This week sees the release of three Myanmar news items which I was involved in: firstly, an Al Jazeera English documentary (25) where I offered a triangular ethnic conflict as a lens to understand what Natalie Brinham and I call “the slow-burning genocide”, Myanmar’s nearly half-century of systemic persecution and destruction of Rohingya Muslims.

 

Secondly, a rather comprehensive analysis of Myanmar’s un-ending crises in the form of a podcast on The Clash Report; and finally, a Myanmar language interview on Thailand’s widely criticised red-carpet reception of the deeply unpopular military leader ex-General Min Aung Hlaing.

In the Myanmar language interview, which has had over 100,000 views, I took the time to inform Myanmar audience about the collapsing global governance system clustered around the United Nations, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

The Al Jazeera English document picked up my heart-felt moral sentiment – universal sense of fellowship of humans above narrow tribal identity — and used it as one of the concluding remarks.

Ethnically and religiously, I belonged – note the past tense – to Myanmar and Buddhists. But I have long chosen to identify with another human population, subjected to state-sponsored, but widely popular genocide. For that I was universally ostracised by my own countrymen.

And it is certainly not my loss. I don’t wish to belong or identify with an overwhelmingly genocidal society that likes to call itself Buddhist, and yet behave in the most vile and inhuman ways.

National August 19, 2026

Experts urge Cambodia to balance Myanmar engagement with ASEAN peace efforts

Taing Rinith / Khmer Times.
Excerpted:
“The planned visit also revives a broader question: whether Cambodia can use its own peacebuilding experience to contribute to resolving Myanmar’s protracted conflict.
Myanmar human rights activist Maung Zarni, a 2024 Nobel Peace Prize nominee and fellow of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, has previously proposed what he calls the “Phnom Penh Peace Process” as a framework for ending the conflict.
He argued that Cambodia’s experience of civil war, genocide and national reconciliation gives it a potentially important role in helping Myanmar achieve a negotiated settlement.
His proposed process would involve Cambodia working with major Asian powers, including China and India, as well as ASEAN members, to bring Myanmar’s military authorities and ethnic resistance organisations into negotiations.
The proposal calls for an initial ceasefire, with all sides agreeing to stop attacks for a defined period, followed by inclusive political dialogue involving the military, ethnic armed organisations and other stakeholders.
Zarni has also affirmed that Myanmar’s long-running conflict cannot be resolved through military victory alone and that any eventual settlement needs to address the demands of its ethnic nationalities, including greater regional autonomy within a federal political system.
His proposal reflects Cambodia’s own experience of ending its civil war through negotiations and political reconciliation, culminating in the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, followed by the eventual integration of remaining Khmer Rouge forces into society.”

More sources –

How decades of persecution displaced Myanmar’s Rohingya | Al Jazeera Untangles (25 minutes)
18 August 2026. https://youtu.be/g3bXX52exiI

The Rohingya, the Junta & Myanmar’s Endless Civil War | with Human Rights Activist Dr. Maung Zarni
https://x.com/clashreport/status/2089345721879187700
Full interview (37 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d779RizGBQI

“ဖမ်းဝရမ်း တန်းလန်းနဲ့ ဒေသတွင်း ခေါင်းပြူလာတဲ့ ဦးမင်းအောင်လှိုင်ကို ကမ္ဘာကြီးက ဘာလုပ်မလဲ”
https://youtu.be/1c5LWzAaReo?is=2yxmKw468bjes_AG

Maung Zarni

Posted by Maung Zarni

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide. He is the co-author (with Natalie Brinham) of the pioneering study, "The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas" (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, Spring 2014) and "Reworking the Colonial-Era Indian Peril: Myanmar’s State-Directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims" (The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall/Winter 2017/18).

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