For the second year in a row, Southeast Asia is sweating it out: The month of April, which coincides with the hottest and driest season of the year in most of the region's countries, has been reaching extreme temperatures – though not, at this stage, exceeding the all-time records set in 2023. Songkran, the Buddhist water festival, which takes place on April 13 in Thailand (known as "Thingyan" in Myanmar) and which marks the arrival of the monsoon season and the new year, has done nothing to change this: The Thai Meteorological Department has warned that 15 of the country's provinces will be affected by a "dangerous level of heat" according to its temperature index until at least April 28; with peaks of 43°C in some parts of the country. In addition to the heat, slash-and-burn agriculture operations have caused air pollution levels to soar in the drier northern areas.

In neighboring Myanmar, where the civil war is intensifying, on April 17 the heat wave prompted the junta to move former prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi from the dilapidated building built for her in a special section of Naypyidaw prison to "house arrest," because of the intense heat and her age (78). The former leader, who had been arrested on the day of the coup that toppled her elected government on February 1, 2021, is serving a 27-year sentence. She had refused to have air-conditioning installed in her section of Naypyidaw prison, asking to be given the same treatment as the other inmates. In mid-April, temperatures topped 40°C in Myanmar's capital.

The heat has been a double blow for civilians in Myanmar. The intensification of fighting has forced the inhabitants of entire towns to leave their homes and settle outside, in makeshift camps: At least 2.6 million people among the country's 55 million inhabitants are "internally displaced," according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Moreover, 18.6 million people are considered as needing humanitarian aid – which has been distributed only sparingly due to lack of access.

Meanwhile, in most of the regions affected by the fighting, or "liberated" by the resistance, the power supply is non-existent, and the population has had to rely on generators, which are only used intermittently due to fuel shortages. In recent days, temperatures have been fluctuating between 37° and 39°C in daytime. This is particularly the case in Myawaddy, a large town of 50,000 inhabitants on the Thai border, which was seized by the armed resistance movement in the week of April 8: For the past few days, it has been subjected to shelling by Myanmar's army. Several thousand inhabitants have already taken refuge on the Thai side of the border, along the river that separates the two countries, where they have been housed in shelters that are used to protect livestock from the sun.

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