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Southeast Asian foreign ministers pressed their Myanmar counterpart for “concrete” progress on a stagnant ASEAN peace plan for the country during a meeting in Bangkok on Sunday, top Thai and Philippine diplomats said. Th
July 13 Mizzima. Over 130 civilians, including seven children, have been killed due to airstrikes, missile attacks, and artillery shelling by the military junta in Kachin State, the Kachin Human Rights Watch (KHRW) annou
Last week, Myanmar's online social networks focused on an unexpected diplomatic milestone: the visa-free travel agreement with Belarus, which came into effect on July 8. However, the response was not one of celebration,
July 13 Mizzima. -- Fighting continues fiercely in the southern areas of Myawaddy Township along the Thai-Myanmar border, specifically in the regions of Phalu and Minlapan, with the military junta forces conducting daily
(Insight Myanmar) Mohammed Siraj, a Rohingya researcher, political analyst, educationist, and aspiring legal scholar, is currently a refugee residing in Bangladesh. His work primarily focuses on citizenship, constitution
Mizzima Twenty political and ethnic minority groups in Myanmar including the National Unity Government (NUG) have released a statement expressing concern about ASEAN meeting with the foreign minister of a country that wa
Photo: Those who surrendered to the revolutionary forces. (Kani(9plus)) It has been reported that a total of 12 individuals, including defectors and prisoners of war, have emerged from the military junta's forces that ad
Members of the Myanmar diaspora across the United States are preparing for a series of nationwide public rallies this September. The campaign aims to ensure that Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun—a staunch critic of the military r
This handout photo from Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs taken on July 11, 2026 and released on July 12, 2026 shows Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Tin Maung Swe (C) attending bilateral talks with Thailand’s Foreign M
Last week, Myanmar’s online conversation focused on an unlikely diplomatic milestone: a visa-free travel deal with Belarus, effective 8 July. The reaction wasn’t celebration — it was irony, sharply felt. The agreement, a
Mohammed Siraj, a Rohingya researcher, political analyst, educator, and aspiring legal scholar, is a refugee living in Bangladesh whose work focuses on citizenship, constitutional reform, education, and human rights. He
Mizzima The Burmese Women’s Union (BWU) says the illegal military junta have continued to commit various forms of severe human rights violations that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. For women, due to th
Mizzima The Singapore government has issued a statement on the informal meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers with Myanmar that took place on 12 July. Here is the text of the statement: Informal Meeting of ASEAN Foreign Min
Main photo: (L-R) Timor-Leste FM Bendito Freitas, Vietnam FM Le Hoai Trung, Malaysia Chief Secretary Shamsul Bakar, Thailand FM Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Philippines FM Maria Theresa Lazaro, Singapore FM Vivian Balakrishnan
It is known that school computers were donated to the education family, led by Dhamma Duta Sayadaw Ashin Sekinda, with the Deputy Minister of Education attending. The donation ceremony for these school computers was held
The opening ceremony for the Shan and Ethnic Nationalities Democratic Party (Kyar Phu Party) Mandalay Region office was held in Pagoda Ward, at the intersection of 51B Street and 122 Street, Dagon Township. "The Kyar Phu
It is necessary to analyze and implement the current population situation, future projections, and regional population differences strategically in the development of the nation, said Vice President U Nyo Saw. The Vice P
Last July (10th) according to the new fuel reference price released by the Fuel Import, Storage and Distribution Supervisory Committee, the price of fuel in Mon state has increased, but the price of diesel has risen agai
For a Myanmar migrant worker who passed away in a car accident in Thailand, Myanmar Labour Attaché Office helped in claiming insurance worth 1.5 million baht from a private insurance company. The worker died in a car acc
A nine-storey illegal building used for online scams and gambling activities in the Shwe Kokko area of Myawady Township, Kayin State, has been systematically demolished, bringing the total number of demolished illegal bu
OFFICIALS of the De- partment of Rural De- velopment inspected the completed rural water supply project in Bantb- wekyin Village, Nawng- hkio Township, on 11 July. The project aimed to ensure an adequate supply of drinki
UNDER the programme organized by the Minis- try of Health, a specialist medical team comprising professor/senior special- ists from Yangon Specialist Hospital (500-bed) and the Yangon Children’s Hospi- tal provided free
