Insight Myanmar

Episode #476: Minnthonya, a deeply committed Burmese monk, recounts his remarkable journey from traditional monastic education to becoming a key figure in Myanmar's resistance movements. Initially drawn to the Buddhist path as a young boy, he studied under teachers who encouraged a deep engagement with both Buddhist scriptures and broader knowledge. It was this education that opened his eyes to the true political situation in his country, where the military regime had not only oppressed the people but also controlled religious institutions. As a teenager, Minnthonya's desire to change Myanmar grew, and he began organizing underground reading groups with fellow monks to discuss the country's dire political situation. Despite the regime’s brutal repression, he and his peers covertly shared political writings and inspired others to question the status quo. His efforts culminated in his leadership role during the 2007 Saffron Revolution, where monks took to the streets, reciting the Metta Sutta, demanding freedom from military oppression. One of their key actions was the "Patta Nekku Sanna"—a symbolic boycott of the military’s offerings, which united the monks in their defiance against the regime.Forced into exile after the regime’s crackdown, Minnthonya continues his activism from Thailand, setting up libraries, education centers, and organizing resistance efforts among exiled Burmese communities. His commitment to the Dhamma has never wavered, as he believes that true Buddhist teachings must address the suffering of the people. For him, the fight for democracy and justice is inseparable from the spiritual path. He continues to advocate for both inner and outer peace, teaching that monks have a duty to stand up against oppression and that the path to freedom lies not only in meditation but also in courageous action against injustice.“We never believe in the military regime!” he exclaims. "For a very long time, [the military] has been destroying our Buddhism. They’ve killed many monks, sent countless others to jail, and destroyed monasteries—even now!”

Episode #475: “So many peoples in Myanmar who are fighting for democracy and human rights... they don’t get any title or any recognize, but they did what they believed in.” Wut Hmone Win carries a legacy of resistance that began long before her. Her father, a student leader in the 1974 uprising involving U Thant’s funeral, was imprisoned for his defiance of Ne Win’s regime, and her family lived under surveillance. “The whole life of me and my family is [being] watched by the military,” she says. That experience taught her that freedom always has a cost. Educated in economics in Yangon and Norway, she had once hoped to live an ordinary life, free from politics. But when the 2021 coup struck Myanmar, the safety and democracy she enjoyed in Norway became unbearable reminders of what her people had lost. “I am living in Norway. I feel democracy and freedom and safety here, and human rights,” she says, with the understanding that all of this was lost completely back home. Within days she began organizing protests, helping to found the CRPH Support Group, Norway—a coalition of over twenty-one ethnic and religious organizations fighting for Myanmar’s democracy from exile. As General Secretary, she oversees its humanitarian aid programs and international advocacy. “I do need money to support people who are suffering in Myanmar,” she says. “That’s my simple strategy… we do need to support human rights… we do need [to be] shouting out loudly effectively.” Wut Hmone Win is critical of diaspora groups that remain confined to their own circles. “They are [remaining] in their own group, and that is a limited amount,” she says, emphasizing the need to reach Norwegians who “don’t know about Myanmar.” Traveling beyond Oslo, she holds cultural events in towns like Lillehammer to “show our culture, dancing and then what happened in Myanmar.” For her, crossing those boundaries is how the revolution’s voice can truly be heard. “We are standing here like a diaspora group in Norway,” she says. “We do need support, and we do need [recognition] too.”

