Insight Myanmar

The Case for Engagement

Episode #467: “We still believe that engaging is more useful than not engaging,” says Kiat Sittheeamorn , former Thai Deputy Prime Minister and international trade negotiator. In this discussion, Kiat draws on decades of experience in engineering, business, and international diplomacy to reflect on the tough moral and practical choices facing Southeast Asia today. Kiat’s approach to public service was shaped by hardship, self-reliance, and a code rooted in early struggle. From power plant engineer to director of the Board of Trade, to an “accidental” entry into politics at the height of Thailand’s 1997 economic crisis, he moved quickly into three terms as Member of Parliament and one as Deputy Prime Minister. Carrying technical expertise into public life, Kiat saw integrity as the only defense against the temptations and the “confusion” of power. In Parliament, he explains how he fought corruption, intimidation and bribery, and helped force the repayment of billions in ill-gotten gains. Internationally, Kiat rejects “market fundamentalism,” insisting that global progress requires fairness alongside growth. For this reason, he prefers the term “free and fair trade” than “free trade” alone. Kiat views Southeast Asian economic integration as essential, but laments that Thailand’s “bad politics”—corruption, disunity, and passive excuses—have held the country back. His perspective on Myanmar is equally blunt. Thailand has borne refugee burdens faithfully, he says, while Western partners fail to deliver on their promises. On the value of sanctions or “megaphone diplomacy,” Kiat argues that quiet engagement—pragmatic, persistent, and rooted in genuine empathy—offers a better path forward, even when dealing with deeply flawed elections and authoritarian regimes.

What Lies Beneath

Episode #466: Jonathan Moss, a Free Burma Rangers (FBR) volunteer and former U.S. Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, speaks on the topic of landmines. He notes that the Burma Army routinely employs these devices around military camps, along roads and trails, and in villages. After the military takes a village, often accompanied by widespread looting and arson, it routinely seeds the ground with landmines near homes, places of worship and transit routes. Displaced villagers returning home face a stark choice: conduct ad hoc demining now or live with constant danger. “Mines are being laid, not only for defense, but to target civilians,” Moss says. “IDP routes, food paths, water access points – they’re increasingly contaminated.” Mines have been found at church entrances and home doorways, deliberately targeting civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law. More than 1,600 mine and UXO casualties were recorded in Myanmar in 2024 – the worst in the world for the second year running. Beyond deaths and injuries, contamination creates fear and economic hardship for communities. “Demining, it’s already happening with or without international support,” Moss says. “People just really can’t wait. They’re clearing paths to farms, water sources, medical clinics and schools out of necessity.” In partnership with communities, FBR is working to establish an Explosive Hazard Mitigation Center that would support existing efforts and upholding International Mine Action Standards as much as possible. In the midst of the uncertain conflict and a shortfall of international support at the local level, demining efforts face considerable challenges but also solutions that are in sight.

The Medium Is the Message

Episode #465: In a rich discussion on Buddhist manuscript cultures in Southeast Asia, Professor Volker Grabowsky and Dr. Silpsupa Jaengsawang explore how handwritten texts—especially those on palm leaf and mulberry paper—carry spiritual, cultural, and scholarly significance. They distinguish literature from manuscript study, which emphasizes the importance of materials, format and scribal context as much as the content. Manuscripts, they argue, are not just vessels of content, but cultural artifacts, and often used as sacred objects in monastic rituals. In Theravāda traditions, monks often preach from memory, andholding a manuscript mainly to symbolically evoke the connection to the Buddha’s teachings. They explain how traditional manuscript forms can also be used to convey secular content—such as histories and political commentary—and sometimes serve as tools of cultural preservation, such as in the Tai community in China. The scholars highlight the many challenges of preservation due to the deleterious effects of a tropical climate and natural disasters, as well as the social barrier of restricted access to manuscripts for women. Another challenge to preservation is the declining knowledge of traditional scripts in the modern world. Digitization efforts like the Hamburg-based Digital Library aim to safeguard these texts, but both scholars insist on the need for public engagement. The pair concludes that manuscript traditions persist not as relics but as dynamic forms coexisting with print and digital media—integrating past, present, and future in a living continuum of cultural practice.

State of the Scam

Episode #464: Dr. Tun Aung Shwe, a researcher, former public health practitioner, political activist, and National Unity Government representative to Australia discusses Myanmar’s proliferating scam centers, calling them a symptom of a far deeper political and economic system rooted in decades of military rule. He explains that they began as small, family-run operations in northeastern Shan, operating initially on the borderlands, but have expanded rapidly, even into Yangon, Mandalay, and Naypyidaw. Scam centers operate under the protection of the military and its allied militias, continuing a long-standing pattern in which armed patronage and illicit economies sustain military power. The notorious Border Guard Forces are an example of this dynamic. Formed from splinter groups of ethnic armed organizations under military pressure, these forces control territory, protect scam compounds, and support the junta’s political agenda, including its planned elections, in exchange for freedom to conduct illegal business. He describes this arrangement as consistent with earlier strategies used under General Ne Win half a century ago, linking counterinsurgency directly to criminal enterprise. Tun Aung Shwe dismisses the military’s public crackdowns on scam centers as mere propaganda. While resistance groups preserve evidence and invite international observers when they close down a center, the military quickly destroys anything that can be traced back to it. He explains how, when Chinese authorities presented evidence implicating senior officers in scams targeting Chinese nationals, that pressure prompted limited internal action, but otherwise, the junta continues its institutional involvement in centers targeting other countries. He links the military’s staged anti-scam actions to the junta’s ongoing effort to regain international legitimacy. Contrast all this, he says, with the post-coup revolutionary movement, which has articulated shared principles for a federal democratic union without military involvement and now prioritizes security sector reform to build a professional federal force. “No one believes the Myanmar military today,” he concludes, “because the military lied again and again.”

The Weight of Freedom

Episode #463: “You know, I’m not a superwoman or anything, but at least I can do what I can do,” says Moe Thae Say with quiet conviction. Once a creative director and successful entrepreneur in Yangon’s digital and design scene, she lived comfortably, surrounded by friends who continued their middle-class lives even after the coup. But when Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021, Moe Thae Say could no longer accept normalcy under dictatorship. She used profits from her small business to support resistance groups—until she made a life-altering choice to join them. Leaving behind her career and family, she left the city and traveled to the border to train with the People’s Defense Force (PDF). For two months she endured grueling combat drills under defected soldiers, confronting fear, exhaustion, and discrimination as one of only seven women among sixty trainees. “My heartbeat was louder than the gunfire,” she recalls. Though barred from the frontline, she contributed through medical training, management, and fundraising, finding strength in solidarity— and in the presence of her longtime partner, now fiancé, whom she married amid airstrikes as an act of defiance and hope. Haunted by the constant threat of bombings, she slept with her shoes on, ready to flee. Yet her determination deepened. “I enjoyed it,” she says. “I’m thinking that my life is meaningful over there.” Now recovering from heart problems, she awaits the call to return, unafraid of death: “Once I die, I won’t remember anything— it just disappears.” Moe Thae Say remains critical of the revolution’s leadership in the NUG, urging decision-makers to “come to the ground and listen.” She believes art can bridge divides and awaken empathy in a desensitized urban middle class. Her call is simple but profound: to listen—to one another, to the suffering, and to the shared humanity that must fuel Myanmar’s struggle for freedom.