On the heels of a rigged election that saw Myanmar’s military tighten its grip on power, the situation for the country’s many ethnoreligious minority communities is looking bleak. The military announced the capture of two strategic border towns in the last week, taken from Karenni and Chin militias. Mawtaung, on the border with Thailand, was seized from the Karen National Union, while Tonzang, close to the border with India, had been under Chin’s control since May 2024.