Insight Myanmar

Episode #417: “There has been a massive lay critique of leading Buddhist monks that have been seen as pro-military… but to conclude that monks are either silent or pro-military is too hasty! What we actually see is polarization and division within the Saṅgha,” says Iselin Frydenlund, a professor of religion in Norway who has spent decades studying Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.   

One of her arguments is that the Saṅgha has never been truly unified. The coup simply shattered public illusions of unity, and that diversity and division have always marked monastic life in Myanmar. Frydenlund’s seco...

Episode #416: In the early 1990s, a chance encounter with Burmese student exiles in Bangkok sparked Nic Dunlop’s enduring interest in the country. His initial ignorance of the country developed into curiosity, empathy, and visual storytelling. As a photojournalist, Dunlop has spent years documenting the “invisible dictatorship” of Myanmar’s military regime, focusing on the mechanisms of social control, forced labor, and repression. 

His 2013 book, Brave New Burma, aimed to educate Western audiences about the complex realities behind simplistic narratives. Rather than reinforcing the myth of Aung San Suu Kyi as a saintly figure, he presents her as a tough leader shap...

Episode #415: U Jāgara's spiritual journey is a fascinating exploration of monastic life, creativity, and the transformative power of the Dhamma. Born in Quebec, his introduction to meditation set him on a path that would span traditions and continents. His spiritual journey was initially shaped by his time in the Goenka tradition, where he valued the rigor and structure of its method. He later practiced Mahasi Sayadaw’s teachings in Yangon, which introduced him to the nuanced and adaptive approaches of Burmese monastic practice. Then in Sri Lanka, he immersed himself in rich Theravādatraditions of scholarship and meditation that expanded his underst...

Episode #414: “They just didn't believe me at first. So I had to prove to them.” With these words, Xiao Yar Yar captures his struggle for recognition— a struggle that has defined both his personal life and his role in Myanmar’s revolution. 

When the military staged its coup and dismissed the election as fraudulent, Xiao Yar Yar knew the generals were lying. He had collected votes and seen the results himself. Watching peaceful protestors shot down shattered any remaining illusions. A student training to be a teacher, he set aside his future and stepped into the jungle as a medic. 

Episode #413: “No one's liberated without everyone being liberated, right?” Those words belong to Nitchakarn “Memee” Rakwongrit, a Thai youth activist whose journey from a rural upbringing to the center of Bangkok’s protests has made her one of the country’s most visible young voices for democracy and feminist struggle. 

Born in Mahasarakham province in Thailand’s Isaan region, a place long tied to grassroots democracy but often dismissed by elites, Memee grew up in a politicized household, as her father, a staunch Red Shirt supporter, constantly encouraged her to question authority. At sixteen she moved to Bangkok, and wh...

Episode #412: “We are in Myanmar, and nothing is clear cut.”

Anthony Davis offers a stark assessment of Myanmar’s war, drawing on decades of experience studying insurgencies. He begins with the United Wa State Army, a thirty-thousand-strong force running a state the size of Belgium. “It would be entirely wrong to see the Wa as simply Chinese puppets or Chinese proxies,” Davis insists. The Wa have scaled back arms transfers under Chinese pressure, but they remain determined to expand their autonomy. Their ambition is recognition as a state, linking their territories along the Chinese and Thai borders. If the reg...

Episode #411: This is the second part of our interview with the meditation teacher, Tempel Smith, and it starts off with his decision “to commit to deep intensive Burmese-style meditation, break through some of these habits, and then find a more integrated lifestyle.” With this in mind, he boarded a flight to Myanmar with his friend Diana Winston, and ordained under Sayadaw U Pandita.

Although U Pandita’s reputation as a stern and very demanding teacher caused him some concern, he went to the Sayadaw’s monastery and began to practice. Tempel describes U Pandita’s style as a “ruthles...

Episode #410: “We’ve got to find a way from surviving to thriving again.” With this vision, Jue Jue, a social worker and founder of Jue Jue’s Safe Space, seeks to transform Myanmar’s mental health landscape. Raised in a politically engaged family—her father an 88 Generation activist and her mother a frontline social worker—Jue Jue’s early exposure to trauma and resilience shaped her lifelong dedication to social justice.

