On every birthday, Min Zin typically reflects back on his life's journey and shares commemorative posts containing his deep thoughts on his social media. This year, we will not have the opportunity to read his new reflections. Spending his birthday silently in unseen darkness while being wrongfully detained is heartbreaking and deeply saddening for his family and friends.

တရုတ်ပြည်သူ့သမ္မတနိုင်ငံတွင် တရားဝင် ဖိတ်ကြားချက်ဖြင့် သွားရောက်စဉ် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံခဲ့ရသည့် လွတ်လပ်သော သုတေသီနှင့် ကျောင်းသားခေါင်းဆောင်ဟောင်း ဦးမင်းဇင်အား ဘေးကင်းလုံခြုံစွာ ချက်ချင်း ပြန်လည်လွှတ်ပေးရန် အခြေခံပညာကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂ (၈၈ မျိုးဆက်) က စက်တင်ဘာလ (၁) ရက်နေ့စွဲဖြင့် သတင်းထုတ်ပြန် မေတ္တာရပ်ခံလိုက်သည်။

U Min Zin, the founder of the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), a former member of the Basic Education Students' Union (B.E.S.U.), and an independent scholar and researcher, was detained by Chinese authorities while he was en route to attend an academic conference in Kunming, Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China, on June 3, 2026, following an official invitation.

We are scholars of Asia and international affairs who support academic freedom, including the freedom to carry out research and disseminate and publish the results thereof, and who believe academic institutions in both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States benefit from the free and open exchange of ideas, high quality scholarly research, and critical analysis. We are, therefore, gravely concerned by the wrongful detention of our colleague Min Zin, who was detained upon arrival in Kunming, Yunnan Province (PRC), on June 3. Min Zin traveled to Kunming to participate in an academic workshop.

In 1 month, @POTUS will meet President Xi at the White House. Currently, there are at least 12 Americans unjustly held in China. The Trump administration has continually demonstrated that the return of Americans unjustly held overseas is their top priority. PRC officials need to understand that for there to be a productive visit between the leaders, it is imperative that Americans come home, particularly U.S. academics Dr. Youlin Chen and Min Zin.

@SecRubio has been clear: "We’re always concerned about wrongfully detained Americans everywhere in the world." has been clear: "We’re always concerned about wrongfully detained Americans everywhere in the world."

German Embassy Yangon takes note of the U.S. designation of U Min Zin as “wrongfully detained” in China. U Min Zin, Executive Director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), was detained in China on 3 June while travelling to Kunming for an academic workshop. We remain concerned about U Min Zin’s continued detention and ask for a resolution that respects due process and his fundamental rights.

အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံခြားရေးဝန်ကြီး ရူဘီယိုက အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံသား မင်းဇင်အား မတရားဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခံထားရသူအဖြစ် တရားဝင် သတ်မှတ်လိုက်ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ဘေဂျင်းအစိုးရအနေဖြင့် တရုတ်နိုင်ငံတွင် မတရားဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခံထားရသော သို့မဟုတ် ပြည်ပထွက်ခွာခွင့်ပိတ်ပင်ခံထားရသော အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံသားအားလုံးကို ပြန်လွှတ်ပေးရန် မိမိတို့ တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။

Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Dylan Johnson: "The safety and security of U.S. citizens is U.S. Department of State's top priority. We will continue to advocate for Mr. Zin and call for the release of all U.S. citizens who are arbitrarily detained or exit banned in China."

The Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar) welcomes the announcement that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has formally designated our founding Executive Director, Min Zin, as wrongfully detained in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It sends a clear message that Min Zin’s release is a top priority.

Secretary Rubio has determined that U.S. citizen Min Zin is wrongfully detained in China. This follows an extensive review of the circumstances surrounding his June 3 detention in Yunnan, China, where Mr. Zin had traveled to attend an academic conference at the invitation of the Chinese government. There are now two wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in China: Mr. Zin and Dr. Youlin Chen.

Min Zin’s unjust detention raises serious concerns about the safety of American scholars conducting research about China. His wrongful detention is another point of tension in U.S. Chinese relations. Academic freedom organizations have called for his immediate release, emphasizing that responsible governments do not imprison researchers for conducting legitimate scholarship or engaging in policy analysis.

Scholars at Risk is concerned about the detention of a scholar in apparent retaliation for his exercising the right to academic freedom. State authorities must refrain from restricting or otherwise interfering in the nonviolent exercise of such rights.

Strategic Initiative Forum (SIF) sent an open letter on 4 August to the People’s Republic of China regarding China’s involvement in Myanmar affairs.