Analysis of Reactions to Nonviolent Public Protests Against Revolutionary Forces
Similarly, in February 2026, 36 residents of Lashio Township, Shan State, protested a gold mining
project. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) used gunfire to disperse the gathering and arrested participants. While some detainees were released, nine remained in detention as of
late February 2026, and some faced beatings and other ill-treatment. 5
Additionally, in controlled territories, authorities of revolutionary forces have often responded
to public demands related to governance and social justice with crackdowns rather than negotiation.
On 18 May 2025, approximately 50 local residents in Taungup Township, Rakhine State, who protested
against the Arakan Army’s (AA) conscription law, were arrested and detained by the AA. 6
On 6 September 2025, in Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region, a dispute over the collection of customs fees between protesters and members of the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) under the National
Unity Government (NUG) escalated into physical clashes and exchanges of gunfire, resulting in injuries
on both sides. 7
These cases indicate that, in controlled territories, revolutionary forces have tended to rely on
power and arms to address public grievances related to natural resource extraction and management, rather than engaging with affected communities’ concerns. They also suggest a lack of constructive dialogue in resolving governance issues and taxation disputes, reinforcing perceptions of coercive
responses toward the public.
Between 2021 and 2026, a total of 157 individuals were injured or arrested as a result of crackdowns by certain revolutionary forces.
5 မြေသိမ်းရွှေတူးမည့်လုပ်ငန်း ကန့်ကွက်သည့် ရွာသား ၉ ဦးကို MNDAA ဖမ်းဆီးထား၊ ကျော်ဇင်ဝင်း၊
Myanmar Now (၂၀၂၆၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ၊ ၄ ရက်နေ့)
6 တောင်ကုတ်တွင် စစ်မှုထမ်းဥပဒေကို ဆန္ဒပြသည့် ဒေသခံ ၅၀ ခန့်ကို AA ဖမ်းဆီး၊
Ayeyarwaddy Times (၂၀၂၅၊ မေလ၊ ၂၅ ရက်နေ့)
7 ထန်းကြီးရွာအခွန်ကောက်ဂိတ် ဆန္ဒပြခံရမှု ရွာပကဖ၊ဒေသခံနဲ့ PDF တွေကြား ဘာတွေဖြစ်ခဲ့လဲ၊ မြတ်၊ ကျော်စွာ၊
Myaelatt Athan (၂၀၂၅၊ စက်တင်ဘာလ၊ ၁၄ ရက်နေ့)
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