Estelle knew she had to flee Myanmar. The military junta had just announced it would introduce conscription to bolster its forces against myriad armed groups challenging its power, and she was terrified she would be forced to fight.

The former government worker, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is among thousands of people who have decided to leave their homes since the mandatory military service law was announced in February, and then came into effect in April.

Some people have risked their lives to trek through jungles and ford rivers, crossing into neighbouring countries without documentation because the military has made it increasingly difficult to leave through formal channels.

Others have fled to areas under the control of armed groups fighting against the military, or have joined these groups themselves.

The mass exodus is taking place as the military regime faces its most serious crisis since it took power in a 2021 coup, which sparked widespread protests.

The street demonstrations, which were met with a brutal crackdown, morphed into an armed resistance movement that has seen newer anti-coup forces join with many of Myanmar’s autonomy-seeking ethnic armed groups, posing the most significant challenge to the military in decades.

The UN Human Rights Office says more than 5,000 people have been killed by the military since the coup, including more than 1,000 women. Around 3 million people have been displaced.

Estelle had to sneak out of the country because she had joined a countrywide Civil Disobedience Movement after the coup and faced international travel restrictions as a result.

She and a friend paid the equivalent of around $280 each in Myanmar’s kyat currency to travel by car from the city of Mawlamyine to the border with Thailand and then hired a smuggler to take them across the Moei River.

“It was just the two of us girls travelling with a man we didn’t know,” Estelle said. “We were scared we would be arrested or trafficked.”

Worth the risk

But they took the risk anyway despite the fact that, at 36, Estelle falls outside the age range for conscription. A few days after its initial announcement, the junta also pledged to exempt women for the time being.

But Estelle is not going back.

“That’s just words,” she said. “We never know when the time will come when they will make difficulties for us.”

The junta has been accused by Western governments of systematic atrocities and excessive use of air strikes and artillery in civilian areas. It has dismissed that as misinformation and says it is targeting “terrorists”.

In a report published in July, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said women’s rights organisations had identified increasing reports of the trafficking of women and girls following the enactment of the conscription law.

“Women are using dangerous channels to flee the country amid fears of conscription, putting them at high risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Conscription exemptions for married women also raise the risk of early and forced marriage for girls and women,” Mr. Andrews wrote.

Severe hardships

The military call-up comes on top of an economic crisis that has sent the currency spiralling lower and caused unemployment to surge. The World Bank says women have been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn that followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the coup.

“There is no safe place for women and girls … they have to survive in risky situations,” she said.

Women were at the forefront of resistance to the 2021 coup and have also joined armed groups fighting the military. Around one-fifth of the 20,000 political prisoners in Myanmar are female, according to a local rights group.

Women from the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have also faced fresh hardships after years of abuses.

Although Rohingya are not eligible for conscription under the law because they are denied citizenship, the military has conscripted more than 1,000 Rohingya men and boys since February using methods including abduction, threats and false promises of citizenship, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

And this has had an effect on women and the economic welfare of their households.

“Families are worried … Women don’t want their husbands to go,” said Sofia, a Rohingya women’s protection specialist in Rakhine State, who also used a pseudonym for security reasons.

The International Organization for Migration in Thailand said it had seen a steady increase in people crossing the border from Myanmar, including a nearly 30% increase between January and February. Women were more likely than men to enter without official documentation, it added.

But it’s not just military conscription that some women have to fear.

In the eastern Shan State, at least three ethnic armed groups have announced mandatory service policies in recent months. Two of these groups conscript women.

Fear of being conscripted into an ethnic armed group drove 16-year-old Christine, who also did not give her real name for security reasons, from her home in Lashio township in February after one of the armed groups there told her grandmother that Christine and her siblings would have to serve in its forces. They fled the next day and Christine headed to Malaysia.

She is now in Kuala Lumpur where she is terrified of being arrested by immigration officials.

