About 5,000 internally displaced people have returned to the western Myanmar border town of Maungdaw after the insurgent group that captured it from the military finished securing the town, some of those going back told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.
The return of the civilians to their homes will be widely seen as an indication of the stability that the Arakan Army, or AA, insurgent group has brought to the region on the border with Bangladesh that it captured last month.
It will also raise questions about prospects for the return to Myanmar of nearly a million members of the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority, who have fled across a border river to Bangladesh to escape persecution.
“The AA has given us permission to return to the town because they have cleared the bombs,” said one Maungdaw resident heading home.
“As far as we know, about 2,000 Rakhine people and 3,000 Muslims have arrived back.”
RFA tried to telephone AA spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha to ask about the situation in Maungdaw but he did not respond.
Internally displaced people board a boat for their return to Myanmar’s Maungdaw town in an undated photograph taken in January.(Arakan Princess Media)
The AA, which now controls about 80% of Rakhine state, captured Maungdaw on Dec. 6 and began letting people return early this month after securing control of the area and the nearby border.
Residents said many homes had been destroyed in the fighting and people coming back needed food, clothing and help with rebuilding.
The AA draws its support from Rakhine state’s Buddhist majority and has been accused of committing rights abuses against Rohingya people, in particular when the AA was battling the military last year and accused the army of raising Rohingya militias to fight the AA.
During months of fighting last year, tens of thousands of people fled from Maungdaw, either across the border to Bangladesh or to safer parts of Myanmar.
The 5,000 who have returned home in recent days have come from other parts of Myanmar, not from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh and the junta that seized power five years ago had been discussing repatriation of the Rohingya but made little progress, in part because members of the community said their safety could not be guaranteed under the military that targeted them in a 2017 crackdown that sent about 740,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh.
Although the AA’s takeover of northwest Rakhine state has rekindled hopes that the Rohingya might be able to go home, refugees in Bangladesh told RFA this month they remained uncertain – in part because it was not clear whether the AA would accommodate their return.
A checkpoint set up by Myanmar’s Arakan Army near Maungdaw for registering returnees, in an undated photograph taken in January.(Arakn Bay News)
A major question is with whom should Bangladesh try to arrange a repatriation plan.
Bangladesh said last month it was urging Myanmar’s junta to “find a way” to settle the border dispute as it would “not engage” with the AA.
A week later, however, Bangladeshi security experts, former diplomats and scholars advised the Bangladesh government to engage with the AA directly. The status of the relationship remains uncertain.
The International Criminal Court applied for a warrant last month for the arrest of the junta chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, in connection with the 2017 violence. The United Nations Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar has also vowed to investigate abuses by the AA.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Read RFA coverage of this story in Burmese here and here.
Myanmar’s ruling military junta has begun initial steps to draft women for active military service, residents said, showing the military’s desperation to replenish its ranks amid a series of battlefield defeats and desertions in the country’s four-year civil war.
Last year, the junta enforced a 2010 military conscription law saying men aged 18-35 and single women 18-27 would be eligible for military service.
So far, it has conscripted only men — sometimes by force — but since mid-January, authorities have begun compiling lists of eligible women in the Yangon region, residents in several townships said, suggesting official conscription would begin in the future.
“The list of women has already been compiled, and many students are included in it,” said a woman living in Taketa township who she was worried because her 20-year-old daughter, a student at East Yangon University, was on the list for recruitment.
Woman make their way along street in Hlaingthaya township, Yangon, Myanmar, May 16, 2020.(AFP)
The woman asked her ward administrator for a postponement for her daughter because she is a student, but her request was denied, she said.
Married women are exempt from military service under the law, but married women without children who live in Kayan township were still included on the list, said a resident there who had to register.
“The law states that married women are exempt, [but] when I asked why my name was included, they said if I was not pregnant or did not have children, I would have to serve in the military without exception,” she added.
Getting ready
The military council denied that women had been called up for military service, and a representative from the Chairman’s Office of the Central Body for Summoning People’s Military Servants said authorities were simply taking a headcount of those eligible to serve.
“It is similar to a census — essentially a basic manpower registry,” the representative said. “There has been no separate call for women for military service at this time.”
Myanmar military officer Capt. Zin Yaw, a member of the Civil Disobedience Movement that opposed the military’s seizure of power in 2021, said that the listings of women were part of a plan to recruit them for training, but not necessarily send them into combat.
“In the past, junta leader [Sen. Gen.] Min Aung Hlaing has shown interest in involving female officers,” Zin Yaw said. “There have also been cases where female military personnel … were called in and assigned roles.”
The junta’s council announced that women meeting the age requirements for military service under the country’s military service law will be recruited starting from their fifth week of military training.
Women from all 10 townships in Mon state in Myanmar’s south and from Kayin state and Tanintharyi region also have been recruited for military service since mid-2024, according to a survey by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland, which monitors human rights in Mon state.
Militia forcing recruitment
The Pa-O National Army, a state-sponsored militia that fights alongside junta soldiers against Pa-O rebels, is forcing women and underage girls to join the military service, they said.
New female military recruits prepare to take their oaths before the lower house of parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, May 17, 2018.(Aung Shine Oo/AP)
Female recruits mostly have been sent to the front lines of armed combat between the junta and Karenni rebels at the Shan-Kayah state border since late last year, a Pa-O Youth Organization official said.
A directive requiring women to undergo military training in areas controlled by the Pa-O National Army could result in girls being deployed in front-line combat, residents and Pa-O organizations said.
Though it is difficult to verify the ages of the women sent to combat areas, it is known that they include women under the age of 18, the official from the Pa-O Youth Organization said.
“We began noticing women being sent to the front lines around the end of 2024, particularly in the fighting along the [Kayah state] and Shan border,” said the official. “Their presence in these areas is very evident. At times, a significant number of soldiers are deployed, and women are among them.”
A military training graduation ceremony takes place in Kyauktalongyi subtownship in Special Region 6 of southern Shan state’s Pa-O Self-Administered Zone, Oct. 3, 2024.(PNO/PNA News and Information)
Khun Aung Mann, general secretary of the Pa-O National Liberation Army, an ethnic armed organization that opposes the military regime, told RFA that he has received reports that the Pa-O militia has been training women for military service.
“The current situation is that both the [Pa-O] militia and the military council are in need of manpower,” he said. “Therefore, we believe that they will use women if necessary, as we are already witnessing the use of underage children on the battlefield.”
There were 15-year-old child soldiers among captured prisoners of war, he said.
Translated by Kalyar Lwinfor RFA Burmese. edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese and Nang Hseng Phoo.
An ethnic minority insurgent force that has captured most of western Myanmar’s Rakhine state has seized a military base on a main road into central heartland areas, the group said, raising the prospect of a rebel push into the Irrawaddy River valley.
The Arakan Army, or AA, has made significant gains over the past year in its bid to force the Myanmar military out of Rakhine state and take it over, capturing 14 of the state’s 17 townships, and probing into southern and central areas of Myanmar dominated by the majority Bamar community.
AA forces seized a military base at a pass on the main raid between the town of Toungup, which they hold near the coast, over mountains and down to the Bago region in the central plains.
“The AA completely captured the junta’s Mo Hti Taung camp on the border between Rakhine state and Bago division,” the AA said in a statement late on Monday.
The AA launched their bid to capture the camp, which is 180 kilometers, or 112 miles, southwest of the capital, Naypyidaw, on Jan. 21. They found abandoned ammunition, other military equipment and the bodies of junta soldiers, the group said, without giving details of casualties on either side.
The main spokesperson for the junta that seized power nearly five years ago, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun, did not respond to calls by RFA seeking comment.
Junta forces were launching counter-attacks from the east, the AA said.
The AA did not say how the capture of the camp might fit into its military planning but one analyst said the group might be aiming to make a push east, down to the populated lowland, where the main north-south roads, railway lines and river transport links run, and on towards Naypyidaw.
“We must consider the possibility that they are coming to dominate along the Naypyidaw highway,” said political analyst Than Soe Naing.
“A situation where Naypyidaw can be surrounded is being created,” he said. “Similar to the military aims of other revolutionary forces, the conquest of Naypyidaw in the rainy season is possible.”
The camp at the pass on a main road from central areas to Rakhine state would also be an important defensive position for the AA if it wanted to block the military from advancing into Rakhine state from the east.
Than Soe Naing said the AA was also launching guerrilla attacks from the south of Rakine state into the Ayeyarwady region, and into the Magway region to the north.
AA troops on the Ayeyarwady region’s border with Rakhine state, in photograph released on Jan. 27, 2025.(AA Info Desk)
The AA captured the Gwa town in the south of Rakhine state in late December and the military was launching heavy air and artillery strikes from the Ayeyarwady border to try to take it back, residents of the area said.
Similarly to the north, fighting is taking place on the main road east from Ann town, which the AA took in early December, through the mountains to Pa Dan, in Ngape township, residents said.
AA soldiers at a ‘Welcome to Magway’ sign in a photograph released on Jan. 27, 2025.(AA Info Desk)
Battles are also being fought daily around the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe, one of the few places left under junta administration, residents said.
The other main area under junta control in the state is the Kyaukpyu economic zone on the coast, where China aims to build a deep-sea port, and has energy facilities including natural gas and oil pipelines running to southern China.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
The Myanmar military killed 19 people including 14 members of an insurgent militia in an air attack on a rebel position, the militia said, as the junta presses on with operations aimed at recovering territory it lost last year.
The attack was near an office in Sin Gut village, in central Myanmar’s Myingyan township, occupied by members of a pro-democracy People’s Defense Force, or PDF, groups of fighters that sprang up across the country after the military overthrew an elected government in early 2021.
PDFs and allied ethnic minority insurgent groups made stunning gains last year but the junta has vowed to recapture territory and defeat the PDFs while trying to coax the ethnic minority insurgent into peace talks.
A representative of the PDF in Myingyan, which is in the Mandalay region, said the Sunday air raid lasted for more than 20 minutes.
“First, they shot with a fighter jet. Then they came firing with machine guns from an Mi-35 helicopter,” said the militia member, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
RFA tried to telephone the Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson, Thein Htay, for comment on the attack but he did not answer.
A building in Myanmar’s Sin Gut village badly damaged in by a junta air raid on Jan. 26, 2025.(Mandalay Free Press)
A Myingyan PDF leader was among those killed, the PDF official said, adding that two children were among five civilians killed.
Bodies of the dead were so badly mutilated it was not possible to identify them before they were cremated, said a resident of the area who also declined to be identified.
Eight people were wounded in the attack, the PDF official said.
There had not been any fighting recently in the Myingyan area, which is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Mandalay city, unlike places to the north of the city, so the attack was a surprise, the resident said.
The military has made advances in recent days in its operations in the Mandalay region after anti-junta fighters last year took positions on the approaches to Myanmar’s second-biggest city.
There is no precise death toll for Myanmar’s war but U.N. experts said last month that more than 6,000 civilians had been killed.
“Thousands of lives have been cut short in indiscriminate attacks by the military, which often targets civilian homes and infrastructure. Unlawful killings by junta forces are common and are characterized by their brutality and inhumanity,” U.N. experts said in a report.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Once a full-time musician who toured throughout Myanmar, indie-pop star Linnith now finds himself in vastly different circumstances –- just like so many other celebrities who fled the country after the 2021 military coup d’etat.