Her understanding of inequality deepened upon moving to the U.S., where her accent and ethnicity led to discrimination, mirroring the systemic exclusion ethnic minorities face in Myanmar. This...

Episode #409: His military experience enabled a rapport with Myanmar’s armed actors, says Rory McCann, who recently served almost two years as the country Weapons Contamination Specialist for the ICRC. A challenge at the beginning of the job was to build trust with different conflict parties, in part to convince them that the ICRC was teaching weapons safety regarding landmines and other explosive ordnance, not weapons handling. 

As a 25-year veteran of the Irish Army, McCann was deployed in Chad, Syria and Uganda, with his training in the ordnance corps preparing him for humanitarian mine action. His ICR...

Episode #408: “There is no way to tell the story of Myanmar and where it’s headed if you are leaving out the Wa,” says Patrick Winn, a veteran Southeast Asia reporter and author of Narcotopia. His book traces the wild story how Wa State, a mountainous enclave on the Chinese border, became defined by narcotics, and how it has become one of the key powers in the country today. 

A pivotal figure is Saw Lu, born in the mid-1940s, raised among Baptist missionaries, and convinced that literacy and Christianity could unify and “civilize” the Wa. Recruited by Burmese intelli...

Episode #407: One month after the coup, Captain Kyaw Kyaw defected from his post as a military pediatrician. After years of seeing the military brutalize the civilians they were supposed to protect, committing systematic war crimes in conflicts with ethnic armed organizations, he had still felt loyalty to the soldiers in the lower ranks who he viewed also as victims. The carnage that met protests against the coup, however, was the final straw leading him to join the ranks of defectors.

In his account of indoctrination and military training, a clear picture emerges of a military leadership that...

Episode #406: “I didn’t come to study this subject deliberately with a focus on Buddhism,” says Justine Chambers, author of Pursuing Morality, a book that explores Buddhist moral life among the Plong community in southeast Myanmar—known to outsiders as Pwo Karen—particularly in and around the town of Hpaan. Her work, the product of many years of immersive fieldwork, traces not only Buddhist ethical practices in everyday life but also the entanglements of those practices with political transitions, spiritual power, armed conflict, and minority identity in Karen State. 

Chambers’ journey began with refugee advocacy in Australia and continued...

Episode #405: “Myanmar deserves better,” reflects Olle Thorell, a Swedish Member of Parliament whose nearly two-decade commitment to the nation is both political and personal.  

Elected to the Riksdag in 2006, Thorell's focus on Asian affairs quickly centered on Myanmar. He learned from dedicated activists and, in 2011, had a clandestine meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, a moment he recalls as “fantastic;” albeit, goes on to acknowledge that this occurred before what her later fall from grace in international relations. Part of Thorell’s vision as a member of the Swedish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee is for Sweden to fill the gl...

Episode #404: Before the coup, Pandora was a tour guide with little interest in politics. That changed in 2021, when the generals seized power and she found herself leading protests in her hometown of Bago. Arrests of friends and pressure from her family to stop pushed her into the jungle, where she joined the People’s Defense Forces. Life there meant leaking tents, beans and noodles for every meal, and complete separation from her family, whom she has not seen since. 

In September 2021 she entered PDF training with over 200 recruits, just 13 of them women. After a month of basics she...

Episode #403: Annai had always been attracted to spirituality.  Growing up in a devout Catholic family in Barcelona, she preferred spending time in church while her friends only wanted to watch TV, and even began asking how she could one day become a Catholic nun. Eventually she found her way to Dhamma Neru, a vipassana meditation center in Spain the tradition of S.N. Goenka.  She found the course extremely difficult and cried every day. However, in the end, she realized this was a path she wanted to dedicate herself to, and so decided to venture to India, where she to...

Episode #402: “In stable times, sustainability may be seen as a long term aspiration,” says Tin Shine Aung, a Burmese scholar and sustainability expert whose work bridges research, policy, and on-the-ground crisis response. “But in our context, in the context of a polycrisis, it’s become like a strategy for survival and reconstruction.”

Arguing that Myanmar is living through a true polycrisis— multiple shocks that collide and amplify each other rather than simply add up— Tin Shine Aung points out that this demands treating sustainability not as a later luxury but as a present survival and reconstruction strategy. He rejects the...

