Volume 5, Issue 16

September 26, 2019

Volume 5, Issue 16

Volunteer ambulance crews brave bullets to save lives

Volunteers with community service ambulances in northern Shan State are taking big risks to help others in conflict zones – and sometimes pay with their lives.

BY Kyaw Lin Htoon

Opinion

Joining the dots: Investment and human rights

Foreign investors like to lobby for “fairer” contracts and less red tape, but basic rights and security for Myanmar’s poorest people is their business, too.

BY Frontier

News Feed, Bizfeed, News, Business, Features

Thousands evicted as Kayin govt cracks down on armed group-linked housing project

An officer in the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army is in custody over a housing project in Myawaddy Township that has left several thousand people out of pocket.

BY Naw Betty Han

Opinion

Health access denied in northern Rakhine

Massive shortfalls in government services, blocks on NGOs and travel restrictions for residents continue to starve communities in northern Rakhine State of access to healthcare and flout the recommendations of the Kofi Annan commission.

BY Nay Lin Tun

Bizfeed, Business

The rush job: Myanmar's 'impossible' emergency power tender

A consortium in the running for a tender aimed at avoiding power shortages next hot season seems unfazed by the tight deadlines and viability concerns that deterred many foreign bidders.

BY Thomas Kean

Bizfeed, Business, Features

Mandalay Region goldfields tainted by whiff of corruption

Illegal mining is flourishing at the troubled Moehti Moemi goldfields in Mandalay Region and some say weak law enforcement and corruption are to blame.

BY Kyaw Ye Lynn

Opinion

Gloves off in the tussle over constitutional change

Changes to the constitution proposed by the parliamentary Tatmadaw bloc indicate that the National League for Democracy’s campaign to reform the military-drafted charter is going nowhere.

BY Sithu Aung Myint

Opinion

Why China is sceptical about the peace process

In the first of a two-part series, contributor Yun Sun examines the different approaches China has taken to mediating in Myanmar’s armed conflicts, and why it has begun to adopt a more limited – yet still important – role.

BY Yun Sun

Affairs, Features, Culture

Spectacle in a circle: Marking Waso with chinlone

Spectacular displays of acrobatic skill enthral audiences during the annual chinlone festival held at the Maha Muni Pagoda in Mandalay in the two months leading to the end of Waso.

BY Ivan Ogilvie

News, Features, Culture

Zawgyi to Unicode: the big switch

Myanmar will make the change to Unicode fonts from the home-grown Zawgyi encoding system on October 1 – a switch that will leave many users outside their comfort zone.

BY Eaint Thet Su

Culture

'Playing for beauty and playing to fight': Myanmar's martial arts

Veterans of Myanmar’s traditional martial arts, or thaing, fear for its future but hope it can replicate the revival and growing international reach of other Southeast Asian fighting forms.

BY Hein Thar