Episode #545: The promise of justice for war crimes in Myanmar is far from perfect, says Dr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, a leading legal expert on disarmament and international humanitarian law. The military regime’s alleged war crimes continue unchecked, with airstrikes against civilian targets, the destruction of homes, schools, and places of worship, and indiscriminate use of landmines exacting a cruel toll. On a different scale, some resistance armed groups have also been accused of war crimes.

“Justice can, and sometimes does, catch up with you even many years afterwards,” says Casey-Maslen, who is editor of the Mine Action Review and has written extensively on international law related to landmines. “If a member of the Tatmadaw, or a senior official in the Myanmar government, travels in years to come to one of many countries that have legislation for war crimes or crimes against humanity… that can also be a prosecution of the use of an anti-personnel mine.”

Anti-personnel landmines fall into a distinct class of “victim-activated” weapons, which are designed to be detonated by the victim. The deliberate delay between the deployment and detonation also distinguishes landmines from weapons such as firearms or artillery, in which a specific target is chosen and impact is relatively immediate. This delay makes accountability much more difficult, including identifying who laid the mine.

Prosecutions for crimes committed in Myanmar face considerable challenges, but the facts of the case remain. “The use by the Tatmadaw and by certain rebel groups, but particularly the use by the Myanmar military, has been indiscriminate,” Casey-Maslen says. “They have committed war crimes through their use of anti-personnel mines. In certain instances, they have forced people to walk through minefields. That is a war crime. That kind of conduct is beyond any rule of IHL, and hopefully one day those who are responsible will be brought to account.”

Episode #544: May Shine, a recent graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs, approaches policy work from the position of someone shaped by displacement and minority identity within Myanmar’s Chin community. Her work focuses on a persistent gap between lived realities and international policy, particularly in how crises like Myanmar’s remain underrepresented despite ongoing conflict and displacement.

Her research along the Thailand–Myanmar border reveals how issues such as child labor emerge directly from structural pressures like legal insecurity and economic instability. “I have also come across with child labor,” she adds, describing how children miss school not by choice but necessity. These observations inform her critique of humanitarian aid systems that often fail toreach affected communities due to political and logistical barriers.

She argues that more representation within policymaking spaces is essential, noting that Myanmar remains underrepresented globally. At the same time, she situates this within broader geopolitical realities, where competing crises limit sustained international attention.

Within Myanmar’s movement, she emphasizes collective leadership over reliance on singular figures, even as fragmentation across ethnic and community lines complicates unity. “The strength of Myanmar’s movement should not depend on a single figure or leader,” she says, advocating for collaboration across differences.

Her work remains grounded in a constrained but deliberate role: to carry lived experience into policy spaces that often operate without it, despite the difficulty of translating between the two.

Episode #543: “We believe in dialogs among people of different backgrounds,” says Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, a Thai professor at Chiang Mai University and director of the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD). While Myanmar’s crisis is often framed in political and humanitarian terms, he argues that Myanmar is also living through an “interregnum”: that is, the old political order has lost legitimacy, but no coherent alternative has yet taken shape, and foundational questions about national identity, federalism, and shared values remain unresolved. This instability, he explains, creates both the danger of ethno-political fragmentation and the opportunity for developing a more inclusive framework for Myanmar’s post-junta future

RCSD is one of those platforms now attempting to articulate and synthesize this future. Long before the 2021 coup, the center brought together journalists, activists, and researchers to examine land issues, education, and social transformation. It collaborated with universities and organized Myanmar-focused conferences. After the coup, it established a scholar-at-risk fellowship program in Thailand for journalists, artists, and civil society researchers, creating a relatively safe academic space at a time of growing repression.

Chayan frames this support as urgent. Many young people who fled Myanmar, including participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement, are stranded in Thailand without stable documentation or access to higher education. Their continued exclusion would harm not only Myanmar but the region as a whole, as Thailand depends economically on migrant labor and stability across its borders.

