Beyond Borders | 'You Can't Treat Hopelessness', Martial Law and Trauma in the Philippines, Electric Cars in Vietnam
Beyond Borders | 'You Can't Treat Hopelessness', Martial Law and Trauma in the Philippines, Electric Cars in Vietnam
Beyond Borders | 'You Can't Treat Hopelessness', Martial Law and Trauma in the Philippines, Electric Cars in Vietnam
This newsletter issue takes you on a four-country journey in the region, bringing insights and discussions from and around Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia.
From Myanmar, we talk about the precarious life of the Rohingya – the largest stateless population in the world – in what is the world's largest refugee camp, in Bangladesh. The rainy season, meantime, brings a Myanmar writer back to the time he was picked up by intelligence agents of a previous junta two decades ago.
Our sustainability set looks into the use of electric cars that's picking up in Vietnam. A Cambodia piece on the country's world-heritage applications is here, as part of a publishing partnership with Southeast Asia Globe and the Pulitzer Center.
From the Philippines comes reflections about clashing social memories and the different faces of trauma as it marked the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in September – insights that will be useful to many other countries and peoples.
Take a look too at the work of two senior-year journalism students (Aerielle and Meg) from the University of the Philippines, who are interns with Reporting ASEAN and Probe Media Foundation Inc.
Keep well in these rainy times (in Thailand we're wading through a wet season that's expected to be longer, with heavier rains, till November – a new normal?)
Johanna
Editor/founder - Reporting ASEAN (reportingaseandesk@fastmail.net)
Bangkok
COMING SOON : Our tool for reporting on sustainability issues!
1 Myanmar On Our Minds
'At a Certain Point You Can’t Treat Hopelessness' — www.reportingasean.net
Q&A WITH JOHANNA SON
Having no agency in life and feeling entirely abandoned add to the already health-and-life threatening situation of the Rohingya in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. Without a clear regional response and international attention shifting elsewhere, minimum standards of living in the contained settlements are deteriorating.
Burma Past and Present: Same and Different — www.reportingasean.net
By ZWE MAHN
It has been 20 years since Myanmar's intelligence agents detained this writer, who was a university student at the time. Yet far too little has really changed in Burma since then.
2 S is for Sustainability
‘Why Don’t You Get an Electric Vehicle?’ — www.reportingasean.net
By NGUYEN THUY MIEN
CAMBODIA: What Difference Can World Heritage Status Make? — www.reportingasean.net
By ANTON DELGADO AND NASA DIP, Southeast Asia Globe
Cambodia prepares its first submissions for a natural world heritage site - a dolphin conservation area in Kratie province - and a geopark at a wildlife sanctuary in Mondulkiri.
3 The Philippines
Conflicting Social Memories of Martial Law, 50 Years On - Why? — www.reportingasean.net Martial law had a 'smiling' face, a law-and-order face and one of outright repression, which meant that Filipinos had different kinds of trauma from that time that persist in today's polarized spaces. But to correct the neglect of the nurturing of public memories, it is time to teach 'historical empathy'.
We Remember - Martial Law at 50  — www.reportingasean.net
By AERIELLE ULANDAY
It is the young people's responsibility to hold, and pass on, the memories around martial law in the Philippines, a university student writes.
Students Back in School, Fret about the Pandemic’s Impact on their Future
By RASSEL MEIGAN RODRIGUEZ
Many university campuses have reopened in the Philippines, which until August 2022 had among the longest school closures in the world. As students mix in-person with remote-learning classes, they wonder how their pandemic-era education will shape their future.