From his new home in Maryland in the United States, Linnith told Radio Free Asia about working as an Uber driver and trying to experiment with new music, but also generally “feeling lost.”
“In my country, I don’t have to work like this – 50 hours a week, or something like that,” he said last week.
After the coup, Linnith and many other artists took to the streets in protest. They also wrote music and posted on social media against the military dictatorship.
Subsequent crackdowns by the junta left hundreds dead and thousands in police custody as censorship and threats of violence forced many artists into hiding.
(Rebel Pepper illustration/RFA)
But the aftermath of the coup has also brought underground and ethnic artists into the spotlight, as widely popular anti-coup music proliferates both online and off and artists navigate a new music industry with unique challenges.
“Everything is different now, it’s not only the production, literally everything,” Linnith said, adding that he’s had to transition from making music in a major studio with a team and professional equipment to working independently.
“After the coup, I can make music in my bedroom with my laptop with one cheap mic. I don’t even have a soundproof room, you know? That’s it.”
Others are embracing the new underground nature of the music industry, where online platforms have given rise to popularity of new artists.
“My priority is politics, so I write down all these things that I think about politics that I think about in my rap,” said an underground rapper asking to be identified as T.G. “I talk about the military coup and how we should unite and fight them back to get democracy for our generation.”
New challenges
But addressing politics can be a matter of life and death.
At least three hip-hop artists have been arrested for their role in anti-junta movements, two later dying at the hands of the junta. Yangon-based 39-year-old Byu Har was arrested in 2023 for criticizing the military’s Ministry of Electricity and Energy on social media, and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
But others have met worse fates. Rapper and member of parliament for the ousted National League for Democracy party Phyo Zayar Thaw was executed in 2022. Similarly, San Linn San, a 29-year-old former rapper and singer, died after being denied medical treatment for a head injury sustained in prison linked to alleged torture, according to a family member.
Many others have been injured protesting the dictatorship.
Like many fleeing the country to avoid political persecution and to find work, much of the music industry has also shifted outside of Myanmar.
A former Yangon-based rapper who asked to be identified as her stage name, Youth Thu, for security reasons moved to Thailand when she saw her main job in e-commerce being affected by the coup and economic downturn.
“When I came here, I was trying to stay with my friends because I have no deposit money to get a room because I need to get a job first,” said a singer asking to be identified as her stage name, Youth Thu, for security reasons.
Now working at a bar in Bangkok, she’s starting to incorporate her experiences into music that will resonate with others in the Myanmar diaspora.
“I never expected these things. I never expected to be broke as [expletive deleted]. I never expected to live in that kind of hostel,” she said.
“Especially migrants from Myanmar who are struggling here, I’m representing that group so my songs will be coming out saying all my experiences.”
For those left inside the country, economic factors are also taking a toll on music production, Linnith said.
“Because of inflation, the exchange rates are horrible… All the gear, the prices are going so high, like two or three times what it was,” Linnith said. “So most people can’t upgrade their gear or if something is wrong, they can’t buy a new thing.”
Starting again
The challenges have also ushered in new music and different tastes from audiences, as well as a boom in the underground industry and in rap and grime, a type of electronic dance, artists told RFA.
T.G. said he’s seen a new appreciation for ethnic music coming from the country’s border regions, where languages other than Burmese dominate the music scene and everyday life. He’s also seen a revival of revolutionary music popularized in 1988, when student protests across Myanmar ended in a violent military coup that has drawn comparisons to the junta’s 2021 seizure of power.
“After the [2021] coup, a lot of people from the mainland, a lot of people are going to the ethnic places like Shan, Kachin, Karen and then, Karenni,” he said. “They started to realize there are a lot of people willing to have democracy, so they started to realize that ethnic people are also important for the country.”
Artists are also dealing with new feelings on a personal level. Depressed, anxious and struggling to cope with changing realities, Linnith and others have found new feelings to draw from.
“The lyrics are literally ‘I give everything, I don’t believe in anything. I’m lost.’ That’s the kind of feeling I’ve got at the moment…I wrote it in my head while I was driving, again and again and again,” he said.
“This is perfect timing, a perfect song for me…. Not just a perfect song, but the best song. It came from real feelings, real pain.”
Youth Thu says while her music isn’t inherently political, she is also writing about her new life in ways she hopes will resonate with her audience.
“I got to meet with other girls who are coming to Thailand to survive too. We have different goals, but still we are sharing lunch, sharing rooms, sharing the hostel – and they have no voice,” she said.
“I have a voice – voice means the songs. I can write a song, I can say I’m not afraid in the songs and include all these things.”
Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kiana Duncan for RFA.
Once a full-time musician who toured throughout Myanmar, indie-pop star Linnith now finds himself in vastly different circumstances –- just like so many other celebrities who fled the country after the 2021 military coup d’etat.
From his new home in Maryland in the United States, Linnith told Radio Free Asia about working as an Uber driver and trying to experiment with new music, but also generally “feeling lost.”
“In my country, I don’t have to work like this – 50 hours a week, or something like that,” he said last week.
After the coup, Linnith and many other artists took to the streets in protest. They also wrote music and posted on social media against the military dictatorship.
Subsequent crackdowns by the junta left hundreds dead and thousands in police custody as censorship and threats of violence forced many artists into hiding.
(Rebel Pepper illustration/RFA)
But the aftermath of the coup has also brought underground and ethnic artists into the spotlight, as widely popular anti-coup music proliferates both online and off and artists navigate a new music industry with unique challenges.
“Everything is different now, it’s not only the production, literally everything,” Linnith said, adding that he’s had to transition from making music in a major studio with a team and professional equipment to working independently.
“After the coup, I can make music in my bedroom with my laptop with one cheap mic. I don’t even have a soundproof room, you know? That’s it.”
Others are embracing the new underground nature of the music industry, where online platforms have given rise to popularity of new artists.
“My priority is politics, so I write down all these things that I think about politics that I think about in my rap,” said an underground rapper asking to be identified as T.G. “I talk about the military coup and how we should unite and fight them back to get democracy for our generation.”
New challenges
But addressing politics can be a matter of life and death.
At least three hip-hop artists have been arrested for their role in anti-junta movements, two later dying at the hands of the junta. Yangon-based 39-year-old Byu Har was arrested in 2023 for criticizing the military’s Ministry of Electricity and Energy on social media, and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
But others have met worse fates. Rapper and member of parliament for the ousted National League for Democracy party Phyo Zayar Thaw was executed in 2022. Similarly, San Linn San, a 29-year-old former rapper and singer, died after being denied medical treatment for a head injury sustained in prison linked to alleged torture, according to a family member.
Many others have been injured protesting the dictatorship.
Like many fleeing the country to avoid political persecution and to find work, much of the music industry has also shifted outside of Myanmar.
A former Yangon-based rapper who asked to be identified as her stage name, Youth Thu, for security reasons moved to Thailand when she saw her main job in e-commerce being affected by the coup and economic downturn.
“When I came here, I was trying to stay with my friends because I have no deposit money to get a room because I need to get a job first,” said a singer asking to be identified as her stage name, Youth Thu, for security reasons.
Now working at a bar in Bangkok, she’s starting to incorporate her experiences into music that will resonate with others in the Myanmar diaspora.
“I never expected these things. I never expected to be broke as [expletive deleted]. I never expected to live in that kind of hostel,” she said.
“Especially migrants from Myanmar who are struggling here, I’m representing that group so my songs will be coming out saying all my experiences.”
For those left inside the country, economic factors are also taking a toll on music production, Linnith said.
“Because of inflation, the exchange rates are horrible… All the gear, the prices are going so high, like two or three times what it was,” Linnith said. “So most people can’t upgrade their gear or if something is wrong, they can’t buy a new thing.”
Starting again
The challenges have also ushered in new music and different tastes from audiences, as well as a boom in the underground industry and in rap and grime, a type of electronic dance, artists told RFA.
T.G. said he’s seen a new appreciation for ethnic music coming from the country’s border regions, where languages other than Burmese dominate the music scene and everyday life. He’s also seen a revival of revolutionary music popularized in 1988, when student protests across Myanmar ended in a violent military coup that has drawn comparisons to the junta’s 2021 seizure of power.
“After the [2021] coup, a lot of people from the mainland, a lot of people are going to the ethnic places like Shan, Kachin, Karen and then, Karenni,” he said. “They started to realize there are a lot of people willing to have democracy, so they started to realize that ethnic people are also important for the country.”
Artists are also dealing with new feelings on a personal level. Depressed, anxious and struggling to cope with changing realities, Linnith and others have found new feelings to draw from.
“The lyrics are literally ‘I give everything, I don’t believe in anything. I’m lost.’ That’s the kind of feeling I’ve got at the moment…I wrote it in my head while I was driving, again and again and again,” he said.
“This is perfect timing, a perfect song for me…. Not just a perfect song, but the best song. It came from real feelings, real pain.”
Youth Thu says while her music isn’t inherently political, she is also writing about her new life in ways she hopes will resonate with her audience.
“I got to meet with other girls who are coming to Thailand to survive too. We have different goals, but still we are sharing lunch, sharing rooms, sharing the hostel – and they have no voice,” she said.
“I have a voice – voice means the songs. I can write a song, I can say I’m not afraid in the songs and include all these things.”
Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kiana Duncan for RFA.
The threatened deportations from Thailand of a Vietnamese ethnic minority activist and 48 Uyghurs detained after trying to flee China have cast a harsh spotlight on Bangkok.
But a flood of war refugees from Myanmar poses a bigger test for Thailand’s relatively generous policies toward migrants.
The Uyghurs, held in Thailand since 2014 after attempting to use the Southeast Asian nation to escape persecution in China, have said they fear they are about to be repatriated and staged a hunger strike to highlight their plight.
Vietnamese ethnic minority rights activist Y Quynh Bdap, who Hanoi wants to extradite and jail for terrorism, denies Vietnamese accusations that he committed 2023 attacks on government offices that resulted in nine deaths.
A Thai Immigration Bureau spokesperson said Thailand has “no policy” to deport the Uyghurs, while enforcement of a Bangkok court ruling calling for Bdap’s extradition to Vietnam is still pending.
These high-profile rights cases are playing out amid a bigger crackdown on hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens who have taken refuge in Thailand since a military takeover four years ago.
The displaced Myanmar citizens include junta opponents, but are largely ordinary people who seek safety and work as the civil war at home grinds into its fifth year, say those who help migrants in Thailand.
Many have been subject to arrest, involuntary repatriation and arrest again back in Myanmar as Thailand moves to regulate labor migration flows with stricter registration policies and stringent inspections.
“While all nationalities face similar risks, Myanmar nationals face dual risks – both political opposition groups and ordinary workers uninvolved in politics. If deported, they might be drafted into military service, risking their lives,” said Roisai Wongsuban, policy advocacy advisor for the Migrant Working Group, an NGO in Thailand.
Mecca for migrants
Along with scrutiny from rights and labor groups, Thailand gets plenty of credit from the United Nations and others for hosting more than 5 million non-Thai nationals.
“Because of its relatively prosperous and stable economy, Thailand has attracted millions of migrants from neighboring countries looking for a better standard of living,” said the International Organization for Migration, or IOM.
However, Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, meaning it doesn’t recognize refugees, and those who seek asylum can face detention and deportation.
