Ma Khaing Yin Mon: From business success to grassroots resistance in Myanmar

Ma Khaing Yin Mon. Photo from Exile Hub, content partner of Global Voices.

Exile Hub is one of Global Voices’ partners in Southeast Asia, emerging in response to the 2021 coup in Myanmar, focusing on empowering journalists and human rights defenders. This edited article is republished under a content partnership agreement.

Before the 2021 coup in Myanmar, Ma Khaing Yin Mon was a thriving businesswoman in Yangon’s growing small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. Today, she is living in a conflict zone, promoting Indigenous language education and advocating for women’s health — all while adjusting to the uncertainties of life in a revolutionary movement.

Her story is not one of sudden transformation, but of choice and resilience, made under immense pressure.

“I never imagined the resistance would last this long,” she says. “At the beginning, many of us thought it would be over in weeks. How naive we were.”