Complicated histories and relations among Myanmar’s diverse ethnic communities make the goal of a federal union a daunting one. But possibilities emerge from a new governance forum set up in line with this federal future in Sagaing, the heartland of resistance by the Bamar ethnic majority – and a region that used to be free of conflicts that ethnic regions have been living with.

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.