But it is a main base of humanitarian U.N. agencies and NGOs that help refugees in the region.
“The country has also traditionally hosted hundreds of thousands of nationals from neighboring countries, who have fled their homelands due to war, internal conflict or national instability,” the IOM, a UN agency, said in a statement.
“Khaing,” a former teacher with the Civil Disobedience Movement folds clothes at her current home in Bangkok, Thailand, June 4, 2024, after fleeing Myanmar to avoid conscription by the military junta.(Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP)
Thai law has since 2016 recognized the principle of non-refoulement, or not deporting people to places where they face torture and other abuse.
But in practice, politically sensitive cases involving neighboring authoritarian states are handled differently, and Bangkok has cooperated with the rendition of Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian dissidents by those nations’ security agents.
A middle-income country with more than a fifth of its 67 million people over 60 and a low birth rate, fast-aging Thailand needs the workers.
“We must maintain a balance between providing employment for Thai nationals and managing migrant workers to meet business needs, enabling efficient operations across the manufacturing, agricultural and industrial sectors,” Thai Labor Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn told reporters in Bangkok last month.
Thailand’s neighbors need the jobs and money.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar –- poorer states that border Thailand and have endured war, political violence and economic stagnation -– provide the “vast majority of Thailand’s migrant stock,” the IOM noted.
Laos said it took in more than US$600 million in remittances in 2023 from 400,000 migrant workers, mostly in Thailand.
Vietnamese ethnic minority rights activist Y Quynh Bdap in an undated photo.(Y Quynh Bdap via Facebook)
An IOM report last month estimated that 5.3 million non-Thai nationals were living in Thailand as of December 2023, up from 4.9 million five years earlier.
The Thai Ministry of Labor says that more than 3 million Myanmar nationals were legally living in Thailand as of March 2024, while 286,000 Lao workers were legally working there as of last November.
The tally of registered Cambodians was 460,000 as of January 2024. Cambodia’s labor ministry published a figure of 1.2 million last year.
The IOM says that more than a third of the 5.2 million migrants estimated to be in Thailand as of July 2024 are in “irregular” situations, without proper documents and not captured in ministry statistics.
Such migrants suffer abuses such as unpaid wages, excessive working hours, and unsafe working conditions – or get trafficked to work scam centers in compounds neighboring states’ borders with Thailand, advocates say.
Conscription law exodus
What makes a Thai crackdown on illegal migrants dangerous for Myanmar ‘s war-displaced citizens are policies the Myanmar junta and the Thai government adopted in 2024, migrant advocates say.
After a military offensive launched across northern Myanmar by ethnic armies in late 2023 started to turn the tide against the junta, the regime last February passed a law imposing mass conscription.
Fear of getting drafted by the unpopular junta drove so many young men to flee to Thailand in 2024 that they set a record for the highest annual number of undocumented Myanmar migrants to arrive in Thailand.
This sparked anti-migrant protests in several Thai cities and waves of mass arrests for illegal cross-border entry.
Migrant labor advocates who tracked a 120-day Thai government crackdown on illegal workers from June to September said the drive led to the arrest of 300,000 people, including about 210,000 Myanmar nationals.
“When illegal immigrants entered Myanmar due to the conscription law, hundreds of thousands were arrested,” said Min Oo, a labor official at the Thailand-based Federation of Education and Development.
People from Myanmar cross the Moei river on the Thai-Myanmar border on April 11, 2023.(Royal Thai Army /AFP)
As a result of repatriations of migrants from prisons in Ranong, a Thai border town near the southern tip of Myanmar, about 800 people were handed over to the junta for conscription last year, said Thar Kyaw, head of the Meikta Thahaya Self Administrated Funeral Welfare Association.
According to Ranong locals, young men under the age of 35 were sent to three different Myanmar military units in the next-door Tanintharyi region. Disabled people were also arrested and their families had to pay ransoms to free them.
“Deporting Myanmar nationals is a violation of human rights and effectively a handover to the oppressors of the Myanmar people,” Thar Kyaw told RFA.
Tightening Thai policies
The surge in migrants from Myanmar prompted other Thai measures, including limits on daily entry visa applications at its embassies, elimination of visa renewal options and university places for students, and inspections and closures of migrant schools in southern Thailand.
“Although we pay taxes to Thailand in accordance with their laws, we still feel a sense of inferiority,” said Aung Kyaw, a Burmese student in Chiang Mai, the biggest city in northern Thailand. “And we constantly live on the brink of becoming illegal residents.”
Wongsuban of the Migrant Working Group said Thailand wants short-term workers but doesn’t want Myanmar war refugees to stay permanently – “which is why they don’t make it easy to apply for refugee status or get residence permits.”
Thailand is fine-tuning the “MOU system” it uses to manage the employment of migrant workers through bilateral Memoranda of Understanding with Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and others.
“Managing migrant workers in Thailand must consider employment opportunities for Thai citizens, national security and prevention of labor trafficking or forced labor,” said Ratchakitprakarn, the labor minister.
The minister called on businesses employing migrant workers whose work permits are set to expire in mid-February to submit renewal applications or face “strict legal action against illegal migrant workers, as well as migrant workers and employers and businesses.”
Migrant workers and activists from Laos and Myanmar told RFA the high cost – often many months’ pay – and long wait for work permits under the MOU system drives workers to try illegal entry and work in Thailand. Illegal workers keep trafficking profitable, they add.
Myanmar nationals cross over into Thailand at the Tak border checkpoint in Thailand’s Mae Sot district on April 10, 2024.(Manan Vatsyayana/AFP)
Phyo Ko Ko, who works legally at a garment factory in Thailand, told RFA Burmese the military junta back in Myanmar is now collecting taxes on registered migrant workers’ earnings, in another hit to her income.
“Workers only get a basic salary, so the money is spent on these visas and documents all year round,” said Phyo Ko Ko.
Thai media have reported on some promising developments for migrants, such as cabinet approval in October of a plan to grant citizenship to nearly half a million people, including long-term migrants and children born in Thailand, and new visas for digital, medical and cultural pursuits.
Despite the protests and crackdown of 2024, Wongsuban says the same economic priorities and necessities behind Thailand’s decision to accept migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will ensure the flow of workers continues.
Even critics and activists work with the understanding that “Thailand is the only country in the region that accepts a high number of migrant workers, war refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants,” he said.
Reported by Nontarat Phaicharoen and Jon Preechawong for BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, RFA Burmese and Phouvong for RFA Lao. Translated by Aung Naing and Phouvong. Written by Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Paul Eckert.
Ethnic Rakhine rebels on Friday confirmed the torture and execution of two prisoners of war from Myanmar’s military after video clips of the killings went viral online.
The videos have prompted an NGO to call on the International Criminal Court to launch an investigation into the incident.
While RFA has obtained several videos of junta troops torturing and killing enemy combatants in the nearly four years since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat, opposition forces have largely claimed to adhere to the rules of war with regards to the treatment of POWs.
A leaked two-minute video clip recently generated a buzz on social media in Myanmar that shows around seven men — some of whom are wearing Arakan Army, or AA, uniforms — kicking and beating two shirtless men who are lying on the ground.
Another video showed their brutal killing.
On Friday, AA spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha confirmed that the videos showed his group’s soldiers torturing and executing two junta POWs in Rakhine state’s Kyauktaw township on Feb. 7, 2024, during an offensive against Military Operations Command No. 9.
Speaking at a press conference, he said that the AA soldiers “were unable to control their anger” and committed the crimes in retaliation for junta troops arresting, torturing and killing their family members.
The AA’s admission came a day after Southeast Asia-based NGO Fortify Rights called on the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, to investigate reports of AA soldiers committing atrocities in Rakhine state, specifically mentioning the two video clips that went viral.
Sources with knowledge of the incident told RFA Burmese that it occurred in the mountains near Kyauktaw Mountain Pagoda during the February 2024 AA offensive.
The two junta soldiers were reportedly captured while fleeing from a battalion at Military Operations Command No. 9, said the sources, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
They said that the two men were killed while being taken to a location where other POWs were held, and claimed that the perpetrators included AA soldiers, AA militiamen, and members of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force, or PDF.
The incident followed a junta artillery barrage into Kyauktaw’s Kan Sauk village that had killed residents, including relatives of the AA soldiers, the sources said.
They said two men involved in the killing recorded the videos, one of whom shared the clips with residents after returning to Kan Sauk village. A villager sent the clips to a family member working in Malaysia, who posted them to Facebook, where they went viral.
Telecommunications and internet access have been cut in Rakhine state since late 2023, when the AA ended a ceasefire that had been in place since the coup, and RFA was unable to independently verify the social media accounts.
Attempts by RFA to contact the AA’s Khaing Thu Kha for comment on the killings went unanswered Friday.
Calls for accountability
Ejaz Min Khant, human rights associate at Fortify Rights, told RFA that the torture and execution of civilians or captured enemy soldiers are considered “war crimes.”
“It is crucial to take action against those involved in extrajudicial killings,” he said. “We welcome [that] the AA has acknowledged this and stated they have taken action.”
However, according to Fortify Rights, Khaing Thu Kha’s claim that the killings were retaliation for the deaths of AA family members contradicts what can be heard in the video, where the perpetrators said their commander had ordered them to kill the two POWs.
“If they were ordered to do so, who are their senior officers? What are their ranks? What specific actions have been taken?” Ejaz asked. “This must be clarified transparently.”
He said his group will urge the AA to cooperate with international judicial bodies to conduct an investigation into the incident and plans to monitor and document the army’s actions to prevent similar human rights violations.
The torture and executions drew additional condemnation from Salai William Chin, the general secretary of the Chin National Organization/Chin National Defense Force, another ethnic army battling the military in Chin state, in the northwest.
“It is absolutely unacceptable,” he said, adding that all anti-junta groups must work together to prevent such incidents.
“In the future, as armed opposition groups throughout the country wage war to capture junta camps and towns under junta control, we have to be mindful that this kind of incident should not occur again when we take POWs,” he said. “It is crucial that senior commanders don’t act like [leaders of] the terrorist military junta.”
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Myanmar’s military bombed a town in Shan state under rebel control killing 10 people days after striking a ceasefire with an allied group that also operates in the northeastern state, the group in control of the bombed town said.
The junta that seized power in a 2021 coup has been under major pressure from its insurgent enemies over the past year losing large areas of territory, military bases and major towns.
The military has repeatedly called for talks over the past few months while at the same time unleashing its air force in devastating attacks on insurgents and the towns and villages they control, killing numerous civilians, rights group says.
The latest junta air raid to inflict heavy casualties was in the town of Nawnghkio, which is under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, in Shan state.
“Near Parami Teashop, the junta dropped two bombs back to back from a jet at around 11 a.m.,” the TNLA said in a statement after the strike on Wednesday.
At least three women were among the dead and two houses and a police station were destroyed, it said.
RFA tried to contact Shan state’s junta spokesperson, Khun Thein Maung, by telephone for comment but he did not respond.
Destruction from an airstrike in Myanmar’s Nawnghkio town, seen on Jan. 22, 2025.(Thein Aung- Facebook)
A resident of Nawnghkio, which is 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, northeast of the city of Mandalay, told Radio Free Asia the tea shop was obliterated and staff, customers and passers-by were among the dead.
