Last December I set out on a road trip to Mae Sot on the Thailand-Myanmar border with my friend Mon, a Burmese poet, journalist and lifelong activist for democratic reform. Her insights into Myanmar’s political struggles, shaped by years of fighting for a free and democratic Burma, made the journey enlightening and profoundly personal.
Like many patriots, Mon refuses to accept the name “Myanmar”, which the country’s ruling generals imposed in 1989 in a calculated act of cultural erasure. The name change was part of a broader effort by the military government to cast off colonial influences and assert a more nationalistic identity, claiming it was more inclusive. While Burma refers to the ethnic Burman majority, Myanmar conveys the sense “brave and strong people”. To Mon, this is an instrument of authoritarian revisionism, an attempt to overwrite the country’s identity with a veneer of legitimacy for the military’s oppressive rule. She stands resolutely as a proud Burmese, asserting that her country’s proper name is – and always will be – Burma, which has been used for at least 800 years.
Mon had visited me in Hua Hin, Thailand, for a few days of vacation before our journey. Our ten-hour drive across Thailand went by quickly, filled with animated discussions about Burma’s turbulent past, fraught present, and uncertain future. We took turns asking Siri to cue up our favourite songs. Burma has a vibrant musical culture, and I grew fond of the Burmese pop singer Mary Soe, who is known simply as Mary.
I had first met Mon in Chiang Mai, where she was pursuing her Ph.D. Her research focused on the political philosophy of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, frequently-imprisoned politician whom the Burmese lovingly call “The Lady”. Mon’s dissertation explored Suu Kyi’s vision for a democratic Burma. It was a political philosophy grounded in Buddhist principles, steeped in Burmese cultural traditions, and informed by Western philosophy, citing thinkers from Plato to Max Weber, Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Mon wove these three strands into a cohesive framework, shedding light on Burma’s pressing political challenges. Her work illuminated how ideals of virtue and moral leadership can serve as a beacon of inspiration in Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for freedom, offering hope while highlighting the challenges of navigating such a rocky path for her beleaguered country.
Is Myanmar in a civil war?
Yes, Myanmar has been in a civil war since a military coup in February 2021. The conflict involves the military junta (Tatmadaw) fighting a coalition of rebel forces, including ethnic armed organizations like the Karen National Union (KNU), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and the Arakan Army (AA), as well as the newly-formed People’s Defense Forces (PDFs). The war’s toll has been staggering: 50,000 deaths, 3 million displaced and an estimated 18.6 million people urgently in need of humanitarian aid, one-third of those children.
Myanmar’s Forgotten War
Myanmar’s long civil war has been overshadowed by global focus on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, leaving its people’s immense suffering largely ignored. In early 2021 Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, staged a coup d’état against the democratically elected government led by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The military rationalized its actions by alleging electoral fraud in elections the previous year. The Tatmadaw declared a state of emergency and arrested senior NLD leaders including Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, effectively restoring military rule under General Min Aung Hlaing.
The coup triggered nationwide protests, a civil disobedience movement (CDM) and armed resistance, with ethnic militias and the newly formed People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) fighting against the junta. The military responded with brutal crackdowns, including mass arrests, extrajudicial killings, internet blackouts and airstrikes on civilian areas. The coup reversed a decade of democratic reforms and plunged the country into an ongoing political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.
The Tatmadaw today remains locked in a fierce battle against a coalition of rebel forces. These include ethnic armed organizations such as the Karen National Union (KNU), Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Arakan Army (AA), as well as the PDFs, which are aligned with the National Unity Government (NUG). The toll has been staggering: over 50,000 killed, including 8,000 civilians, and more than 3 million displaced. Towns and villages lie in ruins as the military’s relentless airstrikes obliterate schools, medical facilities and homes, leaving a landscape of devastation and grief.
Despite the suffering, resistance forces have made substantial territorial gains, particularly in border regions. In late 2024, the Arakan Army dealt a significant blow to the junta by seizing the Tatmadaw’s western regional military headquarters in Ann Township, Rakhine State. Across the country, emboldened resistance movements continue to erode the junta’s grip on power while the military faces a wave of defections and growing difficulties in replenishing its ranks. The increasingly rattled regime recently turned to forced conscription, dragging young men and women into its ranks against their will.
The country’s economic and social systems have largely collapsed, plunging millions into deprivation. The UN estimates that 18.6 million people, including 6 million children, out of Myanmar’s total population of 55 million, urgently need humanitarian aid, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking to prosecute junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity.
But the regime’s brutality extends beyond ethnic cleansing. Myanmar retains the death penalty, and while executions were rare for decades, the junta resumed them in July 2022, executing four pro-democracy activists. Extrajudicial killings have surged, with over 4,000 civilians killed since the 2021 coup. The junta also employs pro-regime militias such as the Thway Thout or “Blood Comrades” to operate as death squads, targeting activists and resistance members with impunity.
