Written with Elliott and Manu on the occasion of YAG’s 10th anniversary. Published in Caravanserai, the magazine of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs (RSAA). Click here for the article’s PDF print version.

More than ten years ago, you could see us wandering the streets of Yangon with camera and notepad in hand. Yangon seemed to be waking up from a long and uneasy sleep. A few years earlier, in 2010, Myanmar had begun opening up in a staged liberalisation process after several decades of self-imposed isolation. Its former capital was cautiously re-entering the global imagination. There was a palpable sense of change in the air.

Yangon Correctional Facility aka Insein Prison (photo by Manuel Oka)

I just finished reading An Unlikely Prisoner by Sean Turnell. The economist used to be a key adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD-led government before the coup d’etat in 2021, which ousted her democratically elected government from power. Continue reading →