Living and working in exile may be safer for Myanmar’s journalists, but they are worried about being able to making a decent living (and life) from their embattled profession, insights from a Reporting ASEAN survey show.

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.

၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက်တွင်ဒုက္ခသည်များ၊ ခိုလှုံခွင့် တောင်းခံသူများ၊ ပြည်ပရောက်သူ သို့မဟုတ် ထိုသို့အခွင့်ရရန် စောင့်နေသူများသည် တိုင်းပြည်၏ ရှိပြီးသား ပြည်ပရောက် နိုင်ငံသားဦးရေ ပမာဏတွင် ထပ်တိုးစာရင်းဖြစ်ပြီး အိမ်နှင့်အဝေးမှာနေရင်း အိမ်လွမ်းနေကြရသည်။ သူတို့သည် ရရာအလုပ် ဝင်လုပ်ကြပြီး မိသားစုကို၊ တော်လှန်ရေး အင်အားစုများကို လှမ်းထောက်ပံ့နေကြရင်း လက်ရှိဘဝမှာ ယာယီအခိုက်အတန့်သာ ဖြစ်သည်ဟု အားခဲနေကြသည်။

As refugees, asylum seekers, exiles or people waiting it out in other countries after Myanmar’s 2021 coup, the newest additions to the country’s huge diaspora are grappling with anxiety while away, taking up junior jobs, sending financial aid home and to the anti-coup resistance – and hoping their time away is temporary .

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.

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။

Six months after the 1 Feb coup, hypervigilance has become a survival skils for many people in Myanmar. But they are mostly on their own in the ‘double trouble’ of COVID-19 emergency and the coup crisis.

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..

Myanmar’s pandemic-hit communities are trying to fend for themselves as the country’s health system, already crippled after the Feb 1 coup, crumbles under a third outbreak of COVID-19. But the country needs a much stronger response, not to mention a functioning government.

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.

More people are being displaced by conflict and insecurity in Myanmar after the February coup, having to cross the border to Thailand, or waiting for the chance to do so. But Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. What does this mean for those whose life and safety are under threat after the coup?

Take a look at these infographics and data, which are useful in following the Myanmar crisis after the Feb 1 coup.

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Amid the brutal crackdown in Myanmar, a journalist tells Reporting ASEAN they will continue to record the story of the popular uprising. They asked outsiders to press for space for journalism and said that in a digital world, there is no longer ‘outside’ or ‘inside’ Myanmar:  “We have professional journalists, technology and platforms.”

Asean has been pooh-poohed by many, but it is still the most pragmatic bet for talking  to Myanmar’s military. But can it convene a coordinated international response, with the west as bad cop and it as the negotiator, under heightened expectations about its doing ‘the right thing’ in our digitally connected world?

Myanmar’s list of “yearly approved amount of foreign investment” by country/region shows that one does not have to look too far away to spot the leading investors in 2020.