For all its nationalist and “inclusive” rhetoric, Myanmar’s military at heart is a crime syndicate in uniform. It profits from drug trafficking, illicit trade and money laundering. It outsources assassinations and reprisals to gang networks, wielding state executions, extrajudicial killings and organized crime as tools of repression.
Like many refugee communities, the Burmese in Mae Sot exist in a liminal state, unable to settle permanently in Thailand and uncertain of what awaits them should they return to their homeland.
Although Burma is rich in natural resources, the country’s main industries – agriculture, natural gas, mining and textiles – have been severely disrupted by the ongoing conflict. The nation’s annual GDP, which stood at around US$65 billion before the coup – less than US$1,300 per person – has since plummeted, with sanctions, capital flight and internal instability driving the economy into near ruin. The humanitarian crisis continues.
Joy House in Mae Sot
Mae Sot, a bustling city of around 100,000 in western Thailand’s Tak Province, sits along the Moei River, which marks the border with Myanmar. The nations come together at a market on the city’s western edge. On the Burmese side, enterprising merchants operate duty-free shops, offering brand-name liquor and cigarettes at irresistibly low prices. In a display of cross-border ingenuity, customers on the Thai side stretch their arms across the invisible boundary to bargain and trade. Unable to resist, I picked up a litre of Johnnie Walker Black Label for just $8.
It is a town marked by contrast and contradiction. On one hand, it is a crossroads, bustling with commerce and the daily grind of life along the border. On the other, it serves as a crucible of resistance and survival, home to thousands of Burmese refugees who have fled the violence and repression of the military junta in Yangon (formerly Rangoon, an Anglicized version). Like many refugee communities, the Burmese in Mae Sot exist in a liminal state, unable to settle permanently in Thailand and uncertain of what awaits them should they return to their homeland.
Mon had arranged for us to meet with some of the Burmese in exile. Our first stop was Joy House, a modest community center started by the American filmmaker Jeanne Marie Hallacy and her Burmese colleagues. It serves as a sanctuary for refugees who have fled unimaginable hardship yet remain quietly determined to rebuild their lives.
The Burmese language has no words for the psychological wounds we in the West label “depression” or “post-traumatic stress disorder”. Joy House embraces a different kind of healing by using the arts and providing motivational and inspirational speakers who emphasize ideals of joy and hope. Rather than dwelling on the intricacies of trauma, they aim to rebuild shattered spirits with stories of endurance and messages of optimism.
Nay Chi Win, director of Joy House, passionately champions the arts as a balm for the deep scars left by conflict. “Mental health support,” she insists, “is more crucial now than ever.” Amid the unyielding trials faced by her community, Joy House has become a sanctuary where music, painting and storytelling form the soul of healing. Strengthening mental resilience isn’t merely about survival, but restoring dignity and rekindling hope. To this end, Win calls for a robust collaboration with international experts to develop innovative programs, using the arts as a bridge to mend shattered lives and foster long-term well-being.
It was difficult to shake the thought that healing through the arts and via connection and inspiration might offer a more compassionate and effective approach than the often cold and clinical methods favoured by Western psychiatry. Cultivating spaces where stories, art and personal narratives are embraced as tools of recovery, I came to believe, might forge paths towards healing that honour the complexity of the human experience. Connection reminds us of our shared humanity, and inspiration can reignite a sense of purpose and hope, both vital in dressing the wounds left by the horrors of war.
Nowhere was this power of storytelling more evident than at the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) Film Festival, held at Chiang Mai University in December. The event brought together filmmakers whose work recorded the brutal realities endured by ordinary people from Burma under the military’s oppressive rule.
One film in particular left an indelible mark. The Wingless Bird, directed by Ko Lu Chaw, chronicled the life of a young mother whose village was bombed. The bombing claimed her husband’s life and shattered her own. Pregnant with her second child, she survived the attack but lost her left arm. The tragedy deepened as her baby was born prematurely. Stripped of her ability to farm – the only livelihood she had ever known – she resorted to selling groceries from a roadside kiosk. With only a grade 1 education, even the simple math required to operate her grocery stand proved a daunting challenge. The camera captured the human cost of this unrelenting conflict as the young mother broke down in tears, consumed by uncertainty about what awaits her and her children.
Her story is one among countless others, each revealing the devastating impact of the military’s actions on the ordinary lives of innocent Burmese people and underscoring the urgent need for justice and change.