A villager walks in a flourishing poppy field at Nampatka village, Northern Shan State, Myanmar
| Photo Credit: AP

Conflict-ravaged Myanmar is “facing challenges” in stemming opium poppy cultivation, the junta said on Wednesday, months after the United Nations said the country had become the world’s biggest producer of the narcotic substances.

Myanmar’s legal economy has been gutted by conflict and instability since the military seized power in 2021 and sparked a widespread armed uprising.

The country was “severely facing challenges related to opium poppy cultivation”, the junta’s Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Yar Pyae said in a statement carried by the state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

He said there had been a “slight increase” in illegal cultivation of opium poppy — essential for producing heroin — in 2023 compared to the previous year.

According to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, Myanmar produced an estimated 1,080 tonnes of opium in 2023, up from 790 the year before, That harvest made Myanmar the world’s biggest producer of opium poppy in 2023 after production in Afghanistan slumped to around 330 tonnes following the Taliban government’s ban on poppy cultivation.

Mr. Yar Pyae accused some of Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups of manufacturing synthetic drugs using precursor chemicals imported from Myanmar’s neighbours.

The Southeast Asian nation’s borderlands are home to a plethora of ethnic armed groups, many of which have fought the military for control of local resources and over the drug trade.

This photo shows a destroyed house and burned trees following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army (AA) ethnic minority armed group in the Rakhine State.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar’s junta has ordered thousands of people living outside a State capital threatened by ethnic rebels to leave their homes and head into the city, residents said on June 14.

Sittwe city is one of the few holdouts for junta troops in western Rakhine State, where the military has lost swathes of territory to the Arakan Army (AA) in recent weeks.

The AA, which says it is fighting for autonomy for the State’s ethnic Rakhine population, has vowed to capture Sittwe, home to an India-backed deep sea port and around 2,00,000 people.

Residents of 15 villages around Sittwe were given five days to leave their homes and move to the state capital, a resident of one of the villages told AFP.

“The army threatened to shoot and kill if they found someone after the deadline” which expires on June 15, she said, requesting anonymity due to fear of arrest.

A resident of Sittwe put the number of villages ordered to evacuate at around 10, saying that residents had been told “to move out for security reasons” by June 15.

The villages were home to around 3,500 people, the Sittwe resident said, requesting anonymity.

They added the military had not arranged for temporary shelters in Sittwe.

“People have to move to their relatives’ homes from other villages,” they said.

Local media also reported the order to evacuate villages in the area.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

In November, the AA launched a wave of attacks on the military across Rakhine, shattering a ceasefire that had largely held since the military’s 2021 coup.

It has since seized territory along the border with India and Bangladesh, piling further pressure on the junta as it battles opponents elsewhere across the Southeast Asian country.

It has also held the town of Pauktaw, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Sittwe, since January.

AFP images from the town last month showed gutted buildings, vacant windows and blocks bombed to rubble by the fighting, which has emptied the fishing port of its residents.

This month, the AA said junta troops had killed more than 70 civilians in a raid on Byain Phyu village, north of Sittwe.

The junta said the claim was “propaganda” and accused AA fighters of launching attacks on Sittwe from surrounding villages.

Phone and internet services have been all but cut off across Rakhine State, making it difficult to verify reports of violence.

Thailand delivered its first batch of humanitarian aid to war-torn Myanmar on March 25, in what officials hope will be a continuing effort to ease the plight of millions of people displaced by fighting.

But critics charge that the aid will benefit only people in areas under the Myanmar military’s control, providing it with a propaganda boost while leaving the vast majority of displaced people in contested areas without access to assistance.

Myanmar is wracked by a nationwide armed conflict that began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule. The fighting has displaced millions of people and battered the economy.

Thailand sent ten trucks over the border from the northern province of Tak, carrying some 4,000 packages of aid to three towns in Kayin State, also known as Karen State, where it will be distributed to approximately 20,000 displaced people.

