Military Rule and Crackdowns Push Burmese Citizens to Seek Asylum

Photo: Myanmar - eGuide Travel

Myanmar's military junta (Tatmadaw) seized power on 1 February 2021, overthrowing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggering a nationwide armed resistance that has produced one of the worst human rights catastrophes in Asia.[1] Security forces have massacred civilians, burned entire villages, conducted airstrikes on civilian areas including schools and churches, systematically tortured detainees, and used sexual violence as a weapon of war — driving over 2.6 million people into internal displacement and hundreds of thousands to seek asylum abroad.[2]

The 2021 Coup and Immediate Crackdown

Within days of the February 2021 coup, Myanmar's military deployed lethal force against peaceful protesters across the country.[3] Security forces fired live ammunition into crowds, conducted nighttime raids on homes, arrested elected politicians, civil servants, journalists, doctors, and student leaders. The UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar described the military's actions as potentially constituting crimes against humanity from the earliest days of the crackdown. Over 26,000 people were arrested in the three years following the coup; many were tortured in detention — with the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) documenting deaths in custody on a weekly basis.

Ethnic Minority Persecution

Myanmar's military has a decades-long history of atrocity crimes against ethnic minority communities — the Rohingya genocide of 2016–2017, which drove over 700,000 people to Bangladesh, preceded the coup and was documented by a UN Fact-Finding Mission as genocide.[4] Since 2021, the junta has escalated violence against Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, and Shan communities, destroying villages, forcibly displacing populations, and conducting arbitrary arrests of community and religious leaders. Churches and Buddhist temples in resistance-held areas have been deliberately targeted and burned.

"They came at night. They burned twenty houses before we could flee. My neighbour's son was shot in the back running away. We walked for two weeks through the jungle to reach the border."
Chin villager from Sagaing Region, testimony to Human Rights Watch, 2023

Forced Military Conscription

In February 2024, the junta activated a dormant 2010 People's Military Service Law, announcing compulsory military conscription for men aged 18–35 and women aged 18–27 for up to two years, with potential extension to five years.[5] The announcement triggered a mass exodus — tens of thousands of young people fled to Thailand, India, and China to avoid forced recruitment into a military conducting documented war crimes. Conscripted soldiers risk deployment in operations against civilian populations; those who desert face imprisonment or execution.