Articles Gallery About
DVB •

Myanmar refugees in Malaysia face new registration regime

Myanmar refugees in Malaysia face growing uncertainty as a UN refugee agency documentation process is challenged by a new Malaysian initiative during ongoing refugee deportations. In the stairwell of a four-storey building in Kuala Lumpur’s Pudu district, James Bawi Thang Bik, the chairperson of the Alliance of Chin Refugees (ACR), points to a notice stuck on the wall at the entrance of a school classroom. “This is the only protection we have in Malaysia,” James...
DVB •

Myanmar refugees in Malaysia protest against regime elections

Myanmar’s refugee community in Malaysia held a protest at a community centre in Kuala Lumpur’s Pudu district on Friday against the military regime elections set to begin Sunday.“Our assembly may be stopped, but our voice shall not be silenced,” said organiser James Bawi Thang Bik, the chairperson of the Alliance of Chin Refugees (ACR).The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) states that 190,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from Myanmar – including a signifi...
DVB •

Karen authorities launch ambitious 10-year climate action plan

Senior officials from the Karen National Union (KNU) and affiliated civil society organisations formally launched a 10-year climate action plan they describe as the region’s first indigenous-led climate plan on Wednesday. “For the Indigenous people of Karen, the forests, the rivers and the lands are our life – our healthcare suppliers,” said Saw Hla Tun, the KNU joint secretary, adding that these resources were under “huge threat”
DVB •

Thabyay: Creative resistance in Myanmar documentary film (review)

“Why can’t we build up a nation with everyone all together?” asks Myanmar community organiser and human rights activist Thet Swe Win, one of four protagonists in Jeanne Hallacy’s new film Thabyay. It’s a deceptively simple question, but it encapsulates what the film sets out to do. Myanmar is a place where storytellers risk getting swallowed up by factional detail, and outsiders are met with a thicket of acronyms, alliances, betrayals, counter-alliances, and historical...
DVB •

Eradication: A poet at the heart of the Rohingya genocide (review)

From exiled Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali comes a story about belonging, confusion, and loss, told with purpose and poetic restraint, in order to set the record straight.A book that almost never saw the light of day, written while the author was in exile after finding himself at odds with a Rohingya militant group, has now appeared in English. From the opening dedication, Eradication shows that it is not a personal lament. Mayyu Ali tells a deeply personal story...
DVB •

A dispatch from Mandalay six months after the March 28 earthquake

Myanmar’s strongest earthquake in a century struggled to spur international support in any meaningful way. Nor did it inspire any let up in the military’s violence – and in the second largest city of Mandalay, oppression is only intensifying. What followed March 28 stands as a crystal-clear case study of the military’s priorities — a crucial reminder as it seeks to normalise its rule and gain international legitimacy with end-of-year elections.From a busy tea house on...
DVB •

A Q&A with David Eubank from the Free Burma Rangers

Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is a humanitarian group that has operated for over two decades in Myanmar’s ethnic homelands, providing front-line medical care, evacuation support, and more. 

In this Q&A, FBR founder and director David Eubank discusses the shift in needs since the 2021 military coup, the response to the March 28th earthquake, and how shrinking international aid is impacting the 3.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Myanmar.DVB.