Do we like Min Aung Hlaing?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A coup launched on fraud claims monitors found unsupported, a military the UN links to hundreds of civilian deaths, ICC and Argentine warrant moves, and no real good to set against it.
Min Aung Hlaing became head of Myanmar's military in 2011. In 2021 his army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government before the new parliament could even sit, citing voter fraud. Election monitors found no evidence to support those fraud claims, and peaceful protests were crushed, which pushed some activists to armed resistance and a civil war that is still going. AP counts nearly 8,000 activists and civilians killed since, about 22,872 political detainees, and Suu Kyi serving a 27-year sentence.
The story he's best known for abroad is the Rohingya. The 2017 crackdown in Rakhine state drove at least 700,000 people into Bangladesh, and in November 2024 the ICC prosecutor asked judges for a warrant, alleging he bears responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution. The junta rejected the proceedings, noting Myanmar isn't an ICC member. In February 2025 a Buenos Aires court ordered arrest warrants for 25 officials including him, though no arrests have been reported. Judges haven't ruled on the ICC request as far as we could find.
Now the harm check, and it's grim. A June 2026 UN human rights office report counted at least 702 civilian deaths between August 2025 and January 2026 attributable to the military, including 224 women and 153 children. Airstrikes were the single largest cause, and the UN urged countries to refer Myanmar to the ICC and halt arms and jet fuel transfers. The article carried no response from the military government, and he commanded the armed forces until March 2026.
On the company he keeps: his August trip to Russia was his seventh since the coup and his second meeting with Putin this year. Russia is described as a major supporter and arms supplier, and Russian-made fighter jets are used in attacks on areas held by ethnic minority groups. We found nothing in his own words about LGBTQ+ people, so the case against him rests on what his military does and what he did to an elected government.
The presidency is the fresh bit. Parliament voted him in with 429 of 584 votes after a military-run election, and he was sworn in on 10 April with over two-thirds of his 30 ministers retired or serving military. In his speech he said Myanmar “has returned to the path of democracy”. Democracy watchdogs call it army rule in civilian dress, and Amnesty's Joe Freeman said a civilian title won't shield him from prosecution.
Then there's the 2025 earthquake. Human Rights Watch says his government delayed and denied visas for emergency teams, seized medicine, harassed aid workers and restricted internet, and that opposition-held areas got almost no outside help. In the two months after the quake the military carried out more than 550 aerial and artillery attacks. The closest thing to a good-news item we found is that he moved Suu Kyi from prison to house arrest in April, which analysts read as a bid to win international engagement. That's honestly the whole list.