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Time •

Civil War Looms As Myanmar's Military Intensifies Crackdown

efore the Feb. 1 coup, Zarni Win* worked for a United Nations-funded committee that monitored a ceasefire between Myanmar’s junta and ethnic armed groups. Today, the 27-year-old from Yangon, the country’s largest city, is getting ready to enlist in one of those groups herself.

“Now is the time to start preparing to eliminate the terrorist military,” she tells TIME. “I am ready to join the armed revolution.”

Myanmar is veering dangerously toward all-out civil war as the military, known as the T
Time •

How Myanmar's Pro-Democracy Protests Are Giving a Voice to LGBTQ+ People

ue Sha Shin Thant, a transgender woman, has experienced a lifetime of discrimination and social exclusion in Myanmar, where LGBTQ+ people have no recognized rights or protections and the only words used to describe them in their own language are derogatory. Now, the Mandalay-based activist is among thousands of LGBTQ+ people marching under rainbow flags as they join mass protests against dictatorship.

Millions of people, according to some estimates, have demonstrated since Myanmar’s generals se
Time •

Aung San Suu Kyi Faces New Charges After the Coup. Can Myanmar's Democracy Survive Without Her?

he news that Aung San Suu Kyi had been overthrown in a Feb. 1 coup spread through Myanmar like a shockwave. “Most of the citizens 100% depend on her,” says Kyaw Kyaw, a 28-year old LGBTQ rights campaigner who lives in Yangon, the Southeast Asian nation’s largest city. “Everyone was frustrated and scared.”

Myanmar’s elected civilian leader was idolized even before she came to power. During the 15 years that the junta kept her under house arrest, many secretly kept pictures of Suu Kyi in their ho
Time •

Myanmar’s Military Didn’t Just Overthrow Aung San Suu Kyi's Government. It’s Cracking Down on All Forms of Dissent

ust before 5 a.m. Monday, three officers from Myanmar’s national police force showed up at Po Po’s home in Yangon. The officers, two of whom carried rifles, asked for her husband Min Thway Thit, a former leader of a prominent dissident student union. “They said they wanted to ask some questions,” says Po Po. “I asked whether they had a search warrant to enter his room, and they told me it wasn’t necessary.”

Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, staged a coup against the democratically-elec