Burma’s 2015 Elections and the 2008 Constitution

With elections scheduled in Burma on 8 November, this briefing contains detailed analysis of what is likely to happen after election day, the process of the elections, and key election statistics […]

၂၀၁၅ အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ ရခုိင္ျပည္လုံးဆုိင္ရာေက်ာင္းသားႏွင့္လူငယ္မ်ားအစည္းအ႐ုံး (AASYC) မွ ထုုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

(၁၉၆၂)ခုႏွစ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေန၀င္း အာဏာသိမ္းလိုက္ခ်ိန္မွ (၂၀၁၀)ခုႏွစ္ထိ ျမန္မာျပည္သူလူထုအေနျဖင့္ မိမိတို႔၏ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူအစိုးရအား လြတ္လပ္စြာ ေ႐ြးေကာက္တင္ေျမွာက္ခြင့္မရခဲ့ၾကေပ […]

Statement by Kawthoolei Armed Forces on signing NCA

Our First Karen President in history never signed to be a part of Burma, or a part of a Union to gain the Independence of Burma from the British. (Neither did the Arakan, Mon or Karenni) […]

Burma 2014 Human Rights Report

Burma’s parliamentary government is headed by President Thein Sein. In 2012 the country held largely transparent and inclusive by-elections in which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, chaired by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 43 of 45 contested seats of a total 664 seats in the legislature. Constitutional provisions grant one-quarter of all national and one-third of all regional and state parliamentary seats to active-duty military appointees and provide that the military indefinitely assume power over all branches of the government should the president declare a national state of emergency. The ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) continued to hold an overwhelming majority of the seats in the national parliament and state and regional assemblies, and active-duty military officers continued to wield authority at many levels of government. There is no civilian control of the military; police forces also report to the military through the minister of home affairs […]

Will the President of Myanmar Keep His Promise?

The veneer of progress is wearing thin in Myanmar. A year ago, the President of Myanmar, Thein Sein, promised to release all prisoners of conscience. Earlier this year, to mark Myanmar’s Independence Day, the President ordered the release of thousands of prisoners. Now one year on from the promise to release all prisoners of conscience, the promise remains unfulfilled. Even more troubling is the fact that the government is arresting more prisoners of conscience […]

Now is the Time to Act, Sexual Violence Must End in Burma

On 10 June 2014, the Burma government prepared to sign the ‘Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict’ at the end of a three-day global summit, which aimed to “shatter the culture of impunity for sexual violence in conflict.” On the same day, a woman was brutally beaten by a Burma Army soldier during an attempted rape in Rezua, Chin State. The eyewitnesses who spoke to the Chin Human Rights Organization said that the women was held down by the soldier, while he repeatedly beat her. She was rushed to the hospital and is fortunately now in recovery.

However, this brutal event has lead to a series of demonstrations in Rezua and Matupi, Chin State this week, calling for an end to sexual violence. According to The Irrawaddy, protesters held placards that stated: “Stop raping; We are humans, not animals. We are humans, not property.” Though the organizers requested to hold the rally, the local police denied their applications and they have been arrested for staging a peaceful demonstration without permission, ironically under the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law.

This recent case of attempted rape is not a one-off incident of a rogue Burma Army soldier. A report produced by Women’s League of Burma (WLB) ‘Same Patterns, Same Impunity’ demonstrates how the sexual violence inflicted by the Burma Army soldiers are systematic in nature and a part of a wider structural system of politicizing women’s bodies and abusing them as instruments of war and oppression. The data collected by WLB and its members found that since the 2010 elections, over 100 cases of rape has been documented, of which 47 were brutal gang rapes and victims were as young as eight years old. Most of the documented cases were linked to Kachin and Northern Shan State where military offensives have been taking place since 2011, indicating that rape and sexual violence is in fact, used as a weapon in an attempt to demoralize the ethnic communities and to assert dominance over them […]

Burma: A Year After Elections, Rights Concerns Persist

Positive actions by Burma’s new government should not obscure the serious human rights problems persisting in the country one year after the November 2010 elections, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released on November 3, 2011 […]

Post Election Chronology of Armed Conflict in Burma (7 November 2010 – 3 June 2011)

NDD is researching and documenting armed conflicts occurred throughout Burma after Burma’s 2010 Elections and has produced Post Election Chronology of Armed Conflicts in Burma. The report files important incidences of fighting covering 7 November 2010 to 3 June 2011 […]

Situation Update: The UN Must Establish a Commission of Inquiry in Burma

Despite the expectations of the international community, there has been no genuine progress towards democracy and peace since the November 2010 elections.

This briefer outlines the regime’s manipulative program of window dressing and it’s failure to take concrete steps towards meaningful democratic reforms. It concludes with recommendations to the United Nations, including the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into serious human rights violations in Burma […]

Report on the Human Rights Situation in Burma (January – March 2011)

The Network for Human Rights Documentation – Burma (ND-Burma) launches its periodic report online. The findings of this report demonstrate from January through March 2011 ongoing human rights violations committed by the regime and its proxies after the Election and just become new structure […]