Insight Myanmar

Children of the Revolution

Episode #443: Ei, a former member of the People’s Defense Force (PDF), shifted from armed resistance to humanitarian work, and now focuses on child soldiers and youth affected by conflict. She joined the PDF at 28, witnessing both bravery and abuse—including harassment and executions over financial disputes—which convinced her that real revolution required education and ethics. “We have different skills for education, for healthcare, for the citizens,” she said. “My mastery is not in my arms, it is in my brain.”  After leaving the camp, Ei lived for three years in a rural Karen village, overcoming mistrust through practical work— helping teachers, planting vegetables, and raising livestock to improve food security. Despite airstrikes and instability, she helped build schools and a library, insisting that education must continue even in war.  Drawing from these experiences, Ei founded the A Lin Eain Shelter in Mae Sot, Thailand. It provides education, trauma counseling, and vocational training for children under 18 from all sides of the conflict—the military, PDFs, and ethnic armed groups. “If you have any under 18 years old soldier who would like to go to school, we can accept,” she tells resistance leaders. The shelter aims to reintegrate children through practical skills and mental health support.  Ei warns that trauma and lost education will shape Myanmar’s future. “If their childhood life is really bad, if they become a soldier, it becomes worse when they hold a weapon,” she said. “Our young people are human resources for the future, and they have to study [to] build a free and just society for the next generation.” She urges both revolutionary and international leaders to invest in education and end child recruitment: “Taking the children out of war is not a loss. It is an investment in our future.”

A Scanner Darkly

Episode #442: Yin Maung, a Myanmar-born digital-rights researcher with Aung Media, examines how non-consensual intimate images have become a political weapon in post-coup Myanmar. He places this crisis within the country’s rapid digital shift. Although online communication surged during COVID-19, digital literacy, privacy awareness, and regulatory protections did not keep pace. As a result, Myanmar’s population entered a politically volatile digital environment without safeguards.  Following the 2021 coup, many women—some politically outspoken for the first time—used social media to oppose the junta. This visibility made them targets of harassment by male, pro-military users. Doxing became a primary tactic, with personal data such as names, ID numbers, and addresses leaked on Telegram alongside accusations of ties to resistance groups. These online attacks frequently translated into physical danger and arrests by security forces. Non-consensual pornography is another form of harassment: leaked photos, AI-altered images, etc. While some pro-democracy users have also engaged in abusive behavior, Yin Maung’s research shows gendered attacks are more intense and prevalent on the military-aligned side.  A legal vacuum intensifies the harm. Myanmar lacks privacy or data-protection laws, and Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law is widely used to suppress dissent rather than protect victims. Social norms further burden victims, as conservative attitudes toward sexuality lead to widespread victim-blaming, particularly towards women. While the emotional, social, and economic consequences often result in depression, extreme fear and even suicidal thoughts, perpetrators rarely face stigma or punishment.  Support systems have only recently begun to emerge. Organizations like Stop Online Harm now partner with major platforms to expedite takedown requests and offer psychosocial assistance, though Telegram remains resistant to moderation. Yin Maung stresses that prevention requires addressing gender inequality, improving platform accountability, and fostering collaboration between digital-rights and women’s-rights groups. Ultimately, he advocates for a future grounded in digital-rights principles and calls for men to share responsibility in combating systemic gender-based oppression.

Against Injustice

Episode #441: “I just thought, ‘Someone has to stay and bear witness,’” says Paul Greening, a veteran humanitarian with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). For decades he moved between crises—Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, East Timor—but Myanmar, and the Rohingya tragedy in particular, define his moral world.   He first encountered the Rohingya in 2008 while in Aceh, when boats of desperate families arrived on Indonesian shores. Unprepared officials and global indifference convinced him to keep their story alive within humanitarian networks, a concern that eventually drew him to Myanmar itself. He arrived in August 2017, and felt strongly that a catastrophe was about to unfold. Weeks later, the campaign began.   When his IOM contract ended, Greening stayed on in Rakhine, linking aid agencies with local civil society and supporting the 2019 White Rose campaign of interfaith solidarity. Trapped in Bangkok by COVID, he later moved to Mae Sot, where he now supports exiled youth and the wounded. “They’re inspiring,” he says. “They’re not giving up!” Greening finds particular inspiration in both the leading role taken in the resistance by Burmese youth, and by Myanmar’s emerging cross-ethnic unity: “That’s the real revolution,” he says, “ethnic cooperation.”   At the same time, he has reasons for concern, such as the lack of full acceptance of women and LGBTQ youth in the movement, as well as in a future, post-conflict Myanmar. He also wants to ensure that the movement is not co-opted by career politicians who have fled the area for their own safety but intend to regain power in a post-conflict Myanmar.  Greening is unsentimental about how many revolutions turn out, and the effects of trauma across generations, yet still has hope. “If [the people] can be more united,” he says, “then we move the revolution forward again.”