BAGO Region Chief Minister U Myo Swe Win met local farmers in Phaye Village, Thanatpin Township yesterday, and discussed measures to reduce chemical fertilizer use, promote natural fertilizer production and use, grow bea
SHAN State Chief Minis- ter U Sai Htein Soe and his wife, accompanied by state ministers, the state advocate-general and of- ficials, released 207,000 fingerlings into the nat- ural waters of Inlay Lake in Nyaungshwe on
Myanmar President U Min Aung Hlaing met local officials, community leaders and departmental representatives in Minbu Township, Magway Region, yesterday afternoon, emphasizing the importance of education, agricultural dev
DEPUTY Minister for Construction U Myo Myint, accompanied by members of the Chin State Reha- bilitation and Reconstruction Committee, inspected a collective cleanup campaign at Falam People’s Hospital (200-bed) on 11 Jul
PyinOoLwin Greening Project was launched this year to become greener with abundant trees and forests, health- ier, more pleasant to live in, sustainably developed and clean. T he national-lev- el monsoon tree-growing cer
THE Ministry of Elec- tricity and Energy is or- ganizing a workshop to increase the contribution of solar power systems to Myanmar’s electricity supply. The event will bring together experts, busi- nesses, relevant organ
STUDENTS from the remote Cocokyun have shared their joy after the township achieved a 100 per cent pass rate in Myanmar’s 2026 matric- ulation examination, a milestone made possible through the combined ef- forts of teac
PYINOOLWIN, Myanmar’s famous hill station known as the “City of Flowers”, is preparing for a rise in visitor arrivals during this year’s open tourism season following the reopening of Anisakan Airport. Local tourism oper
The government, in their tenure, pledges to develop Agri-based industries based on cotton cultivation to achieve the targeted per-acre cotton yield. A s cotton cul- tivation and production are beneficial for the country,
An informal meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers concerning the current situation in Myanmar was held on July 12 in Bangkok, Thailand. At the meeting, ASEAN member states reiterated their strong demand for the swift releas
Guest contributor James Shwe When Myanmar’s junta foreign minister sat down with his Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) counterparts in Bangkok this weekend, the images that mattered were manufactured before anyone entered the room. This was not an act of diplomacy. It was an act of information warfare — and it is the front on which the generals now expect to win. Consider what the junta actually did on the way to that table. It is reported to have refused ASEAN’s request for access to Aung San Suu Kyi, offering only a verbal assurance that the “sister” would be “looked after.” Its own parliamentarians publicly dismissed the Five-Point Consensus — ASEAN’s founding framework for the crisis — as foreign “interference.” And having repudiated both the person and the process, it still obtained the first minister-level ASEAN engagement since the 2021 coup, with all the optics of a normal government. A regime sincerely trying to satisfy ASEAN would not insult the framework it needs. The contradiction only makes sense as a message. Denying access to Suu Kyi blocks independent verification while projecting absolute control: we hold your leader, we reject your framework, and none of you can make us blink. The intended audience was never in Jakarta or Manila. It was the people of Myanmar, and the engineered message is the one the junta wants us to absorb above all others: ASEAN sits with us anyway. Your resistance is pointless. You are alone. A whole apparatus, not a single stunt Bangkok was one move in a sustained campaign. The junta cannot govern what it claims, cannot recruit without kidnapping, and survives only on Beijing’s sufferance. It has one asset left that is cheap, deniable, and potentially decisive: the power to shape what people believe. So it has built the machinery to do exactly that — and by credible reporting it stood up a major-general-led task force for psychological warfare and counter-information in 2026. A government that could actually rule would not need one. You can watch the apparatus work across several registers at once: Buying the messenger. The junta’s information ministry is paying the American lobbyist Roger Stone a reported $50,000 USD a month to “rebuild” its relations with Washington — an open attempt to purchase legitimacy it cannot earn. Manufacturing the narrative. A steady stream of op-eds, “analysis,” and polished web platforms now urges the region to “move beyond Naypyidaw,” accept the post-election order, and treat junta rule as a settled fact. Some of it is sincere fatigue with a long war. Some of it is seeded. The