Insight Myanmar

Episode #561: The third episode in a three part series, this was recorded inside Malaysia’s Parliament during the final stretch of Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship. It sits where diplomacy meets consequence—non-interference, the limits of influence, and the reset button of rotating leadership. Beneath that is Malaysia’s lived reality: refugees arriving as people, not headlines, often in legal limbo and reliant on UNHCR papers. MPs speak of gaps in data, barriers to legal work and schooling, strained clinics, and the politics of backlash. The first guest is Zahir Hassan, a first-term MP for Wangsa Maju in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s most densely populated constituency. An engineer and disaster-risk advocate, he treats displacement as a systems failure that has turned permanent. Refugees were meant to be part of “a few months transition,” yet some families are now third or fourth generation in Malaysia. With no legal status, “they technically cannot work. They cannot earn a living here, [so] for them to survive over the years, they have got to work illegally,” he says. Hassan also warns that Malaysia can’t drift year after year without proper data, planning, burden-sharing, and serious leadership at regional levels, and that stronger action needs to be taken towards the crisis. Mohammed Suhaimi Abdullah, MP for Langkawi and a former two-term senator, describes Bukit Malut as a settlement that began in 1982 with about 12 Rohingya families, and has grown to nearly 15,000 today. Some residents, he says, “have got blue identity card,” adding, “when you have a blue card, you have to treat them like Malaysians;” despite this, he laments that much of the region is plagued by poor infrastructure and few schools. Abdullah rejects stereotypes, asserting that these Rohingya communities are “not poor people! They’re very hard-working,” and adds that this fact that has created resentment among local populations who are not willing to take on equally strenuous jobs. Finally, Hassan Karim is a MP for Pasir Gudang and a lawyer shaped by civil-liberties fights. Referencing his youth, he says: “We fought any attempt by the [Malaysian] government tosuppress the space for democracy.” Karim’s actions aligned with his words then, as he notes that he was arrested on sedition charges for protesting authoritarian tendencies. Concerning thecurrent influx of refugees, he calls out Malaysian society for not extending sympathy to those fleeing conflict. “This kind of humanism must transcend religions and race,” he insists. If Malaysians can mobilize around Palestinians in Gaza as a matter of human rights, he argues, they cannot practice moral compartmentalization when the persecuted are nearer, poorer, and politically inconvenient. As Karim ask openly, if Muslim solidarity is invoked loudly elsewhere, why is it so thin here? His harshest criticism, however, is for Myanmar’s military, adding that currently, “I feel pessimistic. I never heard or saw any tangible effort [of progress.]”

Episode #559: “Comrade,” Renata says, when asked how she would like to be remembered. A member of the People’s Defense Force and a former political prisoner, she uses the word to name what sustains her in Myanmar’s revolution: loyalty to those who have suffered, fought, been jailed, and died. Before the 2021 coup, Renata was a law student who describes her life as centered on study and office work. Following the coup, she hesitated initially to take part in direct action, and instead chose to participate online, calling herself a “keyboard fighter” then. But as the crackdowns intensified, she joined street protests, and then learned to make Molotov cocktails and small bombs for her brother and his friends. In June 2021, she was arrested with her mother and four-year-old sister, who became the country’s youngest political prisoner. Renata was sentenced to three years with hard labor but freed after four months upon signing a pledge not to participate in revolutionary activity. She describes prison as lasting trauma. After her release, she joined the PDF in northern Shan State. Jungle life revolved around food and water scarcity, physical endurance, and evading airstrikes and landmines. For young people anxious to join the resistance, she says they must prepare physically and mentally for hunger, discrimination, sleeplessness, and trauma; women, she adds, will face additional burdens. Her own ability to sustain herself through these challenges is rooted in her relationships with her comrades and her dedication to defeating the junta. Yet Renata still allows herself to imagine a peaceful future after this long struggle. “Please keep on watching our revolution!” she pleads to the international audience.

