Until the World Shatters
Truth, Lies, and the Looting of Myanmar
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- ¥2,600
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- ¥2,600
発行者による作品情報
This first in-depth piece of reportage about the largest natural resource heist in Asia reveals Myanmar's world of secret-keepers and truth-tellers.
In Myanmar, where civil war, repressive government, and the $40 billion a year jade industry have shaped life for decades, everyone is fighting for their own version of the truth. Until the World Shatters, takes us deep into a world in which journalists seek to overcome censorship and intimidation, ethnic minorities wage guerilla war against a government they claim refuses to grant basic human rights; devout Buddhists launch violent anti-Muslim campaigns; and artists try to build their own havens of free expression.
In the bustling city of Yangon we meet Phoe Wa, a young photojournalist pursuing his dream at a time when the government is jailing reporters and nationalist voices are on the rise. In Myanmar's far north, we meet Bum Tsit who is caught between the insurgent army his family supports and the business and military leaders his career depends on. His attempt to get rich quickly leads him to Myanmar's biggest, worst kept secret: the connection between the jade industry and the longest running war in the world.
Until the World Shatters weaves Phoe Wa and Bum Tsit's stories to reveal a larger portrait of Myanmar's history, politics, and people in a time and place where public trust has disappeared.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Combs, a foreign service officer in the U.S. state department, debuts with a deeply reported look at how Myanmar's jade industry fuels the country's 70-year-old civil war. He untangles links between jade mining, which takes place in the remote, resource-rich northern province of Kachin State and is driven largely by demand from China, and the government's oppression of minority ethnic groups, including Rohingya Muslims, through the parallel stories of Bum Tsit, a 30-year-old Kachin businessman starting out in the jade trade, and Phoe Wa, a 22-year-old photojournalist in the city of Yangon (formerly Rangoon). Chronicling his subjects' lives from August 2017 to September 2018, Combs explains the political dangers and uncertain economics faced by independent jade traders, who must rely on smugglers to get their stones across the border into China; reveals evidence that Kachin elites have colluded with the national army to control the region's natural resources; and documents the government's anti-Rohingya propaganda campaign and crackdown on press freedoms. Though Combs succeeds in elucidating Myanmar's complex political and cultural dynamics, the narrative occasionally slips into exoticism. Still, this is an illuminating portrait of a troubled and secretive country.
