Lawmakers and Civil Society Call on ASEAN to Delay Burma Chairmanship Decision

Representatives from Burma’s civil society based in the Thai-Burma border areas held a press conference today calling on ASEAN to delay their decision about Burma’s bid for the 2014 chairmanship until the country takes substantial key steps […]

Opium Cultivation Surging in Constituency of Burma’s New Ruling Party

A new briefing paper by the Palaung Women’s Organization (PWO) exposes a dramatic increase in opium cultivation in Burma’s northern Shan State in the constituency of a drug lord elected into the new military-backed parliament […]

Promoting Reconciliation in Burma

An alliance of humanitarian agencies working with displaced persons from Burma/Myanmar believes the current window of democratic reform is the best opportunity in decades to resolve ethnic conflict. The prospect of a genuine and inclusive process of national […]

Kachin Churches Attacked, Women Raped and Civilians Killed by Military While Regime Talks of Reform

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) is deeply concerned by reports that the Burma Army are directly attacking churches in Kachin State, beating pastors and church members, setting homes alight and raping, torturing and killing civilians.

According to CSW’s sources, on 16 October soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 438 seized control of a Roman Catholic Church in Namsan Yang village, Waimaw township, where 23 worshippers, mostly women and elderly people, had gathered for the 8am Sunday service […]

ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္၏ ၄၉ ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ေမြးေန႕ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

ယေန႕သည္ ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈ၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးျဖစ္သူ ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္၏ ၄၉ ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ေမြးေန႕ ျဖစ္ေပသည္။ “မ်က္ရည္ေတြ သိမ္းႏိုင္မွ က်ေနာ္ အားလံုးကို မဂၤလာပါလို႕ ႏႈတ္ခြန္းဆက္တာ အဓိပၸါယ္ ရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္ဗ်ာ။ […]

Japan: Press Burma’s Foreign Minister on Rights

Political Prisoners, Not Just Aid and Trade, Should Top Agenda

Japanese officials should press Burma’s visiting foreign minister on the need for genuine reforms to improve human rights in Burma, Human Rights Watch said today. Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin will visit Tokyo from October 20 to 22, 2011.

Wunna Maung Lwin’s visit to Japan is the first by a foreign minister from Burma in 16 years. His meetings with Japanese officials are expected to include discussion of increased development assistance and possible trade agreements […]

AAPP Urges the External Hospitalization for a Critically Ill Political Prisoner

AAPP has learned that Nay Myo Zin has been repeatedly denied vital medical care and has been unable to sit or walk without severe pain, causing him to forego his family visits. His repeated denials come at a time when the U Thein Sein administration granted an amnesty to those prisoners in poor health […]

Civil Society Responds to Indonesia: Burma is Not Ready to Chair ASEAN

On 18 October, the Task Force on ASEAN and Burma (TFAB), a network of Burma’s exiled civil society groups, sent an open letter to Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to call on ASEAN to delay its decision regarding Burma’s bid for the bloc’s chairmanship in […]

Detainees Swap between Malaysia and Myanmar

AIPMC notes with serious concern on recent developments of the Malaysian government’s plan to implement the ‘detainees exchange program’ with Myanmar. This plan will result around 1,000 people from Myanmar, detained in Malaysia, deported from the country […]

UK Government – No Review or Dilution of Burma Sanctions Yet

Burma Campaign UK today welcomed a statement by the British government that they will not review or dilute Burma sanctions yet. The statement follows the disappointingly low number of political prisoners released in an amnesty last Wednesday […]