Swe Win: “Myanmar never fully caught up with the outside world”

Myanmar has stayed with me ever since I first visited in 2018, during the country’s brief quasi-democratic period following the political shift of 2010¹In 2010, the military junta — which had ruled Myanmar for decades — introduced a new constitution and held elections. This opened the door to a civilian government, but the generals kept most of the real power.. It was the first decade in the modern history of Myanmar when the country was open to the world and began both enjoying and struggling with modernity — internet access, modern transport, capitalism, and a flow of new ideas. The freedom was partly illusory: the military junta still held real power and eventually overthrew the democratic leadership in 2021, plunging the country back into darkness. But society had already changed. A new generation had grown up experiencing freedom, and many are now fighting the junta as part of the resistance armies.

Swe Win stands at the intersection of several generations — those who witnessed the 1988 protests that sparked decades of democratic efforts, created political prisoners and dissidents who remain the faces of a new Myanmar including Aung San Suu Kyi³Aung San Suu Kyi is Myanmar’s most famous pro-democracy leader, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent years under house arrest for opposing military rule. In 2015, her National League for Democracy party won the elections, but she was barred from presidency and governed with limited power under a constitution that kept the military in control. In 2021, she was overthrown and put to prison where she remains.. He later joined that struggle himself and was punished for it with imprisonment and attacks ordered by the authorities. Now he leads one of the most influential independent Myanmar media outlets, Myanmar Now, and lives in exile in Australia.

In this interview, Swe Win speaks about his country, the misconceptions surrounding it, and his personal experiences of threats and forgiveness. Here, we share his story in direct speech.

News junkie

Growing up in an authoritarian state, I became addicted to news when I was very young. We had a major democratic uprising in 1988⁴8888 Uprising was a nationwide pro-democracy revolt led by students, monks, and ordinary citizens against decades of military dictatorship. It was met with brutal repression: thousands were killed when the army opened fire on protesters. Although the movement was crushed, it gave rise to Myanmar’s modern pro-democracy movement and Aung San Suu Kyi., when I was ten. It was almost successful, but it was crushed by another round of military rule. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, even members of the armed forces joined.

My father followed the news on a small radio, and later I took over tuning into BBC and Voice of America. In such a closed society there was so much hunger for the news. In those days, we didn’t have any media outlets, telephones or the ability to travel outside our own country — we couldn’t apply for a passport or any kind of travel document. Vehicles are also a means of communication. But we didn’t even own bicycles, let alone a motorcycle or a car.

Information was spreading simply by word of mouth, from one person to another. It could be true or half true — you never knew. So we followed the radio.

By 15 or 16, I was already a news junkie. I had been following the Monica Lewinsky affair in Washington, D.C., the downfall of Suharto in Indonesia, the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis, and the arguments between Soros and [Malaysia’s former Prime Minister] Mahathir Mohamad. I found realising how all these things were connected — like in a good play, everything connects.

That passion — and that anger — were enough to send me to jail at the age of 20. I was thrown into jail on a number of charges — “posing a threat to national security” and so on [laughs]. Actually, I was just secretly distributing pamphlets with my bike, putting them here and there. I was caught and sentenced to 21 years.

Prison years

I spent a total of seven years in prison, from 1998 to 2005. First, I was wriggling like an insect, you know? Because I was cut off from the dopamine — the news dopamine [laughs].

For almost three years, I received no news at all. For two years, I had no writing materials. I was put in solitary confinement. But I also found that it was, in a way, a great experience to live by myself, to survive independently of external stimuli.

Interaction with other human beings, interaction with the outside world, reading a novel, getting immersed in a book… all of that was cut off. But that experience helped me. I managed to go deeper into the issues I had struggled with in my life. Outside, we just move from one event to the next and never look deeply into the complex causes behind them.

Take the war in Ukraine, for example. On the surface it is Putin’s war, Russian aggression. That is true. But what about the other causes? The weakening of Western democracy, both financially and militarily. Was it related to Brexit? To the rise of China? To the rise of India? To the weakening economies of Europe and the United States? So yes, this is Putin’s war — but around it, there are many other reasons. When you are in prison, you have time to think in different ways.

The authorities were not afraid of us at all. They wanted to show that if you did these things, you would suffer heavy punishment. It was meant as an example to everyone — even your own family members. In our country, in Asia, society is more cohesive, I would say. So if a son or daughter “goes wrong”, the authorities think the parents are responsible. Your family members will be punished as well. Your parents and your siblings — who know nothing about your work — might also be arrested. Their houses might be confiscated as state property. That happened in my case. After the coup, my family home was taken by the state.

There are at least 10,000 political prisoners in Myanmar now: pro-democracy activists, politicians, journalists, NGO workers, people doing humanitarian work. Many have been jailed for no reason at all. For example, if someone criticised the authoritarian leader on social media and you simply shared it on your Facebook timeline, you could be jailed. Wherever you go, the authorities have the right to stop you and check your mobile phone. Facebook is banned; the websites of independent media are blocked.

My experience in jail helped me become what I call a newsman. I wanted to work not only with the immediate causes but also the complex reasons behind issues. I wanted to describe things, to speak out for myself and for others. When somebody was mistreated, I wanted to say: “This is not okay.”

Uniqueness of Myanmar

In 2025, we see the news about Generation Z revolts in Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Madagascar. So what’s going on? Communication technology, financial flows and modern means of transportation have changed everything. These things give a lot of strength to the mobilisation of young people who are ready to risk everything.

There is something unique about Myanmar — perhaps other countries have it too, I don’t know. The uniqueness lies in the fact that our country started to catch up with the outside world, but we never fully caught up. We only just began to understand what the outside world is.