“The bomb hit right on the teashop as the family was cleaning up,” said the resident, who declined to be identified for safety reasons, referring to the people who ran the shop.
“There were some people sitting around and a girl who works there was torn to pieces.”
The military then fired artillery at Nawnghkio from the direction of the junta-controlled town of Pyin Oo Lwin, residents said.
It was the second airstrike on the town in about 24 hours. One person was killed and two were wounded in a strike on an administrative office and the town hall on Tuesday, the TNLA said earlier.
The TNLA, fighting for autonomy for the Ta’ang, or Palaung, people has emerged as a powerful force in Shan state and was part of a three-group alliance that went on a coordinated offensive in October 2024, scoring major victories against junta forces, including the capture of Nawnghkio.
Another member of the Three Brotherhood alliance, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, struck a ceasefire with the junta on Saturday after talks brokered by China.
While calling for talks, the junta chief also vowed late last year to re-capture territory lost in Shan state.
Many insurgent groups have rejected the calls for talks, saying it is a ploy by the military which is trying to secure more areas in preparation for an election expected late this year that the generals hope will bolster their legitimacy.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Some two-thirds of residents of a beach resort town in Myanmar’s heartland have fled their homes amid fighting between junta troops and ethnic Rakhine rebels, sources in the region told RFA Burmese on Wednesday.
Until now, the Arakan Army, or AA, has been fighting junta troops in Rakhine state, in Myanmar’s west, where it controls nearly all townships, and other states and regions on the country’s periphery.
Now the emboldened rebel army is moving beyond its traditional territory.
The fighting near Chaung Thar, a popular beach destination in Ayeyarwady region’s Pathein township, is the latest sign that the junta is losing ground as the civil war grinds toward its fourth full year following its February 2021 coup d’etat.
Normally home to around 6,000 households, only about 2,000 remain in Chaung Thar, according to a resident, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
“Residents of Chaung Thar are fleeing in fear of the fighting,” he said. “Wealthy individuals have closed their grocery stores and hotels before leaving. Approximately two-thirds of the town’s residents have already fled.”
Those who fled the town are taking shelter in the cities of Pathein and Yangon, while residents of nearby Shwe Thaung Yan, Baw Mi and Ma Gyi Zin villages have fled to Thabaung town, residents said.
Many of those who have not left Chaung Thar stayed because they lack the money needed to relocate, they said.
While gunfire was heard near the town in recent days, the situation has been calm since Tuesday, residents reported.
A hotel staff member told RFA that some hotels on the town’s beachfront remain open, despite the fighting.
The junta has yet to issue any statement on fighting in the area and attempts by RFA to contact Khin Maung Kyi, the junta’s Ayeyarwady region spokesperson and social affairs minister, for comment went unanswered Wednesday.
The fighting near Chaung Thar comes two weeks after the AA and allied forces captured Pathein’s Ma Gyi Zin village, on the border on Rakhine state, on Jan. 9. Residents told RFA that fighting has since intensified in nearby Baw Mi and other villages.
Since early January, the AA, which controls nearly all townships in Rakhine state, has been attacking military bases in the bordering regions of Ayeyarwady, Bago and Magway, according to residents.
On Dec. 29, AA insurgents captured the west coast town of Gwa from the military, a major step toward their goal of taking the whole of Rakhine state, and then said they were ready for talks with the junta.
However, nearly a week later, the military had carried out at least six airstrikes since the proposal in the AA-controlled townships of Ponnagyun, Ann, Gwa and Myebon, killing 10 civilians and injuring more than a dozen others, residents told RFA Burmese.
On Monday, the AA said in a statement that fighting is ongoing in some areas along the Rakhine-Ayeyarwady border, as well as in Chin Su village, in Ayeyarwady’s Yegyi township.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
The six Mekong River countries are working together to combat online scamming and arms dealing in the interests of their security, China’s embassy in Myanmar said, as authorities renew efforts to tackle a problem that is causing growing alarm across the region.
The rescue of a Chinese actor and several other victims this month from an online scam center in eastern Myanmar has shone a spotlight on the criminal gangs running fraud, money-laundering and human trafficking operations from some of the more lawless corners of the region.
The scam centers proliferated in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted casinos. Thousands of people have been lured by false job offers and then forced to work defrauding victims online in complexes often run by ethnic Chinese gangsters, human rights groups say.
China, which is also home to many of the victims of the scammers, has been organizing action to tackle the problem with its southern neighbors, most recently at a meeting in the city of Kunming, in China’s Yunnan southern border province.
“The operation brings together the law enforcement resources of various countries and is an effective cooperative force in the fight against telecommunications fraud and arms smuggling in the region,” China’s embassy in Myanmar said in a statement on Tuesday.
“All parties unanimously agreed that regional security and stability were effectively protected,” it said.
In 2025, members of the Lancang-Mekong Integrated Law Enforcement and Security Cooperation Center – China, Myanmar, Thailand Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – will begin the second phase of an operation against the criminals, the embassy said. It did not give details of what it would entail.
The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army hands over 337 telecom and internet fraud suspects to Chinese police on Oct. 7, 2023.(Kokang News)
From August to December, Operation Zin Yaw resulted in a collective 160 cases cracking down on telecommunications fraud, in which more than 70,000 criminals were arrested and 160 victims were rescued, the embassy said. Myanmar authorities have said the large majority of suspects detained in raids are from China.
China can provide “effective protection” against both arms smuggling and online fraud, the embassy said.
The recent abduction and rescue from an eastern Myanmar enclave on the Thai border of Chinese actor Wang Xing, and model Yang Zeqi, has attracted media attention across the region and raised public alarm about safety.
Thailand has seen a rash of group tour cancellations for the upcoming Lunar New Year and its government has promised action to protect its economically important tourist industry.
The leaders of militias loyal to Myanmar’s junta and the operators of online scam centers announced this month that they had agreed to stop forced labor and fraud after coming under pressure from Thailand and the Myanmar military, sources close to the militia groups said.
“The threat posed by the scam gangs is large – if you read the newspapers you know – so something needs to be done,” said Aung Thu Nyein, a member of the Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar think tank.
Myanmar’s exiled parallel National Unity Government said in a statement on Monday it and other anti-junta groups would work with neighboring countries to suppress the scam centers.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Longer range/endurance UAVs make a different to the tyranny of distance when it comes down to ISR. For full situational awareness, governments and their armed forces are electing to perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions across international waters and borders with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV), and this is most evident in the Asia Pacific […]
A rebel army in northeastern Myanmar has agreed to a ceasefire with the junta after talks mediated by neighboring China, which is keen to see an end to Myanmar’s turbulence, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Myanmar’s junta has suffered unprecedented setbacks at the hands of different insurgent groups over the past year, raising questions about the sustainability of military rule over the ethnically diverse country, where China has considerable economic interests.
China has been putting pressure on some insurgents, particularly those operating in Myanmar regions on the Chinese border, such as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, to press them into negotiations with the junta that seized power in a 2021 coup.
“With China’s mediation and effort to drive progress … the two sides reached and signed a formal ceasefire agreement, and stopped fighting at 12 a.m. on January 18, 2025,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a briefing in Beijing on Monday, referring to the MNDAA and the Myanmar military.
The talks were held in China’s southwest city of Kunming, Mao said but she gave no details of the agreement.
“China stands ready to actively promote talks for peace and provide support and help for the peace process in northern Myanmar,” she said.
Neither the MNDAA nor the junta had released any information about a ceasefire at time of publication and Radio Free Asia was not able to contact their spokespeople for comment.
A main street in Myanmar’s Lashio town on Jan. 7, 2025.(Lashio Reconstruction)
The MNDAA, based in the Kokang region of Myanmar’s Shan state, was one of three allied insurgent groups that launched a stunning offensive in October 2023, pushing the military out of swathes of territory, numerous military camps and towns, despite China’s efforts to broker peace.
The MNDAA captured the major town of Lashio and the army’s regional command headquarters there in early August.
China later closed the border with the MNDAA zone, cutting off vital supplies.
In October, MNDAA leader Peng Daxun traveled to China for medical treatment and to meet a senior Chinese official. Sources close to the MNDAA later told RFA that he was prevented from returning to Myanmar as a way of pressing the group to make peace. China denied that.
It was not immediately clear what the ceasefire would mean for Lashio, a major trade gateway with China.
Earlier, the MNDAA said it would agree to a ceasefire if it could retain control of Lashio.
A resident said there had been no major changes there this week.
“Transport is running as usual,” said the resident, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
“According to what we can see, it doesn’t look like the Kokang Army is withdrawing,” he said, referring to the MNDAA. “I get the sense they have a firm foothold here.”
An MNDAA-appointed traffic police officer in Myanmar’s Lashio on Jan. 7, 2025.(Lashio Reconstruction)
A political analyst in the region said he had heard that the main issues the two sides discussed in recent talks were border trade and returning prisoners of war, not a rebel withdrawal from Lashio.
He said he did not expect the region’s status to be determined until after the junta holds an election, expected later this year, which it hopes will bolster its legitimacy.
“We’ll have to wait and see if the government and the MNDAA can discuss issues related to territory,” said the analyst, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
Another analyst, who is also a former army officer, said both sides would initially be cautious.
“The agreement has only just been made … the next thing is to wait and see if each side is committed,” said the second analyst, who also declined to be identified as talking to the media.
The progress towards peace has led to China re-opening some of its border crossings, to the relief of communities deprived of Chinese trade for weeks, sources in the region said.
“Food products can be sent and received normally,” Nyi Yan, a liaison officer with the United Wa State Army, another militia force based in Shan state, told RFA.
“China also eased restrictions on the import of fuel into Wa administrative regions on Sunday night.”
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
A second Hong Konger has been freed from a notorious scamming center in Myanmar amid concerns for 10 others who remain in captivity as families hear reports of electric shocks with batons, according to a campaigner working for the families of scam victims.
The person was released from the KK Park in Myawaddy, just across the river from Mae Sot in Thailand, on Sunday and is now in the “safe place” in Thailand, according to Andy Yu, a former district councilor who is campaigning on behalf of the families of Hong Kong victims.
No ransom was involved, said Yu, who delivered a petition letter along with relatives at the Myanmar Consulate General in Hong Kong on Monday, calling for help with the rescue of the 10 Hong Kongers who remain in Southeast Asian scam parks.
The release of the man is the second in a week, and comes after the city authorities sent a task force to Thailand in a bid to rescue an estimated 12 victims stuck in the scam parks.
What are these scam centers?
Thousands of people from around Asia — and as far away as Africa — have been trafficked these scam centers, mostly in Myanmar and Laos, but often run by Chinese, lured by false advertisements.
Trapped in the compound, the workers forced to contact people online and trick them into buying bogus investments to earn money for the operators. If they don’t reach quotas, the workers are often punished or tortured, according to accounts from people who have been freed.
A petition from a family member of a scam park victim and intended for the Myanmar Consulate General is displayed in Hong Kong, Jan. 20, 2025.(Hong Kong Government Information Services)
“Some imprisoned Hong Kongers in the Myanmar park were given electric shocks because they failed to achieve their targets, so their families fear for their safety,” Yu said.
“Since we received that information, we are going to appeal to the Myanmar consulate, in the hope of rescuing them as soon as possible.’
