Pakistani Cricket Star Sana Mir

Sana Mir, former captain of Pakistan’s national women’s cricket team, is among the top female cricketers in the world. She’s also a fierce activist who uses her outsized celebrity and massive social media presence to advocate for everything from mental health awareness to an end to body shaming.

That leadership comes naturally to Mir. As a child who moved often, Mir went door to door in each new neighborhood, gathering kids to build a cricket team. But when strict gender norms put an end to the street cricket days in her early teens, Mir walked away from the game and focused on school. While her playing waned, her passion didn't. And when her mother passed her an article about tryouts for the nascent women's cricket team, Mir jumped at the opportunity.

Since then, Mir has risen to the top of the sport. In the process, she's become a source of inspiration for millions of girls — a mantle she doesn't wear lightly.

Part of Asia Society's Asia 21 Young Leaders program, Mir was recently honored with an Asia Game Changer Award. In the latest episode of Asia In-Depth, Asia Society Executive Vice President Tom Nagorski speaks with Mir about her extraordinary life — and what drives her on the pitch and off.

Each week, Asia In-Depth brings you insightful conversations about the politics, business, and culture of Asia — and beyond. Subscribe today!

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CURRENT AFFAIRS

How a Telecom Revolution Shook Myanmar

Earlier this decade, Myanmar’s emergence from decades of isolation made it one of the world’s democratic success stories. But communal tension in Rakhine state and the military’s subsequent brutal campaign of violence against the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, has attracted international condemnation and tarnished the reputation of once-iconic leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ethnic violence is nothing new to Myanmar — but the campaign against the Rohingya coincided with a telecommunications revolution in a country that had largely been cut off from the global internet.

“At the exact moment that people went online, you had reports of the initial communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims, you had people saying whatever they wanted about that on Facebook, and you had a lot of hate speech as a result,” said historian and author Thant Myint-U during a talk last week about his new book The Hidden History of Burma at Asia Society New York. “And then you had for the first time people seeing global Islamic terrorism — ISIS in Syria, for example — in color through Facebook video. I think this had an effect in creating a wave of paranoia that was stoked by different people.”

Photo: Elsa Ruiz/Asia Society

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ARTS

Xiaoze Xie's Challenge to Censorship

The current Asia Society Museum exhibition Xiaoze Xie: Objects of Evidence, showcases the China-born artist’s fascination with the subject of censorship, particularly that of banned books.

Jessica Holmes writes in Hyperallergic:

“For the past seven years, [Xiaoze] Xie has assiduously hunted down original copies of banned books, as well as later and alternate editions, assembling a collection that helps elucidate the potency of repression which has become intrinsic to Chinese literary culture.”

Xiaoze Xie: Objects of Evidence will be on display at Asia Society Museum in New York through January 5, 2020.

Image: Xiaoze Xie. Chinese Library No. 66, 2018. Oil on canvas. H. 48 x W. 72 in. (122 x 183 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Dec. 2: ABC News Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz will discuss her distinguished career covering the world’s biggest news stories with Asia Society Executive Vice President Tom Nagorski at Asia Society New York.
Dec. 5: Veteran Israeli peace negotiator Tal Becker provides an insider’s view of the Israel-Palestine peace process in a conversation with Ronnie Chan at Asia Society Hong Kong.
Dec. 10: Political scientist and China expert Emile Dirks discusses the large and growing surveillance capacity of the Chinese state in an event at Asia Society Texas.

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