News & Updates

Myanmar's military released photographs showing 81-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with the International Committee of the Red Cross — her first confirmed contact with a foreign representative since the coup. The photos show her in traditional Burmese dress, appearing to be in reasonable health.

Her son Kim Aris told NPR it was "a reason to hope for the first time" since her arrest. International human rights organizations have long demanded proof of her wellbeing. The military has kept her location and health status secret since detaining her on February 1, 2021.

A new coalition of resistance forces announced a formal alliance in April 2026, with the stated objective of ending military rule and establishing a federal democratic government in Myanmar. The alliance brings together People's Defence Forces and ethnic armed organizations that have been operating largely independently since 2021. Analysts noted it represents a significant step toward coordinated strategy among the resistance.

After staging phased elections across December 2025 and January 2026, Myanmar's military-backed party declared victory with an overwhelming majority. The elections were widely condemned as fraudulent. Major opposition parties were barred from participating, democratic leaders remained jailed, and Myanmar law made boycotting the election — or even commenting critically on it — punishable by up to life imprisonment.

Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, and ASEAN observers all rejected the elections as a tool to legitimize military rule under the guise of civilian governance, not a genuine democratic process.

After the catastrophic March 28 earthquake, the military declared a temporary ceasefire to allow relief efforts. The UN and multiple humanitarian organizations documented that the military continued bombing villages during that same period. The UN publicly condemned the violations, calling on the junta to honor its own declared truce and allow unimpeded humanitarian access.

The military's behavior during the earthquake — using a humanitarian crisis as cover while continuing attacks — drew some of the sharpest international criticism the junta has faced.

A powerful earthquake centered near Mandalay struck on March 28, killing more than 3,600 people and injuring thousands more. The disaster hit a country already in the middle of a civil war, compounding displacement and overwhelming communities with no access to international aid. Ancient temples at Bagan sustained significant damage. The true scope of the destruction remains difficult to assess due to the ongoing conflict and restricted access.

Resistance forces captured Lashio, home to one of the military's 14 regional command headquarters — the first time in Myanmar's modern history that a military regional command has fallen to opposition forces. The capture was a significant symbolic and strategic blow to the junta, demonstrating that the military institution that has ruled Myanmar for sixty years is not invincible. By late 2024, the junta controlled only about 21% of the country's territory, compared to 42% held by resistance forces.

In October 2023, the Three Brotherhood Alliance — a coalition of ethnic armed organizations — launched Operation 1027, a coordinated offensive that rapidly overran dozens of military outposts and captured significant territory in northern Shan State. It marked the most significant territorial losses the Myanmar military had suffered since the 2021 coup and signaled a shift in the conflict. What had been a grinding stalemate became, for the first time, a war the resistance appeared capable of winning.

Myanmar's military-controlled courts convicted Aung San Suu Kyi on additional charges in October 2022, bringing her total sentence to 27 years in prison. The charges — spanning corruption, violating COVID restrictions, illegally importing walkie-talkies, and breaching the official secrets act — were universally condemned by human rights organizations as politically motivated. No independent legal observers were permitted to attend the trials. She has been held in an undisclosed location since her arrest.

As millions continued to fill the streets across Myanmar, the military escalated its response. Soldiers opened fire on crowds of peaceful protesters beginning in late February and into March. Hundreds were killed within weeks. Security forces used live ammunition, rubber bullets, and mass arrests to try to suppress the protests. The killings drew international condemnation but did not stop the demonstrations — and they pushed many young people from nonviolent protest toward armed resistance.

Within days of the coup, doctors, nurses, teachers, government workers, and factory employees walked off the job in a mass act of nonviolent resistance. The Civil Disobedience Movement — one of the largest in Myanmar's history — brought the economy to a near standstill. Citizens banged pots and pans each night in solidarity. Millions marched. The movement crossed ethnic, religious, and class lines in a way Myanmar had rarely seen. It was, in the words of one observer, a whole country saying no.

In the early hours of February 1, soldiers arrested State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and dozens of elected officials across Myanmar. Phone lines were cut. State television went dark. General Min Aung Hlaing announced a year-long state of emergency, citing unproven fraud in the November 2020 elections — which the NLD had won by a historic landslide just three months earlier. By morning, the democracy Myanmar had spent decades building was gone. The world woke up to a Myanmar that had changed overnight.