Section 505A: The Manifestation of Orwell’s “Thoughtcrime”
Among the Orwellian features of Myanmar’s military rule is the imposition of a draconian legislative instrument: a rewritten Section 505A of the Penal Code. Enacted two weeks after the 2021 coup, the new version of Section 505A criminalizes fear-mongering, false news or agitation against the military. It serves as a broad tool for arresting and imprisoning journalists, activists and dissidents under vague, arbitrary charges.
Section 505A of the Penal Code of Myanmar makes a crime of “spreading false information” and agitating against the military; it turns the law into an instrument to silence dissent and foster a climate of fear, but it has not stopped the protests. (Sources of photos: (top) kan Sangtong/Shutterstock; (bottom) R. Bociaga/Shutterstock)
This legislation epitomizes the totalitarian impulse to suppress free expression. By relying on vaguely defined offences such as “spreading false information,” the law is transformed into a blunt instrument of control designed to silence dissent and foster a climate of pervasive fear. 505A embodies a defining characteristic of totalitarianism: the unyielding pursuit of control, one of the means for this being silencing dissent by criminalizing expression itself. Even the most mundane forms of communication – social media posts, private conversations or casual remarks – can lead to arrest. This law turns everyday speech into a minefield of potential offences, creating a pervasive climate of suspicion and self-censorship. By extending its punitive reach into the private sphere, the regime seeks to extinguish any possibility of dissent, leaving society paralyzed by fear and stripped of its collective voice.
Section 505A of Myanmar’s Penal Code reveals another truth about totalitarianism: its greatest fear is not armed resistance but the population’s belief in a freer, better future. The regime fortifies its tyranny by erasing that belief – and the ability even to form it.
As bad as that is, 505A goes even farther. Just as in George Orwell’s 1984, it appears to aim to extinguish the very capacity to conceive ideas that challenge the regime’s authority. Its vague and sweeping language fractures inter-personal trust and isolates individuals. Under its shadow, fear erodes community bonds, suffocates civil society and crushes the foundations of culture and daily life – as well as actual resistance.
“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any,” noted German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt; laws like Myanmar’s Section 505A attempt to render citizens disconnected, fearful and powerless. (Source of photo: Barbara Niggl Radloff, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)As the political philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, “The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” Totalitarian regimes seek to make people themselves “superfluous” – disconnected, voiceless and powerless. Laws like 505A tighten the regime’s grip on power so as to become all-but unchallengeable; such laws target hope itself.
Section 505A reveals another truth about totalitarianism: its greatest fear is not armed resistance but the population’s belief in a freer, better future. The regime fortifies its tyranny by erasing that belief – and the ability even to form it. The international community must recognize 505A for what it is: an instrument of oppression designed to dismantle the foundations of a thriving society: freedom of thought, mutual trust, voluntary associations, and individual and collective action.
In contrast to the bleak state of things in dictatorial Myanmar, spaces like Joy House in Mae Sot shine as beacons of resistance. These havens of creativity and defiance provide exiled artists, writers and journalists with the means to amplify voices silenced by the regime. By nurturing solidarity and sustaining the vision of a democratic future, they stand as living proof that human agency, creativity and resilience endure even under the shadow of totalitarianism.
What is the Myanmar civil war about?
The Myanmar civil war began when the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) overthrew the democratically-elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), citing alleged electoral fraud. The coup triggered nationwide protests, a civil disobedience movement and armed resistance. The military responded with brutal crackdowns, including mass arrests, executions and airstrikes against civilian areas. Over time, the conflict escalated into a full-scale civil war that is fundamentally about democracy vs. military dictatorship, with the resistance fighting for a free and democratic Burma while the military clings to power through repression and violence.
The Philosophy of Resistance: The Museum of Political Prisoners in Mae Sot
Nestled on a quiet street in Mae Sot is the Museum of Political Prisoners. Its director, Ko Bo Kyi, is a Burmese former student activist, political prisoner and founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
On August 8, 1988, mounting anger over military rule, economic hardship and repression sparked the 8.8.88 Uprising, with millions of Burmese demanding democracy. The military crushed the revolt, killing 3,000 people and imprisoning thousands including student activist Bo Kyi. To appease global criticism, two years later the junta held elections, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD won in a landslide. But instead of relinquishing power, the military ignored the results and kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the next two decades.
Under sustained international pressure, Suu Kyi was finally freed in 2011, and partial reforms allowed limited civilian rule. Four years later she formed a government, though under strict military constraints, and despite the NLD winning re-election even this fragile transition collapsed in February 2021, when the military again seized power, annulled the 2020 elections and plunged Burma back into dictatorship and civil war.
For those who had already endured the junta’s brutality, this was a bitter return to the past. During his seven years and three months in prison, Bo Kyi endured relentless interrogations, beatings and torture. Yet he managed to transform his suffering into an opportunity, secretly teaching himself English. Like many former prisoners of the regime, today he exudes remarkable good cheer and equanimity. I doubt I would have emerged from such an ordeal with even a fraction of his grace.
