On 20 September 2025, Mu Dra, a journalist reporting for the independent press agency Border News Agency, was abducted from her home in front of her parents by the intelligence services of the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed organisations, controlling much of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Three days later, an AA spokesperson denied that she had been arrested, claiming instead that she was merely being questioned as part of an investigation into activities 'beyond the rules to be followed during the fighting period', without providing any concrete evidence. She has been held by the military since. 

Border News Agency’s editor-in-chief, Ko Kaung Myat Naing, believes, on the contrary that the journalist is targeted for her recent article exposing the lack of school supplies in a village hosting large numbers of people displaced by the conflict. Mu Dra has also been reporting on abuses such as violence against civilians by the AA in Rakhine State, as well as other human rights violations by the military junta.

“By abducting and detaining a journalist on such vague grounds and without providing a shred of evidence, the Arakan Army is resorting to the same arbitrary and repressive methods as the military regime it opposes. In the absence of concrete charges against Mu Dra, we call for her immediate release and urge the AA to commit to respecting the rights of journalists.

Mu Dra is the first journalist to be detained by the Arakan Army since the uprising triggered by the junta’s February 2021 coup. Other armed groups opposing the military regime have also targeted the press. In 2024, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) detained journalists Ta Lin Maung, of the Red News Agency, and independent reporter Naung Yoe, for a month.

Since its coup in 2021, the military junta has waged an extremely brutal crackdown on the press: seven journalists and press freedom defenders have been executed, more than 200 detained, with at least 51 still behind bars.

Myanmar Press Freedom: RSF’s support for Burmese journalists

In response to this repression, RSF has provided emergency assistance to over a hundred journalists and runs the Myanmar Press Freedom Project from Thailand, supporting both exiled media professionals and those continuing to work inside the country.

Ranked 169th out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Myanmar is the world’s second-largest jailer of journalists, just behind China.