Episode #401: “Look at my eye. Trust me! You can do this!” With steady assurance, Nay Chi Linn describes her work at the Sunshine Care Center (SCC), a border-based facility she founded to care for Myanmar’s war-injured. Located on the Thai side of the border, the SCC provides daily care, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, and emotional support.

Nay Chi Linn was raised in Yangon and studied law before moving to Chiang Mai for further study. There, she met an ethnic Karen man and got married; the couple lived in a refugee camp with his family for two years before moving...

Episode #400: James Rodehaver, head of the UN Human Rights Office on Myanmar, offers a sobering account of the country’s accelerating crisis and the limits of the international community’s response. Drawing on decades of experience in conflict zones, he describes Myanmar as uniquely complex and heartbreakingly violent—particularly since the 2021 coup. His office, which operates from outside the country due to lack of access, monitors rights violations, advises UN agencies, and supports civil society efforts.

Rodehaver acknowledges that some UN agencies do engage with the junta to secure humanitarian access, and says the anger this provokes among...

Episode #399: Insight Myanmar was very fortunate to conduct a series of interviews with Friedgard Lottermoser between 2023 and 2024, amounting to more than forty hours before she sadly passed away last year. Friedgard was one of the few non-Burmese who could speak about the experience of meditating extensively with Sayagyi U Ba Khin, life at the International Meditation Center (IMC), and what it was like to live in Burma at a crucial period of its modern history.

In this episode, she explains how she survived the July 7, 1962 student massacre by chance, spending the weekend meditating at IMC instead of...

Episode #398: The Telenor scandal has emerged as one of the most serious blows to Norway’s reputation as a champion of peace and human rights. Nicolai Prydz, author and long-time observer of Myanmar, calls it “the largest scandal in Norway, but it’s under the carpet. Nobody wants to tell it.” 

When Telenor entered Myanmar in 2014, only 7% of the population owned a mobile phone. Backed by Norway’s decision to lift sanctions and forgive $3 billion in debt, the company quickly expanded to more than 20 million users and generated hundreds of millions in annual profits. Norwegian politicians hailed it as a mod...

Episode #397: In this episode of the Insight Myanmar Podcast, two compelling voices—Thinzar Shunlei Yi and Wongpun Amarinthewa—illuminate the stakes of Myanmar’s political crisis from the frontlines of resistance and reporting. 

Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a prominent Burmese activist and deputy director of the Anti-Sham Election Campaign Committee, lays out a forceful case against the junta’s proposed elections. Far from representing democratic progress, she sees them as a calculated maneuver to legitimize the military’s grip on power. These elections, rooted in the discredited 2008 Constitution, are framed as part of a broader strategy to escape accountabil...

Episode #396: “There is no other issue in Thailand that has this long of a history of civil society engagement like Myanmar.” With these words, Thai humanitarian worker and activist, Mic Chawaratt, discusses the decades-long relationship between Thailand and Myanmar regarding displacement, refugee management, and civil society aid. 

He traces Thailand’s security-driven approach to Myanmar refugees from the 1980s to today. Despite not signing the 1951 Refugee Convention, Thailand has hosted large populations displaced by conflict and political repression, though often without offering any legal recognition. He notes how the official response has been spotty, and Thai civil society...

Episode #395: Laetitia van den Assum, a Dutch diplomat and former ambassador to Thailand, was one of nine members of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, a group set up in 2016 at Aung San Suu Kyi’s request and chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Its mandate was to improve conditions in one of Myanmar’s poorest and most divided regions. In this conversation, van den Assum reflects on the Commission’s work, her dealings with Annan and Min Aung Hlaing, and the enduring challenges of Rakhine. 

From the outset, the military opposed the Commission because it had bee...

Episode #394: Sandar, an ethnographer and documentary photographer, dedicated her life to understanding Myanmar’s diverse cultures. Before the coup, she conducted extensive research in ethnic territories, particularly in Kachin, documenting their struggles and traditions. However, when the military seized power, her ability to continue fieldwork was shattered. Facing restrictions and violence, she joined mass protests in Yangon, capturing the resistance movement as it first emerged onto the scene. As the military began to target anyone so much as holding a camera, she realized the dangers of remaining in the city, and sought another way to contribute.

Sandar de...

