U Min Zin, a US citizen originally from Myanmar, was arrested by security forces on June 3 upon his arrival at the airport in the provincial capital Kunming. he was invited to attend an event hosted by a Chinese university there.

U Min Zin is a political science PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include civil-military relations, democratization and ethnic conflicts, with a focus on Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries.

As a student activist, U Min Zin joined the 1988 Democracy Uprising in Myanmar, and later went into exile to avoid arrest.

He founded ISP-Myanmar in 2016 and has written extensively on Myanmar’s politics, economy and international relations for The New York Times, Foreign Policy and other news outlets.