Myanmar Says It Is Seeking Red Notices Against Exiled Journalists: Another Case for INTERPOL Transparency

On 6 October 2026, Myanmar’s Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, Maj-Gen Min Thu, told the lower house of parliament that criminal cases had been opened against opponents of the government, including the founders of the opposition’s parallel government and five exile news outlets. He said that INTERPOL Red Notices and the cancellation of passports were part of the government’s response to those who had fled abroad, but he did not say whom the notices concern. The Irrawaddy reported the statement the next day. The outlets he named were Myanmar Now, Khit Thit, Mizzima, DVB and The Irrawaddy.

INTERPOL’s rules give exiles, journalists included, real protection against any such request. Whether any request concerns a journalist, and how those rules are applied, will most likely stay inside INTERPOL. We have written before about the three reasons: refusal figures are not published by country, corrective measures against national police bureaus are rarely made public, and INTERPOL’s database of stolen and lost passports has no public rule of its own.

Min Thu’s statement to parliament

Maj-Gen Min Thu, the Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, was answering a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the military-backed party, who had asked whether the government planned to work with INTERPOL and seek the return of suspects living abroad. According to the official record of the exchange, which was published in Burmese on the parliament’s website, he listed those against whom cases had been opened. They were the founders of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH, the committee formed by members of parliament elected in November 2020 who were prevented from taking their seats by the February 2021 coup) and of the National Unity Government (NUG), the members and financiers of the People’s Defence Force (PDF, the NUG’s armed wing), people “writing untruthfully” to damage the dignity of the State, and the five outlets.

He read out a single list of charges for the whole group, “according to their respective offenses,” which includes sedition and offenses under the Counter-Terrorism Law, without saying which charges apply to whom. He then described, in general terms, how cases against people abroad are taken to INTERPOL and to ASEANAPOL, the regional police organization of Southeast Asia. In our translation of the official record, he said:

“Once a case is opened, the arrest warrants (notices) sent through the relevant departments and organizations are checked for conformity with the constitution and rules of the International Police Organization (INTERPOL) and of ASEANAPOL, and liaison is being carried out with the international police organizations so that the issuing of Interpol Red Notices and the arrest of suspects can be carried out […].”

Maj-Gen Min Thu, Pyithu Hluttaw, 6 October 2026 (official record, our translation from the Burmese)

Min Thu used the word “issuing” three times, and the state newspaper, The Global New Light of Myanmar, repeated it the next day. The word overstates Myanmar’s role. A member country can only request a Red Notice, and INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, the Organization’s headquarters staff based in Lyon, publishes it once it has found the request compliant with the rules.

Min Thu himself was cautious about the results. Asked how many prominent exiles had been arrested or returned, he gave no figure. For important suspects in cases relating to what he called terrorist groups, he said, cooperation with the country concerned “depends on that country’s political stance,” and the suspects transferred so far had mostly been wanted for drug offenses.

The same debate showed that the government knows where INTERPOL draws the line. According to The Irrawaddy, the Speaker of the house, Khin Yi, a former head of the Myanmar police, observed that INTERPOL does not involve itself in religious and political issues, so that any case brought by the government needs to rest on criminal charges. The remark is not in the official record of the exchange, which covers only the question and the minister’s answers. Whether a criminal label is enough is the question INTERPOL’s rules are designed to answer.

INTERPOL’s rules on political cases

Any request Myanmar sends will be examined against those rules, which look beyond the label of the charge. Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution forbids the Organization from undertaking any intervention or activities of a political character, and the Repository of Practice, published in November 2024, explains how that rule applies to charges from sedition to terrorism.

The terrorism chapter matters most here, because the CRPH, the NUG and the PDF were declared terrorist organizations by the military authorities in May 2021, and Min Thu named the five news outlets in the same list of cases, for which the charges he read out include Counter-Terrorism Law offenses. Chapter 3.6 of the Repository requires an organization to be considered terrorist “based on international agreement,” which a domestic designation alone does not provide. It also states that protected speech or association cannot, on its own, amount to a terrorist act or establish a link with a terrorist organization.

The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (CCF), INTERPOL’s independent supervisory body, has already dealt with a journalist in this position. In a 2018 decision, it deleted a Red Notice published on anti-terrorism charges against a journalist and former recognized refugee. Among the factors it weighed was the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on press freedom:

“[I]t is nevertheless incumbent on the press to impart information and ideas on issues of political importance and of general interest, including divisive ones.”

CCF, Decision excerpt No 07 of 2018, para 44

INTERPOL has also taken a position on Myanmar itself. In February 2022, the military’s foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, asked INTERPOL, ASEANAPOL and the United Nations for help against what he called terrorism. Two days later, Thaiger reported, citing CNA, that INTERPOL had turned down the request and would not intervene in any nation’s domestic political affairs. According to the same report, an INTERPOL spokesperson told CNA that the Organization does not comment on specific cases except in extraordinary circumstances, which the report linked to notices requested against political opponents or government critics, or in the context of a coup. The framework is sound, but nobody outside INTERPOL can see how it is applied to the requests of a particular country.