Episode #557: Born in Yangon, Aung Tun grew up listening to foreign news broadcasts, which provided an uncensored view of a world beyond Myanmar’s military control. Inspired by the 1988 uprising in which his brother was detained, he felt compelled to ensure the truth was documented.So Aung Tun joined the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an independent media organization. His work was clandestine and risky—using hidden cameras to document the regime's brutality and the resilience of the Burmese people. In 2007, Aung Tun played a vital role in filming large parts of the Saffron Revolution, an uprising led by monks. His footage became part of the documentary "Burma VJ," which garnered international acclaim for bringing Myanmar’s struggle to global attention.Despite a temporary setback after being arrested during the revolution, Aung Tun returned to the streets to continue documenting the protests. He believes in the power of citizen journalism to transcend borders and inspire action.In 2021, Myanmar once again faced a military coup, and while technology had evolved, the danger of speaking out remained the same. Aung Tun stresses the importance of learning from the past, being transparent, and fostering growth through self-critique. Now living in exile, he continues to train young Burmese journalists, ensuring that Myanmar’s fight for democracy is not forgotten. His dedication stands as a testament to the unyielding spirit of Myanmar's people."In Saffron, all I could do is to just to keep recording," he says. “So as long as you survive, you keep recording! Somebody will use your footage. Even though I am in exile, and I cannot film, I still keep telling the story, like I'm telling right now. So don't think too much! Sometimes you think too much, you'll be overwhelmed by what you have to do. Just look at the present moment."

Episode #555: Note: this podcast episode includes frank anatomical language and extended discussion of women’s bodies, including terms for female genitalia, in the context of human rights, state abuse, and activist movements. Reader and listener discretion is advised.“[They say that] Thailand is the only country that has never been colonized. But it's not true!” Kornkanok “Pup” Khumta, an activist from Isaan, argues that the myth of sovereignty hides a colonial order, where Bangkok defines language, history, development, and which bodies are allowed to exist. Isaan, she says, is Lao in language and culture, and the borders that separate people along the Mekong are still newer than the state admits. “People in Isaan, we have been brainwashed to be Thai people,” she says, adding that even the word “Thai” itself is a recent invention. Pup describes Siam’s consolidation as violent, then sustained through schooling that punishes local speech and replaces regional memory with a Siam-centered story. The same center–periphery structure shapes “development” as extraction: resources flow to Bangkok while poverty in the northeast is treated as normal. Generations migrate to the capital for education and wages, leaving Isaan hollowed out, a place many return to only for Songkran or New Year. At Thammasat University, Pup expected democratic critique but instead found classmates aiming for bureaucratic power. She pushed back, arguing provincial governors should be elected, not appointed from Bangkok. After the 2014 coup, she tested the regime’s limits with quiet protest and was arrested, learning that visibility alone can trigger punishment. Later, after refusing to sign a pledge to stop political activity, she was sent into prison, and processed through searches that turned discipline into bodily violation. That experience sharpened her feminism. She framed organizing around bodily autonomy, using taboo-breaking protest—speaking openly about female body parts and insisting democracy includes control over one’s body. Pup then moved to extend her politics beyond borders, rejecting ASEAN’s “non-interference” policy as a cover for authoritarian cooperation, including support for Myanmar’s military. For her, constitutional change in Thailand is the hinge between refuge and repression—and survival requires joy: “I believe in fun,” she says, because despair is also a weapon. “We are at the point that we don't have to belong to any state,” she says. “I mean, we can just treat each other as a humans and we can all come together against all forms of repression.”

Episode #543: “We believe in dialogs among people of different backgrounds,” says Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, a Thai professor at Chiang Mai University and director of the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD). While Myanmar’s crisis is often framed in political and humanitarian terms, he argues that Myanmar is also living through an “interregnum”: that is, the old political order has lost legitimacy, but no coherent alternative has yet taken shape, and foundational questions about national identity, federalism, and shared values remain unresolved. This instability, he explains, creates both the danger of ethno-political fragmentation and the opportunity for developing a more inclusive framework for Myanmar’s post-junta future RCSD is one of those platforms now attempting to articulate and synthesize this future. Long before the 2021 coup, the center brought together journalists, activists, and researchers to examine land issues, education, and social transformation. It collaborated with universities and organized Myanmar-focused conferences. After the coup, it established a scholar-at-risk fellowship program in Thailand for journalists, artists, and civil society researchers, creating a relatively safe academic space at a time of growing repression. Chayan frames this support as urgent. Many young people who fled Myanmar, including participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement, are stranded in Thailand without stable documentation or access to higher education. Their continued exclusion would harm not only Myanmar but the region as a whole, as Thailand depends economically on migrant labor and stability across its borders. At the heart of his argument is the need for what Chayan calls “organic intellectuals”—individuals who remain rooted in their communities while developing analytical tools to interpret them—and developing “counter-hegemonic knowledge.” Resistance alone is insufficient, he stresses; Myanmar must imagine what comes after military rule. He warns against reducing political identity solely to ethnicity, and calls for a framework that respects differences but is grounded in shared values.

