Volume 6, Issue 16
A coronavirus outbreak in Tachileik has shone a rare spotlight on border-based hotels, KTVs and casinos with links to powerful armed groups, whose open flouting of pandemic restrictions has put Myanmar and Thailand in danger.
Government officials are sorting through hundreds of thousands of complaints from households that missed out on a November cash transfer, as new research from the World Bank reveals the heavy toll of the pandemic on vulnerable families.
It may be a long time, if ever, before the country can fully account for the loss of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, and anecdotal evidence from cemeteries and hospitals in Yangon shows a muddled picture.
An advocacy group has proposed four options for reforming Myanmar’s tangle of criminal defamation clauses, which are being used ever more frequently under the National League for Democracy government.
The National League for Democracy’s re-election was helped by generous cash and in-kind contributions, but loose campaign finance rules kept much of this support off the books.
After its landslide election win, the NLD is seeking the “cooperation” of ethnic parties in establishing a federal democracy, but they have yet to see evidence that their basic demands will be met.
An illiterate woman from a Yangon Region village says members of the Union Development and Solidarity Party pressured her into signing a police statement falsely alleging the National League for Democracy bought her vote.
Teachers risked their health to serve at polling stations on election day. Now several face lawsuits brought by the losing party.
The private ownership of most of Yangon’s green space leaves residents with no choice but to crowd into the few public spaces left for them.
A lull in fighting in Rakhine State should not be mistaken for a free and fair election environment, but the efforts of Japanese envoy Yohei Sasakawa towards supplementary elections may deliver other benefits.
Mandalay is struggling to balance virus containment with the economic impact of stay-at-home orders, which added another layer of hardship this month to the lives of casual day labourers already struggling to support their families.
David Arnott, who died earlier this month in Thailand, was at the vanguard of online activism targeting Myanmar’s regime and spent the last two decades of his life building the largest online collection of material about the country.
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