Episode Details

This week in Myanmar: Air strikes kill dozens of civilians and combatants, the Kachin Independence Army and Organisation stand to negotiate with civil society and China on their recent rare earth acquisitions, and Trump's 2025 Secretary of State bucks the isolationist trend.

Email the show at: whimyanmar@proton.me and visit http://www.frontiermyanmar.net/

Timecodes:

1m08s :: Weekly news digest
3m41s :: Trump administration's effects on Burmese
13m06s :: The Lucky Men Hotel
23m46s :: Kachin's Special Region 1 & rare earths
39m42s :: Correspondence

Our guests:

Michael Haack, activist and key organizer for passing the Burma Act in the United States, who wrote about it for Frontier:

How the BURMA Act passed congress
What happened to the BURMA Act?

Emily Fishbein, independent journalist with over 50 articles published on Frontier, and many more elsewhere:

Emily's list of Frontier articles.

Jaw Tu Hkawng, independent journalist and activist, who with Emily and others published the Lucky Men feature discussed in this podcast:

'The negotiation failed': Hpakant's deadly standoff
He also writes with Al Jazeera.

In this episode, Jaw also referred to Global Witness reports on rare earths and Hpakant in Myanmar:

Myanmar's poisoned mountains
Jade and Conflict: Myanmar's Vicious Circle