The social norms and social structures in many parts of the country haven’t changed much. One village can essentially mean everyone is family. Nearby villages have been interacting with each other for centuries. In the modern world, people don’t know each other [laughs]. You don’t know where your relatives are; they’re scattered around the world. For a Ukrainian family, perhaps an uncle is in Washington, D.C., and an aunt is in Thailand or Austria. But we don’t have the same in Myanmar.

Society in Myanmar remains quite cohesive because of the lack of modernity. And that cohesion, combined with relative openness, modern communication, modern transport and financial flows, means you can raise an army easily. Because you can trust. You can organise. In a town of 30,000 people, you can form an army quickly because these people have known each other — and their families have known each other — for so many years. When someone gains respect or recognition in a community, he can instantly become a resistance leader. So in the context of Myanmar, the features of the old society contribute to the resistance movement just as much as modern technology.

Rohingya and Aung San Suu Kyi

My mother belongs to an ethnic minority group in the western part of the country⁷Rakhine State is a region in western Myanmar bordering Bangladesh. It is one of the country’s poorest and most ethnically diverse areas, home to both Buddhist Rakhine communities and the Muslim Rohingya population. where millions of Rohingya live. She’s from a Rakhine tribe who are Buddhist.

Personally, whenever I see suffering, I don’t care about identities, ethnicity, or religions. I care about how people are treated. Can they seek medical treatment? Can they seek justice? Can they live in an environment where there is no fear? Do they have enough food? That’s more important.

This problem⁹The Rohingya are a Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State who have faced decades of discrimination, denial of citizenship, and periodic waves of violence. In 2017, a brutal military campaign forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, creating one of the world’s largest refugee crises. [with prosecuting a Muslim minority] has been simmering for so long. It always plays into the control of the military. But it was never as bad as this one in my lifetime.

After the 2010 political transition from full-fledged military rule to a quasi-democracy, this problem escalated. In hindsight, I think members of the new military leadership — who had limited power in the new political system — wanted to create problems. Because the justification for military dominance is always instability and unrest. So they began fomenting these tensions. Nationalist groups emerged, opposed to the very existence of the Rohingya. It was partly linked to anti-Muslim sentiment in an otherwise Buddhist-majority nation, but it weaponized by propaganda, especially on Facebook.

Then Aung San Suu Kyi came to power within a constitutional framework written and orchestrated by the military. I think she was in a bind. If she offended the military, she must have thought, “We will return to square one.” She feared that defending the Rohingya would undo the fragile political opening. What is certain is that she played no active role, nor any role at all, in the abuses suffered by the Rohingya. Her complicity lies in her silence.

It is hard to judge her silence¹⁰Aung San Suu Kyi faced international criticism during the Rohingya crisis because she did not publicly condemn the military’s actions., her decisions. Personally, I do not agree with it — then or now — because we cannot sacrifice justice for even one person for the supposed good of 20 or 30 million. Right is right. Justice is justice. But at the same time, I cannot say she perpetrated genocide against the Rohingya. She had no real power. She simply did not speak out.

In any turbulent and complex situation like hers, there may be many factors we simply do not know. Factors we do not yet understand. We are making an assessment based only on public statements.

Attack

I accidentally exposed myself to publicity. I was always a quiet guy; I don’t use much social media myself. We have to use social media for journalism, but at the same time, I’m not entirely in agreement with social media [laughs].

At one point, I generated public attention in a particular case, and became something of a celebrity in our country in 2016. A major lesson: for journalists, if you are not a celebrity, it’s very good for you, you know? If you are a celebrity, you face far more challenges.

Taking advantage of the country’s limited openness at that time, I didn’t forget what had happened over the past four decades. I wanted to write about the major issues, major crimes committed by different groups and individuals. I didn’t want to let myself be distracted by one news event after another. I wanted to focus, to prioritise a specific list of stories. So I began writing about atrocities committed in the past — some from before I was even born.

Some powerful elites developed deep animosities towards me. Later, I became embroiled in a defamation lawsuit brought by an ultra-nationalist Buddhist man backed by the military regime. I had been following their money and family businesses. They didn’t care much about our Rohingya reporting, but one day in 2019, I travelled to the Rakhine area with a colleague. It wasn’t even a reporting trip — it is my mother’s hometown, so I went there. Meanwhile, the authorities had deployed people to watch me, to monitor my movements.

The hotel manager where we stayed was terrified. He knew what was happening in his hotel complex, but he had no idea who we were. He thought we might be traffickers or criminals. The authorities asked him, “When are they leaving? When are they checking out?” He was ordered to report immediately if I made any change [laughs]. He was cooperating with them.

Soon after I left the hotel at checkout, some people started shooting at me. I was with my four-year-old daughter. My friend also had his four-year-old son with him.

At first, I didn’t realise they were gunshots. I thought someone was throwing big stones. We said, “Oh, it’s lightning, a thunderstorm.” But in fact, I was already being shot at. Fortunately, the bullet struck the car’s keyhole area — the hardest part of the door — and ricocheted into my leg. Later I learned that even the police were not happy about their role in that episode. They had been ordered to do it. But I escaped.

Maybe it’s my Buddhist way of thinking, but I thought: perhaps I have done this to others, you know? Having lived a prisoner’s life, it always feels better to be abused than to abuse others, to be mistreated than to mistreat others.

“Okay, I might have done this to others.” And then I felt instant forgiveness. Forgiveness because, in life, sometimes we make a mistake, and then we must struggle with remorse for the rest of our lives.

The same here. The individual who shot at me — it was easy for them to do it, but it will not be easy for them to cope with the consequences of that decision throughout their life.

So with that in mind, I thought: they are simply playing a peripheral role in this bigger contest of power dynamics, authoritarian rule, cronyism. They are just a very small part, they should be sympathised with — and completely forgiven.

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