Military Tensions Rise at Chin-Magway Border as Junta Troops Mobilize from Saw toward Kanpetlet with Aerial Resupplies

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Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By PM01,

Military tensions are escalating at the Chin-Magway border in the Yaw region. Military junta troops have launched a massive offensive and are reportedly advancing toward Kanpetlet Township in southern Chin State, according to military sources.

Junta troops stationed in Saw Township, Magway Region, began marching yesterday, May 17th, toward Kanpetlet—a town currently controlled by the Chin resistance forces. According to local source HKL Mindat, the column has already reached an area known locally as the "6-Mile" mark.

In response to the advancing troops, the Kanpetlet Township Humanitarian and Disaster Management Department has issued an urgent advisory, warning local residents to remain highly vigilant.

The advancing junta column is also receiving air support. Sources report that earlier this morning, a military Y-12 transport aircraft air-dropped nine bundles of ammunition and food supplies directly to the troops heading toward Kanpetlet.

Meanwhile, another junta column of about 60 soldiers from the Kyaukhtu-based Artillery Battalion 368 in Saw Township was also spotted on the move. 

According to local media Yaw Alinn Tann , this column was seen marching from Nga Lun Village toward Kyauk Ma Village at around 10:40 AM today.

This surge in military activity comes after the junta heavily reinforced Saw Township with fresh troops deployed from Laungshe over the past few days, triggering intense security concerns across the Chin-Magway border.

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Global "PROOF OF LIFE" Campaigns Held across the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia Demanding Verification of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s Well-being

Public Myanmar News , May 18, 2026.

By Saw Zin Maung,

Around 400 Myanmar expatriates gathered in front of the Houses of Parliament in London, UK, on May 17th. They launched the “PROOF OF LIFE” campaign, urgently demanding that the military junta provide credible proof that the detained popular leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is alive and in good health.

The London rally was attended by her youngest son, Ko Htein Lin, also known as Kim Aris, alongside the National Unity Government’s representatives to the UK, U Maung Maung Aung and Dr. Thet Ko Ko. Representatives from ethnic communities and revolutionary families also joined the protest. 

Together, they demanded in-person family visitation for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, verifiable proof of her well-being, and urged international governments to increase pressure on the Myanmar military junta.

Similar protests echoed across Europe. In Berlin, Germany, the group "For Federal Myanmar (Berlin)" led Myanmar pro-democracy activists in their own “Proof of Life” rally on the exact same day.

Meanwhile, in the Hague, Netherlands, Myanmar expats gathered in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Parliament building. They pressured the Myanmar military to issue a guaranteed proof of life for the 81-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate and demanded the unconditional release of all political prisoners. 

The protesters explicitly called on the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to publicly back the demand for proof of life, include her situation in diplomatic dialogues, and stand firmly with the people of Myanmar.

At the same time, in Melbourne, Australia, the Myanmar diaspora united for a prayer session and rally, demanding the immediate release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners.

Ever since the military coup, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept in solitary confinement, completely cut off from the outside world. This total information blackout has raised severe worries about her health, not just for her son Kim Aris, but for millions of people worldwide.

This "Proof of Life" campaign originally kicked off on April 21st. Organizers continue to urge the public to voice their concerns on social media and call on their respective host governments to pressure the junta into providing verifiable proof of her safety.

Reporting for Public Myanmar News, this is the Special Intelligence Force.

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Outrage in Thabaung as Village Administrator Takes Bribe to Cover Up Attempted Rape of Pregnant Woman, Sparking Human Rights Concerns

Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By PM01,

An attempted rape targeting a 20-year-old woman, who is five months pregnant, occurred in Thae Phyu Village Tract, Thabaung Township, Ayeyarwady Region.

Furthermore, local residents told the revolutionary news source, *Special Intelligence Force - Pathein*, that the village tract administrator failed to take legal action and instead extorted money from the victim's family to cover up the crime.

The incident took place on May 14 in U-Yin-Kone Village, Thae Phyu Village Tract. While her husband was away from home, the pregnant woman was gathering vegetables near her house when a fellow villager, identified as Phoe Cho, took advantage of the situation and attempted to forcefully assault her.

Despite her desperate tears and pleas, as she explained she was five months pregnant, the perpetrator refused to listen and persisted with the assault. Following a prolonged struggle to defend her life and her unborn child, the victim heard the sound of incoming motorcycles belonging to villagers returning from a bank. Startled by the approaching noise, Phoe Cho fled before 

completing the assault.

Family members of the victim told Public Myanmar News that the traumatized pregnant woman, seeking justice, immediately reported the assault to the Thae Phyu Village Tract Administrator, Ko Myint, on the very same day, accompanied by a ten-household head.

The victim's family stated that Administrator Ko Myint initially demanded 20,000 MMK to open the case. However, as of today, May 18—four days after the incident—he has failed to notify the police or take any steps to apprehend the suspect, effectively burying the case after accepting the money.