The Museum of Political Prisoners’ unassuming exterior offers little hint of the darkness memorialized within. Visitors enter through a deliberately low doorway, forcing them to crouch. The same symbolic arrangement had forced Myanmar’s political prisoners to bow in humiliation as they crossed into a world designed to strip them of their dignity. This subtle architectural feature is the museum’s first lesson, an unspoken introduction to the systematic dehumanization – on top of the physical suffering and deprivation – that political prisoners in Yangon’s infamous Insein prison endured. Myanmar today holds approximately 20,000 political prisoners in various prisons throughout the country.
The museum’s walls are lined with photographs of those who have perished under the regime, accompanied by testimonies recounting the harrowing experiences of Myanmar’s political prisoners. Each artifact tells a story of resistance: a smuggled letter offering solace to a grieving family, a detainee’s meticulously kept diary documenting their ordeal, or a makeshift washtub guitar – a testament to creativity and defiance in the face of oppression.
The experience provides a potent reminder that totalitarian regimes thrive on the erasure of historical memory. Preserving the stories of political prisoners defies this negation and reclaims agency for those who have been silenced. It declares that these individuals were not mere victims but active participants in the fight for a more just and democratic society: a teacher risking punishment by refusing to teach the propaganda demanded by the generals, a journalist defying brutal reprisals to expose the regime’s abuses, filmmakers risking their lives documenting the military’s inhumanity.
The overall message is a universal one of resilience: courage in the face of fear, solidarity in isolation and the relentless pursuit of justice. More than a repository of history, Mae Sot’s Museum of Political Prisoners is a call to action, honouring those who resisted and affirming that the fight for freedom is not only political but profoundly moral. It challenges us to confront the injustices of our time with the same resolve.
Why is Myanmar sometimes called Burma?
The name Burma has been used for at least 800 years and originates from the dominant Burman (Bamar) ethnic group. In 1989, the ruling military junta officially changed the country’s name to Myanmar, claiming it was more inclusive. However, many Burmese dissidents, as well as ordinary citizens, see the change as an act of cultural erasure and an attempt by the military to legitimize its rule.
Aung San Suu Kyi: Rejecting the Tradition of Fear
Suu Kyi’s imprisonment and the persecution of her supporters reveal the generals’ fear not only of an alternative government in Myanmar but even of alternative narratives that might expose the moral and political bankruptcy of their rule. Suu Kyi’s philosophy, particularly her call to liberate the Burmese people from the “tradition of fear”, embodies resilience and hope in the face of oppression. Her strictly nonviolent approach underscores the transformative power of courage to break the psychological chains of fear and inspire democratic change.
Our trip to Mae Sot was a profound reminder of hope’s endurance and transformative power. Despite the brutality and horrors of their civil war and repression by the generals, millions of Burmese remain determined to build a better future for themselves and their children.
As Mon observed, applying Suu Kyi’s philosophy dismantles the helplessness that regimes depend upon, challenging oppression and planting the seeds of a democratic ethos. Her vision goes beyond resisting tyranny, it empowers individuals to confront fear, reject complicity and embody justice, dignity and hope. Suu Kyi’s commitment to dialogue and nonviolence insists that peace is not just the absence of conflict but the presence of justice and equality. She emphasizes collective courage, urging communities to reject silence, build bridges across divides and foster a political culture rooted in enduring principles rather than expediency.
In a world often drawn to violence, Suu Kyi’s philosophy reminds us that lasting peace requires patience, moral clarity and humanity. Her legacy inspires us to cultivate courage and nurture a future built on truth, reconciliation and shared hope. It is a timeless call, challenging individuals and societies to persevere in the face of oppression and work for a more just world.
Our trip to Mae Sot was a profound reminder of hope’s endurance and transformative power. Despite the brutality and horrors of their civil war and repression by the generals, millions of Burmese remain determined to build a better future for themselves and their children. Meeting Burmese refugees, teachers and activists is inspiring. Their endurance through suffering and oppression and their commitment to freedom are a stirring testament to the strength of the human spirit.
I am grateful to Mon for inviting me to join her on this journey. Witnessing her work firsthand and learning more about the Burmese people’s struggle for justice, rights and democracy provided a stark reminder of how fragile freedom truly is and how easily it can be lost. The Burmese people’s courage in their pursuit of a better future is a powerful reminder that hope and determination can illuminate the path to freedom, even in the darkest times.
Patrick Keeney is a Canadian writer who divides his time between Kelowna, B.C. and Thailand.
Source of main image: AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo.
