Thinzar Shunlei Yi

Thinzar Shunlei Yi speaking at an International Youth Day event

In Yangon, Thinzar Shunlei Yi underwent an ideological change.[1] She grew less supportive of the military after she visited several open forums at the local American Center, taking Aung San Suu Kyi as a role model.[1][14][2] She learned English at the Center and also volunteered at an orphanage.[2]

She first became politically active in 2012, when she co-organized a peace march on the International Day of Peace.[15] She eventually became the first female national coordinator for the National Youth Congress, and the president of the Yangon Youth Network, serving two terms.[16][17] In 2014, she co-organized the ASEAN Youth Forum, and a International Youth Day celebration, which focused on mental health awareness.[18][19] During this time, she was frequently harassed online, and was doxed on pornographic sites.[16][20] She stopped organizing youth forums in 2016, and began working with the NGO coalition Action Committee for Democracy Development, becoming an advocacy coordinator.[17][15]

In 2017, she co-founded and began hosting Under 30 Dialogue, a political youth-oriented television programme on Mizzima TV.[21][14] Sensitive topics such as the Rohingya genocide were often discussed.[4] As a result, the military often attempted to prevent journalists from interviewing her.[4] Mizzima TV's license was revoked by the military in the wake of the 2021 coup, and the programme's status post-coup is unclear.[22][21] Following national elections in 2015, Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, came into power.[12] In May 2018, Thinzar Shunlei Yi, along with 16 other activists, including poet Maung Saung Kha, were charged with unlawful protest for organizing solidarity protests for internally displaced persons in Kachin State and against the Rohingya genocide.[14][23][15] After a two year long trial, they were convicted in June 2020.[15][23] Given the choice between paying a K5,000 fine or staying in jail for a week, all 17 activists chose the former.[23] Thinzar Shunlei Yi experienced severe disillusionment with Suu Kyi for her inaction during the ethnic cleansing.[14][2]

Thinzar Shunlei Yi in a 2021 online interview

On 1 February 2021, General Min Aung Hlaing deposed the democratically elected Suu Kyi in a coup d'état. Thinzar Shunlei Yi, who was residing with her parents in Yangon at the time,[4] immediately went into hiding to avoid arrest,[24][4] with a warrant being announced in March or on 20 April.[15][25][26] She attended and organized several protests during this period.[20][12][22][27] Frequent doxing by pro-junta accounts posed a significant security risk, so she often switched hiding places in the Yangon region.[4][16] Several of her friends were abducted, tortured and killed.[28][29] In May, she testified via video link before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British House of Commons about the state of Myanmar under the military junta.[30] After a month and a half of hiding around Yangon, she took refuge in the dense Burmese jungle, joined a rebel group, and trained in the usage of firearms.[4] When she realized that she did not want to kill, she left the rebel training camp after a month of training and took refuge in Thailand in mid-2022.[4]

She refused to disclose her exact whereabouts in January 2022, for safety reasons.[4] She is a frequent contributor on Western news outlets such as CNN and The Australian,[4] and published an autobiography with a French journalist in 2022.[4][21] In exile, she has been running the #Sisters2Sisters campaign since mid-2021.[31] It aims to raise awareness about sexual violence perpetrated by the military junta.[15] In 2023, in collaboration with Myanmar Witness, #Sisters2Sisters analysed over a million posts from 100 pro- and anti-regime Telegram accounts and discovered that abusive language against women increased eightfold following the 2021 coup d'état.[16]