Episode #393: “It’s now time to be more principled and say that, ‘We would like to support democracy.’” With this statement, Audun Aagre, former head of the Norwegian Burma Committee (NBC), distills three decades of Norway’s involvement in Myanmar into a call for credibility and purpose. 

Aagre’s own engagement with Myanmar began in the early 1990s, when Burmese exiles in Norway trained as journalists with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). Witnessing their dedication inspired him to travel to the Thai–Myanmar border, and later help form a Burma support group back home. He was eventually tapped...

Episode #392: Landmines and explosive remnants of war are taking a devastating toll on civilians, as armed groups on many sides continue to use the deadly and indiscriminate weapons. Mine Free Myanmar, a country-focused campaign of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, runs an annual art contest documenting survivors’ stories and the ever-present threat experienced by communities.

The contest, now in its third year, attracts submissions from both adults and children, opening a window on survivors’ experiences. One woman who was injured while fetching water was later abandoned by her husband because she was disabled. Last year’s prize...

Episode #391: A key figure at Article 19 for the Asia Pacific region, Lana exposes a dilemma: the tense dynamic between an accelerating tech industry and authoritarian governments' increasing digital control. Lana's background informs her examination of how tech operations affect human rights in countries such as Myanmar, Vietnam, and China.

Authorities in oppressive Asian nations are increasingly delegating enforcement of their restrictive policies to private tech firms. In Myanmar, post-2021 coup, new legislation forces telecom and IT companies to comply with the cybersecurity law. Lana clarifies that Myanmar's military isn't just removing content directly; it's using laws to...

Episode #390: The exhibition Fragmentation, hosted earlier this year at Bangkok Art and Culture Center and co-organized by SEA Junction and A New Burma, presented haunting photographs of displaced teachers and students in Karenni State, capturing both devastation and resilience in the midst of war. Through a series of interviews, curators and participants reflected on the deeper meanings of these images.

Tim, the co-curator and graphic designer, explained the deliberate effort to avoid sensationalizing suffering, instead showing both the grief of loss and the ordinariness of children still learning. He recalls how the sound of school bells had...

Episode #389: Mie Mie Wynn Bird, a retired U.S. Army officer and defense strategist runs leadership and capacity-building workshops for Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. In this episode, she argues that morale—and not weapons or resources—is the decisive factor in war. She is guided by this principle: “people first, mission always”: leaders must train, protect, and respect their teams while keeping the mission in focus, building trust that cannot be fabricated in crisis. 

In Myanmar, morale among the resistance groups continues to be high, with the people believing they are fighting for a righteous cause. In contrast, t...

Episode #388: “Every day in Myanmar, people are living in constant fear, fear of air strike, fear of artillery, fear of arbitrary arrest, fear of extra judicial killing. As long as the military is in power, the country will not be in peace,” says Alex, a Burmese activist-in-exile about Myanmar's brutal reality under military rule. His believes that the military’s planned, upcoming elections are in his words “a sham,” just a strategy to consolidate power and a deceptive charade to gain international legitimacy. Because they already hold 25% of the Parliamentary seats under the fraudulent 2008 Constitution, which sets the minimum limit of 3...

Episode #387: “I think vipassana has always been a response to crisis, not just a quest for spiritual purity,” says Gustaaf Houtman, anthropologist and author of Traditions of Buddhist Practice in Burma and Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. Drawing on decades of research and immersion in the culture, Houtman connects meditation, language, politics, and cultural history, revealing a view of Burma’s Buddhist traditions that resists Western simplifications. 

Houtman contrasts Western notions of religion—rooted in belief in abstract doctrines and separated from culture—with the Burmese concept of sāsana, the Buddha’s dispensation, which is integrally emb...

Episode #386: Maw Htun, Deputy Minister for Electricity and Energy in Myanmar's National Unity Government (NUG), has navigated a path defined by personal tribulation and transformation since the 2021 coup. His journey began with joining the NUG to fulfill a lifelong dream of systemic change, but was soon overshadowed by a battle with cancer. With his critical illness and having to endure a series of complex medical procedures, Maw Htun faced an existential crisis. This harrowing experience, including a miraculous recovery linked to a burgeoning meditation practice, radically reshaped his worldview and even his political outlook.

Previously driven by...

