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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 everyday life. People coming of age in this rapidly modernizing country are forced to balance their long-carried traditions while also trying to stay ...
‘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...
Yangon’s great garbage fire fueled by folly
A lack of long-term government planning created the conditions for the Htein Bin landfill fire, and the effort to extinguish it is probably making things worse. From a distance,...
Burmese refugee’s remains discovered in US river, strangers team up to bring them home
It took one person to strip Phyu Phyu Aye of her dignity and an unexpected, international network of total strangers to restore it. A month ago, on the morning of March 29,...
With Rohingya gone, Myanmar’s ethnic Rakhine seek Muslim-free ‘buffer zone’
Buddhist flags hang limply from bamboo poles at the entrance to Koe Tan Kauk, a “model” village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once...
Arrest, abuse, cover up: A Muslim poet’s harrowing encounter with Yangon police
Than Toe Aung’s wounds have mostly healed in the weeks since he was allegedly chased, abducted, beaten, and jailed by six plainclothes policemen one night near his home in...