In its rush to fete Myanmar‘s president, Thein Sein, and capitalize on the country’s tentative opening, the international community has turned a blind eye toward the ongoing repression of minorities and the continued political dominance of the military. In doing so, it has given up much of its leverage over Sein at the very time […]
Khin Yu Waddy Myint is manager at Pyrex Trading and Distribution, a Burmese pharmaceutical company that employs 250 people across the country. Part of her job is to source and import medicines from India and Australia, a task she concedes she doesn’t know enough about. “It is the first time for me to learn many […]
Not too long ago it would have been unthinkable: the sight of a U.S. president standing next to Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman many believe should be — and might yet become — the president of her long-suffering country, Myanmar (also known as Burma). When Barack Obama was first elected to the White House […]
Barack Obama became the first American president to visit Myanmar on Monday, using a six-hour trip to balance U.S. praise for the government’s progress in shaking off military rule with pressure to complete the process of democratic reform. Obama, greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the former capital, Yangon, met President Thein Sein, a former junta […]
Barack Obama’s trip to Myanmar is a gift from the photo-opportunity gods. The sight of the U.S. president standing beside political-prisoner-turned-Nobel- laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon will be a heart-warming moment for a world yearning for good news .The most remarkable thing about Obama’s first trip abroad since his re-election is his itinerary. […]
President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Myanmar, one of three stops on a Southeast Asia trip this month. Obama will meet with President Thein Sein and opposition leader and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, Myanmar, as part of U.S. efforts to encourage the transition to democracy in the country, […]
The past two weeks have probably been the most high-profile weeks for Myanmar in the United States since the uprisings and crackdowns in Myanmar in 1988. The much-awaited visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi drew crowds that could be compared, in some ways, only to visits of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. And […]
In the lobbies of Rangoon’s few business hotels, Western investors in suits are gathering with local businessmen in traditional sarongs to discuss joint ventures, land-lease terms, and profit repatriation rules. For decades, Burma—which is also known as Myanmar—was distinguished for its ruling junta’s imprisonment and torture of political dissidents, execution of protesters, violent campaigns against […]
looking beyond borders 