Myanmar: Four years on from military coup, brutal crackdown by increasingly isolated junta continues
Image credit: MgHla via Wikimedia Commons
‘As we commemorate this solemn occasion, it is crucial to amplify the voices of those struggling for a brighter future. The road ahead remains difficult, yet the military junta has exposed its vulnerabilities, revealing its uncontrolled corruption, a rigid hierarchy that brutalizes its own soldiers, and staggering incompetence. To ensure the junta’s downfall and the protection of human rights, collective international action, including accountability for those responsible for human rights violations, is essential’, said Ma Thida, Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee.
03 February 2025: Four years of military junta rule have left the country ravaged by violence and destruction. PEN International calls for an end to the armed conflict and for the international community to take urgent steps to ensure accountability for those responsible.
1 February 2021 marked the four-year anniversary of the Myanmar military’s seizure of power, bringing an abrupt end to the country’s democratically elected government. Outside of Myanmar, rallies have place in countries including Australia, Germany, Japan, Thailand and the U.S., a sign of solidarity and defiance against the brutal repression and escalating conflict that have defined the last four years of the military junta’s rule by terror.
Despite the embattled military junta reeling from a series of increasingly significant military defeats, resulting in its announcement on 31 January 2025 of a further six-month extension to its self-imposed state of emergency, the country’s worsening human rights crisis has had a profound impact on the right to freedom of expression. Over the last four years, wide-ranging restrictions on all forms of expression have been enacted, with writers, journalists, bloggers and others having been subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture, long-term imprisonment and death.
Many of those targeted for their peaceful expression have been detained under Section 505(A) of Myanmar’s criminal code, which has been used to effectively criminalise any perceived criticism of the junta or the coup. For example, in April 2023, news editor Kyaw Min Swe was detained for over two months for violating Section 505(A) after he changed his social media profile picture to a black square as an expression of mourning for the victims of the junta’s bombing of a village that led to the deaths of at least 165 people. According to media reports last year, a 70-year-old man was charged under the same legislation for sharing a news post on his social media account.
Other examples of the government’s efforts to impose further restrictions include the tightening of licensing requirements for publishers on 31 January 2024, with the threat of legal action against those who fail to comply. Evidence of how the junta uses licensing requirements occurred just days prior on 27 January 2024, when the government revoked the licenses of two publishing houses for the printing and publication of books for violating the Printing and Publishing Enterprises Law (PPEL). In 2023, the PPEL was amended by the junta to empower its Ministry of Information to ban and confiscate publications by decree with no right of appeal.
More recently, there have also been further restrictions impacting freedom of expression online, including the junta’s establishment of a committee tasked with the monitoring and prohibition of various types of online content, including ‘political criticism’ and content deemed incompatible with ‘traditional Burmese culture’. According to the decree, the committee also has the power to freeze bank accounts, deactivate phone numbers and pursue legal action against anyone who posts prohibited content. The junta has also intensified its spot checks of pedestrians phones for VPN software, which can result in up to six months imprisonment for ‘unauthorised VPN installation’ under Myanmar’s newly enacted Cybersecurity Law, which came into force on 1 January 2025.
The indiscriminate destruction of towns and villages carried out by the junta as part of its egregious ‘four cuts’ doctrine has resulted in further waves of displacement as civilians have been forced to flee their homes to escape the junta’s campaign of terror. This displacement has been compounded by the junta’s renewed policy of forced conscription, which has led many to flee the country to avoid being drafted. Among those who have fled are writers, journalists and committed non-violent activists, many of whom have been living in hiding in Myanmar since the coup but now fear discovery from the junta’s intensified house-to-house searches for adults eligible for conscription.
The impact of the conflict and the junta’s brutal repression is most starkly illustrated by the ongoing plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya community. Over one million Rohingya have already been displaced to neighbouring Bangladesh as a result of decades of systematic repression, including more than 700,000 who were forced to flee to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape genocidal attacks by Myanmar’s military. Among those displaced and trapped in dire conditions are Rohingya poets, writers and others who have continued to use their writing to express their collective trauma and resilience in the face of an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
In Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the appalling forced conscription of Rohingya to fight on behalf of the same military responsible for committing atrocities against them has stoked tensions with the opposing Arakan Army (AA), one of Myanmar’s many ethnic armed organisations (EAOs). This has placed the state’s Rohingya community in a position of acute vulnerability between two warring armed groups, and in recent months alarming reports have emerged of further atrocities being committed against the Rohingya by both the junta and the AA.
Conditions of detention remain a pressing concern, an issue that was cruelly illustrated by the tragic passing of documentary filmmaker Pe Maung Sein. Since he was first detained in May 2022, he has been subjected to torture and abhorrent detention conditions, including at one point reportedly suffering from multiple broken ribs and prolapsed discs after he was violently interrogated. He was frequently denied adequate food and medication and later contracted spinal tuberculosis, resulting in him losing his ability to walk. The junta belatedly released him from prison to undergo medical treatment, however, he died just three days later.
PEN International continues to receive requests for support from Myanmar poets, writers, journalists and others who face active persecution for their peaceful expression, with many forced to flee the country.
The organisation calls for an end to the armed conflict and for the international community to take urgent steps to ensure accountability for those responsible, providing a pathway towards justice for all victims.
Note: Includes excerpts from a report published in PEN Melbourne’s 2024 Journal, No Frontiers.
For further information please contact Ross Holder, Head of Asia/ Pacific Region at PEN International. Email: ross.holder@pen-international.org