Yu went with a family member who gave only the nickname Calvin for fear of reprisals to the Consulate General of Myanmar to hand in a petition on Monday, but said there was nobody to receive it, forcing them to leave it downstairs with a concierge.
53,000 arrested
China’s Ministry of Public Security said on Jan. 13 it had arrested a total of 53,000 Chinese nationals involved in Myanmar scam operations in an ongoing crackdown, and that the Four Families crime syndicate in the northern Myanmar region of Kokang had been destroyed.
The ministry detailed a massive and “well-organized” cross-border operation involving massive participation from partners inside China, who promote, develop and update their schemes for luring unsuspecting jobseekers to Thailand or Myanmar, where they are kidnapped and made to work pending a ransom from their families.
Yu said the family members of the second freed victim had been allowed a one-minute phone call with them, and learned that they are now safely in Thailand.
It was unclear when the man would be allowed to return to Hong Kong.
Calvin told RFA Cantonese that his relative was lured into the park after going to Japan to pursue a business opportunity as a “purchasing agent.”
Hong Kong Secretary for Security Chris Tang, left, meets with the Consul-General of Myanmar in Hong Kong, Han Win Naing, second right, Jan. 17, 2025.(Hong Kong Government Information Services)
“I haven’t been able to contact my family member this whole time,” he said, in a reference to the last three weeks. “I hope the consulate … can help us rescue our loved ones as soon as possible, so they can be reunited with their families.”
Calvin said the last time he spoke to his family member, he was only allowed a few minutes on the phone, and that the family hasn’t received any demand for ransom, something they might consider paying to get them out.
Hard to target
There are also fears that the crime syndicate that runs the park could just send them to another park.
“The family members feel that this case is urgent,” Yu said. “The government should take action as soon as possible before they’re transferred to another park and things get even worse.”
A statement on the Hong Kong government website said Secretary for Security Chis Tang met with Myanmar Consul-General Han Win Naing on Jan. 17, in a bid to follow up on the outstanding cases.
Tang “exchanged views and shared information” with Han Win Naing, and discussed “strengthening future follow-up work,” the statement said.
“Tang received positive feedback from Mr Han Win Naing, with all parties expressing hope to assist more assistance seekers in returning to Hong Kong safely as soon as possible,” it said.
Since 2024, law enforcement agencies have received a total of 28 requests for assistance in relation to Hong Kong residents held in Southeast Asian countries and unable to leave, it said.
Seventeen have already returned home, and the task force will continue to follow up on the remaining cases, the statement said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Wei Sze, Alice Yam.
The Myanmar military killed 28 of its own soldiers and their detained relatives in an airstrike on insurgent positions near an ancient capital in Rakhine state, according to the rebels and a human rights group.
The Arakan Army, or AA, is fighting for control of Rakhine state and has made stunning gains over the past year, seizing 14 of its 17 townships from the control of the junta that seized power in an early 2021 coup.
The military has struck back with its air force, launching numerous bombing raids, which early on Sunday included a strike on Kyauk Se village, to the north of Mrauk U town.
“We don’t know the exact details yet but we do know that dozens are dead,” Myat Tun, director of the Arakan Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Association, told Radio Free Asia.
“There were no residents affected, it affected prisoners of war, including children,” he said.
The AA said 28 people were killed and 29 were wounded when the air force dropped three bombs on a temporary detention center run by the AA before dawn on Sunday.
“Those killed/injured in the bombing were prisoners and their families who were arrested in battles,” the AA said in a statement. “Military families were about to be released and were being temporarily detained in that place.”
Some of the wounded were in critical condition and the death toll could rise, the group said.
RFA tried to contact AA spokesperson, Khaing Thu Ka, and Rakhine state’s junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, for more information but neither of them responded by time of publication.
Bodies of some of the 28 people killed in the bombing of a detention camp in Myanmar’s Mrauk U, Rakhine State, released on Jan. 19, 2025.(AA Info Desk)
Mrauk U is the ancient capital of Rakhine kings who were conquered by Burmese kings in 1784.
The AA has captured hundreds of junta soldiers, police officers and their family members, in its relentless advance across the state, from its far north on the border with Bangladesh, down to the south where AA fighters have launched probes into neighboring Ayeyarwady division.
Families of soldiers and police in Myanmar often live near them in family quarters.
This was not the first AA prison to be bombed.
In September, military aircraft struck a detention center and hospital in Pauktaw town, killing more than 50 prisoners of war, the AA said at the time.
On Jan. 8, junta airstrikes in Ramree township’s Kyauk Ni Maw village killed more than 50, including women and children, and some 500 homes were destroyed in a blaze that the bombing sparked.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Myanmar’s military approaches the fourth anniversary of the coup d’etat that put them in power in terminal decline.
The economy continues to atrophy, with even more pronounced energy shortages, less foreign exchange, and an even larger share of the budget allocated to the military.
The battlefield losses are staggering, as the opposition has withstood Chinese pressure to stop their offensives, and continues to hand the over-stretched military defeat after defeat. Opposition forces now control two of the 14 military regional commands.
According to the National Unity Government (NUG) Ministry of Defense, the opposition is in full control of 95 of 330 townships, while the State Administrative Council (SAC), as the junta calls itself, had full control over 107 townships.
By the junta’s own admission, they are only able to conduct a census and safely organize elections in 161 of Myanmar’s 330 townships.
Losses on all battlefronts
Having taken 15 of 17 townships in Rakhine state, the Arakan Army is now in almost total control of the key western state. They’ve surrounded the Rakhine capital of Sittwe and come up to the border of Kyaukphyu where China’s special economic zone and port are located.
Although the capture of Buthidaung and Ann were neither quick nor easy, the AA was able to sustain sieges of over a month at each, and in the case of the former, tunneled beneath the last military outpost in a stunning display of grit.
Having captured the southern city of Gwa, the Arakan Army has now crossed into Ayeyarwaddy, taking the fight into the Bamar ethnic majority heartland.
Smoke rises from fires in Kyauk Ni Maw village in Rakhine state, Myanmar, after a Myanmar Air Force bombing raid on Jan 8, 2025.(Arakan Princess Media)
In the north, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has shrugged off extensive Chinese pressure, and taken the strategic junction town of Mansi, which will make the overland resupply of the besieged city of Bhamo from Mandalay very hard for the junta.
Fighting is ongoing in Bhamo, Kachin’s second largest city. The KIA is now in control of well over half of Kachin, including most of the resource rich regions.
Although they are known for fractiousness, Chin opposition forces are now in almost full control of that state that borders India and Bangladesh, holding five of nine townships, roughly 85% of the territory.
In Shan state, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) temporarily succumbed to Chinese pressure to stop their offensive in November, but they’ve neither surrendered Lashio nor ceded territory, despite airstrikes.
Citing a new military offensive in Naungcho township, the TNLA, which controls nine townships, announced an end to the ceasefire on Jan. 9.
A member of the anti-junta Karenni Nationalities Defence Force holds landmines planted by the Myanmar military and removed during demining operations near Pekon township, July 11, 2023.(AFP)
In eastern Myanmar, Karenni resistance have continued to battle, despite concerted military regime efforts and airstrikes, and their acknowledged ammunition shortages. The Karenni National Defense Force and allied People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) militias claim to control 80% of Kayah state.
Further south, the Karen National Liberation Army and allied people’s defense forces (PDFs) are slowly taking pro-junta border guard posts along the frontier with Thailand.
In Tanintharyi, local PDFs have increased their coordination and are pushing west from the Thai border towards the Andaman Sea coast, diminishing the scope of the military-controlled patchwork of terrain in Myanmar’s southernmost state.
Some of the most intense fighting of late has been in the Bamar heartland, including Sagaing, Magway, and Mandalay.
The military has stepped up their bombings, artillery strikes, and arson, intentionally targeting civilians for their support of the opposition forces. A number of PDFs have expanded their operations into the dry zone.
Mounting troubles
The Myanmar military regime faces severe headwinds as the fourth anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2021 coup approaches.
Prisoners of war from multiple fronts have recounted that the military’s ability to resupply and reinforce troops in the field has all but broken down.
They have a limited number of heavy lift helicopters, including three new Mi-17s that entered service in December. But even those are vulnerable: Some six Mi-17s and two other helicopters have been lost since the coup.
In some cases, the military has tried to parachute in supplies, but those often fall into the hands of the opposition forces.
Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing arrives to deliver a speech to mark the country’s Armed Forces Day, in Naypyidaw on March 27, 2024.(AFP)
Nothing demoralizes troops more than the feeling that the headquarters has abandoned them.
The military has always treated Myanmar as a country under occupation, with thousands of remote outposts scattered throughout the country. The NUG claims that opposition forces have captured 741 of these through 2024, and they continue to fall.
The military is increasingly short of manpower. Over a thousand POWs have been taken in recent months, more have surrendered and others have deserted.
The military has now taken in nine tranches of conscripts, amounting to roughly 45,000 troops, and is increasingly dragooning men. But they are deployed almost immediately and are untrained and poorly motivated, in sharp contrast with ethnic resistance organizations (EROs) and PDFs.
That loss of manpower includes senior officers. The NUG claims that in 2024, 53 senior officers, ranked colonel to major general, were killed, captured or injured.
The military is so broke that they recently announced that they would no longer pay death benefits to conscripts. At the same time, the military is often labeling their dead as “MIA”, rather than “KIA”, to avoid paying benefits.
Sittwe township, Rakhine State, Myanmar. is seen May 15, 2023.(Military True News Information Team via AP)
While the junta fumbles, the degree of tactical battlefield coordination between the legacy ethnic armies and the new PDFs is unprecedented.
Every major offensive outside of Rakhine, entails cooperation between them, and even there, the AA was assisted by Chin PDFs who blocked the military’s resupply from Magway.
The increased PDF operations have been made possible by increased assistance from EROs. The AA and Chin PDFs are pushing in from the west and assisting local PDFs in the Bamar heartland.
The AA’s foray into Ayeyarwaddy was done in concert with local PDFs. The United Wa State Army appears to be defying China by arming and equipping the Mandalay PDF and others that are operating in Mandalay, Magway, and Sagaing.
In its favor, the military has finally caught up to the opposition and effectively employed unmanned aerial systems down to the tactical level.
These include drones that can drop munitions, kamikaze drones, and those for intelligence gathering or for more accurate targeting of artillery.
This has proven costly for the opposition and impeded some of their offensives. Nonetheless, their deployment of drones has been too little too late, and will not fundamentally alter the battlefield dynamics.
The military continues to use air power. Indeed, they put their fifth and sixth SU-30 imported from Russia and three more FTC-2000Gs imported from China into service in December.
It’s the economy
But air power is primarily used as a punitive weapon against unarmed civilian targets, not in support of ground forces.
For example, the Jan. 9 bombing in Rakhine’s Yanbye township that killed 52, wounded over 40 and destroyed 500 homes, had no military utility.
Finally, the state of the economy is even more precarious given the loss of almost all border crossings.
Although the SAC technically still controls Muse and Myawaddy, which links them to China and Thailand, respectively, opposition forces control much of the surrounding territory.
While Karen forces have not made a bid to take Myawaddy, the main border crossing, they are pinching in along Asia Highway 1 to Yangon.
On Jan. 11, some 500 reinforcements in 30 armored personnel carriers were deployed from Hpa-An to Kawkareik in Kayan state near the Thai border to keep the last main overland trade artery open.
