Tag Archives: burma

‘Inch by inch’: Myanmar rebels close in on key military base in Chin State

Al Jazeera, 15 March 2025 Falam Township, Chin State — In the mountains of western Myanmar, photographs of fallen fighters line the wall of a rebel headquarters – an honour roll of some 80 young men, beginning with 28-year-old Salai Cung Naw Piang who was killed in May 2021. The true toll on the Chin […]

‘They plucked out his eye with a motorbike key … I wanted to kill them’

The Times, 4 March 2025 Everyone in the Myanmar resistance knows the brutality of the country’s ruling junta, but even by their standards the cruelty inflicted on Timothy and Isaac was difficult to comprehend. They were found in the town of Falam in the far west of the country, where a battle is raging between […]

Soldier students: Job training gives hope to Myanmar’s military defectors

Al Jazeera, 23 November 2024 Myanmar-Thailand border – At a secret gathering above a cafe in a town on the Myanmar-Thailand border, Ko Aye examined the inside of an Android phone alongside 10 fellow defectors from Myanmar’s military and police forces. The trainer, an ex-captain in the Myanmar army, guided the group through the process of […]

Street vendor builds Yangon’s top seafood chain

Nikkei Asian Review, June 2020 In 1987, when Khin Khin San was 13, she began selling bowls of mont ti fish soup under the shade of a tamarind tree in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, where the rice noodle dish is fishier and fierier than elsewhere in the country. Sometimes she would hawk mont ti with […]

No sex education please, we’re Burmese: new school textbook exposes ignorance

The Sunday Times, May 2020 Burma is historically familiar with ethnic strife. But now the land of maroon-robed monks is confronting discord of a different kind, as politicians, doctors and spiritual leaders turn on each other in a ferocious row about sex. The trouble erupted over a plan to update sex education in schools, a […]