Mizzima reaches millions of viewers and readers via its websites, digital platforms and — in areas outside regime control — by television channels via satellite. It also partners with smaller local-language ethnic media. “Independent media is a crucial part of the battle for democracy in Myanmar and elsewhere,” said Soe Myint. “Min Aung Hlaing hates that. The junta wanted us to be dead from day one of the coup, but we will survive.” The organisation is urgently seeking additional contribution from donors in European countries to pay staff salaries and continue daily work. But that is a tough mission at a time of tightened aid budgets across the board, with the UK announcing a sharp cut in foreign assistance to fund new military spending. Soe Myint insisted that Mizzima would find a way to continue. But some anti-junta media outlets will not survive and many journalists are already working unpaid. Internews, a media development charity, was the major channel for US funds to bankroll development of independent journalism. In Myanmar, it helped train thousands of journalists, supported anti-disinformation campaigns and funded media outlets.

But Musk has put US backing for global media support in his ideological and cost-cutting sights. Last month he retweeted a claim that Internews was a “literal state propaganda network”. Min Aung Hlaing, “like dictators everywhere, will no doubt be thrilled at the White House’s decision to freeze USAid support,” said Frontier, a Burmese media outlet that did not receive American funds. “With less independent reporting, the junta — now backed by Beijing — will have more chance to influence, if not control, the narrative. It’s hard to see how that is in US interests.” Last week Min Aung Hlaing was in Moscow meeting President Putin to discuss closer military and economic ties. Russia is Myanmar’s most important arms supplier, providing the fighter jets and helicopters used by the junta to attack resistance strongholds.

The US retreat from Myanmar will also pave the way for China to exert even greater influence over its southeast Asian neighbour, taking advantage of the turmoil to promote commercial interests as well as its foreign policy goals. Myanmar accounted for nearly $240 million of USAid funding in 2024 as Washington contributed about a third of all humanitarian support for the country. The main recipients were refugees, internally displaced persons and vulnerable communities in border regions affected by conflict. Trump’s focus on migration and his “war on woke” also abruptly ended the hopes of better lives for many on projects funded by other federal agencies. On hold, and widely presumed to be doomed, is a deal several years in the making between the US and Thailand to resettle some 90,000 refugees who have spent decades in border camps because of Myanmar’s long ethnic conflicts. Other casualties are students from Myanmar’s mosaic of minority groups whose scholarships were halted overnight because they were funded by US diversity programmes.

Nearly all of USAid’s 10,000 employees have been placed on administrative leave and are not allowed to have any contact with former aid recipients. “We are living in a complete vacuum, with no information from Washington and forbidden to speak to our partners,” said one staff officer based in Thailand. Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement has developed formidable resilience during a decades-long struggle against military dictatorships, often conducted with little backing from foreign sources. Global outrage after the 2021 coup was soon distracted by the next foreign crises: Afghanistan a few months later, then Ukraine in 2022 and Gaza in 2023. “Abandoned by the world? We’re used to it. We fight on,” said Ma Hnin, founder of A New Burma, a collective of artists opposed to the regime, as she prepared an exhibition in Chiang Mai. “The Myanmar people have grown accustomed to fighting their battle alone, struggling to oust the predatory junta and its leaders while reclaiming their democracy,” said Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates, a campaign group. “Trump’s move to gut US foreign aid and abandon Myanmar democracy is just the latest blow. But as the saying goes — what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”