Diverse Groups Raise Concerns About Development Projects on the Irrawaddy River

On 12 August, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with the regime’s minister of social welfare, relief, and resettlement, Aung Kyi, in Rangoon for the second time in less than a month. After the meeting the two issued a joint statement noting that they had agreed to cooperate and “to work in reciprocal basis by avoiding the contradicting attitudes.” However, it is clear that Daw Suu intends to continue to operate independently on behalf of the people of Burma, even where doing so contradicts the position of the regime. Just two days after the 12 August meeting Daw Suu defied the regime, traveling outside of Rangoon to meet supporters in Pegu and neighbouring Thanatpin despite the regime’s warning that such a trip could trigger “riots.”

Additionally, the day before her meeting with Aung Kyi, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi issued a letter expressing her opinion on one of the most contentious issues currently facing Burma, the issue of development projects, in particular dams along the Irrawaddy River […]

မိခင္ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီး ထာဝရ ရွင္သန္ေစေရး ျမန္မာတမ်ဳိးသားလံုးအေရး

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္တြင္ ျမစ္ဖ်ားခံျပီး အိႏၵိယသမုဒၵရာထဲသို႕ စီးဝင္ေနေသာ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီးသည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္သာမက အာရွတိုက္ၾကီး တခုလံုးအတြက္ပါ အေရးပါေသာ […]

Statement Supporting Establishment of UN-COI into War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in Burma

The Forum of Burmese in Europe ( F B E ) has resolved in its 17th Conference held in Paris on July 29-30, 2011 that the Forum unanimously supports the establishment of the UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry (UN-COI) into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma […]

Statement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Personal Appeal to Save the Irrawaddy River

Today, the lrrawaddy is under threat. tack of sound planning, the failure to enforce necessary conservation laws, and a poor ecological awareness have created diverse problems. The plains forests on the banks of the river are in danger of disappearing as illegal logging and charcoal production proceed at an alarming pace […]

Rohingyas Call On EU to Support UN Commission of Inquiry on Burma

Over a period of many years the Burmese military dictatorship has been persistently violating international law. Grave human rights violations and abuses have been committed across the country. They are widespread, systematic and consistent against […]

Over 30,000 Displaced by Burma Army Attacks Face Humanitarian Crisis in Northern Shan State

Numbers of villagers fleeing Burma Army atrocities have soared to over 30,000 during recent intensified attacks against the Shan State Army North (SSA-N), causing a dire humanitarian crisis in northern Shan State […]

Ivanhoe Received US $103 Million from Burma’s Copper Mines

Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines has announced early today in its press release that it received US$103 million from Burma asset it held through Monywa Trust.

Ivanhoe owned a 50% operating interest in a joint venture with Burma’s state-owned company and transferred its asset to a third party Monywa Trust in 2007 […]

Burma due for ASEAN assembly recognition

Naypyidaw will send a delegation to Cambodia this month where the annual summit of the ASEAN Inter Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) is expected to officially recognise Burma as a member.

Around 14 parliamentarians will travel to Phnom Penh for the event, scheduled for 18 August. Dr Aye Maung, chairman of the parliamentary Guarantees, Pledges and Undertakings Vetting Committee, told DVB that the event will include a ceremony to hand over Burma’s national flag […]

UK Must Take Lead to Secure UN Commission of Inquiry on Burma, Says TUC

The TUC is today calling on the UK Government to take the lead in securing consensus for a UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity by the regime in Burma. The EU is currently drafting the UN General Assembly resolution on Burma which is an excellent opportunity […]

Letter: Myanmar should not chair ASEAN

The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) deeply regrets a statement made by Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia’s representative to ASEAN’s Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), as reported by The Jakarta Post on July 19: “ … giving Myanmar a chance [to chair ASEAN] could encourage the country to show ASEAN and the world that it is committed to improving its national situation” […]