The Tibetans you’ve never heard of

Who hasn’t heard of Tibet? And who outside of Asia can even pronounce “Uyghur”?
Millions of Uyghurs (pronounced “WEE-ger”) live in China’s northwesternmost province, Xinjiang. They, like the Tibetans, are a religious as well as an ethnic minority; they have chafed under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule for the last six decades; and Chinese authorities have faced persistent [...]

One more detention in Burma

You read it here less than two weeks ago: Burma’s military government detained a noted comedian, Zargana, after he went on a private mission to aid millions of victims of Cyclone Nargis. Now they have detained a prominent journalist who was working with Zargana, Zaw Thet Htwe.

Do they protest too much?

Soviet dissidents used to say the surest sign that an air crash had occurred back in the USSR was a sudden surge in official reporting on air disasters abroad. A plane would go down, and suddenly the airwaves were alive with grisly, fiery footage of Western crashes, from Illinois to Edinburgh—with no mention of what [...]

Burma: Buddhist relief efforts expand

RFA’s Burmese service had this interview with Thigadu Sayardaw, a senior figure in Burmese Buddhism, whose organisation is helping as much as possible with the relief effort for those made homeless by Tropical Cyclone Nargis:
Interviewer: Could you please tell us the situation of the cyclone victims that the Thidagu group is [...]

Who’ll stop the pain? Part 2

“The most suffering animal on the earth invented for itself: laughter.”—Nietzsche
I’ve often wondered what makes people laugh in the more repressive or deprived countries on this Earth. After 18 years of work on Burma and North Korea, among other Asian countries, I still don’t have an answer—although I do know of one man who gets [...]