Mekong Review

The unwanted election

Aung Naing Soe

The Myanmar military hopes that an election will give their rule a veneer of legitimacy, but a vote largely rejected by the people as a sham will hardly soothe tensions.

Cautionary tales

Calum Stuart

Fred Chin’s story is as much as a firsthand account of a dark time in Taiwanese history as it is a cautionary tale of the cruelty of unchecked authoritarian power.

Rocking and rolling

Pippo Carmona

The story of Philippine music post-Marcos is not one of political liberation but of a transition from the chains of censorship to the cushioned shackles of commercialism.

Cultural misinterpretation

Nathalie Chi

Hongkongers’ defence of bamboo scaffolding in the aftermath of the Tai Po fire wasn’t just about a material; it became part of efforts to defend the things that make the city what it is.

Moving beyond

Soobin Kim

By making Kintsugi, Lim Ji-soo found a way to tell her story of surviving sexual assault.

Spaces

Robert Wood

Ranjit Hoskote’s practice is one of art world curation, poetry, translation, and cultural theorising.

Power and conquest

Soham Gadre

Ferdinand Magellan was a famous explorer, but Diaz makes it clear that his film isn’t some graceful portrait of the man.

Trading words for bullets

Oliver Raw

There’s poignancy in the idea of artistic ambition sacrificed for something as fundamental as war. And Myanmar embroiled in civil war, it’s perhaps only natural that poets, like many of their countrymen, have taken up arms.

New springs

Kirsten Han

We don’t know how history will remember or talk about the Milk Tea Alliance. But it isn’t the only recent manifestation of transnational solidarity with the youth at its core.

Quiet persistence

Adil Amin Akhoon

Kashmir has lived many seasons of erasure: newspapers censored, cable channels muted, voices disappearing overnight. But books linger in the physical world longer than speeches or tweets.

“I am Chinese”

Frankie Huang

Tyrus Wong’s extraordinary 106 years on earth, told in meticulous detail by Karen Fang, is a story of resilience and triumph.

A borderlander’s reckoning

Wavie Hu

“The mountains are high and the emperor far away.” Reckonings from a borderland—on walls, my friend J, and choosing a life in diaspora.

Street cries

Phạm Thu Trang

Street cries in Vietnam are more than simple calls of commerce; they form an urban soundscape—a way of sensing time, place, and season.

Small things

Paul French

With When Sleeping Women Wake, Emma Pei Yin takes her place in a long-running and constantly evolving tradition of Chinese female-centred historical fiction.

Pragmatic idealism

Isaac Neo

An idealistic and highly personal approach to foreign policy is what sets Tommy Koh apart from many of his fellow luminaries in Singapore’s diplomatic sphere.

Cybercrime unchained

Nick J. Freeman

Cybercrime is a big business, and some of its leading perpetrators are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities in Southeast Asia.

The murder of Affan Kurniawan

Sylvie Tanaga

Indonesians were already furious at their government, seen as out-of-touch at a time of economic hardship. After an armoured police vehicle ran over a young delivery rider, they became unstoppable.

Pol Pot’s guests

Colin Meyn

Meeting with Pol Pot adds to Rithy Panh’s resume as the most prolific maker of films about the regime that took his family and terrorised his country.

Into the fray

Aie Balagtas See

Returning to politics, Leila de Lima says, is the only choice if she wants to keep fighting for justice, the rule of law, and truth.

Scars of victory

Robic Upadhayay

Every decade or so, Nepal endures upheaval, then dusts itself off—a cycle of destruction and reconstruction. But, maybe this time, the cycle will finally be broken.

Bringing Iwao home

Kirsten Han

Hakamata Iwao is believed to have been the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner. For more than half a century, his sister Hideko has never given up on him.

Memories of disaster

Shu-Mei Huang

As discussions of a so-called nuclear power renaissance resurface, Return to Fukushima pushes us to (re)consider not only the ways we live but also the exploitative systems through which energy is produced and consumed.

Those who left on those who stayed

Will Nguyen

Claudia Krich’s Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary is an invaluable primary source for those studying regime change, documenting firsthand the disintegration of the South Vietnamese government and the coalescence of a byzantine military administration in its wake.

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