Silent Lonesome Man

When people are talking about the widespread uprising in Myanmar nowadays against the junta, so many people try to draw parallels with some kinds of other dictatorships. Some think of South Korea's military junta. Some think about the reformed communist dictatorships in Vietnam and China. Some look at the old Indonesian, Filipino juntas or current Thai monarcho-junta. There are even comparisons to the strongman rule based on monarchial power like Cambodia, or isolated outcast North Korea. Well, yeah, it is not wrong to compare, but there is a major problem. And we need to address it immediately. The root For most of its history since independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar, or also known as Burma, has always been beset with military coups and violence, as well as government's mismanagement. And this is what led to the downfall of Myanmar from grace. In the history of ancient and medieval Burma, the country produced three major empires, the two latter, Taungoo and Konbaung, w

  The murder of six Asian women by a white racist in Atlanta seriously rattled my emotions. I knew that anti-Asian sentiment has always had a long history in the United States since 19th century, but never thought it would exacerbate so far during the COVID-19 pandemic. It occurred since the former President Donald Trump frequently repeated the speeches of "Chinese virus" or "Wuhan virus", but has no clear insight about Asian Americans. Subsequently, Trump's ignorance inflamed the racist fervour among the racist segments, which had been greatly blessed by Donald Trump's four years reign, to spread its anti-Asian hatred. And when Joe Biden became President, the sentiment exaggerated even further, as people injected with Trump's racist ideology found themselves insecure with Biden Administration. Yet, one group of Asian Americans have stayed deaf when widespread anti-Asian violence is happening. The Vietnamese Americans have, so far, demonstrated little to

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Back in 2003, Turkey welcomed a new Prime Minister, the former mayor of Istanbul. His name was Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Just 49 years old at the time, he belonged to his newfound AKP (Justice and Development  Party, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). He governed a relatively secular, modern, industrialised Turkey, and by the end of 2000s, Turkey appeared to be on the right track, as usual. And Erdogan didn't have any intentions to stay long in power since there was "nothing to do". Then, the Arab Spring broke out. It changed the political landscape across the Middle East. In response, Erdogan started to unveil his inner self, slowly weakening opposition groups and placing figures loyal to the party and his family members in charge of Turkey. But this didn't sit well with most of Turkish population, who were enraged by Erdogan's political reforms that trying to undermine the secular and already modern Turkey. Erdogan responded by forc

The protests in Myanmar have been the biggest since the 1988 Uprising in Myanmar, and the number of fatalities is rising days by days, nights by nights - triggered by the coup on 1 February 2021. This has triggered widespread international condemnation, but attempts to pass out a solution over the coup d'etat, was not successful, because of counter-attempts to block the condemnation by China and Russia - both Beijing and Moscow regard it as "internal affairs" of Myanmar. Later, it was reported that not just China and Russia; there are two other nations on the list of trying to prevent condemnation on the Myanmar junta. India and Vietnam are the two nations being on the list, and this has led to criticism that New Delhi and Hanoi are "playing on the lives" of innocent Burmese people being gunned down by Tatmadaw soldiers. As the world concentrates its eyes on Russia and China, so does India and Vietnam. However, the decision by both the governments of India and V

  Myanmar, or you can say, Burma, is a country of every reflection on the mind of the people. Historically, the country is unique. And even in the modern era, it is still unique. It appears to be everything in your minds, like how I watched the movie "Beyond Rangoon". But it is also a story where power brought them might, and yet power also brought Myanmar, into tragedy... just like the current coup and protests... Glory of an imperial state History of Burma began with the migration of people from the mountains of Tibet and today's Yunnan to the plateau of Irrawaddy river. They first came to Burma in 11,000 BC, but it only became a civilisation from 2nd century BC onward. They established a series of city-states called Pyu, and ruled independently, not an organised structure. Because these city-states maintained limited contact outside between themselves, China and India, historian disagreed on how to interpret the Pyu-states' histories, as they all developed for them