Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

460 Ashin Wirathu’s sermon that is thought to have provoked the massacre of Rohingya at Meiktila can be viewed online at “Anti Muslim monk Wira thu talk about Meiktila before riot,” YouTube, March 24, 2013; a summary translation is available at Maung Zarni, “Racist leader monk Rev. Wirathu’s speech,” M-Media, March 24, 2013. Wirathu’s exhortation to “rise up” and “make your blood boil” was quoted in Hannah Beech, “The face of Buddhist terror,” Time, July 1, 2013. The quote from the pamphlet distributed at one of Ashin Wirathu’s sermons appears in Thomas Fuller, “Extremism rises among Myanmar Buddhists,” New York Times, June 20, 2013. Wirathu is compared to Hitler in Sarah Kaplan, “The serene-looking Buddhist monk accused of inciting Burma’s sectarian violence,” Washington Post, May 27, 2015.

461 See Yassin Musharbash, “The ‘Talibanization’ of Pakistan: Islamists destroy Buddhist statue,” Der Spiegel, November 8, 2007.

461 The term “savage Buddhists” is cited in Jonathan Pearlman, “Jihadist group calls on Muslims to save Burmese migrants from ‘savage Buddhists,’ ” Telegraph, May 20, 2015.

462 The Rohingyas’ flight from Myanmar is documented in David Mathieson, “Perilous plight: Burma’s Rohingya take to the seas,” Human Rights Watch, 2009.

462 Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingya issue has been widely noted; see, e.g., Moshahida Sultana Ritu, “Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar,” New York Times, July 12, 2012; and Charlie Campbell, “Arakan strife poses Suu Kyi political problem,” Irrawaddy, July 13, 2012.

462 Tensions between Arakanese Buddhists and foreign aid workers are described in Lawi Weng, “Arakan monks boycott UN, INGOs,” Irrawaddy, July 6, 2012.

462 The 2014 Mandalay riots were reported in “Five injured in Mandalay unrest, damage limited,” Irrawaddy, July 2, 2014.

463 For a scholarly discussion of the variety of Muslims residing in Myanmar, see Khin Maung Yin, “Salience of ethnicity among Burman Muslims: A study in identity formation,” Intellectual Discourse 13, no. 2 (2005).

465 For more information on the tattooed women of Chin state, see Sarah Boesveld, “Stealing beauty: A look at the tattooed faces of Burma’s Chin province,” National Post, July 15, 2011.

466 The number of monks in Myanmar is put at four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand in Sarah Buckley, “Who are Burma’s monks?” BBC News, September 26, 2007.

467 The history of Jewish migration to and from South Asia is explored in Nathan Katz and Ellen S. Goldberg, “The last Jews in India and Burma,” Jerusalem Letter, April 15, 1988.

467 Moses Samuels died on May 29, 2015; see Jonathan Zaiman, “Remembering Moses Samuels, the man who preserved Jewry in Myanmar,” Tablet, June 2, 2015.

468 Moses Samuels himself stated, “There is no problem with religion here”; see Seth Mydans, “Yangon Journal; Burmese Jew shoulders burden of his heritage,” New York Times, July 23, 2002. Also, see a touching remembrance of Moses Samuels and an account of Myanmar’s Jewish community: Sammy Samuels, “Hanukkah with spirit in Yangon,” BBC News, December 4, 2015.

468 The outcome of cease-fire negotiations with armed rebel groups in Myanmar is reported in Shibani Mahtani and Myo Myo, “Myanmar signs draft peace deal with armed ethnic groups,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2015.

468 For more background on the remnants of the Kuomintang in Myanmar, see Denis D. Gray, “The remaining veterans of China’s ‘lost army’ cling to old life styles in Thailand,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1987.

469 Mong La’s National Democratic Alliance and its leader, Sai Leun, figure in Michael Black and Roland Fields, “Virtual gambling in Myanmar’s drug country,” Asia Times, August 26, 2006; and Sebastian Strangio, “Myanmar’s wildlife trafficking hotspot,” Al Jazeera, June 17, 2014.

469 Kachin state’s lucrative jade industry is investigated in Andrew Marshall, “Myanmar old guard clings to $8 billion jade empire,” Reuters, October 1, 2013. The escalating death toll in a landslide at a jadeite mine is reported in Kyaw Myo Min, Kyaw Kyaw Aung, and Khin Khin Ei, “Hopes fade for Myanmar landslide survivors as lawmakers urge greater safety for miners,” Radio Free Asia, November 24, 2015.

471 Thant Thaw Kaung’s story is told in Mary O’Shea, “Journey of shelf discovery,” Post Magazine, October 14, 2012.

473 Htein Lin’s life and work are the subjects of Thomas Fuller, “Back to a Burmese prison by choice,” New York Times, December 6, 2014.

475 Htein Lin’s project, A Show of Hand, is described on his website, at http://hteinlin.com/a-show-of-hand; and in Kyaw Phyo Tha, “Hands of hardship; Artist Htein Lin spotlights political prisoners’ travails,” Irrawaddy, July 27, 2015.