No room for dissent

‘Many political activists are lying low,’ say Thinzar Shunlei Yi, frustrated. ‘There are not many of us speaking up any more. We are always afraid.’ She reels off obstacles to campaigning for political change in Myanmar.

Despite decades of oppressive military rule, Myanmar has a strong activist tradition. Under the junta, which controlled the country outright until 2010 when political reforms began slowly to emerge, thousands risked their lives to fight for democracy and human rights. The narrative then was simple; iconic freedom leader Aung San Suu Kyi served as a moral compass, binding an activist resistance. It may have been dangerous to engage in politics, but it was more straightforward: you knew your enemy, you knew your idol, and you had hundreds of thousands of comrades who agreed with you.

But since Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in a 2015 election that many saw as the culmination of a successful democratization process, the vast majority of Myanmar’s political activists