The parcels contained aid worth around 5 million baht ($1,38,000), mostly food, instant beverages and other basic items such as toiletries. More than 2.8 million people in Myanmar are displaced, according to UN agencies, most by fighting that arose after the army’s takeover. They say 18.6 million people, including 6 million children, require humanitarian aid.

Risk of food insecurity

Carl Skau, Chief Operating Officer of the UN’s World Food Programme, said earlier this month that one in four of the displaced is at risk of acute food insecurity.

The initiative for what has been called a humanitarian corridor is being carried out by the Thai Red Cross, with funding from Thailand’s Foreign Ministry and logistical support from the army, which traditionally has played a major role in border activities.

Officials from Thailand and Kayin State attended a send-off ceremony, which was presided over by Thai Vice Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow. Myanmar’s Red Cross will handle distribution of the aid.

Drivers from Myanmar took the trucks across the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, which crosses the Moei River on the border.

“That corridor puts humanitarian aid into the hands of the junta because it goes into the hands of the junta-controlled Myanmar Red Cross,” Tom Andrews, the UN independent human rights expert on Myanmar, said last week.

“So we know that the junta takes these resources, including humanitarian, and weaponises them, uses them for their own military strategic advantage. The fact of the matter is, is that the reason that humanitarian aid is in such desperate need is precisely because of the junta.”

Areas to focus

Mr. Andrews said the areas in desperate need are “conflict areas in which the junta has absolutely no influence or control whatsoever. So those are the areas we need to focus on.”

Large areas of the country, especially frontier areas, are now contested or controlled by anti-military resistance forces, including pro-democracy fighters allied with armed ethnic minority organisations that have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades. Thai officials say the process of distribution will be monitored by the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management to ensure it reaches people fairly and equally.

Mr. Sihasak said after the ceremony that the aid is expected to be delivered to the three towns the same day, and that Myanmar will send photos as proof it has been delivered.

‘Truly humanitarian’

“I would like to emphasise that this is truly humanitarian aid and not related to the politics or conflicts in Myanmar. I think, now, people should think about the interests of the Myanmar people as a priority,” he said. “Of course, if the initiative today is carried out smoothly, and meets the objectives that we set, Thailand as a neighbour will see how we can expand the help to other areas.”

The humanitarian corridor project was initiated by Thailand with support from Myanmar and other fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during a Foreign Ministers Retreat of the bloc in Laos in January.

Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara had said ASEAN needs to actively push to implement what it calls the Five-Points Consensus, which it agreed to just a few months after the army’s 2021 takeover.

The agreement called for an immediate end to violence, dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels, and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.

But Myanmar’s generals, despite initially assenting to the consensus, failed to act on it, leaving ASEAN looking powerless.

Dulyapak Preecharush, a professor of Southeast Asia Studies at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, said the aid initiative is a good start for Thailand, which has been quiet and inactive” about Myanmar.

“The readiness of Thailand to deliver the aid is not an issue, but when the aid is delivered to Myanmar, it will face obstacles from violent fighting and different stakeholders who will have their gains and losses.” Mr. Sihasak said Thailand hopes the aid will be distributed equally and transparently, and that the delivery of the aid will help create a “good atmosphere” that will contribute to the peace process in Myanmar.

Myanmar’s military launched a second day of air strikes on Wednesday, bombing territory controlled by an ethnic armed group on the border with China, a rebel spokesman told AFP.

The strikes come as the military battles an alliance of armed groups across a northern region that is home to Chinese investment and where the junta says it has lost ground.

A military jet struck a site near the town of Laiza in Kachin state at 12:45 p.m. local time (0615 GMT), Kachin Independence Army (KIA) spokesman Colonel Naw Bu told AFP.

He said there were no details yet on casualties from the strike, adding that it came a day after a jet dropped three bombs on Laiza, killing one person and wounding twelve others.

On Tuesday soldiers and officers were killed when the KIA attempted to seize a major road in Kachin state, according to the junta-controlled Global Light of New Myanmar newspaper.

The military said it had carried out an “appropriate counterattack” without giving details.

