Outsiders about Myanmar

Journalists

  • Sweden born journalist Bertil Lintner visited Myanmar since 1977. This article is from Asia Times, September 20, 2017. Also in The Irrawaddy, December 17, 2017. And here his vision September 28, 2018.
  • Larry Jagan, Bangkok Post, October 26, 2017, describes how the peace plan for Rakhine state as announced by Aung San Suu Kyi October 15, 2017, is sponsored by businessmen’s gifts. He also gives details about the relationship between the civil part of the goverment and the military.
  • Thai senior-journalist Kavi Chongkittavorn in The Irrawaddy, 23 oktober 2018: ‘I don’t think the West understands Myanmar’. According to him relationships between Thailand and Myanmar have never been so good as they are now since 1962. He also mentions the importance of relationships with China, Japan and the ten ASEAN-countries.

Academics

Tony Waters (1957), is Director of the Institute of Religion, Culture and Peace at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Professor of Sociology (on leave) at California State University, Chico. He makes the comparison between the colonial administrator as described by George Orwell (Burmese Days, 1934) and present day INGO-workers in Myanmar. (The Irrawaddy, April 5, 2019)

In this article (The Irrawaddy, August 29, 2019) Tony Waters questions the reality consciousness of UN and NGO’s with regard to voluntary return of ‘Rohingya’ to Myanmar. He also perceives a lack of moral empathy in the international community.

After having read Miss Burma (Charmaine Craig, 2017) Tony Waters admonishes in a review in The Irrawaddy, March 2020, Western pedants again to somewhat more humbleness.

In The Irrawaddy, April 25, 2020, he shows what a useful contribution to international law has been given by Aung San Suu Kyi in and by her speech at ICJ in The Hague, December 2019.

Michal LubinaThe Moral Democracy. The Political Thought of Aung San Suu Kyi. Krakow, 2019. Review in The Irrawaddy, November 2.

Documentary

Karen Stokkendal Poulsen (Denmark) made the 55 minutes documentary On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship.

Alan Clements

March 19, 2018, Dhammatalk in Vancouver, Canada, by Alan Clements​ about his (love) relationship with Burma since 1972.

More specifically about his monkhood under Mahasi Sayadaw and Sayadaw U Pandita, the book he wrote about Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope (1997), his exile from Myanmar until 2012, and his newest book (September 2020) Aung San Suu Kyi and the Voices of Freedom. As the most important Voice of Freedom Clements considers Sayadaw U Pandita’s admonition for Reconciliation: right speech, with the right intention, the right tone, at the right moment, and even being able to endure not being understood.

Introduction, trailer and one and a half hour interview with Insight Myanmar where Alan speaks about Mahasi Sayadaw, Sayadaw U Pandita, Aung San Suu Kyi and the future of Burma (February 2020).

Diplomats

  • In The Irrawaddy (Myanmar), October 19, 2018, the Japanese ambassador in Myanmar is very outspoken: economical sanctions by European Union are utter nonsense.
  • Derek Tonkin (1929), a former British ambassador in Vietnam, Thailand en Laos, offers a good survey in this article of October 2015. He is the spiritual father of Network Myanmar, in which he offers an incredible amount of historical and up-to-date texts.
  • Gert Rosenthal, former Secretary of State of Guatemala, May 29 2019 publiced an internal UN-report which states that United Nations made huge mistakes in Myanmar since 2010. Derek Tonkin (see above) mentions some inaccuracies in this report.