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Rest of World •

Facebook is still censoring groups fighting the military coup in Myanmar

Nyo Twan Awng was an early adopter of Facebook in Myanmar. A doctor, he joined the social network in 2013, and said he used it to source medical information, as well as to share his poems and articles about art and literature. Alongside his artistic pursuits, he ran another channel: the Arakan Army Info Desk, a propaganda stream for the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group fighting for self-determination in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.

As the AA’s conflict with the national military, known as t
Frontier Myanmar •

Myanmar politics must be re-made, not restored

The growing democracy movement needs to look beyond Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, and listen closely to ethnic voices.

On the morning of February 1, my hopes disappeared when I learned that the civilian government had been overthrown in a military coup. Growing up under army rule, I did not have access to quality education or healthcare, and couldn’t use the internet until 2014. Terrified of the military, my parents always warned me to stay away from politics or activism. Now, I don’t want the
Rest of World •

In Myanmar, one blackout ends, another begins

Early on the morning of February 1, Myanmar’s military seized power from the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, but Swe Pann, a university student in the country’s westernmost Rakhine state, didn’t know until more than a day later.

“I couldn’t access the internet, so I didn’t have much information,” says the 22-year-old. “It felt like a normal day.”

For the past 18 months, Swe Pann was living under the world’s longest internet shutdown, a near-total internet blackout across much of R