The “neighbouring country had been warned in advance”, it said.

In the neighbouring northern Shan state, thousands of people have been reportedly displaced after three other ethnic armed groups launched coordinated attacks on the junta last Friday.

Shan is home to oil and gas pipelines that supply China and a planned billion-dollar rail link, part of Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure project.

On Tuesday China’s Minister for Public Security met junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in the capital Naypyidaw, Myanmar state media said, for a second day of talks with top junta officials about the clashes.

They discussed attacks by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) ethnic armed group “on security camps… with attempts to deteriorate peace and stability in the region”, the Global New Light said.

The MNDAA, along with the Arakan Army (AA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) say they have seized sections of key roads to China — Myanmar’s biggest trade partner — since the beginning of their Friday offensive.

On Wednesday the groups said they were in “complete control” of Chinshwehaw town on the China border and Hsenwi, which sits on the road to the China border.

The junta did not immediately respond to questions about whether it still controls the towns.

AFP was unable to reach residents in Hsenwi and in Hopang township, about 10 kilometres from Chinshwehaw.

The ethnic armed groups said the military has suffered dozens of dead and wounded since Friday although AFP was unable to confirm any casualty figures.

Myanmar’s borderlands are home to more than a dozen ethnic armed groups, some of which have fought the military for decades over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Some have trained and equipped newer “People’s Defence Forces” that have sprung up since the 2021 coup and the military’s bloody crackdown on dissent.

The AA, MNDAA and TNLA — which analysts say can call on at least 15,000 fighters between them — have fought sporadically with the junta since its power grab in 2021.

The military was under “unprecedented pressure to respond to the sharpest military reverses it has suffered” since the coup, Bangkok-based security analyst Anthony Davis told AFP.

Beijing maintains ties with some ethnic armed groups along its border with Myanmar, home to ethnic Chinese communities who use Chinese SIM cards and currency.

It has previously denied reports it has supplied the armed groups with weapons.

Earlier this month nearly 30 people were killed and dozens wounded in a strike on a camp for displaced people in neighbouring Kachin state.

The KIA blamed the junta for the attack.

This handout photo taken and released October 28, 2023 by the Kokang Information Network shows members of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army walking past a Myanmar military base after seizing it during clashes near Laukkaing township in Myanmar’s northern Shan state.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Heavy fighting between rebels and the Myanmar military stretched into a second day near the country’s northern border with China, armed groups said on Saturday.

Myanmar’s junta seized power in a February 2021 coup that sparked renewed fighting with powerful ethnic rebel groups in northern Shan state.

An alliance of ethnic rebel groups launched coordinated attacks on military positions across the country’s north on Friday, posing a fresh challenge to the junta as it struggles to quell resistance to its rule.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army said Saturday it had seized three military outposts — two located close to Mongko near the border with China.

The rebels also ambushed a group of soldiers coming from Hopang and seized military equipment.

The group did not provide details of fatalities.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army said Saturday it had so far seized three military outposts at Namhkam and 18 soldiers were killed.

The group also said it had taken two military outposts at Lashio and netted a haul of military equipment.

The military deployed a fighter jet and helicopter gunship to Lashio, the TNLA statement said.

Overnight, there was heavy shelling for seven hours near Lashio, a local rescue worker said, adding the fighting had died down on Saturday.

Junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told local media on Friday that rebels had attacked military positions in the Chinshwehaw, Laukkai, and Kunlong areas and some outposts were lost.

“We tried to maintain peace and stability in north Shan, but insurgents tried to destroy stability,” he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday it was “closely following” the fighting and called on all sides to prevent the situation from escalating.

Shan state has been earmarked for a proposed billion-dollar rail link under China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure project.

Homes destroyed after air and artillery strikes in Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp, in Laiza, Myanmar, on October 10, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Myanmar’s ruling junta ordered air strikes and troop reinforcements as it tried to recover lost outposts near the Chinese border from rebels, the military said.

