Free Republic

The U.S. shouldn’t ignore this small Asian nation, because it offers interesting options for addressing some American concerns. Myanmar, also called Burma, is holding its first election since a military coup in February 2021. Expectations are low, and the vote has already been denounced as a sham. Early reports suggest that the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party won 82 of the 102 townships that voted in the first phase of the election on December 28. The nation has a total of 330 townships. Myanmar has reserves of natural gas as well as rare earth mines. The country’s pariah status...

The US State Department announced plans on Monday to promote online youth groups as a new and powerful way to fight crime, political oppression and terrorism. Drawing inspiration from a movement against FARC rebels in Colombia, the State Department is joining forces with Facebook, Google, MTV, Howcast and others in New York City next week to get the "ball rolling." It said 17 groups from South Africa, Britain and the Middle East which have an online presence like the "Million Voices Against the FARC" will attend a conference at Columbia University Law School from December 3-5. Observers from seven organizations...

More than four years ago, the military ousted Myanmar’s freely elected government at gunpoint. The upcoming polls will be a total sham.On December 28, Myanmar’s military will hold the first phase of a long-promised election. But don’t be fooled: The voting is set to be a total sham. Military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 coup, has urged his enemies to put down their weapons and take part in the election. He has also promised that the military administration will transfer power to whatever government is formed after the vote. But few observers are putting much stock...

The war that rages on in Burma today is fought on a multitude of fronts. In the mountainous regions of Burma, armed resistance groups are struggling to defend their communities against the bloody regime of the State Security and Peace Commission, SSPC (formerly called the State Administration Council), a military dictatorship with a track record of profiting from illicit activities. Within this convoluted conflict, a quickly expanding criminal empire has taken root. Cyber scam centers, run by established Chinese crime rings and manned by victims of human trafficking, are popping up all along the Burma-Thai border. According to a recent...

There were signs that heroin from Myanmar is reaching markets in Europe previously supplied by Afghanistan, with several seizures over the past year that involved passengers travelling from Southeast Asia to Europe. Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar surged to its highest level in a decade this year as the nation crippled by civil war remains one of the world's primary suppliers of illicit drugs, according to a new United Nations report. The growth solidifies Myanmar's position as the world’s main known source of illicit opium, particularly following a sharp decline in production in Afghanistan after the Taliban imposed a ban...

A Chinese court has sentenced to death 11 members of a notorious family that ran scam centres in Myanmar, according to Chinese state media. Dozens of members of the Ming family were found guilty of conducting criminal activities, with many receiving lengthy jail sentences. The Ming family worked for one of the four clans that ran Myanmar's sleepy backwater town of Laukkai, close to the border with China, and turned it into a hub for gambling, drugs and scam centres. Myanmar eventually cracked down, arresting many members of these families in 2023 and handing them over to Chinese authorities. A...

Myanmar’s rebranded State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC) has announced elections for December 28, in a flurry of domestic dictatorial reformation. But they also want to deceive world opinion too, with the early-August announcement of a US$3 million contract with Washington DC-based public relations firm DCI Group. The filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) claims the contract is to “provide public affairs services to Client (SSPC) with respect to rebuilding relations between the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and the United States, with a focus on trade, natural resources, and humanitarian relief.” The contract will run through...

As families chased from their homes by the Burma Army return to their villages, hidden mines still threaten homes, churches, and fields. The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) are working with local volunteer deminers under civilian authority to train communities, improve detection, and get the gear needed to make the land safe again. Since the 2021 military coup, landmines have become one of the deadliest threats facing civilians in Burma. In Karenni and southern Shan state alone, there have been 205 recorded landmine incidents since that time, with actual numbers likely far greater due to underreporting. Burma now has one of...

On March 28, 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the Southeast Asia country of Myanmar along the Sagaing Fault, killing thousands and causing widespread damage. A new study from Caltech uses satellite imaging of the Sagaing Fault's motion to improve models of how such faults may behave in the future. The study indicates that strike–slip faults, like the Sagaing and the San Andreas, may be capable of earthquakes that are significantly different from past known earthquakes and potentially much larger. The research was conducted primarily in the laboratory of Jean-Philippe Avouac, the Earle C. Anthony Professor of Geology and Mechanical...