No Space for Dictators

Episode #440: Rick Hanson and Brang Nan engage in a moving conversation on Myanmar's ongoing struggle for democracy, focusing on psychological resilience, Buddhist practice, and activism. Rick begins with a powerful statement: “No one can stop you from claiming the power of your own mind, but only you can claim it.” He underscores the importance of mindfulness and mental autonomy as tools to resist oppression, emphasizing, “To put it really bluntly, get the assholes out of your head.” He adds, “If I may use a phrase, fuck them. Live well, meanwhile, as best you can.” This revolutionary act of reclaiming mental freedom, Rick asserts, is foundational to individual and collective empowerment.  Brang Nan shares his experiences living under military rule, speaking of survivor guilt, loss, and emotional isolation. He describes the 2021 protests as an initial “high,” followed by withdrawal and numbing as repression intensified. Despite these challenges, he finds moments of connection transformative. “If we allow ourselves to be a little bit brave, a little bit open to sharing, then what I’ve realized is that we’re all in the same boat,” he reflects. Such openness fosters solidarity, countering the isolation imposed by fear.  Rick uses the metaphor of tending a fruit tree as a guide to self-care.  He says that you can have good soil, water the tree appropriately, etc., yet you can’t make it yield fruit, concluding, “You can tend to the causes, but you cannot control the results.” This teaching resonates with Brang Nan, who finds empowerment in focusing on small, meaningful actions. Rick further emphasizes the value of savoring “ordinary jewels”—small, positive moments—to build resilience.   Brang Nan offers a poignant reflection as the conversation concludes: “Once you get out of that fog you keep yourself in, you start to open your eyes. And when you do, you see others around you doing similar things, surviving, contributing, caring. It’s this openness and connection that nourish us and give us the strength to move forward, even when everything feels impossible.”

Far From Home

Episode #439: “The key human rights issue within Thailand and more broadly within the region is migration related,” says Ben Harkins, a veteran labor rights and migration expert who has spent over seventeen years working across Southeast Asia. From refugee camps to industrial zones, Harkins has witnessed how migration has become both a lifeline and a trap—an act of survival in systems built on exploitation.  He began his career along the Thai-Myanmar border in the 2000s, where tens of thousands of Karen and other ethnic minorities lived in sprawling camps after fleeing conflict. “It's only been this year, in fact, that we've finally seen a major transition in refugee policy in Thailand,” he notes, referring to new measures allowing some refugees to legally work outside the camps for the first time. For Harkins, this small policy shift represents freedom long denied.  Over the years, he has researched the migration that sustain Thailand’s economy. “The flows from Myanmar are so complex,” he explains. “These are very heterogeneous flows of migrants.” His work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) has exposed forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery in sectors like fishing, manufacturing, and agriculture.  When Myanmar’s 2021 coup dismantled years of fragile progress, Harkins says it upended everything he had worked for. “Just overnight, my entire world was turned upside down, basically,” he recalls. Colleagues and partners he had collaborated with for years were suddenly arrested, in hiding, or silenced. The military junta publicly denounced his research in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, accusing him of spreading lies about labor conditions. “Migration itself has sort of become weaponized in many ways by the military junta,” he explains of the current reality, describing how the regime taxes overseas workers, manipulates remittances, and uses migration control to punish dissent.  Now based in Bangkok, Harkins rejects claims that international businesses can operate responsibly under dictatorship. “You just can't have responsible business if you don't have fundamental labor rights for workers,” he insists. Despite everything, he continues his work with the ILO. “The least I can do is make use of the voice that I have within the UN system to try to support these principles of social justice as much as I can.”