To sum it up, the junta is entering the fifth year of military rule with its power rapidly slipping away.
Although they still control one-third of the country – land that holds two-thirds of the population – their mismanagement of the economy has left the military regime broke.
Spread too thin across too many fronts simultaneously, it’s hard to see the SAC doing anything to arrest their terminal decline in 2025.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zachary Abuza.
Pro-junta militia leaders in Myanmar and operators of online scam centers have agreed to stop human trafficking after the rescue of a Chinese actor this month raised international alarm about their operations and looks set to damage Thailand’s tourist industry.
The ethnic Karen militia force based on Myanmar’s border with Thailand is suspected of enabling extensive internet fraud, human trafficking, forced labor and other crimes, and is being enriched by a business network that extends across Asia, a rights group said in a report last year.
But the case of Chinese TV actor Wang Xing, rescued this month from the notorious KK Park scam facility in eastern Myanmar’s Myawaddy, has brought the issue to public attention across Asia like never before.
The result has been pressure from both the Thai government and the Myanmar military, leading to a meeting on Wednesday between the militias and their business partners in which they agreed to stop human trafficking, said a businessman close to the ethnic Karen militia.
“The current issue of the Chinese actor has brought pressure from Thailand and the junta council in Naypyidaw. That’s why the meeting was held to enforce rules,” the businessman, who declined to be identified as talking to the media, told Radio Free Asia.
Leaders of Myawaddy-based Border Guard Force, or BGF, and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, or DKBA, which control the border zone under the auspices of the Myanmar military, agreed on a set of five rules with the business leaders, many of them ethnic Chinese, the businessman said.
The list includes no use of force, threats or torture, no child labor, no income from human trafficking and no scam operations, according to a copy of the rules that the businessman cited. Anyone found breaking the rules will lose their business and be expelled from the area.
RFA tried to contact senior members of the ethnic Karen forces, Maj. Naing Maung Zaw of the BGF and Lt. Gen Saw Shwe Wa of the DKBA, but neither of them answered their telephones.
Leaders of Border Guard Force and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army meet online gambling business owners in Myanmar’s Myawaddy town on Jan. 15, 2025.(AEC News)
The Karen militia force in power in the eastern region emerged from a split in the 1990s in Myanmar’s oldest ethnic minority guerrilla force, the largely Christian-led Karen National Union, when Buddhist fighters broke away, formed the DKBA and sided with the military.
The military let the DKBA rule in areas under its control in Kayin state, set up a Border Guard Force to help the army, and to profit from cross-border trade, and later from online gambling and scam operations.
The scam centers in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have ensnared thousands of human trafficking victims from all over Asia, and as far away as Africa.
Many victims say they were lured by false job offers, then forced to scam people by convincing them over the phone or online to put money into bogus investments.
University of Texas researchers estimated in a report in March last year that scammers had tricked investors out of more than US$75 billion since January 2020.
People forced to work at the scam centers are often tortured if they refuse to comply, victims and rights groups say.
The rules announced by the militias and scam operators come after a string of high-profile kidnappings, including that of Chinese actor Wang.
Hong Kong authorities have sent a task force to Thailand in a bid to rescue an estimated 12 victims in Myanmar and have imposed a yellow travel advisory for Thailand and Myanmar, warning of “signs of threat,” but without mentioning the scam parks.
The Bangkok Post reported on Wednesday that Thai hotels and airlines have been getting a flood of cancellations from Chinese tour groups for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.
Authorities in the region have accused Chinese gangsters of organizing the centers but Chinese nationals in Thailand said Chinese state-owned companies were behind operations in Myanmar, and behind them is the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department.
“Wherever you have these scam parks, you will find Chinese companies plying the biggest trade,” a realtor who only gave the surname Pan for fear of reprisals recently told RFA Mandarin. “The Myawaddy park was built by Chinese state-owned companies.”
Pan said the parks were the criminal face of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s United Front outreach and influence operations.
“All of the big bosses are back in China,” he said.
The Justice for Myanmar human rights group has accused governments and businesses across the region of enabling the cyber scam operations by failing to take action against the profitable flows they generate.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Pro-democracy fighters in Myanmar launched a barrage of rockets at junta facilities in the eastern town of Loikaw as the deputy of the ruling military council was visiting, a rebel group said on Wednesday.
There was no confirmation from the junta of the Tuesday night attack and the anti-junta Brave Warriors for Myanmar, or BWM, militia force said it had no information about casualties.
The group said its members fired five 107 mm rockets to the State Hall in Loikaw, capital of Kayah state, and two rockets at a regional military command headquarters in the town as junta deputy Lt. Gen. Soe Win was visiting for Kayah State Day on Wednesday.
“We want to make sure that even the deputy leader of the junta council is worried about his life, that’s why we had to attack,” an official from the militia group told Radio Free Asia.
He said his group was trying to gather information about the attack, which was organized with help from two other militia groups, the Mountain Knight Civilian Defense Forces and the Anti-Coup People’s Liberation Force.
A Loikaw resident said that he heard loud explosions and the sound of shooting on Tuesday night while some pro-junta channels on the Telegram messaging service said rockets had exploded at Loikaw’s airport and nowhere else.
RFA tried to telephone the junta spokesman for Kayah state, Zar Ni Maung, but could not get through.
Anti-junta forces have on several occasions used short-range 107 mm rockets in actual or planned attacks on junta leaders, including its chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
It was not the first time that Lt. Gen. Soe Win has been in the vicinity of an insurgent attack.
On April 8, 2024, anti-junta fighters used drones to attack the Southeast Regional Military headquarters in Mawlamyine town when he was visiting.
There was speculation at the time that he had been hurt in the attack and he was not seen in public for about a month afterwards, fueling rumors he had been wounded.
Military-controlled media on Wednesday made no mention of any rocket attack in Loikaw but newspapers did carry a Kayah State Day statement from the junta chief, in which he called for people to reject the armed opposition and blamed the democracy supporters and foreign countries for “terror acts.”
“The current instability and terror acts occurring within the country are the result of individuals claiming to be promoting democracy, but instead, they have resorted to electoral fraud to unlawfully seize state power,” he said, apparently referring to Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, which won elections in 2015 and 2020. He made no mention of any attack in Loikaw.
“Rather than resolving issues through lawful democratic methods, they have chosen armed terrorism approaches,” he said.
The military complained of fraud in the 2020 polls, despite there being no evidence of any major cheating, organizers said, and ousted Suu Kyi’s government in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021. She and many others have been locked up ever since.
Min Aung Hlaing also accused foreign countries of “supporting dictatorship disguised as democracy.”
“Some foreign countries, which claim to be defending democracy, are also supporting and encouraging armed terror attacks that are directly or indirectly against the democratic system,” Min Aung Hlaing said. He did not identify any countries.
While Aung San Suu Kyi and her government attracted diplomatic and economic support from Western countries and some Asian neighbors, no foreign governments are known to have supported any anti-junta forces.
The military gets most of its weapons from Russia and China.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Ethnic Ta’ang rebels have renewed their vow to crush Myanmar’s ruling junta, but said that a ceasefire offer made in November following pressure from neighboring China remains on the table.
Based in the northeastern state of Shan, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, has been fighting for autonomy for years. It is a member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armies that went on the offensive against the junta on Oct. 27, 2023, and made stunning gains.
It now controls 11 cities and towns, including the country’s largest ruby mine town of Mogoke in the Mandalay region.
Observers told RFA Burmese that the pledge, made in a Sunday statement marking the 62nd anniversary of Ta’ang National Revolution Day, suggests that the TNLA realizes it cannot achieve peace unilaterally and that merely controlling its own region would be unsustainable if the junta remains in power.
TNLA spokeswoman Lway Yay Oo told RFA that the statement, which also called for increased cooperation with other rebel forces, was released in line with the group’s goal of removing the junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat.
“Although the military dictatorship has been eliminated in the Ta’ang region, the regime continues to exist throughout Myanmar,” she said. “Since the dictatorship is still in power, we will continue to fight to achieve our revolutionary objective of removing the dictatorship.”
Lway Yay Oo said that the TNLA is adhering to its ceasefire offer to the junta “in consideration of the safety of the local people.”
Ta’ang National Liberation Army fighters patrol in northern Shan state, March 9, 2023.(AFP)
Lt. Gen. Tar Aik Bong, the chairman of the Palaung State Liberation Front – Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or PSLF-TNLA, which is also fighting for self-determination in Shan state, said his group would intensify military operations this year in cooperation with other anti-junta forces in the plains and surrounding areas.
In a speech marking Ta’ang National Revolution Day, he also called for strengthened unity among opposition groups to overthrow the junta in 2025, following victories last year.
Two-pronged approach
Despite the TNLA’s self-assured statement, political commentator Hla Kyaw Zaw told RFA that the group likely issued it due to the ongoing threat of a military attack.
“They [the TNLA] proposed peace negotiations under pressure from China, but peace cannot be achieved unilaterally,” he said. “Therefore, they have expressed a dual approach of engaging in peace dialogue with one hand while vowing to remove the junta with the other.”
China has managed to broker short-lived ceasefires between the insurgent allies and the military before, but they collapsed.
Beijing has extensive economic interests in Myanmar, including energy pipelines and mining projects and is keen to see an end to the violent turmoil that has engulfed its southern neighbor since the coup.
Hla Kyaw Zaw said that the TNLA’s statement suggests the group understands that simply controlling its own region is unsustainable.
“If the military regime remains intact, it will regroup and resume its offensive campaigns, just as it did during the terms of [earlier juntas],” he said. “They’ve learned from past experience that while the junta may agree to peace in one region, it simultaneously launches attacks in others. This is why the TNLA issued its recent statement.”
Former military officer Capt. Zin Yaw, who now advises rebel forces as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement of state employees who left their jobs to protest the military’s coup, said that the TNLA’s pledge to cooperate with other anti-junta forces suggests that fighting will intensify in Mandalay and Sagaing regions, as well as southern Shan state.
“The TNLA has clearly stated that the junta can only be removed if all rebel forces fight collaboratively, while also considering political dialogue as an alternative option,” he said. “I anticipate that rebel forces in northern Shan, southern Shan, Sagaing, and Mandalay will grow stronger and achieve more victories.”
Threat of airstrikes
A resident of Lashio, the largest town in Shan, told RFA that the statement has raised concerns that the military may carry out airstrikes on areas in the northern part of the state.
“Bombings and fighting since the coup have been common for residents, but we worry about further bombings and attacks,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “We hope to enjoy peace one day. However, we can do nothing but endure because we cannot stop the conflict.”
Junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly expressed interest in peace talks since his visit to China last November, as have the members of the Northern Brotherhood Alliance, which also includes the Arakan Army, or AA, and the Kokang Army, or MNDAA.
However, the various sides have yet to hold talks, said the TNLA’s Lway Yay Oo.
Residents of Mogoke, Mandaly region, Myanmar, greet the Ta’ang National Liberation Army after they took control of the town, July 24, 2024.(Mai A Hein via Facebook)
A former military officer and political commentator, who also declined to be named, said he believes the TNLA’s call to resume the fight against the military is intended to consolidate aligned anti-junta forces.
“If they stop fighting now, their internal unity could be undermined,” he said.