Investigators said they had found evidence of “systematic torture” at detention centers where the military government is holding children as proxies for their parents.U.N.-backed investigators say they have found significant evidence of “systematic torture” at Myanmar detention centers, where the military government is holding children as young as 2 years old as proxies for their parents. The Southeast Asian nation of about 54 million people has been mired in turmoil since 2021, when democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military. The coup set off mass protests across the country that were violently suppressed, followed by...

The Trump administration is reportedly weighing two proposals to remove China from critical U.S. supply chains. One option involves negotiating a rare earth mineral trade deal directly with the Myanmar junta. The other, and potentially more strategic, approach is to bypass the junta entirely and engage with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), a powerful ethnic armed group that controls resource-rich territory and has been fighting the junta since it nullified Myanmar’s democratic election and seized power in 2021. Engaging with the junta risks legitimizing a brutal regime responsible for widespread atrocities, including airstrikes and ground assaults on civilians, hospitals, schools,...

WASHINGTON — Eight migrants with violent criminal convictions detained by the feds will be sent to South Sudan following a legal skirmish in two separate federal jurisdictions trying to halt their deportation. Lawyers for the migrants filed another lawsuit on July 4 in Washington, DC, to pause their flight to the African nation after the Supreme Court ruled against them Thursday as part of an earlier suit that determined the Trump administration could proceed with the removals. DC District Court Judge Randolph Moss, in response to the most recent suit, temporarily blocked the flight Friday — but shifted it back...

1 July 2025 Karenni State, Burma “Help us, Lord Jesus,“ was our constant prayer throughout the Moebye battle. Mortars and 105mm howitzer were fired repeatedly at our casualty collection point (CCP). The speed between the crack of the cannon being fired and the boom of impact allowed us no warning. Unlike with a mortar, when you can sometimes hear it being fired and then have a few seconds before impact, the firing and impact of a howitzer is almost simultaneous, and it’s devastating in its power. We could do nothing but pray and get as low as we could. We...

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WASHINGTON—President Trump has signed a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries and introduced more-limited travel restrictions on seven others, the White House announced, reintroducing a controversial immigration policy that came to define the early days of his first term.

Footage from a volunteer on a FBR medical team that also did Good Life Club programs for refugee children (basically a warzone version of a VBS). Some very graphic footage. Rather more intense than what even most war correspondents come up with, this provides a good look into the fighting in Karenni state in eastern Burma (Myanmar). They Were Kids

Migrants deported to South Sudan by Donald Trump include murderers and sexual abusers, the Daily Mail can reveal. The latest deportations come as a federal judge ruled U.S. officials must retain custody and control of the migrants in case he orders in the future that their removals were unlawful. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts issued the ruling late Tuesday after an emergency hearing. Attorneys for the immigrants said the Trump administration appeared to start deporting people from Burma and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to third-party countries. The Daily Mail can now...

Four years into Myanmar’s civil war, the conflict remains far from a resolution. The military regime, reeling from devastating losses, is in deep trouble. It has lost effective control of roughly three-quarters of the country’s territory; surrendered key strategic bases, including two regional military commands, to advancing resistance forces; and now faces a hollowing out of its ranks as defections and demoralization spread. But even though opposition forces have made significant gains nationwide, they have yet to penetrate the military’s stronghold in the center of the country. Opposition forces share the amorphous goal of making the country a federal democratic...

Bangkok -- Search teams in Myanmar recovered more bodies from the ruins of buildings on Friday, a week after a massive earthquake killed more than 3,100 people, as the focus turns toward the urgent humanitarian needs in a country already devastated by a continuing civil war. United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, who is also the emergency relief coordinator, will visit the area on Friday in an effort to spur action following the March 28 quake. Ahead of the visit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the international community to immediately step up funding for quake victims “to match the...

Myanmar's military opened fire at a Chinese Red Cross convoy carrying earthquake relief supplies on Tuesday night. The Ta'ang National Liberation Army, an armed rebel group, said that military troops shot at the convoy of nine vehicles with machine guns in eastern Shan State. Myanmar's junta, which said it was investigating the incident, denied shooting directly at the vehicles and said troops fired shots into the air after the convoy did not stop, despite it being signalled to do so. Myanmar has been gripped by violence amid a civil war between the junta, which seized power in a 2021 coup...