Five years after Myanmar’s 2021 military coup plunged the country into brutal civil war, the Thai border town of Mae Sot has emerged as a fragile, overcrowded sanctuary for tens of thousands of people who fled their homeland to oppose junta rule. For many of these exiles, what was once hope of a swift democratic revolution has curdled into exhaustion, disillusionment, and a future shrouded in uncertainty.
One 22-year-old former urban guerrilla, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his family still living under junta surveillance in Yangon, embodies this shifting tide of sentiment. At 17, he joined nationwide mass protests against the coup that ousted democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. When security forces crushed the nonviolent demonstrations, he fled to ethnic insurgent-controlled territory for military training, before returning to Yangon to carry out bombings as part of an underground resistance cell. “I thought then that non-violent protests were not the right way to get back our freedom,” he recalled.
His armed resistance ended abruptly when he was captured and sentenced to seven years in Insein Prison, a facility infamously known for routine abuse and torture of political inmates. Released last year, he fled across the Moei River – the narrow waterway that marks the Myanmar-Thailand border – to Mae Sot, where he now lives in one of dozens of hidden safe houses run by local charities. It was during his imprisonment that his views on the struggle changed forever. He witnessed deep infighting among insurgent groups, saw countless unnecessary civilian and combatant casualties, and as the eldest child in his family, felt a growing obligation to prioritize his family’s safety over armed struggle. Today, he has rejected violence entirely. “I want to help our people as much as I can. But I choose another way. A non-violent way,” he said. Now, he spends his days teaching children in the safe house and supporting friends who remain imprisoned in Myanmar, clinging to a faint hope that freedom will eventually come.
The 22-year-old is far from alone. Since the 2021 coup, Mae Sot – a major trade gateway between Myanmar and Thailand that has long hosted a shifting Burmese population – has seen its community of exiled Myanmar residents swell exponentially. Nearly all cross the border unofficially, leaving them undocumented and without legal status in Thailand. They live in constant fear of arrest by Thai police and deportation back to Myanmar, where reprisals from the junta await them and their families. Many dare not leave their cramped safe house rooms for weeks at a time; one defected former army officer told the BBC she only ventures outside twice a month.
These safe houses, tucked down quiet back streets and offering only six months of maximum stay per resident, are warrens of tiny, basic rooms with shared communal facilities. Behind every door lies a harrowing story of survival. Among them is Yin Yin Aung, a 20-year-old mother who traveled 1,000 miles from her resistance-stronghold village in Sagaing Region to reach Mae Sot with her husband and toddler son. Two years ago, junta troops occupied her village, Htomar, after sweeping through the region to crush dissent. The family fled into the surrounding forest, where they survived for six months on river water and scarce rations, falling ill and seeing several members of their group die before they could begin their journey to the border. When troops finally withdrew, they left the village looted and laced with landmines, making return impossible.
Yin Yin Aung gave birth to her son in the forest, but he was born with an abdominal hernia that requires urgent surgery. In Mae Sot, the couple has no legal status, so they cannot access Thailand’s public healthcare system. A private hospital has demanded a 38,000 baht ($1,140) deposit for the procedure – a sum nearly out of reach for the destitute family. Like many others, they have already hit their six-month limit at one safe house and are now staying in a second, with another move looming when their time runs out. “So long as Min Aung Hlaing is in charge, I cannot go back home,” Yin Yin Aung said. “He is the one who caused all of this.”
The growing despair among Mae Sot’s exiles comes as Myanmar’s junta leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, has consolidated his grip on power over the past 12 months, backed by significant diplomatic and military support from China and Russia. Last month, Min Aung Hlaing received a formal red-carpet welcome from Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking a key milestone in his effort to rebrand himself from a coup-leading pariah to a legitimate head of state accepted by neighboring countries. Earlier this year, the junta held a tightly controlled, opposition-boycotted election that allowed Min Aung Hlaing to formally take the office of civilian president, while over the past year junta forces have recaptured large swathes of territory that resistance groups seized in the early years of the war.
Chinese pressure has also cut off critical weapons and technology supplies to many resistance groups, leaving them fragmented, outgunned, and on the defensive. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently reported that at least 702 civilians – most of them women and children – were killed by junta air strikes between the announcement of the election last August and its conclusion in January, with violence against civilians continuing unabated even as Min Aung Hlaing solidifies his international standing.
Not all exiles in Mae Sot have abandoned hope of a revolutionary victory. In another safe house, a former Yangon bartender who serves with the Cobra Column – one of the opposition’s most effective fighting units, affiliated with the long-running Karen National Union insurgency – traveled to Mae Sot only to welcome his newborn child, and says he is eager to return to the front lines. “The military is fighting a war against the entire country, against the very citizens they are supposed to protect,” he said. “There is no way they can win.” Morale remains high among well-established ethnic armed groups like the Karen National Union, but newer people’s defense forces have struggled to maintain momentum amid supply shortages and junta advances.
For many older exiles like Louis, a 40-something Yangon entrepreneur who joined the Karen insurgency after the coup and was later imprisoned, the dragging war has forced a reevaluation of priorities. After his release, he chose to settle in Mae Sot to provide for his children, who need education and stability that a life on the run cannot offer. “For the first two or three years, we had high morale and were very motivated,” he said. “But since the war is dragging on for so long, a lot of people have other responsibilities that do not stop. We have changed under that pressure.”
One local Mae Sot activist, who runs a program to rescue child soldiers as young as 13 from insurgent groups and help them adjust to civilian life, says the war has torn apart communities that once lived in peace, with neighbors turning on each other for supporting opposing sides. She argues that the resistance must shift its strategy to meet the growing humanitarian crisis. “We have to prepare for a long fight for this revolution, not only with weapons, but also thinking about education and healthcare,” she said. “There are so many displaced people now. What are we going to do for them?”
Today, hundreds of thousands of Myanmar refugees across Thailand’s border regions remain trapped in devastating limbo. Diplomatic outreach from regional governments has failed to secure any meaningful concessions from the junta, while undocumented exiles like Yin Yin Aung face repeated moves, scarce support, and no clear path home – or to a better future elsewhere. In the cramped, dimly lit safe houses of Mae Sot, each resident carries the weight of trauma, and a future that grows more uncertain by the day.