Episode #474: Scott Aronson, a career humanitarian and conflict expert, describes his years in Myanmar between 2015 and the 2021 coup as “a really dynamic but also very challenging time to work in Myanmar.” He reflects on how his professional experience, field expertise, and moral convictions converged during a period of both democratic optimism and deepening crisis. Beginning his humanitarian career in the early 2000s, Aronson worked in Darfur and northern Uganda, where he learned the importance of coordination, adaptability, and respect for civilians in violent settings. Later, with USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, he managed disaster and conflict responses, including the 2015 Nepal earthquake. In 2016, he became USAID’s senior conflict and governance advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, supporting Myanmar’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. His work focused on strengthening civil society networks and promoting inclusion in a fragile peace process. The 2017 Rohingya crisis shifted his attention to Rakhine State, where he worked with both Rohingya and Rakhine partners to provide humanitarian aid and document abuses. He calls this a time of hope mixed with heartbreak, when Myanmar’s potential for democratic unity collided with long-standing ethnic and religious divisions. When the 2021 coup struck, Aronson was in Yangon under COVID quarantine. He helped coordinate emergency communication and funding for local partners after banks and networks collapsed. He credits Burmese activists with sustaining resistance, describing how local groups organized safe houses, escape routes, and covert aid despite mortal danger. Aronson argues that supporting Myanmar’s democracy serves both moral and strategic U.S. interests, rejects isolationist arguments, and acknowledges the personal toll of the crisis. He remainshopeful that unity among Myanmar’s diverse movements will eventually rebuild the nation: “When that day comes, and it will come,” he says, “there’s going to be so much growth and opportunity in the country.”

Episode #473: “The military was pursuing an illiberal strategy to peace, and Norway became complicit, not necessarily by design, but by its effect, it became a de facto sponsor of a strategy for illiberal peace building by the military.” Kristian Stokke draws on decades of research across Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Indonesia, where Norway’s peace efforts often reinforced state dominance rather than confronting inequality. He argues that Myanmar followed the same trajectory. “Norway became the envoy of the West that went in to test the waters,” he recalls, acting as a diplomatic go-between for Western powers eager to engage Myanmar’s generals. “When we came to Myanmar, it was very clear that Norway’s engagement was interest-based. It was no longer pretending to be just altruistic.” Norway’s involvement, he continues, was driven as much by self-interest as by moral aspiration: “as a diplomat, as an aid donor and as an investor.” He goes on to describe that as a result, the so-called democratic opening of the 2010s was not a genuine transition: “This was not the negotiated transition of South Africa or Latin American countries in the 1980s,” Stokke explains. “It was an authoritarian-led transition to less closed dictatorship or electoral autocracy.” He believes Norway’s peacebuilding “actually undermined the forces for power sharing and democracy,” focusing too much on the state and too little on democratic and ethnic movements. Reflecting on the years since the coup, Stokke laments Norway’s caution: “At times, I find it surprising or unfortunate that they don’t come out in support of those actors who are really at the forefront of the struggle for better democracy in Myanmar.”

Episode #472: “Where is my grandmother’s vote?!” asks Thiri. Her core argument is that Myanmar’s struggle today is not a failed revolution, but the evolution of a long, cyclical people’s movement, whose legitimacy most recently derives from a valid election overturned by the military, and from the accumulated sacrifice and sustained moral agency of ordinary people. For Thiri, the most powerful form of resistance now is preserving dignity, voice, and mutual care amid prolonged uncertainty. She grounds this argument in lived experience. Her grandmother, eighty-two at the time, insisted on voting in person in the November 2020 general election despite being eligible for early voting at home. On election day morning, she woke before dawn and went to the polling station to cast her ballot for the National League for Democracy; a week later, she died. She never witnessed the coup that overturned the election results, sparing her the pain of seeing what she regarded as a sacred civic duty rendered meaningless. For Thiri, the legitimacy crisis begins there: millions of votes, like her grandmother’s, were cast in good faith but never honored. From this starting point, Thiri argues that any new election organized by the same military lacks moral and political legitimacy. She describes it as an attempt to erase their unresolved theft. Democracy, she insists, cannot be reset without reckoning with the original violation. The election matters deeply to the military and to some international actors seeking closure, but not to people living with airstrikes, displacement, and fear. To the junta, it functions as an exit strategy that just sustains their oppressive rule in the guise civilian governance. To put the despair surrounding these times in Myanmar in context, Thiri turns to movement theory. She describes movements as cyclical, marked by peaks of hope followed by repression and exhaustion. The downturn now, she emphasizes, is but a natural phase, and to not get overly caught up in it. Thiri believes the present moment calls for reflection, role clarity, and recognition of small victories that preserve people power. Survival itself becomes a form of resistance. She frames emotional self-preservation as defiance, concluding, “I would rather choose to remember the kindness and the community and the resilience of people that are against any form of oppression.”

