen the response and to encourage the fragile progress towards social cohesion. Meanwhile, the international organisations providing funding and technical support must be mindful of this delicate context.
By coming together in this way, I still believe we can demolish a mountain with the seeds of a palm fruit.
This article was written together with Emily Fishbein, a freelance journalist focusing on Myanmar.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Actor and singer Jane Birkin, who made France her home and charmed the country with her English grace, natural style and social activism, has died at age 76.
The London-born star and fashion icon was known for her musical and romantic relationship with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. Their songs notably included the steamy “Je t’aime moi non plus” (“I Love You, Me Neither”). Birkin’s ethereal, British-accented singing voice interlaced with his gruff baritone in the 1969 duet that helped make her famous and was forbidden in Italy after being denounced in the Vatican newspaper.
The style Birkin displayed in the 1960s and early 1970s — long hair with bangs, jeans paired with white tops, knit mini dresses and basket bags — still epitomizes the height of French chic for many women around the world.
Birkin was also synonymous with a Hermes bag that bore her name. Created by the Paris fashion house in 1984 in her honor, the Birkin bag became one of the world’s most exclusive luxury items, with a stratospheric price tag and years-long waiting list to buy it.
“When I went to America, I don’t know in what interview, they said, ‘You mean Birkin, like the bag?’ I said, ‘Well, now, the bag is going to sing!’ I thought, ‘Oh gosh, on my obituary, it will say, ‘Like the bag’ or something,’” Birkin said to senior culture and senior national correspondent for CBS News Anthony Mason.
“It’s so funny that, after all this, you might be known for a bag,” Mason said.
In her adopted France, Birkin was also celebrated for her political activism and campaigning for Amnesty International, Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, the fight against AIDS and other causes.
“You can always do something,” Birkin said in 2001, drumming up support for an Amnesty campaign against torture. “You can say, ‘I am not OK with that.’”
She joined five monks on a march through the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 to demand that Myanmar let foreign aid workers into the country to help cyclone victims.
In 2022, she joined other screen and music stars in France in chopping off locks of their hair in support of protesters in Iran. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Birkin’s daughter with Gainsbourg and also an actor in her own right, cut off a snippet of her mother’s hair for the “HairForFreedom” campaign as Iran was engulfed by anti-government protests.
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed Birkin as a “complete artist,” noting that her soft voice went hand-in-hand with her “ardent” activism.
“Jane Birkin was a French icon because she was the incarnation of freedom, sang the most beautiful words of our language,” he tweeted.
French media reported that Birkin was found dead at her Paris home. The French Culture Ministry tweeted that Birkin died Sunday. It hailed her as a “timeless Francophone icon.”
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak called Birkin “the most French British person” and “the emblem for a whole epoch who never went out of fashion.”
Outside Birkin’s home on Paris’ Left Bank, fans mourned her death.
“She was a poet, a singer, an artist,” said Marie-Jo Bonnet. “She gave the best of herself and that’s marvelous.”
Birkin’s early movie credits included “Blow-Up” in 1966, credited with helping introduce French audiences to her “Swinging Sixties” style and beauty.
Birkin and Gainsbourg met two years later. She remained his muse even after the couple separated in 1980.
She also had a daughter, Kate, with James Bond composer John Barry. Kate Barry died in 2013 at age 46. Birkin had her third daughter, singer and model Lou Doillon, with French director Jacques Doillon.
Birkin suffered from health issues in recent years that kept her from performing and her public appearances became sparse.
French broadcaster BFMTV said Birkin suffered a mild stroke in 2021, forcing her to cancel shows that year. She canceled her shows again in March due to a broken shoulder blade.
A return to performing was put off in May, with the singer saying she needed a bit more time and promising her fans she would see them again come the fall.
Despite her decades-long screen and music career, Birkin suspected that, for some people, the bag named after her might be her most famous legacy.
The fashion accessory was born of a fortuitous encounter on a London-bound flight in the 1980s with the then-head of Hermes, Jean-Louis Dumas. Birkin recounted in subsequent interviews that they got talking after she spilled some of her things on the cabin floor. She asked Dumas why Hermes didn’t make a bigger handbag and sketched out on an airplane vomit sack the sort of bag that she’d like.
Dumas then had an example made for her and, flattered, she said yes when Hermes asked whether it could commercialize the bag in her name.
