A young man was selling several different magazines with a buoyant look on his face

Young man selling magazines — Magazine stand in Yangon

In the center of Yangon, there are many food stalls on the sidewalks. This stall selling magazines was one of them. There were many newspapers and magazines lined up on the table, and a young man was sitting on the other side of the table. The young man looked unhappy, perhaps because he was not selling well.

It was a bit surprising to see so many publications being sold at a magazine stand in Yangon. After all, this is a military dictatorship, and freedom of speech is non-existent. I had assumed that there were only one or two newspapers and magazines that were puppets of the military regime, so I was surprised to see so many different magazines and newspapers for sale.

A quick glance at the papers showed that they were no different from the rest of the country, with many of them heavily illustrated with photographs. Although the titles were written in English, the articles were all written in Burmese. It would have been a pity if the articles had been written in English, so that we could have learned what they wrote about.

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