Insight Myanmar

Episode #136: “I usually do what I want,” Nyein admits openly. Somewhat unusual for a woman in traditional Burmese culture, it is an attitude Nyein cultivated during the democratic transition period of the 2010s. Since the coup, she has become quite possibly the country’s only female photojournalist, one who has captured some of the most violent examples of military oppression. However, she h...

Episode #135: “We just felt like we knew Myanmar, and it didn't seem like a foreign place to us.” So says Tamara Edwards, currently the Center Teacher at Dhamma Pabha, a vipassana meditation center in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. A chance encounter led Tamara to her first course in 1990. The teachings stuck, and she became dedicated to the practice. Together she and her Dhamma partner, Jamie, sat...

Episode #134: Liv Gaborit, a Danish social scientist with a background in psychology, conducted a groundbreaking study about intensive vipassana meditation retreats offered in the tradition of S. N. Goenka in notorious, overcrowded, Insein prison. Gaborit was told a story about a high-level military figure who regretted his bloody actions in suppressing the 1988 democratic uprising. Seeking spirit...

Episode #133: Zach Abuza, a professor at the National War College who shared his analysis of the Burmese military in our previous discussion, now turns his attention to the resistance movement. While initially the concern about the Peoples’ Defense Force [PDFs] was that they were well -intentioned yet poorly trained individuals going up against a ruthless and brutal military, much has changed sinc...

Episode #132: Zach Abuza, a columnist at Radio Free Asia and a professor at the National War College in Washington, DC, provides his analysis of the tactical and strategic situation facing the Tatmadaw nearly two years into their attempted coup. He debunks several theories regarding the Burmese military. One is the size of the Burmese military, which he believes is much smaller than is often assum...

Episode #131: Mike Davis is CEO of Global Witness, an international NGO that seeks “justice for those disproportionately affected by the climate crisis: people in the global south, indigenous communities and communities of colour, women and younger generations.” It published two groundbreaking reports on Myanmar’s mining industry. One is Jade and Conflict , which shines a light on the dangers, cor...

Episode #130: Igor Blaževič experienced the chaos, violence and fear of the Bosnian War at a young age. Once the war ended, Igor wanted to support others who were suffering from the lack of freedom he had only just escaped from. With this in mind, Igor traveled to such hotspots as Kosovo, Chechnya, Cuba, Belarus, and eventually to Myanmar. This work led to a close friendship with Czech P...

Episode #129: Andrea Passeri and Hunter Marsten co-authored an article which looks at Myanmar’s quest for a non-aligned foreign policy, and that is the subject of this podcast discussion. In 2011-12, following many years of military rule, the Thein Sein administration moved quickly to gain both domestic and international legitimacy. It instituted economic and political reforms, allowing the N...

“The greatest tragedy of Myanmar as a country is that it gets the headline for a week or two, and then it generally gets buried, because so many other things are happening,” Matt Davis explains. With this in mind, Matt decided to head to Chin State, one of the regions where the conflict has been among the worst, and report on the resistance movement. His work ultimately resulted in a feature on Au...

Episode #127: “I basically started meditating about eight years ago, and it's it changed my life completely,” Claire Thorp tells us. For years, Claire had been intrigued observing how her partner kept up a daily sitting and was curious to give it a try herself. Her initial course in the Burmese lineage of S.N. Goenka was very challenging for her. However, she felt sort of a “magnetic pull” to...

Episode #126: When Rose Metro sat down to write Have Fun In Burma , a novel set during the Rohingya crisis, she was already well aware that the country has long been viewed through an exotified, Orientalist lens. Being quite conscious of this past narrative, she wanted to draw attention to cultural conflict, using multiple perspectives. The protagonist, Adela Frost, is a politically progressive yo...

Episode #125: Given the deteriorating and destabilizing situation in Myanmar, one might assume that experts in the fields of Burma Studies, along with Burmese language teachers, would be more important now than ever. Yet nonetheless, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has elected to terminate the post of Professor of Burmese. Burmese language instruction at SO...