Refusals by country

INTERPOL already publishes part of the picture. It now reports each year how many Red Notices and diffusions (alerts a country sends directly to selected member countries) it has refused or cancelled. In 2025, it refused or cancelled 558 under Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, up from 305 the year before, as we set out in our analysis of the 2025 statistics. Those figures do not say which countries the refused requests came from.

If Myanmar sends requests against exiled journalists and the General Secretariat refuses them all, the public will most likely not hear it from INTERPOL. The main source will be the requesting government, which has already told its parliament that Red Notices are being issued. Last year, the public learned that 21 of Bangladesh’s 25 Red Notice requests since August 2024 had not been published. It learned this only because a police spokesperson in Dhaka chose to give the figures.

Governments do not always describe their own requests accurately. In September 2026, Sri Lanka’s police chief said a Blue Notice (a request for information on a person’s identity, location or activities) would soon be requested for Basil Rajapaksa, a former finance minister believed to be in the United States, as PTI reported via Outlook India. The same day, the public security minister told the Daily Mirror that the notice had been issued, and Newswire, citing a senior police officer, reported that INTERPOL had asked for more information. Figures by country would not settle any single case, but they would give the public a source other than the requesting government.

Corrective measures on national bureaus

Corrective measures stay out of view too. When a National Central Bureau (the national police office that deals with INTERPOL) keeps sending requests that breach the rules, the General Secretariat can place it under supervision or restrict its access to INTERPOL’s systems. These powers are set out in Article 131 of the Rules on the Processing of Data (RPD), and INTERPOL confirms on its own website that it uses them:

“[S]ince the entry into force of the RPD in 2012, interim and corrective measures have been applied with regard to different NCBs on different occasions.”

INTERPOL, Compliance and review

INTERPOL rarely says which bureaus are concerned. It announced the lifting of measures on Syria in October 2021 and heightened supervision of Russia’s use of its channels in March 2022. In January 2026, Disclose reported that six countries had been under corrective measures in April 2025. They included Russia, Belarus and Syria, three and a half years after INTERPOL had announced the end of Syria’s earlier measures. INTERPOL itself has never published the list.

If Myanmar’s requests repeatedly fail review, its bureau could be placed under these measures, and the public would probably never know. That information matters to the people concerned, to the courts and asylum authorities of the countries where they now live, and to the press, because the government has just opened cases against five news outlets and told parliament, in the same answer, that Red Notices “are being issued” against its opponents abroad. In March 2026, Charlie Magri, Ted Bromund and Sandra Grossman argued in the Harvard International Law Journal that INTERPOL should publish which countries are subject to corrective measures, on what grounds and for how long. Myanmar’s statement in parliament shows why that list matters.

Passports and the SLTD database

The third gap concerns passports. Min Thu also told parliament that Myanmar’s embassies had reported 1,341 opponents who had fled abroad, and that the cancellation of their passports, their blacklisting and their watch-listing were under way. The Irrawaddy reported the figure as more than 1,300 passports revoked, although the minister described the cancellations as being carried out step by step.

A cancelled passport can be recorded in INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database (SLTD) as revoked or invalid, and the holder usually learns of it from a border officer. Nothing published so far shows that Myanmar has recorded these passports, but no rule written for travel documents would stand in its way. The Rules on the Processing of Data contain articles on notices and on diffusions and none on travel documents, which are left to the general principles applying to all data and to unpublished internal procedures. INTERPOL’s rules therefore do not require a court decision before a passport is recorded as revoked. INTERPOL has said that it reviews SLTD data for compliance, but it has not described that review in public.

After 2016, Turkey used the same route against its opponents, and last month we set out the same gap in the case of 24,511 Syrian passports recorded as stolen by the Assad government. Before the U.S. Helsinki Commission in October 2024, and again in that article, we proposed two changes: a rule requiring a court decision before a passport is recorded as revoked, and a published review mechanism for SLTD entries. To our knowledge, neither has yet been taken up.

Options for those concerned

Until those gaps are closed, the people concerned must find out for themselves. For those working for the five outlets and for the opposition figures facing charges, the first question is whether anything has reached INTERPOL’s files, and the right step depends on the facts of each case.

• An access request to the CCF establishes whether data are recorded, including SLTD entries, and, subject to restrictions, what they contain.
• A preemptive request, filed through the CCF, puts the political context on record with the General Secretariat before any request from Myanmar arrives.
• If a notice or diffusion is already recorded, a deletion request can be filed, together with a request for temporary blocking of the data while the Commission examines it.

Anyone concerned who needs to travel, particularly to countries that cooperate closely with Myanmar’s police, should check first whether anything has been recorded. Until INTERPOL publishes refusals by country, names the countries under corrective measures and adopts a public rule for travel documents, that check is the only way for them to know where they stand.

Charlie Magri is the founder of Otherside, a specialist law firm dedicated exclusively to INTERPOL and CCF matters. He is a former Legal Officer at the Secretariat to the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files.