The perpetrator, Phoe Cho, reportedly has a notorious history of local thefts and moral misconduct involving the harassment of women in the village, and he remains at large.

Commenting on the situation, a local resident spoke on the condition of anonymity due to security concerns:

 "It is utterly disgusting that a pregnant woman was violated like this, and the village administrator took money just to stay silent. He has done absolutely nothing for us. We do not have the financial means to travel directly to the township administration office, which is why we sought help from the administrator. Instead, he demanded 20,000 MMK and buried the case. With the criminal still roaming free, we are deeply worried about the safety of other women here."

Since the breakdown of local governance and law enforcement mechanisms in Myanmar, violence against women has become increasingly severe. Local residents are urgently demanding immediate accountability and effective legal action against both the perpetrator, Phoe Cho, and the corrupt administrator, Ko Myint, who shielded the criminal through bribery.

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Human Rights Violations and Oppression Worsen Against Inmates at Myaungmya Prison

Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By Saw Zin Maung,

Severe human rights violations, corruption, and moral misconduct are heavily taking place against inmates inside Myaungmya Prison in Myaungmya Township, Ayeyarwady Region, according to a report by the Special Intelligence Force, a revolutionary news source.

Sources close to the prison staff told Public Myanmar News that an inmate named "Maung Aye," who is serving a sentence for murder and rape, was appointed as the chief prison monitor (Tan-see-choke) for the entire facility by prison officials earlier this year in 2026. Since then, he has been abusing his authority to abuse and torture detainees.

According to the sources, those oppressed by Maung Aye include local residents from townships such as Myaungmya, Wakema, Laputta, and Einme, with some victims being elderly individuals aged 70 to 80.

Family members of the victims stated that elderly inmates are being beaten and verbally abused under the pretext of failing to remember the mandatory prison posture. Furthermore, inmates are subjected to extortion, facing a fee of 50,000 MMK per person if they wish to transfer from the disciplinary cells to other regular prison cells.

In addition, lower-ranking prison staff are reportedly addressing 70-year-old elderly inmates using derogatory language, while subjecting them to inhumane beatings and severe torture, according to staff sources close to the prison.

In response to these human rights violations, prison sources reported that inmates are demanding an end to the inhumane group beatings and violence perpetrated by certain prison staff, regardless of whether an inmate has committed a disciplinary infraction or not. They are also demanding a designated 30-minute visitation window for visitors traveling from afar, alongside properly regulated schedules for morning, afternoon, and evening cell openings and lockdowns.

Local residents and families of the inmates have emphasized that the prisoners are constantly facing severe restrictions while staff abuse their authority and lack empathy. They further asserted that senior officials, from the chief jailer and prison superintendent down to the lower-ranking staff, must be held accountable for this ongoing corruption and systemic oppression.

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Moderate Earthquake Noticeably Felt Across Several Townships, Including Yangon

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Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By Ko Saw

Local residents told Public Myanmar News that a moderate earthquake struck this morning, May 18, starting at 8:30 AM, and was noticeably felt across several townships, including the Yangon Region.

While many urban residents distinctly felt the tremors, some reported that they did not notice the quake at all.

"It was quite noticeable. I felt the entire room shaking," said a resident living in Mingaladon Township.

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According to My Earthquake Alerts, a digital earthquake monitoring system, the quake registered a magnitude of 5.23 on the Richter scale, classifying it as a moderate earthquake. The alert, issued at 8:45 AM today (May 18), indicated that the epicenter was located within in Kyarktann township ,Yangon Region.

Myanmar has experienced a continuous series of earthquakes since the Sagaing earthquake struck on March 28, 2025.

Earlier this year in 2026, another moderate earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 also hit, centered in Minbya Township, Rakhine State.

According to monitoring by Public Myanmar News, there have been at least over a dozen minor to moderate earthquakes recorded in townships situated along active fault lines from the beginning of this year up until the third week of May.

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ထိုင်း-မြန်မာနယ်စပ် တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ ၇ သောင်းနဲ့အတူ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်တွေက ဖမ်းဆီး Three Myanmar Nationals Arrested in Tak for Smuggling 70,000 Illegal Cigarettes

 

ထိုင်း-မြန်မာနယ်စပ် တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ ၇ သောင်းနဲ့အတူ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်တွေက ဖမ်းဆီး

Three Myanmar Nationals Arrested in Tak for Smuggling 70,000 Illegal Cigarettes

Public Myanmar News, May 12 , 2026.

By Saw Zin Maung,

Photo- Social Media 

ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံ၊ တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်၊ မယ်လမတ်မြို့နယ်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ်တွေ သယ်ဆောင်လာတဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို အမှတ် (၃၅၀၄) ထိုင်းအခြေစိုက် ခြေလျင်တပ်ရင်းနဲ့ အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးအဖွဲ့တွေ ပူးပေါင်းပြီး မေလ ၁၁ ရက်နေ့ ညနေပိုင်းက ဖမ်းဆီးလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Three Myanmar nationals were arrested on the afternoon of May 11 in Mae Ramat District, Tak Province, after being caught smuggling illegal cigarettes during a joint operation by the Thai 3504th Ranger Forces and local administrative authorities.

