Originally published on RSF
Myanmar journalist and documentary filmmaker Shin Daewe, recently released after more than two and a half years in detention, spoke to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) about what drives her to document the environmental devastation unfolding in her country. A laureate of the RSF Press Freedom Prize for Independence in 2025, she embodies the courage of independent journalists in Myanmar.
“Long civil wars and endless military dictatorship have led to rampant exploitation of natural resources in Myanmar,” Shin Daewe told RSF. “Faced with this environmental destruction, my love for my country awakened. As a documentary filmmaker, I feel it is my duty to tell this story.”
Born in 1973, Shin Daewe came of age under a military dictatorship, in a country where information was tightly controlled and dissent brutally repressed. As a student, she took part in demonstrations against the regime and was imprisoned twice, in 1990 and 1991, for opposing military abuses.
Journalism became a natural extension of her fight to hold authorities to account. In 2005, she joined Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), one of Myanmar’s leading independent media outlets. She notably covered the Saffron Revolution in 2007, when the military violently suppressed demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, and contributed to a documentary that drew international attention to the crackdown.
During Myanmar’s political transition in the 2010s, Shin Daewe turned exclusively to documentary filmmaking, notably collaborating with the Burmese service of Radio Free Asia (RFA). It was there that her journalistic instincts and environmental awareness fully converged.
Her work is grounded in field reporting and the lives of ordinary people. “I try to capture what is most intimate in the lives of ordinary people, rather than focusing on prominent figures,” she explains.
That approach found its fullest expression in the video report Ayeyarwady Riverbank Erosion, released by RFA in 2023, in which villagers describe the toll of erosion on their farmland, homes, and centuries-old cultural and religious sites in Central Myanmar. The report earned the 2024 Gracie Awards by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWM).
Sentenced to life in jail
Her documentaries, carried out in a country where independent journalism has become a high-risk activity since the February 2021 coup, made her a target. In October 2023, soldiers arrested her at a bus station in Yangon as she was collecting a drone ordered for filming a documentary. After two weeks of interrogation, she was transferred to the notorious Insein Prison, infamous for torture and ill-treatment.
In January 2024, a closed military court — that denied her legal representation — sentenced her to life imprisonment under the anti-terrorism law. It was then the harshest sentence handed to a journalist in Myanmar since the 2021 coup. Her husband told RFA that during prison visits, he had observed “stitches on her head and wounds on her arms.”
“Shin Daewe’s unwavering commitment to covering environmental and social issues in the face of repression in Myanmar is an inspiration — not just to the journalistic community inside the country, but around the world. Her courage should be heard as a direct call to the international community: it is urgent to put pressure on the Myanmar regime to end its systematic crackdown on information, starting with the release of the 40 journalists it currently holds behind bars,” said Cédric Alviani, the director at RSF Asia-Pacific Bureau.
An unwavering campaign for her release
Throughout her detention, RSF campaigned for her release. In November 2025, the 33rd RSF Press Freedom Awards granted her the Independence Prize while she was still behind bars. Her sentence was meanwhile reduced to fifteen years as part of an amnesty, before she was finally released on April 17, 2026.
Upon leaving Insein Prison, she said: “I am the happiest. Whether it was me or the others, every day we all wanted to return to our families. I am fortunate today, but many of my friends did not have the same luck.”
Now free, Shin Daewe is already looking ahead. “Environmental destruction is accelerating and the losses are immense amid the civil conflict. I cannot ignore this reality,” she says. Her next subject: elephant conservation in Myanmar.
Myanmar ranks 166th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index. The country is the world’s second-largest jailer of journalists, just behind China.