But the group also faces challenges “due to a lack of economic resources.”
“This is why they are saying two different things,” he said.
Attempts by RFA to reach junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun for comment on the TNLA’s statement went unanswered Monday.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
A mudslide at a Myanmar jade mine swept over a village on Monday and eight people were confirmed killed with dozens missing, residents of the area in Kachin state said, the latest disaster in the unregulated sector in which scores of people are killed every year.
The mud swept through Sa Paut village in Hpakant township before dawn on Monday, after a pond full of jade-mining slurry overflowed, residents said.
The bodies of three children, two women and three men, had been found by late morning but dozens were missing, residents said.
“The damage was worse as it happened at night when everyone was sleeping,” a Hpakant resident told Radio Free Asia.
“There were eight bodies found by 11:30 this morning … but there may be more dead.”
Residents said about 50 homes were engulfed by mud and many villagers had joined a rescue effort.
Myanmar’s Sa Paut village in Kachin state after a mudslide from a jade mine on Jan 13, 2025.(Citizen photo)
The disaster highlights lax safety measures at the area in Hpakant where the U.K.-based rights group Global Witness estimated that nearly 400,000 people rely on scavenging precious stones, most of whom work under unsafe conditions.
Poor oversight of mining operations has worsened in the turmoil that engulfed Myanmar since the military overthrew an elected government in a February 2021 coup d’etat.
The Hpakant area has been captured by the anti-junta Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, which relies on mining of jade, as well as rare earths and gold, and their export to neighboring China, to finance its armed campaign for self-determination.
A spokesman for the KIA said he had yet to receive information about the disaster, adding that the KIA had tried to improve conditions at the jade mines but with little success.
There’s no reliable tally of people killed in Myanmar’s mines but accidents are all too common.
More than 190 people were killed in a landslide at the Wai Khar jade mining site in Hapkant in 2022. Dozens have been killed in rare-earth mining accidents in Kachin state over the past year.
According to reports compiled by RFA, about 600 people were killed between 2008 and 2024 in more than 10 landslides in Hpakant township. Many deaths go unreported.
Another resident of Hpakant said the Monday disaster followed a build-up of water in an old jade mine.
“Rain water gets into the old pits and builds up as there’s nowhere for it to flow,” said the second resident, who also declined to be identified for safety reasons.
“It’s neither liquid nor solid … and it flows downstream when the lip of the deep pit can’t take any more pressure.”
Elsewhere in Hpakant township, at least eight people were killed and several were wounded when the military’s air force bombed San Hkar and Ma Sut Yang on Monday, residents told RFA.
KIA-controlled gold mine in Myanmar’s Tanai township, Kachin state, after bombing by the military’s air force on Jan 11, 2024.(Kachin News Group)
In Kachin state’s Tanai township, 15 people were killed in an air raid on a gold mine on Saturday, residents in the area said.
RFA tried to telephone the military’s spokesman for Kachin state, Moe Min Thein, for information on the situation but he did not answer.
Myanmar has banned seven books because of their LGBTQ+ content and will take legal action against their publishers, the military government announced, adding that the books were “obscene” and socially unacceptable.
The banned domestically published books are “A Butterfly Rests on My Heart” by Aung Khant, “1500 Miles to You” and “Love Planted by Hate” by Mahura, Myint Mo’s “Tie the Knot of Love”, “Match Made in Clouds” by DiDi Zaw, “DISO+Extra” by Red in Peace and “Concerned Person U Wai” by Vivian, the Ministry of Information said.
“These books are not accepted by Myanmar society, they are shameless and the content that can mislead the thinking and feelings of young people,” the Ministry of Information said in a statement published in state-run media on Thursday.
LGBTQ+ people face widespread prejudice in socially conservative Myanmar, where British colonial-era legislation criminalises gay sex with up to 10 years in jail.
The LGBTQ+ community made some advances during nearly a decade of tentative reforms, when the military partially stepped back from power to let a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi rule, establishing some rights groups and holding festivals.
But the democratic experiment ended in February 2021 when the military ousted Suu Kyi’s government and cracked down on dissent, with LBGTQ+ people among those who have been particularly hard hit, U.N. rights investigators have said.
The ministry said the publishers of the seven books by Myanmar authors had broken the law by putting out obscene literature without permission and prosecutions would take place.
Radio Free Asia tried to contact some of the publishers and authors of the banned books but was not able to.
One reader in the main city of Yangon said he could not understand why the books were banned. While most were about LGBTQ+ people, they were not obscene, he told RFA.
“These books can be read for entertainment. I don’t think they’re dirty,” said the reader, who highlighted strong characters in DiDi Zaw’s “Match Made in Clouds.”
One Myanmar author, not among those whose books were banned, told RFA that while the expression of sexuality might be considered obscene, there was also the issue of free expression.
“It doesn’t mean that obscenity should be allowed but banning books violates freedom of expression,” said the author who declined to be identified for security reasons.
One member of the LGBTQ+ community said the military represented oppressive chauvinism.
“The army is dominated by chauvinism. So women, children and LGBT people will always be oppressed,” the community member who also declined to be identified told RFA.
“Taking action against books published about LGBT people but considered obscene is oppressing us … It makes me think we have to work harder in the revolution against the junta.”
The U.N. Human Rights Council said in a report last year that Myanmar’s 2021 coup had precipitated an unprecedented human rights crisis.
“Women, girls, and LGBT people are severely and uniquely impacted by this crisis, yet these impacts are all too often obscured and ignored by the international community,” it said.
Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
The Myanmar air force has bombed a fishing village in Rakhine state killing 41 civilians and wounding 52, most of them Rohingya Muslims, residents involved in rescue work said on Thursday, in an attack insurgents condemned as a war crime.
Military planes bombed Kyauk Ni Maw village on the coast in Ramree township on Wednesday afternoon sparking huge fires that destroyed about 600 homes, residents said, sending clouds of black smoke up over the sea.
The area is under the control of anti-junta Arakan Army, or AA, insurgents but a spokesman said no fighting was going on there at the time of the air raid.
“The targeting of innocent people where there is no fighting is a very despicable and cowardly act … as well as a blatant war crime,” AA spokesman Khaing Thu Kha told Radio Free Asia.
Smoke rises from fires in Kyauk Ni Maw village in Rakhine state after a Myanmar air force bombing raid on Jan. 8, 2025.(Arakan Princess Media)
Hla Thein, the junta’s spokesman for Rakhine state, told RFA he was not aware of the incident. Posters in pro-military social media news channels said Kyauk Ni Maw was a transport hub for the AA.
A resident helping survivors said medics were trying to give emergency treatment to the wounded amid fears that the air force could return at any time and let loose bombs and missiles.
“People are going to help them out and more are coming,” said the resident, who declined to be identified for safety teaspoons.
“We’ve been treating the injured since last night but we don’t dare to keep too many patients in the hospital for fear of another airstrike.”
Villagers survey ruins in Kyauk Ni Maw village in Rakhine state after a Myanmar air force raid on Jan. 8, 2025.(Arakan Princess Media)
The AA has made unprecedented gains against the military since late last year and now controls about 80% of Myanmar’s westernmost state.
On Dec. 29, the AA captured the town of Gwa from the military, a major step toward its goal of taking the whole of Rakhine state, and then said it was ready for talks with the junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat.
But the junta has responded with deadly airstrikes, residents say.
The military denies targeting civilians but human rights investigators and security analysts say Myanmar’s army has a long reputation of indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas as a way to undermine popular support for the various rebel forces fighting its rule.
“The military is showing its fangs with its planes, that people can be killed at any time, at will,” aid worker Wai Hin Aung told RFA.
Villagers watch homes burning in Kyauk Ni Maw village, in Rakhine state, after a raid by the Myanmar air force on Jan. 8, 2025.(Arakan Princess Media)
The bombing of Kyauk Ni Maw is the latest bloody attack on members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority. About 740,000 Rohingya fled from Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh following a bloody crackdown by the military against members of the largely stateless community in August 2017.
Over the past year, Rohingya have suffered violence at the hands of both sides in the Rakhine state’s war, U.N. rights investigators have said.
The AA took a hard line with the Rohingya after the junta launched a campaign to recruit, at times forcibly, Rohingya men into militias to fight the insurgents.
On Aug. 5, scores of Rohingya trying to flee from the town of Maungdaw to Bangladesh, across a border river, were killed by drones and artillery fire that survivors and rights groups said was unleashed by the AA. The AA denied responsibility.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Around 400 ancient religious monuments in Myanmar’s U.N.-designated World Heritage Site of Bagan are located on privately-held land, according to residents, who say access is restricted and maintenance is unregulated.
The monuments — which include pagodas, stupas and temples — are on the property of private businesses and state-owned agencies, away from public view and oversight, the residents told RFA Burmese, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals.
A resident of Mandalay region’s Nyaung-U township, located about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from old Bagan, said that without easy access to the monuments, it’s unclear whether they are being properly maintained.
The Eden Group, which is developing a hotel, owns land with at least 24 temples, including the Agga Tae and Paungku temples, the resident said.
“The fenced-in sections have never been fully protected,” he said, and it isn’t easy for the public to get access to the compounds.
A herder walks with cattle past temples in Bagan in Myanmar’s central Mandalay region, July 8, 2024.(Sai Aung Main/AFP)
In Loka Nanda National Park, which is designated as Forest Department land, there are six pagodas, while another three are located on the grounds of the Ayeyarwady Hotel, three on the property of the Bagan Hotel, and one on land owned by the Thande Hotel.
Several temples are located on the property of private hotels such as Nan Myint Tower, Aureum Palace Hotel, Treasure Hotel, Treasure Palm Garden, Thazin Garden Hotel, and Umbra Hotel. Other temples can be found within the compounds of the Nyaung U Township Court and the Agricultural Department.
UNESCO designation
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, designated Bagan a World Heritage Site in 2019, citing its cultural significance.
But much of Bagan’s preservation oversight fell away after the 2021 coup when teams from France, South Korea and Japan withdrew.
The city was the seat of the Bagan Kingdom which, at its height, ruled the region between the 11th and 13th century. It is home to more than 3,000 monuments that reflect the Buddhist cultural tradition of merit-making, and are decorated with murals and statutes.
UNESCO lists “buildings and development” — including “major visitor accommodation and associated infrastructure” — and “social/cultural uses of heritage” — such as “impacts of tourism/visitor/recreation” — among its 14 primary threats to World Heritage Sites. There is no requirement that sites be accessible to the public.
A Bagan resident expressed frustration that members of the public are only allowed to enter the grounds of monuments located on private land during pagoda festival days.
“You can’t enter them whenever you want,” the resident said.
A taxi driver noted that it’s “inconvenient to enter other people’s property” to visit the sites.
“We don’t have to seek permission to visit the Ananda pagoda and Thar Mani brick monastery in public areas,” he said. “It’s inconvenient for us to ask, ‘please let us visit the pagodas.’”
Development and maintenance
The Eden Group is developing a high-end hotel that was approved by former junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe in 1995. It’s located between the banks of the Ayeyarwady river to the west and the road from Nyaung-U to Bagan to the east.
In the project zone, which is where several ancient pagodas are located, excavators are digging and workers are laying concrete foundations at depths of 3-6 meters (10-20 feet) for constructing buildings.