The toppling of Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in a 2021 coup sparked a huge backlash and the military junta is now battling opponents across swaths of the country.

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) attacked Myanmar military positions around Muse district in northern Shan state on Thursday and near the remote town of Laiza in Kachin state on Friday.

The military was forced to retreat on Friday afternoon and ordered air strikes, as well as artillery and troop reinforcements, the junta said in a statement shortly before midnight Friday.

The KIA said Saturday that the military had counter-attacked with air strikes and ground artillery.

It added that the junta had suffered some fatalities in the latest clashes this week but did not provide a death toll.

“We seized a lot of guns and other equipment from the military,” KIA Colonel Naw Bu told AFP.

The KIA controls large parts of the Christian-majority Kachin state and has clashed with Myanmar’s military for decades.

The region has seen intense fighting since the coup, and the junta accuses the KIA of training People’s Defence Forces that have sprung up in resistance.

Muse lies on the path of a proposed $8.9 billion high-speed rail link from China’s landlocked Yunnan province to Myanmar’s west coast, a key part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The junta has been accused of carrying out multiple bloody attacks on civilians as it struggles to crush resistance to its 2021 coup.

Nearly 30 people were killed and dozens were wounded this month after a military strike on a camp for displaced people near Laiza.

Amnesty International said the deadly attack on the camp was likely the result of the Myanmar military using a large unguided aerial-delivered bomb, while the junta blamed the explosion on a store of rebel bombs.

A protester holds a poster with an image of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a candlelight vigil to honour those who have died during demonstrations against the military coup in Yangon on March 13, 2021.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar’s junta is endangering the life of jailed democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, her political party said on Thursday, accusing the military of depriving her of medical care and food.

Suu Kyi has been detained since the generals seized power in February 2021, ending a 10-year democratic experiment and plunging the Southeast Asian country into bloody turmoil.

In recent days, local media have reported the Nobel laureate, 78, was suffering dizzy spells, vomiting and unable to eat because of a tooth infection.

“We are particularly concerned that she is not receiving adequate medical care and they are not providing healthy food nor accommodation sufficiently with the intention to risk her life,” the National League for Democracy said.

“If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s health is not only impaired but her life also is endangered, the military junta is solely responsible,” the statement said, using a Burmese honorific.

During her 19-month trial in a junta court that rights groups denounced as a sham, Suu Kyi regularly skipped hearings on health grounds.

That trial ended last year, with Suu Kyi jailed for a total of 33 years in prison, a term later partially reduced by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Suu Kyi’s UK-based son told the BBC last week that the junta was denying treatment to his mother for dizziness and a gum disease, though he is not in direct contact with her.

A junta spokesman told AFP last week that reports of Suu Kyi’s ill health were “rumours”.

“She’s not suffering from anything as her medical doctors are taking care of her health,” Zaw Min Tun said.

Suu Kyi, who remains widely popular in Myanmar, was being held as a “hostage… in secret places”, by the junta, the NLD said.

The party asked the international community to “advance efforts and push” for the release of Suu Kyi and all political prisoners in Myanmar.

According to a local monitoring group, more than 24,000 people have been arrested in the junta’s sweeping crackdown since the coup.

In June 2022, after more than a year under house arrest, Suu Kyi was moved to a prison compound in another part of the sprawling, military-built capital Naypyidaw.

There, she was no longer permitted her domestic staff of around 10 people and assigned military-chosen helpers, sources told AFP at the time.

Confinement in the isolated capital is a far cry from the years Suu Kyi spent under house arrest during a previous junta, where she became a world-famous democracy figurehead.

During that period, she lived at her family’s colonial-era lakeside mansion in commercial hub Yangon and regularly gave speeches to crowds on the other side of her garden wall.

The NLD has been decimated in the junta’s bloody crackdown on dissent, with one former lawmaker executed by the junta in the country’s first use of capital punishment in decades.

In March, the junta dissolved the party for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, removing it from polls it has indicated it may hold in 2025.