The Irrawaddy

Arrests confirm scale of mail-order bride business Young women in traditional Chinese costume hold lanterns during Lunar New Year celebrations inYangon’s Chinatown on February 16, 2018. / AFP Recent prosecutions confirm the scale of the human trafficking business whereby Myanmar women are sold to so-called “leftover men” in China who fail to find a mate at home.

Bangkok, Thailand—Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors are seeking “gradual” engagement but the country’s leadership remains sidelined by their ASEAN bloc, Thailand said Friday ahead of the first meeting of foreign ministers since the coup. Myanmar Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe will meet counterparts from the 11-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at an “informal meeting” in Bangkok on Sunday.

Myanmar’s parliament on Thursday rejected a peace plan adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for Myanmar, after a push from military-backed lawmakers who claimed the plan was inconsistent with the country’s “political reality.” The motion to reject ASEAN’s Five‑Point Consensus (5PC) was submitted on June 26 by Nanda Hla Myint from the military-proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing listed 43 proposed amendments to the 2008 Constitution on Tuesday, in a message to the rubber-stamp Union Parliament. The parliament—dominated by the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—formally recorded receipt of the message but did not disclose the draft amendments or when they would be debated. “We don’t yet know how they will amend it.

The regime’s Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe on Thursday said he will attend an upcoming informal meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers. Speaking in the military-controlled Union Parliament, Tin Maung Swe announced he will lead Myanmar’s delegation to the meeting, which reportedly takes place in Bangkok on Sunday. The gathering was called to discuss ASEAN’s potential re-engagement with Myanmar’s pariah regime, according to press reports.

The political geography of Myanmar’s western border has changed far more rapidly than regional diplomacy has acknowledged. Bangladesh’s recent proposal to build a fence along its 270-km frontier with Myanmar illustrates this emerging reality. Announced in June, the project forms part of a broader security strategy aimed at curbing cross-border crime, irregular migration, narcotics trafficking and other transnational threats.

Having secured Beijing’s support for reinstating its place at the United Nations, the junta has renewed demands for the UN to swiftly approve its chosen envoy to replace current ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun. In its second open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a week, the regime published a plea in its mouthpiece, Myanma Alin, on Wednesday urging him to remove U Kyaw Moe Tun and appoint its nominee as Myanmar’s permanent representative.

Political prisoners inside Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison were violently beaten by prison staff earlier this week, in what rights groups describe as systematic abuse targeting anti-regime detainees across Myanmar. Around 30 political prisoners returning from a football match inside the prison compound were attacked by Aung Kyaw Sint, head of Dormitory No. 1, on Sunday, according to sources with knowledge of the incident. They report that he bludgeoned them with a baton without provocation.

On 27 April 2026, two developments on opposite sides of the Atlantic highlighted how Chinese state-linked cyber operations are increasingly aimed not only at stealing secrets but at threatening critics far beyond the country’s borders.

Nearly 900 civilians have been killed in Karenni (Kayah) territory over the five years of the coup, according to the Progressive Karenni People Force (PKPF). PKPF said 878 civilians including internally displaced people (IDPs) were killed by the military regime in Myanmar’s smallest state in the eastern part of the country between Feb. 1, 2021 and June 30 this year.