Episode #541: “There is no such thing as ‘traditional Buddhism.’” For Marte Nilsen, this idea defines her career-long exploration of how faith and power intertwine in Myanmar. A senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), she studies how religion evolves with politics, art, and everyday life. “I’m a scientist, and I’m a researcher,” she says. “So I’m always looking at religion as part of society, not as an individual endeavor.” Nilsen explains that religion in Myanmar has long been a political tool. During the late socialist era, the military built pagodas to project spiritual legitimacy. “The military really needed to take control of politics, obviously, but they did it through religion in many ways.” Yet communities quietly resisted, reclaiming symbols through ritual and art. “Religion is never a static thing,” she says. “It always evolves.” Her research also explores the Ma Ba Tha movement, which gained strength by serving local needs where the state and political parties did not. “It’s incredibly important for people who want to have a political impact or social impact to actually be there with the people,” Nilsen says. The movement’s success, she argues, revealed both the vulnerability and adaptability of faith amid Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for justice. She also notes that Myanmar’s struggle is not only political but psychological and spiritual — a revolution of the mind. The country’s future depends not just on ending military rule, but on unlearning the fear and obedience instilled by decades of dictatorship. Real freedom, she says, will come when people reclaim the empathy and moral courage that oppression tried to erase — a reminder, in her words, of how all things shift and pass. “Life isn't permanent,” she says, referencing Buddhist teachings, “and everything will change. Nothing will stay.”

Episode #539: In his analysis of Myanmar's democratic transition, Elliot Prasse-Freeman highlights the failures of a system that was inherently flawed from its inception. Although the 2010s brought real change to some, the military also retained significant control, making any possibility at political reform superficial. This left marginalized groups without meaningful change, and created a transition that, as Prasse-Freeman says, was “moribund” from the start. Economic reforms during that time emphasized privatization and the commodification of land, disregarding the needs of small-scale farmers. These policies led to land grabs, exacerbating the vulnerabilities of those already struggling. In parallel, he notes that this period failed to address ethnic justice, leaving the grievances of non-Bamar communities, including the Rohingya, unaddressed, and further deepening divisions. Grassroots activism emerged as a critical response, driven by frustration with both the military and the NLD's failure to enact real reform; local groups symbolized sustained resistance, organizing actions to reclaim land and assert their rights. Despite the many flaws, the resilience of the people of Myanmar remains evident. As Prasse-Freeman poignantly states: “One of the things that they talk about is that you have to make people be their own heroes! But in order to do so, you have to act like a hero yourself, because people aren't prepared to be their own heroes in front of a military that's constantly exploited them.”

Episode #537: “Refugees are incredibly remarkable. They're working day-in and day-out to provide for their communities, but they're working under a set of assumptions and a set of regulations that prohibited them from working.” Maximillian Mørch, Head of Program Development and Quality Assurance at The Border Consortium, describes how a system built as an emergency response in 1984 has hardened into a four-decade reality along the Thai–Myanmar border. TBC has long provided food, shelter materials, cooking fuel, nutritional support, and technical assistance across nine border camps. Today, more than 100,000 refugees live inside those camps, with tens of thousands more in rural border areas outside the camp system and at least 50,000 in Thailand’s cities. The displacement is not temporary, and it has only further deepened again since the 2021 coup. For decades, camp refugees were largely confined. Leaving without authorization risked being treated as an undocumented migrant, and work outside the camps was prohibited. That restriction made food aid the central pillar of survival. Mørch emphasizes that dependence was structural, not moral: refugees sustained their communities through constant labor, but under rules that prevented real economic participation. Over time, the camps evolved from transplanted villages into organized settlements with homes, schools, clinics, markets, religious life, and refugee-led governance. The Karen Refugee Committee and Karenni Refugee Committee oversee services, coordinate with Thai authorities and NGOs, and manage disputes. Yet the system’s viability rested on uninterrupted funding—and in 2025 it began to fail. Food and fuel alone exceptionally costly, and funding gaps at one point left camps without food support for weeks, as global humanitarian crises competed for shrinking resources. With return to Myanmar unsafe and resettlement opportunities collapsing—especially after the suspension and termination of a major U.S. process—Thailand’s August 2025 resolution granting eligible refugees the right to work marked a historic rupture. The policy reframes survival around income, with research suggesting a week’s wages can exceed a month of past food assistance. Labor shortages in Thailand, particularly after reported departures of Cambodian workers, helped push the reform. Eligibility remains limited, rollout is complex, families generally stay in camps, and around 10% of residents will still need direct aid. “Everyone wants to be self-dependent,” he says. “No one wants to be held hostage to the changing fluctuations” of humanitarian funding. Mørch’s portrait is of a system forced to reinvent itself—opening a breach in confinement, but not yet a full pathway out.