Post-Coup Dangers for Gender Minorities

In the darkening landscape of Military-ruled Myanmar, the country’s gender minorities and sex workers navigate a terrain that is hazardous not only because of armed conflict and political repression, but because their identities compound the risks in ways nobody planned for. As the recent article titled “We Are Also Family” published by the Transnational Institute underscores, queer, trans, sex-working and drug-using communities face intersecting forms of criminalisation, violence and surveillance that make the search for safety a daily struggle. Since the February 2021 coup and the subsequent crackdown by the military junta (the Tatmadaw), the country’s human-rights environment has worsened dramatically. The live-wire of the conflict has turned into a threat-multiplier for all vulnerable groups — and for sexual- and gender-diverse individuals and sex workers, the danger is compounded. The Human Dignity Trust notes that Myanmar criminalises same-sex sexual activity between men under its colonial-era Penal Code provision (with possible sentences up to ten years), and that transgender people may be prosecuted under other offence frameworks such as the Police Act.

The article by the Transnational Institute quotes participants in a workshop who remarked: “There are no safe spaces for us.” That line jolts with truth: beyond legal prohibitions, self-organising is difficult, shelters do not exist or are targeted, and social attitudes remain deeply conservative. The article reports how the confluence of stigma, criminalisation and moral policing makes anyone outside hetero-normative, cis-gender pathways into a liability.

Adding fresh context, recent protection-analysis updates reveal that while some ten million people face humanitarian need in Myanmar, displaced persons, ethnic minorities, women and children are among the most severely impacted. But in this ‘everybody-is-at-risk’ scenario, those at the intersections of multiple vulnerabilities—gender minorities, sex workers, ethnic and sexual minorities—are invisible in large swathes of response and risk slipping through the cracks. Now consider sex workers specifically: under the 1949 Suppression of Prostitution Act, the act of soliciting or seducing in public is illegal, and running or profiting from a brothel is punishable. That means that sex work in Myanmar functions in a gray zone: technically illegal, socially stigmatised, and exposed to exploitation, arrest and violence. The TNI article emphasises that sex workers within the queer and trans communities are especially at risk — not only of police harassment but of predatory brothel-keepers, unscrupulous clients, and in some cases, extortion by agents of the state.

When you layer on the gender minorities factor, the equation becomes more fraught. Trans people or queer people who are visible may be subject to police ‘round-ups’, moralistic investigations, harassment in shelters, and may find themselves discriminated against in humanitarian assistance contexts. In conflict-zones, where law and order are breaking down, the risks become physical, immediate. The article itself describes how queer and sex-worker communities are operating in “hidden safe spaces”, yet even those spaces are shrinking rapidly.

Meanwhile, broader gender-based violence (GBV) is escalating. A report by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women covering displacement sites after the May 2025 earthquake found rising reports of sexual exploitation and abuse, especially at night and in poorly-secured sites. The military’s strategy of weaponising sexual violence is well documented, and now affects not only ethnic minority women and girls, but also vulnerable gender minorities and sex-workers whose marginalisation makes them lower priority for protection. Thus the dual portrait emerges: on one hand, communities that have formed networks of care and mutual aid — as the TNI article describes — and on the other, legal frameworks, social stigma and violent contexts that squeeze those networks ever thinner. Sexual and gender minorities who also engage in sex work are doubly outside protection: illegal activity plus social identity outside the norm means they are often excluded from mainstream aid, excluded from public discourse, and excluded from protection programmes.

In practical terms, that means there are no guaranteed safe shelters, the police may treat sex workers and queer people as criminals rather than victims, and displacement camps may not recognise trans-inclusive facilities or safe gender-specific zones. It also means humanitarian actors sometimes lack the mandate, the training or the sensitivity to reach these communities. But the article and the broader sources leave room for a kind of guarded hope. The mutual-aid networks, the workshops described, the claim “we are also family” signal that affected communities are organising themselves, finding solidarity beyond the formal systems. In a country where the formal system is failing so many, these informal bonds may be the last line of defence. The question remains, however: will external actors and the international community recognise and support these underground networks — and will the law be challenged so that criminalisation ceases to be the first barrier to safety?

Myanmar’s gender minorities and sex workers are not just collateral victims in a conflict-ridden state; they stand at the complex intersection of political repression, sexual identity, work-based criminalisation and humanitarian collapse. Until the laws change, and until protection systems become inclusive, their survival will depend on community, creativity and courage.