The Right Balance: Negotiating Buddhist Power in Sri Lanka

After a mob attacked a UN safe house for Rohingya refugees on 26 September near the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne came out with some of the strongest public words I’ve seen leveled by a Buddhist public servant against fellow, self-proclaimed Buddhists. “As a Buddhist I am ashamed at what happened,” […]

No Easy Answers: Bangladesh’s Buddhists and Rohingya Refugees

The tragedy of Myanmar’s displacement of Rohingya Muslims, aside from its complex ethnic, historical, and religious backdrop, is exacerbated by two essential political realities. The first is that Western media and governments erroneously saw what it wished to see in Aung San Suu Kyi throughout her difficult struggle against the Burmese junta. When she decided […]

Setting the Stage

John Cannon A careful reflection of the path I have followed while “shuffling my way along this mortal coil” brings into sharp relief some of the events that have moulded me as a person from youth onwards: founder, teacher and administrator of a cultural and language programme for Chinese immigrant children in Toronto; two solo […]