INSIDER
A new crackdown on online scam centers has led to over 7,000 people from around the world being held in a Myanmar border town awaiting repatriation.
An airlift carrying more than 1,000 Chinese nationals who had worked at online scam centers in eastern Myanmar began Thursday, after the rescued workers were taken across the border to Thailand and put on chartered flights to China.
Efforts to shut down online scam centers in Myanmar appear to gain momentum with a visit by a top Chinese official to the border zone ahead of expected large-scale repatriations of workers in the illicit industry.
Thailand's army says some 260 people believed to have been trafficked and trapped into working in online scam centers are to be repatriated after they were rescued from Myanmar.
Thailand on Wednesday cut off power supplies to areas in Myanmar where scam networks operate, following a public outcry demanding government action to tackle the problem.
Peace prospects look bleak in Myanmar as a civil war rages despite international pressure on the military four years after it seized power from an elected civilian government.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers met this year under the regional bloc’s new chair, Malaysia, seeking a breakthrough over Myanmar’s drawn-out civil war and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group has killed about 40 people and injured at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity say.
Myanmar’s military government has announced that provisional results of a census taken in October put the Southeast Asian nation’s population at about 51.3 million, a slight drop from the last official nationwide count of about 51.5 million taken 10 years ago.
The Moken, a group of indigenous people from Thailand and Myanmar, once sailed freely between the archipelago of 800 islands off the coast of the two countries.
Sri Lanka's navy says it has rescued more than 100 people believed to be Rohingya refugees who were found adrift aboard a fishing trawler off the island nation.
U.N. experts say there has been a slight drop in the production of opium in Myanmar, the world’s biggest source of the illicit drug from which heroin is derived, but warn there are still strong prospects for future expansion of the deadly trade.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has asked judges to issue an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
Witnesses say a powerful rebel group has seized a key trading town in northeastern Myanmar on the Chinese border, taking control of a lucrative rare earth mining hub in another setback for the military-led government.
The U.N. Development Programs is warning that Myanmar’s Rakhine state, home to the Rohingya minority and engulfed in conflict between government forces and a powerful ethnic group, could face an imminent acute famine.
Three well-armed militias launched a surprise joint offensive in northeastern Myanmar a year ago, breaking a strategic stalemate with the regime’s military with rapid gains of huge swaths of territory that inspired others to attack around the country.
Three well-armed militias launched a surprise joint offensive in northeastern Myanmar a year ago, breaking a strategic stalemate with the regime’s military with rapid gains of huge swaths of territory that inspired others to attack around the country.
Concern is rising that two nonviolent activists opposed to military rule in Myanmar are at high risk of torture after being arrested in raids this week in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.
The main group coordinating opposition to military rule in Myanmar has rejected a surprise offer from the ruling generals to hold talks on a political solution to the country’s nationwide armed conflict.
State media in Myanmar reported that floods and landslides triggered by last week’s Typhoon Yagi and seasonal monsoon rains have claimed at least 226 lives, with 77 people missing.
State-television in Myanmar says the death toll in the military-run country from flooding and landslides caused by Typhoon Yagi has reached at least 74.
The editor of an independent online news service in Myanmar says a military court has given a life prison sentence to one of its journalists and sentenced another to 20 years after convicting them under a counterterrorism law.
Britain is circulating a United Nations resolution on Myanmar urging renewed peace efforts.
China’s military is carrying out armed patrols near the Myanmar border this week, where the government is concerned about potential fallout from fierce fighting in a civil war on the other side.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees have rallied in a southern Bangladeshi coastal district where they live in sprawling camps, marking the seventh anniversary of their mass exodus from Myanmar.
China’s top diplomat has visited Myanmar and met with the leader of its military government as growing instability from the neighboring country’s civil war causes concern in Beijing.
Myanmar’s military regime says it has lost communications with the commanders of a strategically important army headquarters in the northeast.
The military regime that seized power in Myanmar 3 1/2 years ago extended a state of emergency in the civil war-wracked country for another six months, saying it needs time to prepare for long-promised elections.
Southeast Asian top diplomats have condemned violence in Myanmar’s ongoing civil war and urged for “practical” means to defuse rising tensions in the South China Sea during the last of the three-day regional talks with allies including the U.S., Russia and China.
