“I’m a retired headmaster. I have my dignity. But sometimes I have to put it aside and just do my best at my new job—working as a guard at a beer hall parking lot,” said Aung Win, a 61-year-old former headmaster of a primary school in Mandalay. (more…)

Jakarta – Next week (November 14-19), leaders from 18 nations will gather in Indonesia’s island, Bali, for the sixth annual East Asia summit. The regional economic and security forum has steadily gained in importance in recent years and this year for the first time includes the leaders of the United States, Russia and China.  The host nation Indonesia has raised the profile of the summit through its consensus-building work as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (more…)

A BBC report from last November that carried a map depicting Arakan state as populated by the ethnic Rohingya minority has caused anger in Burma, and once again brought to the fore accusations of entrenched racism within Burmese society. (more…)

The floods have spread across 64 of Thailand’s 77 provinces in the past three months, killing more than 500 people. (more…)

South Africa’s official opposition has called on the country’s president to investigate the shady past of Burmese ambassador Myint Naung, following accusations in media that the former army general was complicit in gross human rights abuses in his home country. (more…)

Bangkok – On November 7, 2010, on the occasion of Myanmar’s first elections in 20 years, Amnesty International commented that the polls which had “presented an opportunity for Myanmar to make meaningful human rights changes on its own terms” were instead “being held against a backdrop of political repression and systematic violence.” A year on, what is the state of play? (more…)

The first time I visited Burma, a Middle-Eastern diplomat in Rangoon related to me a conversation he had with the country’s agriculture minister, a uniformed army colonel. “In your country, do you have a tree that produces both apples and oranges?” the minister had inquired. Of course not, replied the bemused diplomat. “Under the Burmese Way to Socialism,” (the nation’s vague ideology), “we will soon have such trees here,” the minister said confidently. (more…)

Myanmar has taken some bold steps towards openness. They appear to signal a quest to reduce reliance on Beijing and assuage the West, but only time will tell. (more…)

This graphic novel, now in a new edition, follows in the footsteps of work by Joe Sacco, providing a first-person perspective on life as an outsider in a country rocked by poverty and instability. However, unlike Sacco’s gritty, rousing accounts of life under an oppressive regime, Burma Chronicles revolves entirely around the experiences of the author as an expat in an unfamiliar country. (more…)

Yangon – During his four years in a Myanmar jail, Buddhist monk Ashin Kawvida was kept in solitary confinement. Interrogators beat him. Prison seemed to have no rules, he said. (more…)

Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD)—which is led by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and was officially disbanded by the government for failing to register for the 2010 general election—announced on Tuesday that it will hold a historic conference on Nov. 18 to decide whether to re-register as a political party and contest seats in the national Parliament. (more…)

A film released this week purports to show strong evidence that rape of ethnic women by Burmese troops is endemic, and could be a deliberate policy of the country’s military in its ongoing conflicts in the country’s border regions. (more…)

Naypyidaw, Burma — After five years of cozy cooperation with Burma’s ruling generals, China Power Investment Corp. got a shock in September when it sent a senior executive to Naypyidaw, this destitute Southeast Asian nation’s showcase capital, a Pharaonic sprawl of empty eight-lane highways and cavernous government buildings. (more…)

As Burma’s economists go to work on rejuvenating the country’s moribund banking sector, residents of Rangoon may soon benefit from the reintroduction of automatic teller machines (ATMs) and banking cards. (more…)

Jakarta—Countries should consider rewarding Myanmar for its recent reforms by lowering trade sanctions on the Southeast Asian nation as well as allowing it to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said Tuesday. (more…)

Bangkok – While the Burmese government has re-opened a key border checkpoint between Thailand and Myanmar to accommodate thousands of migrants fleeing Thailand’s flooded factories, undocumented – and now unemployed – migrants face extortion and abuse as they try to return home, according to migrants and activists. (more…)

Yangon — A senior EU diplomat has hailed political changes under way in military-dominated Myanmar, where a new nominally civilian government has made a series of gestures towards reform. (more…)

Myanmar authorities haven’t yet convinced Western leaders to scrap economic sanctions despite a slew of internal reforms in recent months. They’ve scored one big victory, though: Reinstatement in the 2018 football World Cup. (more…)

If one cuts through the hype about change in Burma, about how the supposedly civilian administration in Naypyidaw is turning away from its repugnant policies of the past, concrete evidence of new thinking and a new approach by the regime headed by President Thein Sein is relatively slim. Yes, there has been dialogue – an encouraging series of meetings by senior officials – with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as international officials. But with a regime as vicious and untrustworthy as the one that has ruled Burma since the massacres in 1988, it is worth remembering that actions speak a lot louder than words. (more…)

Bangkok – Myanmar’s elections last year seemed like just another self-serving maneuver by the country’s generals to keep their thumbs on the scales of power. Then some surprising things began to happen. (more…)