Mizzima
Journalist, author and former Buddhist monk Alan Clements has penned an open letter to US President Donald Trump regarding an approach to the crisis in Myanmar, written in the immediate wake of the January 5, 2026 capture of Venezuelan narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The letter argues that this historic act – prosecuting a sitting head of state for narco-terrorism – has irreversibly shifted the global standard for accountability, and that Myanmar now stands exposed by that same moral and legal threshold.
The following is the January 7, 2026 open letter:
Dear President Trump,
Allow me to briefly introduce myself. I am Alan Clements – a Boston-born American citizen, journalist, former Buddhist monk, and author of seventeen books on authoritarianism, nonviolence, and the moral psychology of power. I attended the University of Virginia, and I am the son of two World War II veterans, raised with an enduring respect for sacrifice, civic duty, and the true moral cost of freedom. For more than four decades, my work has focused on Myanmar, including extensive time with its democratic movement and direct collaboration with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. My writing examines dictatorship not as abstraction, but as lived reality – its mechanisms, its lies, and its human cost. I write to you now not as an academic observer, but as a witness.
Last month, a copy of my book, Conversation with a Dictator: A Challenge to the Authoritarian Assault – a fictionalized dialogue with Myanmar’s Senior General and narco-dictator Min Aung Hlaing – was sent to you. According to our records, your office received it. I recognize the extraordinary demands on your time, and with full respect for your schedule, I ask permission here to address the essence of that book directly – because the moment it warns of has now arrived.
This book is not a literary gesture, background reading, or symbolic offering. It is the moral core of a global campaign demanding immediate accountability for one of the world’s most urgent and least confronted crimes: the mass imprisonment of an entire nation.
More than 22,000 political prisoners remain incarcerated in Myanmar under a military regime that seized power by force in February 2021. Many have died in detention. Thousands more endure torture, starvation, and medical neglect. Among them is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi – Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the lawful leader overwhelmingly elected by more than fifty million people in the 2020 elections, and the living symbol of a stolen democracy.
She is eighty years old. She has entered her fifth year of imprisonment. She suffers from serious cardiac illness. She is held in isolation, denied proper medical care, legal counsel, and contact with her family. For more than three years, there has been no independent proof of life – no recent photographs, no medical verification – only the junta’s unsubstantiated claims. Her crime is conscience. Her sentence is erasure.
Since the coup, Myanmar has been plunged into one of the darkest campaigns of state terror in the twenty-first century. Villages have been incinerated. Monasteries and schools bombed. Civilians targeted from the air. Entire regions displaced. This is not civil war. It is the deliberate punishment of a population for voting.
Now the junta seeks to stage sham elections—multi-phase, militarized, and fraudulent—while its true opposition remains behind bars. This is not governance. It is political theater designed to launder illegitimacy. And the world risks mistaking procedure for legitimacy because it is convenient.
Just days ago, history shifted.
On January 5, 2026, under your authority, Nicolás Maduro – the narco-dictator of Venezuela – was captured and transferred to New York to face federal prosecution for narco-terrorism, corruption, and cocaine trafficking. With that act, a regime long treated as a diplomatic inconvenience was correctly named for what it is: a criminal enterprise masquerading as a state.
That decision reverberated globally. It declared that sovereignty does not shield criminal governance. That narco-dictators do not enjoy lifetime impunity. That when atrocity, narcotics, and state power converge, justice may still arrive.
Myanmar now stands exposed by that same standard.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – the architect of Myanmar’s coup – is a narco-dictator no less culpable than Maduro, and in many respects more lethal. Under his command, Myanmar has become a major producer of methamphetamines, fentanyl precursors, and transnational scam operations. Shan State functions as a narcotics hub flooding global markets, fueling an overdose epidemic that kills more than 100,000 people annually, including tens of thousands of Americans.
These drugs do not emerge by accident. They flow from junta-controlled territory. Narco-states export misery as policy. Myanmar is now one of them.
At the same time, Min Aung Hlaing has imprisoned an entire elected government, nullified the people’s overwhelming 2020 mandate for civilian rule, and holds the country hostage through terror, narcotics, and fear. This is not an internal affair. It is a transnational criminal enterprise protected by weapons, propaganda, and silence.
He is sustained by China and Russia – through Russian-supplied weapons exceeding $1 billion since the coup, including aircraft, drones, and advanced munitions; through surveillance technology and geopolitical cover; and through deepening strategic dependency. China’s Belt and Road infrastructure grants access to Myanmar’s vast oil and gas reserves—estimated at tens of millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas – already transported through pipelines worth billions annually. Unchecked, Myanmar risks becoming the next Tibet – not by invasion, but by silent contractual colonization.
On January 3, 2026, marking Burma’s Independence Day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly urged the junta to cease its violence, release political detainees including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and restore civilian rule. These words matter. But words, without consequence, no longer deter a narco-military regime.
President Trump, you have shown the world something rare: that decisive action still exists. Not sanctions theater. Not statements. Action.
You have said you seek a Nobel Peace Prize. History now offers a moment where principle and power align. One cannot prosecute narco-governance in Venezuela while tolerating it in Myanmar. One cannot claim peace while imprisoning peace itself.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is not a bargaining chip. She is a living symbol of nonviolent resistance. Her continued imprisonment is a stain on the global conscience. Just as you have been relentlessly vilified through coordinated media attacks and lawfare, so too has Daw Aung San Suu Kyi endured baseless accusations designed to break her moral authority.
A single, clear, public statement from you – demanding the immediate release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and Myanmar’s elected leaders, backed by targeted sanctions, asset freezes, and coordinated Indo-Pacific pressure – would be seismic. It would fracture the junta’s architecture of fear, weaken narcotics pipelines, and allow a nation suffocating under military rule to breathe again.
There remains a dignified exit available to Min Aung Hlaing. Exile is still an option. Maduro chose defiance and now faces trial. The choice remains – and the clock is running.
You understand lawfare, weaponized courts, and political persecution. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has endured years in a cell not for weakness, but for strength. You, of all leaders, understand what it means to threaten entrenched power – and be punished for it.
Our campaign, Use Your Freedom, rests on a simple truth: democracy compromised anywhere is democracy compromised everywhere. Narco-states do not respect borders. Silence, in such circumstances, is not neutrality. It is complicity.
You have shown what decisive power looks like.
History has opened the door.
The world now waits to see whether the free world will be selective – or principled. Whether it will step forward with courage – or look away. Whether it will walk through that door – now.
With profound respect and unrelenting urgency,
Alan Clements
About the Author
Alan Clements is an author and former Buddhist monk who has written for four decades about Myanmar, nonviolence, and the psychology of authoritarian power. His latest books are Conversation with a Dictator, Unsilenced, and Politics of the Heart.
Fergus Harlow, Campaign Director, Use Your Freedom.
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