Myanmar

Our Home in Myanmar: Four years in Yangon by Jessica Mudditt

November 2021, no. 437

Our Home in Myanmar: Four years in Yangon is an Australian woman’s account of her four years living and working in Yangon, the commercial capital of Myanmar. In 2012, Jessica Mudditt arrived there with her Bangladeshi husband; they were looking for adventure and a way to pay for the experience. This is Jessica’s story: how she found work with an English language newspaper, her experiences as a foreigner, her fractious relationships with expat colleagues, the struggle to find suitable accommodation, the shock of her summary dismissal, her money and visa problems, and her subsequent work with the British Embassy, before freelancing and working as foreign editor at the much-derided state-run newspaper, the Global New Light of Myanmar.

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The Case for Myanmar’s Peacock Generation

by Chris Lin •

Book Talk

In her acceptance speech for the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize, writer Arundhati Roy suggested that ‘there’s really no such thing as the “voiceless”’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.’ Framed around the topic of justice, Roy’s lecture invited listeners to think about the mechanisms of power that stifle voices of dissent, those that push against political systems designed to erode fundamental human rights. Roy’s statement resonates because it implies that there is an element of choice in how we respond to cases of oppression. It is a choice not just for authorities but for communities and individuals alike.

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Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads by Benedict Rogers

by Nicholas Hordern •

October 2012, no. 345

Too often foreign affairs seem the realm of tedious diplomacy, impenetrable acronyms, and cynical realpolitik. So it comes as a relief to Western governments and voters if they can from time to time adopt a stance that places them on the side of the angels. Helping transform bad régimes into good, as in Burma, offers such an opportunity, and activist and author Benedict Rogers’ book is very much a tract for these times – explicitly informed, he tells us, by a moral framework.

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