At the heart of his argument is the need for what Chayan calls “organic intellectuals”—individuals who remain rooted in their communities while developing analytical tools to interpret them—and developing “counter-hegemonic knowledge.” Resistance alone is insufficient, he stresses; Myanmar must imagine what comes after military rule. He warns against reducing political identity solely to ethnicity, and calls for a framework that respects differences but is grounded in shared values.

Episode #542: Max Ante, a former deeply committed practitioner of the Goenka Vipassana tradition, describes a spiritual journey shaped by a relentless desire to understand reality directly, regardless of where that search might lead. From early in his practice, he committed fully to a structured path that promised liberation through disciplined meditation, organizing his life, relationships, and sense of purpose around that goal.

Early on in his practice, he traveled to Myanmar on a pilgrimage led by Goenka, where he received permission to become a monk. The experience was immersive and meaningful, offering a glimpse into a life fully dedicated to spiritual practice. Yet it also revealed the intensity and demands of that path, and he recognized that he could not sustain that level of renunciation.

Over time, his confidence in the system began to erode. And as he encountered alternative interpretations of Buddhist teachings, his doubts expanded beyond specific ideas into a broader uncertainty about how to understand his life. He came to feel that he had internalized a system that had overridden his own independent judgment, resulting in this departure from that tradition.

However, without the structure that had defined his identity and progress, he had no clear direction. He turned to other sources, including the writings of Jed McKenna, which challenged the assumption that there is a stable self that progresses along the path.

Ante’s inquiry eventually extended beyond meditation, to a culminating psychedelic experience in Mexico that fractured his sense of identity, and reinforced his growing view that no fixed system could fully resolve the question he was pursuing. He continues to meditate and live ethically, but without grounding these practices in a prescribed framework. He now approaches his life as an open-ended process, no longer guided by a single system or final answer.

Episode #541: “There is no such thing as ‘traditional Buddhism.’”

For Marte Nilsen, this idea defines her career-long exploration of how faith and power intertwine in Myanmar. A senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), she studies how religion evolves with politics, art, and everyday life. “I’m a scientist, and I’m a researcher,” she says. “So I’m always looking at religion as part of society, not as an individual endeavor.”

Nilsen explains that religion in Myanmar has long been a political tool. During the late socialist era, the military built pagodas to project spiritual legitimacy. “The military really needed to take control of politics, obviously, but they did it through religion in many ways.” Yet communities quietly resisted, reclaiming symbols through ritual and art. “Religion is never a static thing,” she says. “It always evolves.”

Her research also explores the Ma Ba Tha movement, which gained strength by serving local needs where the state and political parties did not. “It’s incredibly important for people who want to have a political impact or social impact to actually be there with the people,” Nilsen says. The movement’s success, she argues, revealed both the vulnerability and adaptability of faith amid Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for justice.

She also notes that Myanmar’s struggle is not only political but psychological and spiritual — a revolution of the mind. The country’s future depends not just on ending military rule, but on unlearning the fear and obedience instilled by decades of dictatorship. Real freedom, she says, will come when people reclaim the empathy and moral courage that oppression tried to erase — a reminder, in her words, of how all things shift and pass. “Life isn't permanent,” she says, referencing Buddhist teachings, “and everything will change. Nothing will stay.”

Episode #540: This episode marks a different kind of experiment for Insight Myanmar. Instead of following a single guest, we step back and listen across hundreds of conversations gathered over years of documenting Myanmar’s revolution. What emerges is not one story, but a living network of voices—activists, artists, monks, organizers, journalists, and fighters—all wrestling with what it means to endure the collapse of a society and imagine something beyond it.

The conversation unfolds across four interconnected themes. The first is “Coming Together”: the quiet, invisible labor that makes resistance possible long before protests fill the streets. Organizers describe years spent building trust, underground networks, and systems of mutual support in the absence of a functioning state.

The second is “Creative Expression.” Artists, musicians, photographers, and cooks reveal how humor, storytelling, food, and music become tools for survival and resistance, helping people process trauma while keeping movements emotionally alive.

