Insight Myanmar
“So many peoples in Myanmar who are fighting for democracy and human rights… they don’t get any title or any recognize, but they did what they believed in.”
Wut Hmone Win speaks to the Insight Myanmar Podcast from a place of inheritance and defiance—a legacy of political struggle that shaped her life and an unrelenting determination to continue it. Her father, a student leader of the 1974 uprising, was imprisoned for his defiance of Ne Win’s military regime, and her family lived under constant surveillance. “The whole life of me and my family is [being] watched by the military,” she says. This generational weight shaped her understanding of both fear and resistance. From a young age, she learned that freedom always exacted a price.
Educated at Yangon University of Economics and later at BI Norwegian Business School, she initially sought to build a life of stability and distance from politics. Yet the coup of February 2021 shattered that separation. “I am living in Norway. I feel democracy and freedom and safety here, and human rights,” she says, describing the moment she realized how deeply those same values had been stolen from her country. The grief was immediate and overwhelming—“crying uncontrollably,” she recalls—but it became the beginning of her reawakening.
Within days, she had abandoned her business and begun organizing demonstrations against the junta. She helped found what would become the CRPH Support Group, Norway, a coalition of over 21 ethnic and religious organizations working to sustain Myanmar’s revolution from exile. The group was formally registered in November 2021, headquartered in Blaker, and became a crucial hub for the diaspora’s humanitarian and political resistance. Under her leadership, it serves two missions: to provide humanitarian relief for displaced and persecuted people inside Myanmar, and to advocate internationally for the recognition of the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) as the country’s legitimate authorities.
Wut Hmone Win’s leadership combines moral conviction with organizational precision. “I do need money to support people who are suffering in Myanmar,” she says. “That’s my simple strategy… we do need to support human rights, and we do need to support people who are suffering.” She uses her background in economics and management to make accountability a cornerstone of her work—every donation tracked, every report transparent. Still, no matter how hard she may work to achieve results, she is often left with lingering questions, given how much need inevitably remains. “Sometimes I was depressed. I will do so much, but is that effective or not?”
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