Visiting Khet Mar, I am often greeted by the smells of sour soup or stewing fish. While working on my article on the Burmese refugee community in Pittsburgh, she accompanied me to a monastery where we were served spicy curry, dried fish in oil, and mounds of rice. It was my first introduction to Burmese food and I was eager to return the favor.
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Vakhtang Komakhidze was an investigative journalist in Georgia with a nose for a story and a record of annoying the authorities. His revelations of official corruption ended in the death threats which forced him to seek asylum in Switzerland. Robin Oisín Llewellyn talked to him about the limits of media freedom in Georgia.
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The Rwandan government has made remarkable strides in infrastructure, the economy, healthcare, and gender equity in political representation, but their continued attack on independent thought and criticism is disheartening – and dangerous. As the August presidential election looms, it is important not only to hail Rwanda’s success but also to ask hard questions about government abuse of authority.
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This month we have dedicated our coverage to Burma and it’s repressive and secretive regime. Because publishing is so tightly controlled there and the government regulates communication, it is difficult to have access to stories of daily life in Burma, a perspective offered here by City of Asylum writer-in-residence Khet Mar. Khet Mar fled Burma in 2006 after her relief work with Cyclone Nargis survivors attracted the attention of the junta.
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Khet Mar does not look like a revolutionary. She is demure, soft-spoken, unassuming. She appears to be as delicate and fragile as a butterfly, but that appearance belies great strength and resolve. She was only 22 years old in 1991 when sentenced to ten years in a Burma prison. Her crime: speaking out publicly for human rights.
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The Turkish writer and sociologist Pinar Selek, born in 1971, presently a scholar in the Writers-in-Exile program of German P.E.N., is a passionate advocate for the rights of different kinds of minorities, such as socially disadvantaged children, but she also defends the civil rights of ethnic minorities like Kurds and Armenians.
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In February, Burmese musician and activist Zayar Thaw turned 29 behind the walls of Kawthaung Prison in southern Burma. He was two years into a six-year sentence for “dealings in foreign currency and membership in an illegal organization.” The illegal organization is Generation Wave, a group focused on promoting democracy and civil rights to Burma’s youth through music, poetry, and graffiti.
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