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The Olive Branch Was Smoldering
On June 26, Min Aung Hlaing stood before the Central Committee for the Development of Border Areas and Ethnic Groups in Naypyitaw and offered ethnic armed organizations "unconditional peace talks," saying he wanted to "rush out like a horse galloping out of a stable" once the fighting cleared. Forty-eight hours later, the Air Force leveled five homes in Talaing village in Sagaing, killing eight civilians, four of them children, and wounding more than twenty others. The PDF said there was no active combat anywhere near the village at the time. That afternoon, jets bombed a monastery and a school in Ye Kyaw village in Gwa Township, Rakhine, injuring five residents including a ten-year-old. The Gwa strikes fit a pattern dating back at least to June 20, as the military is trying to claw back territory held by the Arakan Army. Min Aung Hlaing's self-imposed deadline for resistance groups to respond is July 31.
Read more: Shan Herald (peace offer), DVB (Talaing strike), Narinjara (Gwa strike)
Shopping in Delhi, Closing in Dhaka
Min Aung Hlaing sat down with Narendra Modi in New Delhi on June 1, his first foreign trip since taking the presidency in April, and the two sides promised to revive the long-stalled Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway. Both projects have spent years losing ground to jungle and insurgency. Modi posted on social media about rare earth cooperation, a detail that was somehow absent from Naypyidaw's readout. Myanmar could now be the world's third-largest producer of rare earth elements, putting out around 31,000 metric tons in 2024, but almost all of it flows to China.
Read more: SCMP (India visit), Geopolitical Monitor (Beijing corridor), The Daily Star (Bangladesh deals), Fibre2Fashion (BRI scope)
Suu Kyi's Son Still Wants Proof of Life
Kim Aris told reporters in London that he does not believe his mother has been moved to house arrest, disputing the junta's claim (since April) that her sentence was commuted to roughly 17 years and her conditions had improved. The 48-year-old says he has seen no evidence of a transfer and that her health, a heart condition on top of normal age-related issues including osteoporosis, is getting worse. His last letter from her came more than two years ago, and he suspects she remains in a Nay Pyi Taw prison a former inmate described as "pretty horrendous." Aris recently skateboarded 81 kilometers to mark her 81st birthday and has been trying to get governments from Tokyo to London to cut the military's access to aviation fuel.
Read more: Bangkok Post
Pork Ribs, Call Logs, a Knock at the Door
A lawsuit nearly five years in the making alleges that Telenor, majority-owned by the Norwegian state, gave phone call records for six customers to the junta on October 31, 2021. About three weeks later, soldiers surrounded a Yangon safe house and nabbed hip-hop artist and democracy activist Phyo Zeya Thaw halfway through his lunch. His wife Thazin Nyunt Aung had set our his favorite meal, pork ribs and rice, when the military convoy pulled up to their tenth-floor apartment in Dagon Seikkan township to get him. Zeya Thaw was 40. Telenor had entered Myanmar seven years earlier, its three-petaled blue logo becoming an emblem of the country's opening to the world.
Read more: Observer
The Baht Stops Here
Regime troops raided the Myawaddy home of KNU/KNLA-PC Captain Min Htet Paing in late June and reportedly found counterfeit Thai currency, printing machinery, and weapons. It is the second arrest of a regime-aligned officer in weeks. Captain Saw Arkar was picked up in mid-June near Friendship Bridge No. 2 after allegedly passing fake THB at a restaurant. Min Htet Paing slipped the initial raid, but BGF Battalion 4 caught him and sent him back to the military. Ward 5 administrator Sai Myo Nyunt Oo, named as one of four alleged accomplices, has not been arrested and denies any involvement.
Read more: The Irrawaddy
Myawaddy's Scam Compounds Still Open
As of June 25, about 5,300 people are still being held inside at least four scam compounds along the Thai-Myanmar border, including 18 Filipinos and about 1,500 Chinese, even though raids were supposed to shut down the trade. The Shengrui Group compound holds around 1,000 people, Zhongxin Company holds about 1,800, and SKY Company and another undisclosed site hold more than 2,500. It seems clear that when the raids arrived that operators didn’t shut down, they just moved the workers.
Read more: Philippine Inquirer
Bonfire of the Quantities
Myanmar's junta torched more than 50 tons of heroin, methamphetamine, opium, ketamine, marijuana and other drugs outside Yangon on Friday, a $600 million pile of smoke that was worth more than double last year's haul. Police Lt. Col. Aung Myat Soe said Yangon burned $321 million worth gear, to say nothing of similar scenes in Mandalay and Taunggyi, the Shan State capital closer to where much of the product gets made. The Ta'ang National Liberation Army, which signed a ceasefire with the junta after taking control of large parts of northern Shan State, announced its own $5.5 million burn the day before.
Read more: AP News (drug burn), Arise TV (UN day)
Half the Audience Gone, As Designed
A Human Rights Myanmar report for 50 outlets and 12 billion Facebook data points found that monthly audience reach collapsed from 4.7 billion to 2.4 billion since the 2021 coup. The report says the junta engineered the reduction by way of shutdowns, Facebook and website blocks, VPN restrictions, surveillance, and increased data costs. Shares of media posts fell almost two-thirds and comments fell by more than two-fifths, as users learned that visible engagement can invites visible consequences. The outlets pushed out almost a fifth more content anyway; regional outlets more than doubled their output. Reach for military-affiliated media fell by about three-quarters.
Read more: BNI Online
Six Million Empty Desks
When Myanmar's 2026-27 school year opened on June 1, 6.3 million school-aged children, almost half the estimated 13 million total, were not to be found in any classroom. Enrollment is now 6.7 million, down from 9.7 million before the coup.
Read more: The Irrawaddy
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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