Mobs of stick-wielding church-goers in Myanmar's northeast used to descend on dealers and addicts in a desperate effort to save their communities from a meth-induced health crisis sweeping the country.But anonymous death threats brought the vigilante operations to a halt."It simply became too dangerous for us," says Zau Man, leader of the local Baptist church in Kutkai, a town in Shan State scarred by addiction.Myanmar is the second-biggest producer of opium in the world after

Facebook has blacklisted four more of Myanmar's ethnic rebel groups, the platform announced Tuesday as it struggles to control rampant hate speech, misinformation and incitement on its platform.For years the social media giant has been lambasted for its slow and ineffectual response to incendiary posts, particularly against the country's Rohingya Muslims.The company has embarked on a huge public relations (PR) campaign over the last year to prove it is taking action in a country wit

As bullets smashed into the walls, the residents of Alecheung village were jolted from their sleep and fled leaving everything behind – civilian victims of a crackdown by Myanmar's army on ethnic Rakhine militants in an area already concussed by violence."I just ran...

When the military-backed government of Myanmar began a series of political reforms in 2011, the country’s political landscape changed for good. The political reforms carried out by Myanmar’s then government included the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission, general amnesties for more than 200 political prisoners and many others.

In northern Rakhine state, the refugee crisis is not the only worry on the minds of the Myanmar government. On 4 January, also Independence Day in Myanmar, Arakan Army militants killed 13 people and wounded nine others in Rakhine. According to local reports, the insurgents attacked four police posts in the Buthidaung area. The attacks by the Arakan Army reveals a deeply divided state, which has been marred by various other ethnic conflicts.

A report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) this week pointing out that Myanmar’s Shan State is one of the world’s largest producers of crystal methamphetamine is hardly surprising.There have been record seizures of meth in the last two years in ASEAN countries and the surrounding region – 1.6 tonnes in Indonesia, 1.2 tonnes in Malaysia, 788 kilograms (kg) in Thailand, 1.2 tonnes in Western Australia and 0.9 tonnes in Melbourne – all of which is thought to have come from Shan State.Autho