effect is the same: it normalizes a criminal enterprise as a government-in-waiting and quietly moves the world toward premature recognition. Bending the coverage. The most instructive example came this month, and it shows how the manipulation actually works. Agence France Presse sent a team to a single People’s Defence Force camp in Sagaing and first produced an honest, sympathetic dispatch — “Jungle spirit: Myanmar fighters try to keep hope alive,” carried by France 24. It was candid about retreat and dwindling ammunition, but it took the fighters seriously and closed on their defiance: “we organize and revolt with a spirit of defiance and a refusal to accept injustice.” It made no mention of ASEAN, the election, or the “civilian” president. That version did not suit the normalization campaign. What followed was a second AFP treatment of the very same reporting from the very same camp — recast as “Myanmar’s pro-democracy revolution weakens five years on.” Same fighters, same jungle, opposite conclusion: the retreating rebels now open the story, but the frame is in decline. It leans on outside analysts, threads in Chinese-brokered truces, the military’s “sweeping gains,” the new “civilian” president, and the July 12 ASEAN meeting, and lands on the line that the opposition is “increasingly irrelevant.” The decisive part is what happened next. The junta did not need to suppress the hopeful story; it only needed the demoralizing version to be the one that travelled. And it was — the “weakening” framing is what search engines surface, what algorithms push, and what therefore lands on the desks of the policymakers and journalists who shape the next round of coverage. Identical facts on the ground; the demoralizing conclusion optimized to win the click and the citation. That is information asymmetry in the flesh, and it is the junta’s true theatre of operations. Why this is the generals’ most effective weapon The military has decades of practice at one thing above all: divide and rule. It kept power for half a century not by winning arguments but by setting Myanmar’s peoples against one another and its opponents against themselves. It is now applying that same craft to the resistance — and it has found the seam. Because here is the uncomfortable truth the junta understands better than we sometimes do: it does not need to defeat the National Unity Government or the ethnic revolutionary organizations on the battlefield. It only needs Myanmar’s people to lose faith in them. So it invests relentlessly in two ideas, repeated until they feel like common sense: the resistance has no real leadership, and the resistance is not united. Every grievance is amplified, every failure magnified, every internal disagreement dressed up as terminal rot. And crucially, the junta attacks the very habit that would inoculate us — critical thinking — because a public is trained to ask “who benefits from this framing? ” is a public it cannot manipulate. This is why perception, not territory, is the junta’s growing advantage. On the ground it is losing the ability to win. In the mind, it still has a chance — and we keep handing it openings. The common sense no one is saying out loud Somewhere in all of this, an obvious truth has gone strangely unspoken. The resistance does have an organized political leadership. The NUG and its partners are not a rumor or an aspiration; they are a functioning, if imperfect, structure that has held together under exile, bombardment, and blockade for five years. They are not flawless. No government-in-exile, with no territory of its own, no reliable revenue, no recognized army, and no seat at the U.N., could be. But the practical choice in front of us is not between this leadership and a perfect one. It is between improving what we have and dismantling it to start again from scratch — in the middle of a war, against an enemy praying for exactly that. It is far more sensible to strengthen, reform, and hold accountable the institutions we have built than to tear them down and hand the junta the collapse it cannot achieve by force. That is not blind loyalty. It is the most basic strategic realism. I notice that the loudest calls to dismantle rarely come from those with a workable alternat
ASEAN Foreign Ministers meet with regime ‘counterpart’ Foreign ministers from the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met with regime Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe at an “informal” gathering in Bang
In a rare public acknowledgement of an escalating nationwide campaign, the military regime has confirmed it is removing statues of General Aung San, the country’s independence hero and father of jailed State Counsellor A
It is reported that cleaning operations are being carried out at the damaged sections of the 200-bed People's Hospital in Falam Township, which was damaged due to terrorist incidents. It is reported that Deputy Minister