Myanmar: National Human Rights Commission Recommends Ratifying Key Human Rights Treaties

ARTICLE 19 welcomes Myanmar’s National Human Rights Commission’s recommendation that the government ratify the two most significant international human rights treaties. The strong stance adopted by the Commission is noteworthy due to its closeness with the government […]

Arrest Warrants Issued Against Human Rights Defenders Messrs Moe Thway, Wai Lu and Wai Hmuu Thwin

On 20 June 2013, human rights defenders Messrs Moe Thway, Wai Lu and Wai Hmuu Thwin published a statement regarding the arrest warrants issued against them on 13 June 2013 by Monywa Court under section 505 (b) of the Penal Code, “offences against the state or against public tranquillity” […]

Arm Conflict in Kutkai Township Creates More Internal Displacement

On 18th June 2013, in Kutkai Township, Northern Shan state, there was a conflict between the TNLA Battalion (112) and the Burmese military Infantry Battalion (IB) 145 which resulted in over one hundred villagers fleeing their homes […]

Statement on Arrest Warrants for Speaking Out about Letpadaung Emergency Law

We would like to explain what is happening to us, Moe Thway (Generation Wave), Wai Lu and Wai Hmuu Thwin (Yangon People Service Network), in these days.

On 13 June 2013, Monywa court issued warrants to arrest the three of us under section 505(b) of the Penal Code. Lieutenant Khin Zaw Latt from Monywa Police Station 1 said he requested Monywa court to charge us with section 505(b) because of our comments about the Letpadaung copper mine case […]

Nobel Peace Laureates: A True Democratic Future in Burma Will Require Reconciliation

Burma has taken important steps in the past two years to move from decades of repression toward a democratic future. Many, though not all, political prisoners have been conditionally released. Our fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest, and the National League for Democracy now has seats in parliament after contesting last year’s by-elections. The government has also taken some positive steps toward economic reform […]

New HURFOM Report Highlights Use and Trading of Drugs in the Mon Community

The Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) released a report on drug problems in the Mon community, drawing on testimony from 140 individuals. The report aims to give a preliminary account of drug use and trading in Mon populations, exploring issues that range from the causes of rising youth drug use to the New Mon State Party’s (NMSP) recent anti-drugs campaign. HURFOM’s aim is to encourage a new focus on the issue, breaking a long-held silence to call for collaborative action from all relevant authorities […]

Open Letter to President U Thein Sein on the Arbitrary Arrest, Incommunicado Detention and Unfair Trial of Human Rights Defenders and Peaceful Protesters

Your Excellency,

Burma Partnership, a regional democracy and human rights advocacy network, and Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma, a political prisoner monitoring and advocacy group, along with the human rights organizations endorsing this letter, wish to draw your attention to the arbitrary arrest, prolonged incommunicado detention, and unfair trial of human rights defenders and peaceful protesters, most recently in Salingyi Township, Sagaing Region […]

အမ်ဳိးေစာင့္ဥပေဒ မူၾကမ္းတင္သြင္းရန္ၾကိဳးပန္းမႈႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

၂၀၁၃ ခုႏွစ္ ဇြန္လ ၁၃ ရက္ ေန႕တြင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ မ်ဳိးေစာင့္ဥပေဒဆိုင္ရာ အၾကိဳညွိႏႈိင္းပြဲမွ ဗုဒၶဘာသာင္ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ားအား ဘာသာျခားႏွင့္ အိမ္ေထာင္ျပဳျခင္းကို ကန္႕သတ္သည့္ ဥပေဒမူၾကမ္းကို တရား၀င္အတည္ျပဳႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကို တင္ျပမည့္အစီအစဥ္ကို ေၾကညာခဲ့သည္ […]

Karenni Women at the Border Holds First Convention Back Home

Karenni National Women’s Organization KNWO, the lead women’s organization along the border in Maehongson, Thailand announces the launch of its first Karenni All Women Convention- “Together as One” in Karenni State, Myanmar on June 19 – 21, 2013. ThoeMyar MiNyo, KNWO chairperson says that this first gathering would be a good sign that Karenni women along the border of Thailand and Burma see Burma government to seemingly open its door for the eventual return of Karenni people […]

Kachin National Organization’s Press Release

The Kachin National Organization (KNO) welcomes the talks that took place between the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the Government of Burma on May 28th-30th 2013 in Myitkyina, Kachin State. The KNO believes that the best and only way to solve Burma’s longstanding problems of conflict is through political dialogue, not military means […]