Myanmar court convicts man over penis tattoo poem
Maung Saung Kha is one of the first political activists sentenced since Aung San Suu Kyi took power in April. A court in Myanmar has sentenced a young poet to six months in jail for defaming former president Thein Sein, making him one of the first political activists sentenced since Nobel peace prize laureate Aung […]
A Southern Adventure in the Myeik Islands
KAWTHAUNG, Tanintharyi Division—The rumors we had heard that the remote Myeik archipelago was a difficult place to visit meant that we almost didn’t go. That would have been a big mistake. Getting to the departure point for our five day trip through some of the area’s 800-plus islands was just a plane ride from Yangon […]
Myanmar kids prep for homecoming in Thailand’s ‘Little Burma’
In a Thai port dubbed ‘Little Burma’ the children of Myanmar migrant workers peer at white boards carrying the distinctive looping characters of their parents’ language. Enrolment at the school, the first in the fishing hub of Samut Sakhon to offer a Myanmar curriculum including reading and writing, is surging as migrants wearied by the […]
Aung San Suu Kyi Asks U.S. Not to Refer to ‘Rohingya’
BANGKOK — Myanmar recognizes 135 ethnic groups within its borders. But the people who constitute No. 136? They are the people-who-must-not-be-named. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since 1962, embraced that view last week when she advised the United States ambassador against using the term “Rohingya” to describe […]