ANT - Anyarthar
31 Aug 2026
Min Zin was wrongfully detained on June 3, 2026, while traveling to Kunming, China, to attend an academic workshop. ISP-Myanmar calls for his immediate and unconditional release. Academic and research organizations such as ISP-Myanmar should be able to conduct research freely and without fear of intimidation.
This #FreeMinZin information hub brings together news reports and articles covering Min Zin’s case, official statements and open letters calling for his release, and other relevant information. This page will be updated regularly as new information becomes available.
Min Zin is the Executive Director/ founder of the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar).
He is a PhD candidate in Travers Department of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley. Min Zin studies comparative politics with a special focus on civil- military relations, democratization, and contentious politics. He is a former well known student activist in Burma’s democracy movement in 1988. Min Zin’s writings appear in many prestigious academic journals such as the Journal of Democracy, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Social Research: An International Quarterly, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Asian Survey, and many edited books.
Min Zin writes for The New York Times, the New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, Nikkei Asia and other media outlets. He is often cited by various well known media such as the Economist, New York Times, Nikkei Asia and many Burmese and regional newspapers on Myanmar politics, geopolitical issues and conflict transformation.
သူ့ရဲ့ မွေးနေ့ရောက်တိုင်း သူဖြတ်သန်းခဲ့ရတဲ့ ဘ၀ခရီးကို ပြန်လည်ဆင်ခြင်သုံးသပ်ရင်း လေးနက်တဲ့ အတွေးအမြင်တွေပါဝင်တဲ့ အမှတ်တရစာတွေကို သူ့ရဲ့ ဆိုရှယ်မီဒီယာမှာ ဦးမင်းဇင်က ရေးသားမျှဝေလေ့ရှိပါတယ်။ ဒီနှစ်မှာတော့ သူ့ရဲ့ အတွေးအမြင်သစ်တွေကို ဖတ်ရှုခွင့်မရတော့ပါဘူး။ မတရားဖမ်းဆီး ချုပ်နှောင်ခံထားရတာနဲ့အတူ မမြင်ရတဲ့ အမှောင်ထုထဲမှာ မွေးနေ့ကို တိတ်ဆိတ်စွာ ဖြတ်သန်းနေရခြင်းက သူ့ကို ချစ်ခင်လေးစားရသူအားလုံးအတွက်တော့ ရင်နင့်စရာ ဝမ်းနည်းဖွယ်ရာပါပဲ။
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.