Join COCO+
Dharma Dogs: Buddhist chants calm stray Myanmar mutts
Pumped out over speakers, Buddhist chants play for packs of stray dogs at a Yangon shelter in an unusual effort to calm them down as Myanmar struggles to control a ballooning canine population and a deadly rabies scourge. “We find that the dogs don’t mate… when we play Dharma preaching,” says Maung Maung Oo, the manager of ...
Dragons and wizards fired up at Myanmar rocket festival
Clad in elaborate headdresses representing dragons and wizards, Myanmar’s ethnic Pa’O fire huge, homemade rockets into the sky — an annual call for plentiful...
Slaves to the Poppy: How decades of conflict have led to modern-day slavery in Myanmar’s Shan State
Lway Kay* sits inside a dimly lit shack picking bugs and stale rice from a large bag. She is incredibly adept at preparing the rice for her family’s meals, and she needs to...
Myanmar’s atypical music duo talk art, identity and the music industry
Both W-A.I., aka Waiyan Kyawni, and Steph KoKo seem like pretty typical millennials — mindful of the latest trends, tuned into the hashtag zeitgeist, and always down to...
The struggles of being a Burmese millennial
Myanmar has changed in so many great ways over the last couple of years, but the pressure to maintain the culture, values, and traditions we grew up with remains a part of...
‘We Feel Neglected’: Life waist-deep in a flooded Myanmar village
The residents of Nanbaw village are no stranger to floods. Every rainy season, the rivers around them swell, and they are forced to suffer bouts of dampness, but life goes on as...
For ‘mixed-blood’ citizens, Yangon’s passport office is a racist hell
As dawn breaks over Yangon’s Passport Issuing Office, a throng of would-be globetrotters gathers in front of the squat Yankin Township building and snakes around the corner....
From the killing field to the courthouse: The unexplored story of Captain Moe Yan Naing
Police Captain Moe Yan Naing has been hailed as a hero for exposing the police plot to trap Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. What few have talked about – what...
One family, four countries — the dispossession of the Rohingya
It takes a few moments to sift through the years of chaos and dislocation before Rohingya refugee Robi Alam settles on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, August 2012, as the last...
Does Amnesty’s ARSA report prove anything?
A fissure that has long been forming within the Rohingya rights community was exposed this week when Amnesty International released a report that many found less than helpful to...