Burma – Where Classrooms are replaced with Jail Cells

On 2 July 2015, five student protestors were charged under the controversial Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law for taking part in a protest concerning the overpowering influence of the Burma Army in Parliament. An additional four students were arrested after being involved in a graffiti protest on the campus of Yadanabon University in Mandalay. The demonstrations came as a result of the ongoing detention and subsequent unfair trials of students protesting the national education law along with the failure of Parliament to pass five out of six proposed amendments to the 2008 Constitution, most notably Article 436 […]

(၅၃) နွစ္ေျမာက္ ၇ ရက္ ဇူလိုင္အထိမ္းအမွတ္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ ေက်ာင္းသားလူငယ္မ်ားကြန္ဂရက္၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

၇ရက္ ဇူလိုင္ေန႔ဆိုသည္မွာ ဗိုလ္ေနဝင္းစစ္အုပ္စုမွ နိုင္ငံေရးဇာတ္ခံုေပၚတက္လာၿပီးတာနဲ႔ ‘ဓါးဓါးျခင္းလွံလွံျခင္း’ ရင္ဆိုင္ေျဖရွင္းမည္ဟုႀကံဳးဝါးကာ ေက်ာင္းသားထုနွင္႔ျပည္သူမ်ားကိုပစ္ခတ္သတ္ျဖတ္ခဲ႔ၿပီး သမိုင္းဝင္(တကသ)အေဆာက္ အဦးကို ဒိုက္နမိုက္ျဖင္႔ၿဖိဳခြဲကာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ရဲ႕ ရက္စက္ယုတ္မာမႈမ်ားကိုေဖာ္ျပသည္႔လိုက္သည့္ သမိုင္းဝင္ေန႔ျဖစ္ သလိုေက်ာင္းသားထုရဲ႕ စစ္အာဏာရွင္တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရးအတြက္ တိုက္ပြဲဝင္ခြပ္ေဒါင္းအလံကို အျမင္႔မားဆံုးလႊင္႔ထူၿပီးျပည္သူ လူထု ကိုေသြးနဲ ႔မိီးေမာင္း ထိုးျပခဲ႔သည္႔ ေန႔လည္းျဖစ္ပါသည္ […]

Constitutional Crackdown Brings A Dark Day for Democracy in Burma

After an increasingly dispiriting start to 2015, and with landmark national elections now likely only five months away, Burma’s flimsy “reform process” is unraveling inexorably. First there was the 10 March crackdown on the nationwide student protest movement at Letpadan, Bago Region; then the Committee to Protect Journalists’ revealed that, despite much-heralded media reforms in 2011, Burma featured yet again in its 2015 rogues’ gallery of top 10 most censored countries on the planet; more recently, the refugee crisis, triggered mostly by severe state and religious persecution of the Rohingya and other Muslim minorities in Arakan State, caught the world’s attention. Meanwhile, grave human rights abuses – including sexual violence – continue unabated in ethnic conflict areas, especially in war-torn Kachin State, parts of northern Shan State and Arakan State, bringing the total number of IDPs in Burma to over 660,000.

The Burma Government Must Stop Condoning Sexual Violence in Conflict Areas

On 5 June 2015, Burma Campaign UK released a briefing paper that illustrated the Burma Government’s lack of action towards eliminating sexual violence since it signed the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict (the Declaration) last year. As a signatory to the declaration, Burma agreed to prioritize prevention of sexual violence and to hold all perpetrators accountable to the full extent of the international law, amongst other related commitments.

Unfortunately, not only has Burma ignored its commitments to the Declaration, it is also actively violating it, as cases of rape and sexual assault continue to emerge from conflict areas. According to Burma Campaign UK, “Given the widespread nature of sexual violence by the Burmese Army, the refusal to act, and now the violation of commitments made in the Declaration, it can only be concluded that the use of rape and sexual violence by the Burmese Army is condoned at the highest level of the government and the military.” […]

Familiar Blocks on the Road to Peace

As the ethnic armed groups’ summit in Panghsang, Shan State concluded on 6 May 2015, familiar obstacles still loom large in the peace process. Namely, the 2008 Constitution, continued attacks and human rights violations committed by the Burma Army, and a lack of trust. Various commentators and organizations, including Burma Partnership, sounded words of caution after the over excitement caused by the agreement in principle of the draft nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), and those words of caution are salient today as peace remains out of sight.

The summit in Panghsang, territory controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), brought together 12 major ethnic armed groups for talks that lasted six days. Groups that were present included those bearing the brunt of Burma Army offensives the past few weeks, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Arakan Army (AA), and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). In fact, as talks were being held, the Burma Army attacked Kachin Independence Army (KIA) positions with airstrikes. It is not just the armed groups themselves who are bearing the brunt of attacks, but horrific human rights violations committed by the Burma Army on fleeing ethnic Kokang villagers, such as extrajudicial killings, including beheadings, are creating deep-seated fear among those who have been displaced by the conflict, but who are being pressured to return by Burma authorities […]

Statement No. (6/2015) The case Involving the Death of Ko Aung Naing (a) Ko Aung Kyaw Naing (a) Ko Par Gyi

1. With regard to the case involving the death of Ko Aung Naing (a) Ko Aung Kyaw Naing (a) Ko Par Gyi, the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission under instructions from the President’s Office formed a team to investigate into the matter. A special report on the findings of the team was submitted to the President’s Office and a statement for information to the public was released on 2 December 2014. The statement included a recommendation that the case should be heard in a civil court for transparency […]

Political Reform and Ethnic Peace in Burma/Myanmar: The Need for Clarity and Achievement

For many citizens a countdown begins to a crucial general election later this year, with warnings of a halt in reform momentum and a more troubling reality behind many of the socio-political changes in the country […]

Burma: Human Rights Council urges Burma to address human rights violations but overlooks suppression of student protests

The 28th session of the UN Human Rights Council today passed, by consensus, resolution 28/21 entitled ‘Situation of Human Rights Myanmar’ and extended by one year the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar […]

28th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council: Oral Statement Delivered by Khin Ohmar on behalf of Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)

Thank you, Mr. President. FORUM-ASIA, in solidarity with Equality Myanmar and Burma Partnership welcomes the Special Rapporteur’s report […]

Statement from the Open Government Partnership Awareness Workshop for Civil Society

Over 193 representatives from 80 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and networks in Myanmar participated in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) awareness-raising workshop in Yangon from 19-20 January 2015. The objective of this workshop was to raise awareness and understand the potential benefits, opportunities, weaknesses and concerns regarding Myanmar’s participation in the OGP in the context of the recent transition process and the political developments in Myanmar since 2011 […]