Reporting from behind shifting front lines in Myanmar’s civil war

On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels through his native Shan State, in eastern Myanmar, documenting the impact of war.

A video journalist with the online news outlet Shwe Phee Myay, he travels to remote towns and villages, collecting footage and conducting interviews on stories ranging from battle updates to the situation for local civilians living in a war zone.

His job is fraught with risks. Roads are strewn with landmines and there are times when he has taken cover from aerial bombing and artillery shelling.

“I have witnessed countless people being injured and civilians dying in front of me,” Mai Rupa said.

“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he told media, “at times, leading to serious emotional distress.”

Mai Rupa is one of a small number of brave, independent journalists still reporting on the ground in Myanmar, where a 2021 military coup shattered the country’s fragile transition to democracy and obliterated media freedoms.

Like his colleagues at Shwe Phee Myay – a name which refers to Shan State’s rich history of tea cultivation – Mai Rupa prefers to go by a pen name due to the risks of publicly identifying as a reporter with one of the last remaining independent media outlets still operating inside the country.

Most journalists fled Myanmar in the aftermath of the military’s takeover and the expanding civil war. Some continue their coverage by making cross-border trips from work bases in neighbouring Thailand and India.

But staff at Shwe Phee Myay – a Burmese-language outlet, with roots in Shan State’s ethnic Ta’ang community – continue reporting from on the ground, covering a region of Myanmar where several ethnic armed groups have for decades fought against the military and at times clashed with each other.