New Mandala

A September 15 article on the New Era website reports that UNICEF-funded kindergartens in cyclone affected areas of Myanmar’s delta are empty. The Kale Pyaw Neya (literally, Happy Children Place) kindergartens have no kids in them, Aung Kyaw Moe writes, because parents can’t afford to pay for carers. He quotes an INGO staff person working [...]

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Imported players are now a part of the football scene all around Asia, and the Myanmar National League, which held its first tournament this year, is determined not to miss out on the action. The winning squad, Yadanarbon FC, had five players from Africa as well as a coach from France. It was a historic [...]

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On July 1, Myanmar’s state newspapers reported the first confirmed case of swine flu in the country, a teenage girl who had come from Singapore. According to the news, she had been isolated at the general hospital and was getting better. Persons who had been in contact with her had also been quarantined.
The story resembled [...]

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Remember Visit Myanmar Year? Back in 1996 the regime was touting its country as a new Southeast Asian destination for package tourists and those looking for an exotic alternative to more familiar and popular countries in the region. That year it targeted half-a-million visitors but fell far short at just over 300,000, which by the [...]

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If you’re a regular at a Yangon teashop, you might like to ask the owner where he buys his leaves. While foreign correspondents concern themselves with the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, talk in local media, marketplaces and street stalls has been preoccupied with reports about harmful chemicals and parasites in tea, chili, fish [...]

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Anyone who has spent time in the Yangon suburbs will be familiar with the main water pipe that runs from the Gyohpyu Reservoir to the center of the city. The colonial-era pipe snakes its way along ditches, through gardens and under roads and the railway line before disappearing into the ground at Yankin, to supply [...]

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After some weeks of headlines about Thailand’s navy pushing boatloads of Rohingya from across the Bay of Bengal back into the ocean, it was only a matter of time before there was an outburst from a Myanmar government official somewhere or another. In a letter to newspapers in Hong Kong that New Mandala has helpfully [...]

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Two groups last month released new assessments of relief efforts in Myanmar after Nargis. In contrast to the two reports previously reviewed for New Mandala, people directly involved in the work there wrote for these publications. One is the first official periodic review conducted since the cyclone struck on May 2. The other consists of [...]

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Now here’s an exciting piece of news from Bernama, the official Malaysian news service, via Xinhua, monitoring a journal in Yangon: Myanmar is set to go wireless. “Myanmar is striving to introduce a wireless internet system of WiFi by early next year,” an article dated 12 November said. It is also “striving for the development [...]

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Two new reports released this month examine relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis. One, by the International Crisis Group, proposes the normalizing of aid relations with Myanmar. The other, by a conglomerate of groups based over the border, critiques the work of the United Nations and international agencies in responding to the disaster. Neither achieves what [...]

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