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.
Going to school helps the growing numbers of Myanmar children in exile cope with life away from home, across the border in Thailand. Parents find relief from seeing their kids in more normal circumstances, amid the uncertain future they often face.
Ma Aye, whose husband left the Myanmar military after the 2021 coup and who herself grew up as a soldier’s daughter, gives an insider’s view of life, exploitation and discrimination, in the armed forces.
Doing news work in Myanmar comes with high risk to life and safety, in a profession with uncertain prospects for the future. Since 2021 the coup, the junta has been using legal persecution as a weapon against journalism and journalists.
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.
Myanmar is at risk of being overwhelmed by the continuing deterioration of its social and natural capital in the wake of the 2021 coup. Respected environmental campaigner Win Myo Thu discusses the bleak prospects ahead with Reporting ASEAN.
အဝေးရောက်ဘဝတွင် နေထိုင်လုပ်ကိုင်ရခြင်းသည် မြန်မာသတင်းသမားများအတွက် ပိုမိုလုံခြုံမှု ရှိကောင်း ရှိနိုင်သည်။ သို့သော် သူတို့သည် အခက်အခဲကြုံနေရသော ယခုအလုပ်အကိုင်ထံမှ စားဝတ်နေရေး လှည့်ကြည့်စရာမလိုသော အနေအထားတစ်ရပ် (ဘဝ) ကို ရရှိနိုင်ပါ့မည်လားဟု စိုးရိမ်နေကြသည်ဟု Reporting ASEAN က ကောက်ယူသည့် စစ်တမ်းအဖြေက ဆိုသည်။
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.
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.
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ သတင်းသမားများစွာတို့သည် တခြား အလုပ်အကိုင်တခုခုကို ပြောင်းလဲလုပ်ကိုင်ခြင်း သို့မဟုတ် ဘေးကင်းဒေသများသို့ တိမ်းရှောင် ထွက်ပြေးခြင်းများ ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ကြရသည်။ နေမြဲနေခဲ့ကြသူများမှာလည်း မပြတ်တမ်း စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်နေကြရသည်။ သို့သော်လည်း အမှောင်ခေတ်အတွင်းမှာပင် မြန်မာသတင်းသမားများသည် သတင်းမီဒီယာလောက ပြန်လည်ပွင့်လင်းလာမည့်နောင်တချိန်ကို ရည်သန်၍စူးစိုက်ထားကြသည်။
ចាប់តាំងពីរដ្ឋប្រហារខែកុម្ភៈ ឆ្នាំ២០២១មក អ្នកកាសែតជាច្រើននៅក្នុងប្រទេសមីយ៉ាន់ម៉ា ត្រូវផ្លាស់ប្តូរអាជីពទៅធ្វើការផ្សេង ឬភៀសខ្លួនទៅកាន់តំបន់ដែលមានសុវត្ថិភាពជាង ខណៈពេលដែលអ្នកនៅបន្តធ្វើការងារនេះ កំពុងរស់នៅដោយការព្រួយបារម្ភឥតឈប់ឈរ។ ប៉ុន្តែនៅក្នុងភាពអន្ធកាល អ្នកសារព័ត៌មានផ្តោតចក្ខុ ប្រមើលទៅពេលវេលាល្អប្រសើរសម្រាប់វិជ្ជាជីវៈរបស់ពួកគេ នៅថ្ងៃណាមួយ។
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’.
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..
The synthetic drug trade is booming in East and Southeast Asia, where the 5 lower Mekong countries account for just over 70% of methamphetamine seizures in 2020. Resilient syndicates are diversifying production and distribution, while methamphetamine prices are going down and helping push up demand in the region.
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?
© 2023 Reporting ASEAN – Voices and views from within Southeast Asia. All Rights Reserved.