မယ်လမတ်မြို့နယ်၊ ဘန်ဟွေဟန့် ကျေးရွာအနီးမှာ နယ်မြေစိုးမိုးရေး ကင်းလှည့်နေတဲ့ ထိုင်းစစ်တပ်ဟာ လုံခြုံရေးစစ်ဆေးရေးဂိတ်ကို ရှောင်ကွင်းပြီး မသင်္ကာဖွယ်ရာ စက္ကူဖာတွေ သယ်ဆောင်လာတဲ့ အမျိုးသား ၃ ဦးကို တွေ့ရှိခဲ့တာပါ။ စစ်ဆေးကြည့်ရှုတဲ့အခါမှာတော့ ဖာ ၇ ဖာအတွင်း ထည့်သွင်းထားတဲ့ "Krongthip" တံဆိပ်ပါ ပြည်ပပို့ကုန်အဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ စုစုပေါင်း ၇၀,၀၀၀ ကို သိမ်းဆည်းရမိခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

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While conducting a routine security patrol near Ban Huai Haeng village in Mae Ramat, Thai soldiers spotted three suspicious men attempting to bypass a security checkpoint while carrying large cardboard boxes. Upon inspection, authorities seized seven boxes containing a total of 70,000 "Krongthip" brand cigarettes, which were labeled "For Export Only."

ဖမ်းဆီးရမိသူတွေကတော့ အသက် ၂၆ နှစ်အရွယ် မောင်ပါခဲ၊ ၂၅ နှစ်အရွယ် မောင်ဘီစီ နဲ့ ၄၅ နှစ်အရွယ် ဦးအီစာ တို့ ဖြစ်ကြပါတယ်။ သူတို့ ၃ ဦးစလုံးဟာ မယ်လ ဒုက္ခသည်

စခန်း (Zone C) မှာ နေထိုင်သူတွေဖြစ်ကြောင်း စစ်ဆေးတွေ့ရှိခဲ့ရတယ်လို့ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်ဘက်ကပြောပါတယ်။

According to Thai authorities, the suspects have been identified as 26-year-old Maung Pa Kae, 25-year-old Maung B.C., and 45-year-old U Isa. All three are residents of Zone C in the Mae La Refugee Camp.

ဖမ်းဆီးခံရသူတွေရဲ့ ထွက်ဆိုချက်အရ အဆိုပါဆေးလိပ်တွေကို အမည်မသိ အနက်ရောင် ပစ်ကပ်ကားတစ်စီးက လမ်းဘေးနားနေဆောင်တစ်ခုမှာ လာရောက်ချထားပေးခဲ့တာဖြစ်ပြီး၊ သူတို့ကတော့ အဆိုပါဆေးလိပ်တွေကို မယ်လစခန်းအတွင်းမှာ ပြန်လည်ရောင်းချဖို့အတွက် တစ်ဦးကို သယ်ဆောင်ခ ဘတ် ၄၀၀ စီနဲ့ လက်ခံသယ်ဆောင်လာတာလို့ ဝန်ခံထားပါတယ်။

During interrogation, the suspects confessed that an unidentified black pickup truck had dropped off the contraband at a roadside rest area. They admitted to being hired for 400 THB each to transport the cigarettes into the Mae La camp, where they were intended for resale.

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လောလောဆယ်မှာတော့ သူတို့ကို မယ်လမတ်ရဲစခန်းမှာ ထိန်းသိမ်းထားပြီး ယစ်မျိုးဥပဒေ၊ အကောက်ခွန်ဥပဒေတွေအပြင် ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံအတွင်း တရားမဝင် ဝင်ရောက်နေထိုင်မှု ပုဒ်မတွေနဲ့ပါ အမှုဖွင့် အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်ထားကြောင်းထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်ဘက်ကပြောပါတယ်။

The suspects are currently being held at the Mae Ramat Police Station. They face multiple charges, including violations of the Excise Act, the Customs Act, and illegal entry into Thailand.

Photo- Social Media 

ထိုင်းပြည်ထဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာနအနေနဲ့ အခုလို တရားမဝင်ဆေးလိပ်တွေကြောင့် နိုင်ငံတော် အခွန်ဝင်ငွေ ထိခိုက်မှုတွေရှိနေတာမို့ နယ်စပ်တစ်လျှောက် မှောင်ခိုလုပ်ငန်းတွေကို အရှိန်အဟုန်မြှင့် နှိမ်နင်းသွားမယ်လို့လည်း ထုတ်ပြန်ထားပါတယ်။

The Thai Ministry of Interior stated that illegal cigarette smuggling causes significant loss in state tax revenue. Consequently, authorities have announced plans to intensify crackdowns on smuggling operations along the border.

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