Residents reported that the group’s projects were suspended following a recent visit by current junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
A man takes a selfie with an ancient pagoda to celebrate Bagan being named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bagan, Myanmar, July 27, 2019.(Ann Wang/Reuters)
A source close to the Department of Archaeology and National Museum said that the pagodas are being repaired and maintained.
“When necessary, we carry out maintenance,” the source said, noting that workers use chemicals to kill trees that grow on top of the monuments. “As for the pagodas in private compounds, we have the right to maintain all these monuments.”
The source went on to say that laws, rules and regulations have been enacted to prohibit the construction of buildings near the pagoda area, including high-rise buildings.
Nyi Mon, director of the Department of Archaeology and National Museum (Bagan), confirmed that officials from his agency are “constantly inspecting pagodas in the hotel compounds to ensure that preservation work is unaffected.”
He dismissed claims that monuments located within hotel compounds are inaccessible to the public, and said that maintenance is regularly carried out on the sites “with international technology and advice.”
‘As if they belong to someone’
But a resident of Bagan pointed out that many of the sites lie behind locked gates, “as if they belong to someone.”
“Vinyl sticker sign boards outside display the pagoda’s code number, name, and the maximum number of visitors allowed at a time,” he said. “However, the temples remain locked, and only archaeological staff are authorized to hold the keys.”
“Since these heritage sites are managed by the private sector, concerns have been raised about their authenticity and credibility,” he added.
Temples in Bagan, Myanmar’s central Mandalay region, July 7, 2024.(Sai Aung Main/AFP)
Myanmar’s prior military regime forcibly evicted residents of Bagan to the so-called “New Bagan City” during the 1990s under the pretext that their homes were located within cultural heritage sites.
Nonetheless, ancient pagodas of great historic value still exist on land owned by prominent businessmen and state agencies.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Ethnic minority Kachin fighters in northern Myanmar captured military camps on the approaches to the major town of Bhamo on Wednesday, another setback for the junta that have been struggling for much of the past year to hold territory in the face of concerted attacks.
Junta forces now control less than half the country after suffering major battlefield setbacks in 2024, including the loss of command headquarters in Shan and Rakhine states, rebel groups have said.
The military, which has ruled the ethnically diverse country with an iron fist for most of its history since independence from Britain in 1948, has called for talks but there are few signs of realistic steps towards peace.
The Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, fighting for self-determination in Myanmar’s northernmost state, captured the military’s last bases in Mansi town, in southern Kachin state, about 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the town of Bhamo, on the main road south.
“It can be confirmed, the three camps were captured this morning at around 11 a.m.,” said KIA information Naw Bu told Radio Free Asia, referring to bases for the junta’s infantry battalions 601, 319 and artillery battalion 523.
RFA tried to contact the military council’s Kachin state spokesman, Moe Min Thein, by telephone to ask about the situation but he did not respond.
Naw Bu did not give any information about casualties but said the junta forces in Mansi had been supporting their colleagues in Bhamo, an Irrawaddy River town and transport hub with a population of some 80,000 people before the latest fighting erupted.
So the fall of Mansi was a significant loss for the military, Naw Bu said.
“Mansi is important. These camps were providing security for Bhamo,” he said.
The KIA launched an offensive to capture both Mansi and Bhamo on Dec. 4.
A Mansi resident taking refuge outside the town told RFA that the military had responded to the loss of Mansi with sustained airstrikes.
“The sound of explosions can be clearly heard from where I am,” said the resident, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
Mansi’s residents fled months ago to surrounding villages and farms, many living in tents, adding to Myanmar’s growing population of displaced that the United Nations estimates at more than 3.5 million people.
Naw Bu said the battle for Bhamo was fierce and the KIA had captured its police and civil administration headquarters, where junta forces were stationed. The military was defending its remaining positions with airstrikes and heavy weapons, he said.
Most of Bhamo’s residents have fled but about 20,000 remain, according to estimates by aid workers, who say there have been civilian deaths in the fighting.
Residents said at least eight of the town’s neighborhoods had sustained major destruction in fires sparked by artillery and airstrikes, including Min Kone, Nyaung Pin Yat, Kokko Taw and Shwe Kyee Nar, and about 50 residents had been killed over the past month.
One resident said many of those displaced from Bhamo were sheltering in forests and villages with few supplies to sustain them.
“Food and medicine are in need and the pregnant women need medicine and are facing hardship giving birth,” the resident, who also declined to be identified, told RFA.
The KIA, one of Myanmar’s most powerful guerrilla armies, has made significant gains in fighting over the past year, capturing rare earth and jade mines that export to China, as well all main crossings on the border with China in its area of operations.
China, the junta’s main foreign ally, has been trying to end the violence in its neighbor where it has extensive economic interests including energy pipelines from the Indian Ocean, and it has been pressing insurgents to strike ceasefires with the junta.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Myanmar’s junta has rebuffed a New Year’s proposal for political dialogue by rebels in Rakhine state with a week of deadly airstrikes, residents say.
Observers said the military’s actions following the proposal indicate that the junta has no interest in talks, despite frequent calls by chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing for political means to end the crisis.
On Dec. 29, Arakan Army, or AA, insurgents captured the west coast town of Gwa from the military, a major step toward their goal of taking the whole of Rakhine state, and then said they were ready for talks with the junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat.
The seizure came slightly more than a week after the AA took a major military base in Ann town on Dec. 20, and the rebels have now captured 14 of the state’s 17 townships, pushing the military into shrinking pockets of territory.
On Dec. 30, the AA said it was open to talks with the military to resolve Rakhine state’s “internal issues through political means rather than military solutions,” although the group did not refer specifically to a ceasefire.
However, as of Monday, the military had carried out at least six airstrikes since the proposal in the AA-controlled townships of Ponnagyun, Ann, Gwa and Myebon, killing 10 civilians and injuring more than a dozen others, residents told RFA Burmese.
Week of airstrikes
Most recently, on Sunday, a military airstrike on Ponnagyun’s Aung Zon Pyin village killed three members of the ethnic Rohingya community, including a child, and a female resident, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
A hospital damaged by the bombing of Kamtaunggyi town, Myebon township, Myanmar, by the junta, Jan. 3, 2025.(Arakan Princess Media)
“As this area has access to mobile signals, residents [of the state] come here to make phone calls, and the area is normally crowded,” said an aid worker in Ponnagyun. “[On Sunday], when people were talking on the phone, an aerial attack took place, causing some [deaths and] injuries.”
The aid worker said another airstrike took place the same day on nearby Taung Pauk village.
The three Rohingya killed in the airstrike on Aung Zon Pyin had traveled there from nearby Kyauktaw township to place phone calls, he said.
The airstrikes followed a Jan. 3 military bombing of a hospital in Myebon township’s Kan Htaung Gyi town, which killed a woman, residents said.
And on New Year’s Eve — a day after the AA proposal — military jets struck Ponnagyun’s Yoe Ta Yoke village, residents said, killing five civilians and injuring 10 others.
Residents are living in constant fear of aerial bombings, Tin Aung Htay, of Ponnagyun township, told RFA.
“[On Sunday] evening, the junta carried out continuous bombings, with a jet flying overhead for 15 minutes,” he said. “Residents were terrified and fled. Children lay flat on the ground while the plane passed. [No one] dared go to work while the junta’s jet was in the area.”
‘No political dialogue’
A commentator on military affairs in Rakhine state said that the junta’s bombings demonstrates a stance of “no political dialogue,” despite the AA’s offer.
“The recent bombings indicate that the junta has no intention of engaging in political dialogue,” said the commentator, who also declined to be named. “Targeting civilians who are not part of any armed group was both malicious and deeply unethical. These were inhumane acts.”
Attempts by RFA to contact both AA spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha and junta spokesperson and Rakhine state attorney general Hla Thein for their comments on the attacks went unanswered by the time of publishing.
In November, the AA said that since the Nov. 13, 2023, start of its offensive in Rakhine state, military airstrikes, artillery strikes and small arms fire has killed more than 700 civilians and injured more than 1,500 others.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Myanmar’s junta has released 5,864 prisoners, including about 600 political prisoners, to mark Independence Day, a spokesman for the military said, but there was no sign that one of the world’ most famous political prisoners, Aung San Suu Kyi, would be set free.
Myanmar has a tradition on big holidays of mass prisoner releases, with the majority being those jailed for ordinary crimes. Occasionally political prisoners are included.
Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the junta known as the State Administration Council, said in a statement that 5,864 prisoners had been granted amnesty.
“About 600 people prosecuted under 505 will be included,” he said on Independence Day on Saturday, referring to a section of the penal code that includes spreading fear and false news, which is used to target critics of the junta that seized power in 2021.
The spokesman said 180 foreigners were being released, most of whom are believed to be from neighboring countries such as Thailand.
There had been speculation that Myanmar’s most popular politician, Suu Kyi, might be released but the spokesman did not mention her and he did not respond to attempts to reach him for comment.
The 79-year-old daughter of the hero of Myanmar’s campaign for independence from British colonial rule was arrested after the 2021 coup in which an elected government she led was ousted.
She was later sentenced on charges she dismissed as trumped up and jailed for 33 years. Her sentence was reduced to 27 years.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is believed to be in solitary confinement in prison in the capital, Naypyidaw, but her exact whereabouts are not known while concern for her health grows.
Her younger son, Kim Aris, thanked his mother’s supporters for their prayers and hopes for her release.
“I’ve held the same hope for her. Please don’t give up. Let’s continue to hold onto hope,” he said in a video message on Sunday.
The military does not say how many prisoners of conscience it holds but the rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners says more than 28,000 civilians have been arrested in the nearly four years since the coup and 21,499 are in detention.
One former political prisoner dismissed the amnesty as window dressing by the junta as it comes under pressure from its neighbors to end the war against ethnic minority and pro-democracy forces that has crippled its economy and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
“It’s just for show to the International community,” the former prisoner who declined to be identified told Radio Free Asia, adding that most of the political prisoners being freed were near the end of their sentences.
Among those freed was Khat Aung, a former chief minister of Kachin state when Suu Kyi’s party was in government, who was serving a 12-year term on various charges, the military said.
Model and actress Thin Zar Wint Kyaw who was jailed for five years for her dissent was also released, a source close to her family said.
“Her release has been confirmed, she’s in good health,” said the source.
People in Myanmar’s Yangon city greet prisoners on a bus coming out of the Insein Prison after being released under an amnesty on Jan. 4, 2025.(RFA)
Prisoners were emerging from jails across the country and rights groups were compiling data.
A source in Kale town in the northwest said 23 people had been released there including four political prisoners. In the central town of Pyay, 11 political prisoners were among 60 people set free, said a source close to the town’s prison.
The Political Prisoner Network Myanmar activist group told RFA that only 344 political prisoners, including 131 women, had been released as of Monday afternoon, not the 600 the junta announced.
“It’s a lie to the public and the international community,” Thaik Tun Oo, a senior member of the group, told RFA from an undisclosed location.
Thaik Tun Oo said the military did not dare release more political prisoners given the unprecedented setbacks it is facing in the war.
“They don’t have the guts to release those sentenced for rebellion, who don’t accept their rule,” said Thaik Tun Oo.
The only hope for most political prisoners was victorious anti-junta forces throwing open their prison gates, he said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
(Rebel Pepper illustration/RFA)
