Beyond Borders | Let's Talk Sustainability, A Rohingya Voice and More
A post-COVID-19 world is not quite within our sights, but what is already in our midst are conversations around sustainability that the pandemic ignited further.
Have a look at the first stories in our Sustainability Series, which looks into different facets of this buzzword. These report on how COVID-19 has helped conservation campaigners in Vietnam, as well as how some Filipino consumers are combining their shopping bug with an awareness of the environmental footprint of fast fashion.
In Myanmar, many stories and activists' statements have been made about the Rohingya - but what has often been missing or secondary - is the voice of the community itself. In the Q &A below, former refugee and Rohingya advocate Hafsar Tameesuddin shares what life is like inside Myanmar - no education, restricted mobility, life in IDP camps, and being at the bottom of the refugee resettlement ladder. The piece is also in Burmese, with Myanmar's majority population in mind.
Meantime, the number of arrests of journalists and media staff in Myanmar has just crossed 100, as seen in our infographic below. It's super cool to see our data used in various news reports in Myanmar and elsewhere, including Asia Undercovered , the Mekong Review and most recently, by the International Federation of Journalists. Yesssss!
The Splice guys and I recently discussed journalism, thinking Southeast Asia and the beginnings of Reporting ASEAN in this Splice Lo-Fi podcast Episode 16.
And ..... Thanks to the Heinrich Boell Foundation Southeast Asia for its support on the Sustainability Series, and to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation for our Lens Southeast Asia series.
Stay well -
Johanna Son
Editor/founder, Reporting ASEAN reportingaseandesk@fastmail.net
1 Sustainability Series
Pandemic Gives Wildlife Campaigners A Push in Vietnam — www.reportingasean.net
By UYEN DIEP
More public awareness of the link between wildlife and pandemics has given conservation groups a wider entry point to step up campaigns against their use. But COVID-19 restrictions have also led wildlife traffickers and sellers to turn to social platforms to push their trade.
Philippines: COVID-19 Gives Vintage Clothing Gets A Fresh Appeal — www.reportingasean.net
By MARIEJO RAMOS
Vintage fashion appeals to consumers who would like their purchases to have a smaller environmental footprint. For the women entrepreneurs who sell them, they are a source of livelihood in hard times, a creative outlet and advocacy -- toward sustainability.
2 Myanmar On Our Minds
Being Rohingya: 'It’s Not Enough To Just Say Sorry' — www.reportingasean.net
By JOHANNA SON
It will take time for Myanmar to dismantle the oppressive, dehumanising system in place for decades, says ex-refugee Hafsar Tameesuddin, who talks to us about the past and a future her Rohingya community imagines, and hope to see become reality one day. 'Myanmar is my country, Rohingya is my identity'.
Read in Burmese: “ဝမ်းနည်းပါတယ်ပြောရုံမျှနဲ့ မလုံလောက်ဘူး” (ရိုဟင်ဂျာတစ်ဦးဖြစ်ရခြင်း) - မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၌ ဆယ်စုနှစ်များစွာတည်ရှိခဲ့သည့် ဖိနှိပ်ကြမ်းကြုတ် လူမဆန်သောစနစ်ကို ဖြိုချဖျက်ဆီးရေး အတွက် အချိန်ယူရဦးမည်ဟု ဒုက္ခသည်ဟောင်း ဟက်ဖ်ဆာ တာမီဆူဒင်က ပြောသည်။ ၎င်းသည် အတိတ်က ဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်များ၊ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့ တစ်နေ့ ဖြစ်လာမည်ဟု မျှော်လင့်သည့် အနာဂတ်တို့ အကြောင်း ပြောပြခဲ့သည်။ ‘မြန်မာက ကျမရဲ့ နိုင်ငံ။ ရိုဟင်ဂျာကတော့ ကျမ ရဲ့လူမျိုး’ ဟု ပြောသည်။
3 Clickworthy
In Myanmar, Musicians Struggle Under the Post-Coup Military Regime — www.rollingstone.com Music, Film, TV and Political News Coverage
The United Nations’s Own Humanitarian Crisis — www.thecut.com Why can’t the U.N. weed out the sexual assault and harassment in its ranks? Four years after promising to address its internal “scourge” of sexual assault and abuse, the massive, multinational, extralegal institution remains in conflict with itself.
Sep 11 and the Debacle of 'Nation-Building' in Iraq and Afghanistan — fpif.org Nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq was the resurrection of a doctrine that should have been buried after Vietnam.