Episode #385: Minna Fredriksson, human rights advisor at the Swedish development organization Diakonia, describes her humanitarian work and critiques the humanitarian aid field based on her years of work in Southeast Asia. Fredriksson managed humanitarian efforts in refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border in 2013. This was at the start of the democratic transition, and when donor governments such as the U.S., Sweden, Germany, and Japan were urging refugees to return to Myanmar despite persistent insecurity. She observed firsthand the disconnect between donor timelines and refugee realities.  

Later, inside Myanmar, Fredriksson found that decades of repression had shaped ho...

Episode #384: “As a journalist, you always hope for consequences. I mean, otherwise our reporting is meaningless,” says Bjørn Nordahl, a Norwegian investigative reporter who led a two-year probe into Telenor’s withdrawal from Myanmar. The case was especially painful because the company, once praised for driving SIM card prices down and sparking a communication revolution in 2014, ended up entangled with a brutal military regime. 

After the February 2021 coup, Telenor initially disclosed military orders to shut down networks and block Facebook. But on February 14 its CEO told Norwegian media, “From now on, I can’t say anything” about Myanmar...

Episode #383: The 4th International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies (ICBMS) was hosted at hosted by Chiang Mai University. This major event brought together many scholars and experts to discuss Myanmar’s ongoing challenges, including the 2021 coup, conflicts, peace efforts, and human rights issues. Hosting over 800 participants over its three day event, it was one of the largest events dedicated to Myanmar studies.

Insight Myanmar Podcast recorded exclusive interviews with a number of guests at the conference. These short conversations covered a broad range of topics, and this episode closes out this four-part series. Our guests are:

...

Episode #382: Zack Tu Nan, a queer, ethnic Zaiwa activist and student living in the Netherlands, reflects on his journey through marginalization, faith, identity, and exile. Born in 1994 in—literally—a rice field in Kachin State while his parents fled military violence, Zack grew up in a remote village run by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), where he enjoyed a rich, traditional Zaiwa upbringing. But entering a Burmese state school in Loi Jai exposed him to Bamar cultural domination—his family name was stripped away, his pronunciation mocked, and even his given name, “Tu Nan,” ridiculed.

As a gender-non...

Episode #381: Vicky Bowman, the former UK Ambassador to Myanmar and past director of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB), explains what sanctions are meant to do - prevent harm and promote reform, rather than punish - and how Myanmar’s “opaque information ecosystem” makes this challenging.

She recalls that in the early 2000s, compiling sanctions lists was difficult, with EU diplomats sometimes relying on public donation plaques or even the Yellow Pages to identify names of people and companies. While noting that identification and evidence have improved since then, and that stronger coordination now exists among allies...

Episode #380: “I started meditation at a fairly young age,” begins scholar and author, Daniel Stuart. At nineteen, he traveled to India, disillusioned by the world he grew up in and searching for an alternative. What he discovered was vipassanā meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, and for him it was “a quite revolutionary experience!” 

For Stuart, meditation was never confined to the cushion. His practice sparked questions about history, authenticity, and cultural context. This curiosity took him through India and Burma, into the study of Pāḷi and Hindi, and ultimately into academia, where he now bridges rigor...

Episode #379: “It’s a different migration story,” reflects Amy Hardingson, speaking about her enduring connection to her Burmese heritage, a thread stretching across generations. Her great-grandmother, Hilda, embodied this love, embarking on the perilous Great Trek during World War II to India in 1941. A member of the Eurasian community in Burma, Hilda fled with her three-year-old daughter and seven-month-old son (Amy's grandfather). After losing her husband to malaria during the arduous journey, Hilda and her children were interned by the Japanese in a concentration camp for over a year. Their survival ultimately led them from war-ravaged Burma to the UK in...

Episode #378: Simon Billenness, director of Campaign for a New Myanmar, draws on thirty years of advocacy to explain the mechanics and challenges of U.S. policy toward Myanmar. He begins by discussing the recent removal of sanctions on junta-linked individuals, which he believes reflects corporate lobbying rather than signaling a coherent strategy or change in overall policy. In fact, he says, that action contrasts sharply with Congressional progress on three Myanmar-related bills that punish the junta: the Brave Burma Act (targeting junta-linked financial entities), the No New Funds for Burma Act (blocking World Bank disbursements), and the GAP Act...