ASEAN

Yangon Diary: Bomb Blasts a Dark Omen

Yangon Diary: Bomb Blasts a Dark Omen

  YANGON—On Tuesday morning, I received a message from a friend in Vancouver I had just wished a happy birthday. “Thanks Dan,” she said, “I hope you’re having a blast in Yangon.” I winced at the unintended irony: my friend had no way of knowing that Yangon had just been shaken by a series of bomb blasts. Minutes before receiving her note, I learned that another bomb had exploded just before midnight on Monday at…

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The Elephant in Myanmar’s Room

The Elephant in Myanmar’s Room

YANGON—Last week, Myanmar was officially handed the chairmanship of the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a one-year term that begins on January 1. Myanmar waited longer than any other member state for this honour—the first seventeen years of its membership, to be precise. There are those who would argue that it should have waited even longer, given the slow pace of reform under the former military dictatorship. Still others would say that Myanmar…

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