It’s time to end the nightmare and help the people in their struggle for a better future
Benedict Rogers for UCA News
Five years ago, on Feb. 1, 2021, the military in Myanmar seized power in a coup, overthrowing the democratically elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and throwing most of the country’s elected leaders in jail.
In the early hours of that day, the military not only switched off the internet, television, and telecommunications system, but it also turned the clocks back by a decade and plunged Myanmar into a new era of brutal dictatorship, conflict, and repression.
Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won an overwhelming majority in the elections in November 2020 and was poised to begin a second term in government. The military struck just as the new parliament was due to open and Suu Kyi was about to appoint ministers. All the likely leaders of the elected government were gathered in the capital, Naypyidaw, for the occasion, making them easy targets for the army to arrest.
Over the past five years, Myanmar’s human rights crisis has intensified. At least 30,000 people have been arrested since the coup, and more than 22,000 remain in prison today, mostly on political charges. These include the elected president Win Myint, and Suu Kyi, who turned 80 last year and is reportedly in declining health. Several political prisoners have been executed after sham trials, including former legislator Phyo Zeya Thaw and activist Ko Jimmy, whom I knew personally, and many others have died in prison from torture, mistreatment, and sickness.
Almost four million people have been internally displaced as a consequence of the military’s attacks on civilians. According to the United Nations, nearly 20 million people — around a third of the population — are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. The real figures are likely to be even higher, particularly at a time when international aid to the country and refugees in neighboring countries has sharply declined, following the dismantling of US aid.
Last week, the military concluded three rounds of so-called elections and declared a landslide victory. But these are a complete sham, a charade designed to legitimise the military’s illegitimate rule. More than 40 political parties, including the NLD, were dissolved and banned from contesting the elections.
According to the Asian Network for Free Elections, 57 percent of political parties that contested the 2020 elections no longer exist, even though they won 73 percent of the votes and 90 percent of the parliamentary seats.
The junta issued a new decree criminalizing criticism of the election, imposing a minimum 20-year prison sentence as the penalty, and took legal action against more than 400 people for violating the law during the elections. Civil society and independent media have been driven underground or into exile, while the rule of law and an independent judiciary remain a distant dream.
A new and devastating tactic that the military has used over the past five years is airstrikes against civilians. Myanmar was ruled by a succession of military dictatorships for half a century, from Ne Win’s coup in 1962 until the period of limited reform that began in 2012, and has suffered over 75 years of civil war.
The military has long terrorized communities — attacking civilians, committing sexual violence, using people as human minesweepers, and looting and burning villages. But under Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the current regime has taken this brutality to new extremes, deploying new tools of repression, particularly airpower.
These airstrikes have been well documented by human rights organisations such as Fortify Rights, which in recent months has published two reports, Crashing Down on Us and Horrific Sight to Witness. The military uses its fighter jets to bomb hospitals, clinics, schools, places of worship, and homes. It also uses drones for these attacks. And over the past year, as Fortify Rights reported this week, it has increasingly begun using cheap commercial paramotors and gyrocopters to terrorize civilians.
This new form of airpower — paramotors and gyrocopters — began with an attack in Mandalay Region in December 2024, and has continued across Myanmar’s central lowlands in Sagaing, Magway, Mandalay, Ayeyarwady, and Bago regions. For the military, it is cost-effective because these light aircraft are a fraction of the cost of jet fighters, harder to detect, yet just as deadly.
On Oct. 6, 2025, several bombs were dropped by a paramotor on a peaceful gathering of about 100 people, who were gathered to light candles to celebrate Thadingyut — the end of the Buddhist lent — and protest against the sham elections. At least 24 civilians were killed.
In another attack, on Jan. 4 this year — ten days after the junta announced the third phase election in the area — a junta gyrocopter attacked a hospital in Sagaing Region. The chief physician and two other hospital staff were killed. The following day, a gyrocopter bombed the cemetery where the deceased doctor was due to be buried.
As Myanmar enters its fifth year since the coup, the international community must wake up to the appalling carnage in Myanmar and act. There are five steps the world could take to save lives in Myanmar.
First, the sham elections must be rejected — Myanmar continues to be ruled by an illegitimate military junta, even if now it has a semi-civilian fig leaf. It was the right thing for the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to refuse to monitor the sham elections, denying them any credibility.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and also Japan, Korea, and members of ASEAN must not recognize or legitimise them, or whatever government emerges from them.
Instead, the United Nations Security Council should urgently place Myanmar on its agenda and coordinate a robust response.
Second, pressure on the junta should be intensified. New targeted sanctions should be imposed to cut off the military’s financial lifeline. A global arms embargo should be enforced to stop it from killing its own civilians. And the supply of aviation fuel and dual-use technologies — including the components used to assemble paramotors and gyrocopters — should be sanctioned.
Third, the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide should be brought to justice. Efforts to seek accountability are already underway, with the International Court of Justice in The Hague this week concluding hearings on a powerful and well-documented case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar on charges of genocide against the Rohingya.
The International Criminal Court (ICC)’s chief prosecutor has sought an arrest warrant for General Min Aung Hlaing, the chief architect of the current onslaught against civilians. And in Argentina, Turkey, the Philippines, and recently Timor-Leste, universal jurisdiction cases have also been filed. Countries that are parties to the Rome Statute should be encouraged to exercise their right under Article 14 to refer Myanmar to the ICC.
Fourthly, support should be increased for Myanmar’s opposition groups seeking a federal, democratic future for their country, in which peace is secured, and human rights are protected for everyone. That support — through funding, expertise, and diplomatic engagement — is vital, especially at a time when the military is desperate for credibility.
Not all opposition groups deserve international support and recognition — some, like the Arakan Army and ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army), are deeply implicated in abuses against civilians — but there are democratic, human-rights supporting structures of government emerging in Myanmar that deserve international recognition and support.
And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, life-saving humanitarian assistance should be increased, delivered through border-based local civil society groups that can reach those most in need and avoid aid from being blocked or stolen by the military. In particular, the United States needs to restore its humanitarian assistance to the people of Myanmar, as its sudden departure has vastly increased human suffering. Or, if it will not, other nations need to help plug the gaps left behind.
Five years on from the coup, it is time to end Myanmar’s nightmare and help the people in their struggle for a better future. It is time to turn the spotlight back onto Myanmar and to seek the release of political prisoners, an end to the military’s assault on civilians, and a path towards true peace and real freedom.
*Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist and writer, senior director at Fortify Rights, and author of three books on Myanmar, including ‘Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads.’ The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