Episode #124: Today’s guest, Guillaume de Langre, worked for several years in Naypyidaw as an adviser to the Myanmar Ministry of Electricity and Energy (MOEE), and explains the history of electrification in Myanmar. From the post-independence period through the 2000s, he describes how much of the country was dark. One reason is that Tatmadaw was never really interested in developing access to...

Episode #123: Lucine has been the liaison officer between France and Myanmar for decades. With this rich experience, she offers an insightful perspective on the workings and machinations of the hidden world of diplomats across multiple crises in Myanmar. Burma used to be viewed as a kind of remote backwater that few knew much about. But that all changed with the ’88 democratic uprising. ...

Episode #122: Gil Fronsdal’s single visit to Myanmar came over three decades ago, but the impact of the trip on his spiritual life stays with him still. Initially practicing Zen, he went to Japan to deepen his practice, but he soon became disillusioned with the emphasis on ritual. He traveled on to Thailand, where he took a Mahasi course. Immediately impressed, he felt inspired go to the source of...

Episode #121: While perhaps a strange choice for some, Steve Jarand and Kati Schweitzer elected to spend part of their honeymoon meditating in Myanmar. Both being practitioners in the vipassana tradition of S.N. Goenka—a Burmese citizen of Indian heritage who trained in a Burmese lineage—that 2016 trip was something of a spiritual homecoming for them. The visit broadened their horizons regarding t...

Episode #120: On Thursday, August 25th, 2022, the accomplished artist and longtime activist, Htein Lin, was arrested along with his wife, Vicki Bowman. We had only just recently interviewed him, so hearing this news was doubly shocking. Htein Lin became was involved in the 1988 uprising in opposition to the military junta, and experienced guerilla warfare as a member of the revolutionary group, Al...

Episode #119: Erin Murphy has been involved in Asia issues since 2001, and Myanmar, in particular, since 2008. She relates all this in her recently released book, Burmese Haze .   She contrasts the somewhat distorted, emotionally charged view of Myanmar held by American policy-makers during the transition period with the harsh, even brutal military reality in Myanmar that was lurking just und...

Episode #118: Kyar Phyu returns to the Insight Myanmar Podcast to update listeners on how eventful the past number of months have been, in particular regarding her association with the CDM. Her activities came to the notice of military intelligence, and Kyar Phyu was forced to flee, taking refuge in a safe house for eight months. During that entire time, she only ventured outside twice, both times...

Episode #117: “The army believed democratic fighters were hiding in my center, so they moved very aggressively. They entered my meditation center! They shouted, ‘Hey, I will kill you. I will kill you!’ Their soldiers knocked in the door of the female kūti s. Oh God, everyone is very scared. Very afraid. They are shooting; they are firing in the air. But when they came to the female Dhamma Hall, th...

Episode #116: On July 7th, the official account of the European Union in Myanmar posted a two-minute video urging factories in conflict-torn Myanmar to re-open, charging that the factory shutdowns had driven former employees to poverty and even prostitution. In response, many charged that the EU was trying to manipulate Burmese voices to advocate for a policy that would benefit themselves but goes...

Episode #115: Matthew Wells is a member of Amnesty International’s Crisis Response team specializing in human rights violations, and has spent years investigating the ongoing atrocities by the Tatmadaw. One of the patterns that has come up repeatedly in their group’s study has been the Burmese military’s targeting of civilian communities rather than armed opponents. One particular Tatmadaw ta...

Episode #114: Growing up in the Bay Area, raised by parents who followed the Vietnamese meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh, Derek Pyle was no stranger to Buddhist theory and practice. While some Western practitioners separate their formal meditation practice from their experience of everyday life, Derek has always found value in integrating them, and has looked for inspiration from formal sitting p...

Episode #113: “I often asked myself how people can really have the presence of mind to sit down and write amidst such extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to be able to reflect on the kinds of traumas that that they're experiencing.” So says Brian Haman, who, along with ko ko thett, is the co-editor of “ Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanm...

Episode #112: Simon traces the arc of his Chin homeland’s history and politics from the mists of history to the present-day conflict. Chin State is the poorest part of Myanmar, which suffers from an lack of developed infrastructure. Due to the lack of available medical care, Simon decided the best way he could serve his community was by becoming a doctor. He explains how perhaps Chin State’s root...