With the eyes of the world focused on multiple other crises, whether Venezuela or Iran as the year began, or Ukraine and Gaza for the past few years, a forgotten tragedy continues to unfold in Myanmar, a country known to many as Burma. It is a humanitarian emergency and a human rights disaster every bit as egregious as any other, but it is happening largely out of the global spotlight.
1 February will mark the fifth anniversary of the coup d’état in which the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar’s armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, overthrew the democratically elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and seized power. Since the 2021 coup, the illegal military junta has arrested more than 30,000 people and continues to hold around 22,000 political prisoners, including Ms Suu Kyi, in jail today. The United Nations estimates that almost 20 million people, around a third of the population, are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, and almost 4 million are internally displaced. The real figures, according to civil society organisations on the ground, could be much higher.