Top diplomats from Southeast Asia have met with China’s foreign minister for talks that come as friction escalates over Beijing's growing effort to press its sweeping maritime claims.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have gathered in the capital of Laos for a regional forum that runs through Saturday.
Recently renewed combat in northeastern Myanmar between troops of the military government and ethnic minority militias has in the past few days become more complicated, as two minority groups not previously involved in the fighting stepped into the fray.
New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered cease-fire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.
Relatives of a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police in central New York are demanding justice.
Supporters of Myanmar’s imprisoned ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi have carried out peaceful flower-themed protests marking her 79th birthday.
The United Nations envoy charged with reporting on violations against children in conflicts around the world says that first and foremost she is worried about what’s happening to youngsters in war-torn Sudan.
A new United Nations report says East and Southeast Asia are awash in record amounts of methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs.
The U.N. human rights office has warned of “frightening and disturbing reports” about the impact of new violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine and new attacks on Rohingya civilians by the army and an ethnic armed group fighting it.
Guerrilla fighters from the main ethnic Karen fighting force battling Myanmar’s military government have withdrawn from the eastern border town of Myawaddy two weeks after forcing the army to give up its defense.
Officials in Thailand say about 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas.
It’s water festival time in Thailand where many are marking the country’s traditional New Year, splashing each other with colorful water guns and buckets in an often raucous celebration that draws thousands of people, even as this year the Southeast Asian nation marks record-high temperatures causing concern.
Myanmar’s military has begun basic training at military bases and schools across the country for draftees called up under the country’s recently activated conscription law.
The chairman of Japan’s Nippon Foundation says the charity will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to a remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training.
Guerrilla fighters from Myanmar’s Karen ethnic minority are claiming to be close to seizing control of a major trading town bordering Thailand.
The U.N.’s leading human rights body has agreed to measures aimed at putting pressure on Myanmar and Iran, whose governments have been accused of using violence against their own people.
A dramatic story of survival and rescue off Indonesia’s west coast is a reminder of the plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar who make extremely dangerous voyages across the Indian Ocean to seek better lives.
Singapore’s prime minister says Southeast Asian countries’ quest to reach agreement with China on a code of conduct in the contested South China Sea will take time, with difficult issues yet to be resolved despite recent efforts to accelerate the process.
An increasingly assertive China and a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia for a rare summit this week.
Ever since Myanmar's military announced it is implementing conscription to fill its ranks, Thwel sees very few options.
Federal prosecutors say a leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.
Nine members of the United Nations Security Council have condemned “indiscriminate” airstrikes by Myanmar’s military against civilians.
A Bangladesh official says more than 100 members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police have fled their posts and taken shelter in Bangladesh during fighting between Myanmar security forces and an ethnic minority army.
When the army overthrew Myanmar’s elected government in 2021, it looked like a walkover that could entrench the military in power indefinitely.
The United Nations' refugee agency is reporting that one in every eight Rohingya who attempted to flee their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat last year died or went missing.
Myanmar’s leading resistance group and allied ethnic armed groups battling the military government have released a political road map to ending military rule and enabling a peaceful transition of power.
Myanmar was a rising star in Southeast Asia before its military seized power three years ago in a takeover that has brought civil strife and a tightening vise of international sanctions, undoing years of progress and leaving the economy 10% smaller than it was in 2019.
A study issued Tuesday by researchers collecting evidence of war crimes in Myanmar supported reports that air strikes by the military government damaged churches in the Buddhist-dominated country’s sole Christian-majority state.
A veteran Laotian diplomat recently appointed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ special envoy to Myanmar, has arrived on his first mission to the strife-torn nation.
Myanmar’s military government has acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from a key city on the northeastern border with China after it was taken over by an alliance of ethnic armed groups it has been battling for months.
Indonesia’s navy says it forcibly pushed a boat packed with refugees back to international waters after the vessel approached the shores of Aceh province.
Indonesian authorities have detected at least five boats packed tight with Rohingya refugees approaching the shores of Aceh province.
Myanmar, already wracked by a brutal civil war, has regained the unenviable title of world’s biggest opium producer.
A major offensive against Myanmar's military-run government by an alliance of three militias of ethnic minorities has been moving at lightning speed, inspiring resistance forces around the country to attack.
