With Sean Turnell, Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute. This week on What’s Happening in Myanmar, the military ships nearly 1,000 Rohingya from Yangon to wartorn Sittwe, Chinese are repatriated from border scam compounds, and we speak about the military’s access to foreign exchange and other finance matters in the wake of the new report, The Military, Money, and Myanmar: Breaking the Nexus.

Email the show at whimyanmar@proton.me

Timecodes—

1m15s :: Weekly news digest
7m35s :: With Sean Turnell, the military’s finances
10m40s :: Foreign exchange
13m30s :: Sanctions on Myanmar’s banks
21m16s :: Financing the resistance
28m06s :: Multilateral institutions noting the NUG
37m06s :: Close

Our guest—

Sean Turnell, Honorary Professor of Economics at Macquarie University, Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute, and author of the 1999 book Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma, and more recently, An Unlikely Prisoner: How an Eternal Optimist Found Hope in Myanmar’s Most Notorious Jail. Sean advised the National League for Democracy government on economic matters from 2016-2020, was detained and locked up by the military for 650 days following the 2021 coup, and now serves as Special Advisor to the alternative National Unity Government’s Interim Central Bank.

The Military, Money, and Myanmar: Breaking the Nexus

And here’s links to the Frontier Myanmar interviews with Dr Sui Khar and Thai opposition MP Rangsiman Rome.

With Sue-Lin Wong, Southeast Asia correspondent for The Economist. This week on What’s Happening in Myanmar, ASEAN continues talking consensus, Sittwe fighting begins in earnest, and we speak about the scam industry in the region, as hundreds of trafficked victims go free from Myawaddy.

Email the show at whimyanmar@proton.me

Timecodes—

0m58s :: Weekly news digest
8m33s :: With Sue-Lin Wong, the scam industry
15m06s :: Why do people fall for scams?
17m22s :: Coercion and worker trafficking
23m11s :: Chinese experience of scams
25m26s :: Absent connection to CCP
31m45s :: Future of scams
34m52s :: Close

Our guest—

Sue-Lin Wong, Southeast Asia correspondent for The Economist.

Introduction to Scam Inc.

Online scams may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs

And read Frontier’s editorial this week on the dangers posed by Elon Musk.

With Lorcan Lovett, independent journalist and Substack writer, with bylines in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, the Sunday Times and more. This week on What’s Happening in Myanmar, conscripts are barred from monasteries, fuel dries up at key border towns, and we discuss the final fight in the Chin National Defense Force push for Falam, in Chin State.

Email the show at whimyanmar@proton.me

Timecodes—

0m54s :: Weekly news digest
8m14s :: With Lorcan Lovett, fighting in Falam
15m18s :: Reinforcements
18m35s :: Freedom of movement
24m08s :: Civilian and rebel life
28m40s :: Chin resistance schism
37m54s :: Close

Our guest—

Lorcan Lovett, an independent journalist and Substack writer.

Lorcan’s Substack, “On Myanmar”

His first Chin State dispatch: “They plucked out his eye with a motorbike key … I wanted to kill them”

And—

The Institute of Chin Affairs report referred to in this podcast can be found here.

For more context on the Chin resistance split, check out this Frontier feature from last year.