It has been 20 years since Myanmar’s intelligence agents detained the writer, who was a university student at the time. Yet far too little has really changed in Burma since then.

Having no agency in life and feeling entirely abandoned add to the already health-and-life threatening situation of the Rohingya in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. Without a clear regional response and international attention shifting elsewhere, minimum standards of living in the contained settlements are deteriorating, Doctors Without Borders’ Paul McPhun says in this conversation.

It is the young people’s responsibility to hold, and pass on, the memories around martial law in the Philippines. a university student writes. The declaration of martial law, whose 50th anniversary was on 21 September 2022, was among the instruments of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose son and namesake is now the country’s president.

Martial law had a ‘smiling’ face, a law-and-order face and one of outright repression, which meant that Filipinos had different kinds of trauma from that time that persist in today’s polarized spaces. But to correct the neglect of the nurturing of public memories, it is time to teach “historical empathy”.

Funny but serious is how cartoons have been in the political conversations in the Philippines, which votes for a new president in May. Visual artist Kapitan Tambay talks to Reporting ASEAN about visual storytelling.

In these ‘herstories’, Myanmar women tell us, in their words, how they are finding their own ways of being part of continuing resistance against the military since the 2021 coup.

The country is plummeting into the gravest political, economic and humanitarian crises in its modern history. But  I see a bright future ahead, beyond the darkness.

Click on our deck of 10 slides to view highlights from Reporting ASEAN’s 2021 survey, which sought journalists’ insights on how they see sustainability as a news topic as well as how their newsrooms discussed it at this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many may think that addressing sustainability – whether plastic use or climate change – can come after economic recovery from COVID-19. But they are not separate issues at all.

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၌ ဆယ်စုနှစ်များစွာတည်ရှိခဲ့သည့် ဖိနှိပ်ကြမ်းကြုတ် လူမဆန်သောစနစ်ကို ဖြိုချဖျက်ဆီးရေး အတွက် အချိန်ယူရဦးမည်ဟု ဒုက္ခသည်ဟောင်း ဟက်ဖ်ဆာ တာမီဆူဒင်က ပြောသည်။ ၎င်းသည် အတိတ်က ဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်များ၊ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့ တစ်နေ့ ဖြစ်လာမည်ဟု မျှော်လင့်သည့် အနာဂတ်တို့ အကြောင်း ပြောပြခဲ့သည်။ ‘မြန်မာက ကျမရဲ့ နိုင်ငံ။ ရိုဟင်ဂျာကတော့ ကျမ ရဲ့လူမျိုး’ ဟု ပြောသည်။

It will take time for Myanmar to dismantle the oppressive, dehumanising system in place for decades, says ex-refugee Hafsar Tameesuddin, who talks to us about the past and a future her Rohingya community  imagines, and hope to see become reality one day. ‘Myanmar is my country, Rohingya is my identity’.

Crises can be fertile ground for art, but they can also chip away at creativity and artists’ livelihoods. In this chat with Reporting ASEAN, an artist talks about finding ways to stay inspired, and  hopes for the day Myanmar gets past having to wage a revolution..

Tình hình COVID-19 tại Myanmar đang trong tình trạng khẩn cấp và biến đổi nhanh chóng, tệ hơn những gì chúng ta biết. Reporting ASEAN đã phỏng vấn tổ chức Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) để có bức tranh toàn cảnh.

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်း ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ ကပ်ရောဂါဟာ ရုတ်တရက် အရေးပေါ်အန္တရာယ်ကျရောက်မည့် အခြေအနေကို ရောက်ရှိ နေပြီ ဖြစ်တယ်။ လတ်တလော ကျွနှု်ပ်တို့သိရှိထားတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေထက် အလွန့်အလွန် ပိုမို ဆိုးရွားလာနိုင်ဖွယ်ရှိ နေတယ်။

The pandemic in Myanmar is an emergency that is unfolding swiftly, and is much, much worse than what we know at the moment. Reporting ASEAN speaks to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to get a better picture of the situation.

Enthusiasm and a sense of public duty, lack of safety, worries about income and professional work arrangements. All of these mix in how life has been since the February coup in Myanmar, a young local  journalist recounts in this personal account.

A 21-year-old university student shares his story of trauma, loss, anger and frustration, from experiencing what it means to have a health system that is flailing amid COVID-19. The Philippines has reported 17,800 deaths and has fully vaccinated just 0.23% of its over 110 million people, as of 6 May.

A fun way of getting a serious message across is what the online game ‘ChoicesIMake’, developed by a Malaysian group on news and information, literacy, aims for. Ready?