New Mandala

Last week I mentioned a new report that highlights the links between the Burmese jade trade and the Beijing Olympics.  The Kachin News Group has helpfully kept on the story.  They report:
…Kachin jade merchants in Ying Jiang and Ruili (Shweli) in Yunnan, and Guangzhou told KNG [Kachin News Group] today that they believe that the jade [...]

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There has been a recent effort to discourage the purchase of jade from Burma.  The United States has even made a special set of sanctions to target parts of the trade.  And the Olympics has now been drawn into the picture.  A long report outlining the dire conditions of jade miners in Burma, and titled Blood Jade: [...]

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The vocabulary [of Jinghpaw] is not as meagre as has sometimes been stated. The opinion that tribes are found with a vocabulary of only a few hundred words simply reveals the ignorance of the dialect in question and linguistic studies in general. It has more than once been asserted that the illiterate Kachins have at [...]

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New Mandala readers who follow efforts to implement a conservation agenda in mainland Southeast Asia are probably already aware of the work of Dr. Alan Rabinowitz.  He has been mentioned on this site a few times in the past.  But, if the New Mandala daily traffic summary is anything to go by, a lot of other [...]

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Over the past couple of weeks the world has been trying to watch what is going on in Tibet.  It was the biggest global “guns on streets” story of the month of March.�
And now, in a footnote to the Chinese government’s wide-ranging crackdown on dissidents, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) has handed two Tibetan activists back to [...]

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Last month I highlighted a new book by American conservation advocate Dr Alan Rabinowitz.  The Myanmar Times has recently run an interesting article on his efforts to create wildlife sanctuaries in Burma.  Anybody with an interest in the environment of mainland Southeast Asia, or thinking about taking the contentious step of working alongside Burma’s generals, will find his work an [...]

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A few days ago, regular New Mandala contributor Aiontay asked about the tusks at the Manau ground at Laiza, the Kachin Independence Army/Kachin Independence Organisation stronghold along the Sino-Burmese border.  While I don’t have any further information on the tusks I do have a close-up taken a few years ago.

As an aside, the towers that are [...]

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New Mandala readers who have been following my recent series of posts on Manau festivals in northern Burma and northeastern India will be keen to see these pictures from Kachin State Special Region – 2, taken in February 2008.  These shots are from the Manau festival held to mark the 47th anniversary of the Kachin rebellion against Burmese rule.  The town where [...]

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Alan Rabinowitz is famous for his work in far northern Burma where he helped establish the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve.  Part of his exploits in that part of the world was chronicled in Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia’s Forbidden Wilderness.  Rabinowitz has now put together a new book, Life in the [...]

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- The menu for the Singpho food stall at the recent Dehing Patkai Festival held on northeast India’s Assam plain.  The prices are in Indian rupees.  As far as I am aware there are two well-known Singpho (or Kachin) restaurants in India (one in Assam and one in Goa).�
Readers who come across any unusual menus in other parts of the region [...]

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