Prominent Burmese Activist Birthday in Prison

“Dear Mr. President, release him as a birthday gift”, Zarganar, famous Burmese comedian, made the call at Min Ko Naing’s birthday event in Rangoon on Oct. 18, attended by hundreds of colleagues and friends including Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi […]

Joint Statement on the 8th World Youth Day for Democracy

Today, October 18, 2011, marks the 8th World Youth Day for Democracy, a day when students and youth around the world stand in solidarity with young people worldwide for taking part in pro-democracy activities. On this day, three student and […]

ယေန႕သည္ အဌမ အၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကမာၻ႕ဒီမိုကေရစီ လူငယ္မ်ားေန႕ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ထိုေန႕တြင္ တကမာၻလံုးမွ လူငယ္ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားသည္ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးအတြက္ လႈပ္ရွားရင္း ေဘးဒုကၡမ်ဳိးစံု ၾကံေတြ႕ေနရေသာ […]

Burma: Army Committing Abuses in Kachin State

Burma’s armed forces have committed serious abuses against ethnic Kachin civilians in renewed fighting in Kachin State, Human Rights Watch said today. Since hostilities began over five months ago against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Burmese armed forces have […]

Letter to the Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. R.M. Marty M. Natalegawa

We write today, on behalf of the Task Force on ASEAN and Burma (TFAB), in response to your 19 September statement that you would “be keen to listen and to hear the voice of civil society” on whether Burma should be granted the chairmanship of ASEAN. We thank you for […]

Concerns over Immigration Related Developments that Jeopardize the Security of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Malaysia

We, the undersigned organizations who work closely with refugees and asylum seekers from Burma living in Malaysia, express our deep concern over two recent immigration related developments that jeopardize­­ the security of refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia […]

CSW Urges International Community to Address Impunity and Maintain Pressure for Real Change

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) today called on the international community to maintain pressure on the regime in Burma to implement significant and substantial change, release all political prisoners, stop war crimes and crimes against humanity and end impunity […]

Burma Political Prisoner Releases Not Enough To Justify Lifting of Sanctions

The European Parliamentary Caucus on Burma (EPCB) welcomes the release of around 200 political prisoners in Burma. The release of all political prisoners, along with the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire, are essential first steps in creating a climate in which there can be a genuine […]

BURMA: National Reconciliation Through Hostage Taking

Among the many analyses of the release of a couple of hundred political prisoners in a total of over 6000 detainees let out of Burma’s prisons last week, the most precise and succinct came from a famous comedian, Zarganar. Imprisoned for criticising the relief effort […]

AHRDO Welcomes the Recent Release of Prisoners, Including Political Prisoners, Under the Thein Sein Government of Burma

Arakan Human Rights and Development Organisation (AHRDO) welcomes the release on 12 October 2011 of 6,359 prisoners. As of October 13 according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP-Burma) approximately 220 political prisoners including […]

Piecemeal Releases of Political Prisoners do not Demonstrate Genuine Commitment to Necessary Reforms

The release this week of an estimated 220 political prisoners in Burma comes as a relief to their families and colleagues, but again fall far short of a key benchmark for reconciliation and genuine transition to democracy, namely the unconditional and immediate release of all remaining political prisoners and the cessation of military attacks on civilians,