The third dimension, “Moral Alignment,” centers on Buddhist monks grappling with questions of ethics, violence, and responsibility. Their stories expose the tension between spiritual practice and political engagement in a country where suffering can no longer be ignored.

Finally, the episode turns to “Conflict” itself. Ordinary people—a tour guide, a hip hop artist, former nonviolent activists—describe being pushed into armed resistance and the irreversible emotional costs that follow.

Taken together, these voices reveal a revolution that is not only political, but deeply human: creative, fractured, moral, traumatic, and unfinished.

Episode #539: In his analysis of Myanmar's democratic transition, Elliot Prasse-Freeman highlights the failures of a system that was inherently flawed from its inception. Although the 2010s brought real change to some, the military also retained significant control, making any possibility at political reform superficial. This left marginalized groups without meaningful change, and created a transition that, as Prasse-Freeman says, was “moribund” from the start.

Economic reforms during that time emphasized privatization and the commodification of land, disregarding the needs of small-scale farmers. These policies led to land grabs, exacerbating the vulnerabilities of those already struggling. In parallel, he notes that this period failed to address ethnic justice, leaving the grievances of non-Bamar communities, including the Rohingya, unaddressed, and further deepening divisions. Grassroots activism emerged as a critical response, driven by frustration with both the military and the NLD's failure to enact real reform; local groups symbolized sustained resistance, organizing actions to reclaim land and assert their rights.

Despite the many flaws, the resilience of the people of Myanmar remains evident. As Prasse-Freeman poignantly states: “One of the things that they talk about is that you have to make people be their own heroes! But in order to do so, you have to act like a hero yourself, because people aren't prepared to be their own heroes in front of a military that's constantly exploited them.”

Episode #538: The fifth episode in our five-part series features conversations recorded at the 16th International Burma Studies Conference at Northern Illinois University, where scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners gathered under the theme Dealing with Legacies in Burma. Held in the midst of political upheaval and humanitarian crisis, the conference offered a rare space for open exchange, collective reflection, and connection. Insight Myanmar was welcomed into this setting to record dialogues with a diverse range of attendees, produced in collaboration with NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. With these episodes, we hope to bring listeners into the atmosphere of the gathering and into conversation with the people who continue to shape the field today.

Khaing Wai Wai Zaw taught English in Myanmar for eight years, and went to Northern Illinois University for a higher degree in her field. But she also became a research assistant there cataloging artifacts, in particular 228 rare, scared sasi jo ribbons. While having no qualifications in this area, she relied on her Buddhist literacy and background to interpret inscriptions, andensure they have a safe home at the NIU library, at least until her country regains its stability. She also reflects on the political crisis in Myanmar and wrestles with the role monks should play, balancing her own reluctance to criticize with her belief in social responsibility.

“I’m a totally different person when I get on stage.” With this feeling, Karen dancer and community leader Hsa Win reflects on how dance preserves his identity. He grew up in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled Burma, and later moved to the U.S. Wanting to educate others about his Karen heritage, he began performing traditional dances at community events. Hedescribes competitions, bamboo dances, and the spiritual dances of the thirty-seven nat spirits. Onstage, he feels confident and transformed, adopting the personalities of the spirits he portrays, and American audiences are enthusiastic. He now lives in Ohio, where he teaches dance to Karen youth to help them “embrace their identity” and keep their culture alive.

Researcher and artist Ni Ni Win describes how Burmese marionettes have become a powerful link to her identity now that she lives in America. She explains that puppetry developed to portray particularly sacred Jataka Tales that humans were not permitted to depict. Under royal patronage, puppet shows became very popular; the marionettes conveyed religious teachings, history, and even political concerns, since civilians sometimes asked puppeteers to voice criticisms through the puppets. This art form declined when the monarchy was dismantled by the British, and then as other forms of entertainment became increasingly popular. Amy also draws inspiration from pagoda engravings, known as gnot patterns, which are used on traditional Burmese textiles as well. Living abroad has increased her appreciation for these traditions, which help her stay connected to her homeland.