Almost 1,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have arrived by boat in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh in the last six days.
A Myanmar army battalion based near the Chinese border has reportedly surrendered to an alliance of ethnic armed groups that launched a surprise offensive last month in the country’s northeast.
A military court in Myanmar has sentenced a general who until recently was a senior member of the country’s ruling council to five years in prison for abusing his authority and taking bribes.
State media in Myanmar says the military-run Southeast Asian nation is holding its first joint naval exercise with Russia.
A group of human rights researchers has officially launched a website they hope will facilitate the task of obtaining justice for victims of state violence in Myanmar.
A former high-profile Myanmar army officer who had served as information minister and presidential spokesperson in a previous military-backed government has been arrested and charged with spreading false or inflammatory news.
An alliance of ethnic rebel groups has launched a coordinated offensive in northeastern Myanmar to seize military targets in areas near the Chinese border.
Myanmar’s military government has hosted representatives from ethnic rebel groups to mark the eighth anniversary of the signing of a multilateral cease-fire agreement.
The son of ousted Myanmar leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi says he has always avoided talking to the media, but this time is different.
The United Nations chief has renewed an urgent call on the international community to seek a unified strategy to end the worsening crisis in Myanmar.
A court in military-ruled Myanmar has sentenced a photojournalist for an underground news agency to 20 years in prison with hard labor for his coverage of the aftermath of a deadly cyclone in May.
Myanmar won’t take over the rotating leadership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as scheduled in 2026, in the latest blow to efforts by its ruling generals to gain international recognition after violently seizing power in 2021.
Southeast Asian leaders led by Indonesian host President Joko Widodo are gathering in their final summit this year.
A Swiss citizen has been arrested in military-ruled Myanmar for creating a film that allegedly insulted Buddhism.
Rescuers have recovered the bodies of 33 people from a landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar and are searching for three people believed to be missing.
A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar has left more than 30 people missing and a search and rescue operation is underway, a rescue official says.
The military-controlled government of strife-torn Myanmar has unveiled a new giant statue of a sitting Buddha that is scheduled to be consecrated on Aug. 1.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers have renewed their alarm over and condemnation of the deadly air strikes and artillery shelling in Myanmar.
Thailand’s top diplomat says he met with ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in detention over the weekend and she conveyed her openness to engage in talks to resolve the crisis in her strife-torn nation.
Myanmar’s prolonged civil strife, tensions in the disputed South China Sea and concern over arms buildups in the region are expected to dominate the agenda when Southeast Asia’s top diplomats gather for talks this week in Indonesia.
Opponents of Myanmar's military government are applauding fresh financial sanctions imposed by the United States on the Southeast Asian nation.
The United Nations has warned that far too little aid is reaching cyclone-hit areas of Myanmar and the country could face a major food crisis soon if farmers are unable to plant crops.
The United Nations anti-drug agency is warning that the huge trade in illegal drugs such as methamphetamine from Southeast Asia's ‘Golden Triangle’ shows no signs of slowing down.
Myanmar says the death toll from a powerful cyclone this week has burgeoned to at least 145, including 117 Muslim Rohingya.
Early warnings from weather agencies and better preparedness by local governments and aid agencies likely saved thousands of lives during a powerful cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh and Myanmar over the weekend.
Thousands of people have hunkered down in monasteries, pagodas and schools, seeking shelter from a powerful cyclone that slammed into the coast of Myanmar.
Volunteers in coastal districts of Bangladesh are using loudspeakers to urge people to seek shelter as the delta nation braces for an extremely severe cyclone, which is expected to slam ashore in Bangladesh and Myanmar in the next 24 hours.
Authorities in Bangladesh and Myanmar are preparing to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people as they brace for a severe cyclone churning in the Bay of Bengal.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has somberly acknowledged to fellow Southeast Asian leaders that no progress has been made to end the civil strife gripping Myanmar.
Alarm over Myanmar’s still-unfolding deadly civil strife, including an armed attack on an aid convoy, and China’s aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea are expected to challenge Southeast Asian leaders’ commitments to non-interference and consensus decision-making as they meet in Indonesia this week.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Myanmar’s ruling military to take the initiative in finding a way out of the country’s violent political crisis after a surprise meeting with the army leader who seized power two years ago.
