European Parliament Calls on the MNHRC to Intensify its Work of Promoting and Safeguarding the Fundamental Rights of Citizens

In a resolution dated 20 April, the European Parliament, among other things, called “on the National Human Rights Commission to intensify its work of promoting and safeguarding the fundamental rights of citizens.” This statement came only few days after Catherine Ashton, European Union High Representative announced that she has launched a programme to help the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission.

We welcome this statement as the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission is not yet an independent and effective mechanism to promote and protect human rights for the people of Burma.

We hope that the European Union will work closely with the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission in order to ensure it respects the Paris Principles. These principles are minimum conditions that must be met for a national human rights institution to be considered independent and effective in protecting and promoting the rights of the people […]

Happy Thingyan!

Our office has been closed for Thingyan, the Burmese New Year. We’ll be back with a new issue of Weekly Highlights on 23 April. Happy New Year to all!

NLD’s Victory A Step Forward But Sanctions Must be Maintained Until Genuine Reforms Under Way

The past week has seen much celebrating from people throughout Burma and around the world over the election of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and 42 additional members of the National League for Democracy. These results marked a moment of excitement and hope for the people of Burma. However, the many irregularities in the process and the continued numerous restrictions on people’s fundamental freedoms demonstrate that a great deal more progress needs to be made on Burma’s path towards genuine democracy.

As Soe Aung, Deputy Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Forum for Democracy in Burma, noted in an opinion piece earlier this week, “[G]enuine change must be defined by bold institutional, legislative and policy reforms that can decisively create a truly democratic, inclusive and accountable government based on the rule of law and respect for all human rights. For the majority of people in Burma, there has been little real change. The quasi-civilian administration has made small gestures calculated to generate maximum excitement in the international community with minimum cost to high-ranking officials and their cronies.” […]

“A Step Towards Step One in Democracy”

“We won, we won” was the chant that resonated throughout the streets of Rangoon all night yesterday and waking up this morning had an unprecedented taste of joy and hope for the people of Burma. It is the “triumph of the people who have decided that they have to be involved in the political process in this country,” said Daw Aung San Suu Kyi today after the NLD claimed it has won 43 seats out of the 45 contested. Reports still vary and the official results will only be known later this week, after the Union Election Commission confirms them. In yesterday’s by-elections, more than six million people were eligible to vote, 160 candidates from 17 parties were contesting 45 parliamentary seats.

“A step towards step one in democracy” is how Daw Suu qualified the by-elections, reminding the world that even with the NLD wining yesterday, Burma is not a democracy yet but just slowly starting a fragile transition process in which genuine irreversible reforms need to replace the superficial changes done so far. As Burma Campaign UK outlined in a briefer released this week, “By-elections don’t mean Burma is free” […]

By-Elections: A Public Relations Game

With less than one week until the 1 April by-elections in Burma, it is abundantly clear that the process has been anything but free and fair. In an attempt to legitimize the upcoming elections, Thein Sein’s government on Wednesday confirmed that it had invited international monitors to visit Burma and observe the election. However, only one day earlier, it had expelled from the country a representative of the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), a regional organization advocating for “free, honest and clean elections.” The decision to allow in international observers but deny access for independent civil society demonstrates that the by-elections are more about winning the approval of the international community than listening to the voices of local communities in Burma.

While international observation of the election is something that has been called for by many foreign governments and non-governmental organizations, the invitation comes too late for the observers to monitor critical portions of the electoral process. As ANFREL noted in a statement on March 22 “It is regrettable therefore that the invitations, which included the United States, the European Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), come less than two weeks before election day […]

By-Elections Must Not Be Seen as Benchmark of Reform

The international community, including many western governments, has indicated that it views the upcoming 1 April by-elections in Burma as a key benchmark in the country’s reform process and many have argued that a successful process should lead to the lifting of economic sanctions. However, free and fair balloting alone is insufficient to demonstrate that the by-elections have moved Burma into a period of true democracy because the process has been structured to maintain the military’s grip on power.

Only 48 seats in the Parliament, 7% of the total available parliamentary seats, are being contested in the by-elections. Those seats being contested are open predominantly because the individual originally elected to fill them, all of whom are members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), was appointed to a position in the executive branch. Thus, only a small fraction of the country will be participating in this election and the vast majority of the people of Burma will continue to be represented by the individuals who supposedly won the 2010 elections, which were nothing more than a sham […]

Irregularities Tarnish the Credibility of Upcoming By-Elections

“The Special Rapporteur is concerned at continuing allegations of campaign irregularities and attemps to limit campaign activities,” stated Tomás Ojea Quintana in his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council released on Friday. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma further stressed that “the credibility of the elections will not be determined solely on the day of the vote, but on the basis of the entire process leading up and following election day.”

This report comes at the same time as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been alerting the Union Election Commission and the international community about the obstacles and restrictions that the NLD is facing on the campaign trail. Speaking after a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird on Thursday, Daw Suu said that official voter lists for next month’s by-elections include dead people and open the possibility for fraud […]

Local Communities and Supporters Express Concerns About Development Projects in Burma

As Thein Sein’s government takes small steps towards democratic transition, the people of Burma are expressing concerns about problematic development projects already underway. These projects, many of which are in ethnic states, directly contribute to human rights violations and increased militarization in project areas, as well as having negative social, economic and environmental impacts.

On 1 March, activists from Burma and around the world participated in a Global Day of Action against the Shwe Gas Pipeline Project that cuts across the country from western Arakan State to China. One hundred and thirty organizations from more than 20 countries signed an open letter to President Thein Sein calling for the suspension of the Shwe Gas project. The letter condemned the confiscation of thousands of acres of farmlands and restriction of access to traditional fishing areas for the project, as well as increased militarization and displacement along the pipeline corridor. The project will generate the country’s largest source of foreign revenue at US$29 billion over 30 years. Furthermore, the gas will be exported to China, while around 75% of the people in Burma do not receive electricity from the national grid […]

ASEAN Leader’s Visit to Burma Unwittingly Shows Many Needed Steps

This past week, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan traveled to Burma where he met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, President Thein Sein and Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin. While ASEAN and its leaders tend to view developments in Burma through rose-tinted glasses, several of Surin’s comments during and after his visit illustrated just how many more steps are actually needed for there to be genuine reform in the country.

At a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand following his trip, Surin said, “If Myanmar is going to carry out its chairmanship successfully, many things need to happen within the next two years.” He elaborated that the country will need to invest in roads, telecommunications, hotels and internet systems for the thousands of national leaders, delegates and journalists that will attend […]

88 Generation Students Visit Myin Chan, Speak to the People

၈၈မ်ဳိးဆက္ေက်ာင္းသားေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား ျဖစ္ေၾကာင့္ ကိုမင္းေဇယ်၊ ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္၊ ကိုေဌးၾကြယ္၊ ကိုေအာင္သူတို႕မွ ျမင္းျခံျမိဳ႕နယ္အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ရံုးတြင္ ျပည္သူလူထုအား ေတြ႕ဆံုႏႈတ္ဆက္မိန္႕ခြန္းေျပာၾကားခဲ့ရာ […]

88 Generation Students including Min Ko Naing, Min Zaya, Htay Kywe, Aung Thu visited Myin Chan, Mandalay Division and gave speeches about freedom from fear to the public at the NLD’s Myin Chan office yesterday […]