Episode #471: Sebastian Copija's journey from being a Buddhist monk to embracing lay life is a story of deep introspection and balance. Monastic life had afforded him security and structure, but Sebastian felt detached from the broader world. So after ten years as a monk in Thailand and Myanmar, he disrobed, and returned to Europe to care for his parents.Lay life introduced him to new ways to apply his practice, including re-engaging in relationships. The challenges of navigating the strong and sometimes messy emotions that often accompany social and personal interactions has become an essential aspect of his practice, testing his ability to stay open-hearted amidst everyday struggles. He speaks of his present, romantic relationship as a spiritual partnership, focusing on mutual support and non-attachment.Sebastian emphasizes that the lay path is not a lesser one, requiring mindfulness and insight just as being a monastic does. He is now a lay Dhamma teacher in Poland, focusing on integrating mindfulness into daily life and creating supportive community environments where students openly share their challenges and growth. “When you disrobe, it’s just gone! Ten years of your life is gone, and suddenly, the only thing you have is the clarity of the Dhamma you’ve developed. It’s not the robes that define my practice but the application of Dhamma to every moment of life.”

Episode #470: This episode of Insight Myanmar continues our three-part series covering the Decolonizing Southeast Asian Studies Conference at Chiang Mai University, bringing together voices exploring how colonial legacies still shape knowledge, identity, and power in the region. Thai scholar-activist Thiti Jamkajornkeiat argues that true decolonization requires more than inclusion—it demands structural transformation. “The problem about Southeast Asian studies,” he explains, “is that it has a colonial baggage and is exterior—it’s been developed outside of Southeast Asia.” He calls for scholarship that centers local thinkers as equal contributors and research that serves the needs and livelihoods of Southeast Asians. For Thiti, decolonization must confront global hierarchies of knowledge, funding systems, and academic validation that continue to privilege Western authority. His vision is both intellectual and emotional: a call for courage, tenderness, and solidarity in reclaiming the power to define one’s own story. From Myanmar, Kyaw shares reflections rooted in his upbringing within the country’s monastic education system. Growing up as a novice, he experienced how Buddhist and secular teachings intertwined, shaping his understanding of education as a moral as well as intellectual pursuit. Today, amid crisis and repression, he highlights the resilience of Myanmar’s people. “Despite everything going in a negative way, the resilience of this community is huge,” he says. For Kyaw, endurance is an act of care—protecting the collective spirit and reimagining the nation’s future together. Khaing expands on this, focusing on the importance of communication and advocacy in a time when truth itself is dangerous. Having long listened to Insight Myanmar, she describes it as a vital platform allowing citizens to speak and be heard despite censorship and internet blackouts. “Your podcast is more than useful,” she insists. “It’s advocacy, and information awareness.”

Episode #469: “This is not simply about solving the conflict, but about understanding the conflict to begin with,” explains Bhanubhatra “Kaan” Jittiang, an assistant professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University and director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Conflict Resolution and Human Security. He argues that most external efforts to mediate or manage Myanmar’s conflict fail because they begin from the false assumption that Myanmar functions as a centralized, coherent nation-state. In his view, this assumption collapses because Myanmar is structurally complex, rapidly changing, and shaped by fragmented authority, layered identities, and long-normalized violence. Any workable approach, he insists, must start from how power, legitimacy, and survival actually operate, rather than from abstract peace formulas or standardized political templates. Kaan describes that Myanmar is often perceived in Thailand as a centralized state similar to Thailand itself, with ethnic diversity acknowledged but poorly understood in political terms. Descriptions of Myanmar as “federal,” he argues, are filtered through a centralized Thai frame that mistakes rhetoric for lived governance. This frame breaks down in practice. During early fieldwork after the coup, he encountered a dense landscape of armed groups and organizations that defy simple categorization. That confusion becomes emblematic of Myanmar’s reality: political and social organization operates through overlapping layers, and distinctions within ethnic groups matter deeply for authority and representation. Kaan argues that this complexity defines the conflict itself. Simplifying Myanmar leads outsiders to false solutions such as “bringing everyone to the table” without confronting who “everyone” actually is. He also emphasizes how quickly conditions change, warning that static narratives lead actors to misread shifts in control and governance. “In just two to three weeks, things change,” he notes. Anchoring his analysis regionally, he argues that Thailand experiences Myanmar’s crisis as a direct security pressure, rather than as a pressing tragedy. Capital-focused engagement, he contends, misreads a fragmented reality shaped largely at the border. Turning to humanitarian and security policy, he insists that long-term displacement demands investment in dignity, livelihoods, and prevention, not emergency response alone. He concludes that durable engagement must center people rather than rigid state frameworks, stating, “People have to be at the heart, and it must always be at the heart.”

Episode #468: Friedgard Lottermoser, born in Berlin in 1942, first came to Burma in 1959 when her stepfather was sent there on contract. What began as an expatriate posting soon turned into a lifelong spiritual journey, as she became one of the very few Westerners to study closely with the renowned meditation master Sayagyi U Ba Khin at the International Meditation Center (IMC) in Rangoon. At IMC, Friedgard encountered a teaching environment unlike anything she had known. U Ba Khin emphasized the direct observation of saṅkhāras—mental forces—teaching that liberation lay not in theory but in carefully watching the mind and body in real time. Friedgard recalled how his presence alone could anchor those around him, and how he often combined meticulous discipline with compassion and mettā. Her own training was rigorous. She sat thirteen courses at IMC, more than most Burmese were ever allowed, and experienced periods of deep absorption that were both transformative and challenging. She once became ill but refused medicine, convinced that meditation itself would cure her—an ethos that many disciples shared, with sesame oil and turmeric serving as the only remedies at the center. She also witnessed U Ba Khin heal himself of a severe eye infection by meditating directly into the pain, as well as accounts of him easing snake bites and tuberculosis among students through focused awareness and compassion. Friedgard’s life intertwined with other close disciples, such as Mother Sayama, whose delicate meditative states required careful support, and Ruth Denison, who once received “mental healing” from U Ba Khin across continents. Looking back, she emphasized that U Ba Khin never sought breadth but depth—he believed only those with strong spiritual potential would be drawn to him. Foreigners like Friedgard were the exceptions, allowed to stay longer and carry the Dhamma forward, especially after the military regime blocked U Ba Khin from traveling abroad.

Episode #467: “We still believe that engaging is more useful than not engaging,” says Kiat Sittheeamorn , former Thai Deputy Prime Minister and international trade negotiator. In this discussion, Kiat draws on decades of experience in engineering, business, and international diplomacy to reflect on the tough moral and practical choices facing Southeast Asia today. Kiat’s approach to public service was shaped by hardship, self-reliance, and a code rooted in early struggle. From power plant engineer to director of the Board of Trade, to an “accidental” entry into politics at the height of Thailand’s 1997 economic crisis, he moved quickly into three terms as Member of Parliament and one as Deputy Prime Minister. Carrying technical expertise into public life, Kiat saw integrity as the only defense against the temptations and the “confusion” of power. In Parliament, he explains how he fought corruption, intimidation and bribery, and helped force the repayment of billions in ill-gotten gains. Internationally, Kiat rejects “market fundamentalism,” insisting that global progress requires fairness alongside growth. For this reason, he prefers the term “free and fair trade” than “free trade” alone. Kiat views Southeast Asian economic integration as essential, but laments that Thailand’s “bad politics”—corruption, disunity, and passive excuses—have held the country back. His perspective on Myanmar is equally blunt. Thailand has borne refugee burdens faithfully, he says, while Western partners fail to deliver on their promises. On the value of sanctions or “megaphone diplomacy,” Kiat argues that quiet engagement—pragmatic, persistent, and rooted in genuine empathy—offers a better path forward, even when dealing with deeply flawed elections and authoritarian regimes.