Timely Report Documents the Transformation of Burma’s Military Regime’s Paramilitary Organization to Political Party

The Network for Democracy and Development (NDD) released a report today entitled, “Burma: A Violent Past to a Brutal Future; The Transformation of a Paramilitary Organization into a Political Party.” The report looks at the history of the junta-backed social organization, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), and its transformation to the political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

The report’s release comes in the final week before the first elections in Burma in 20 years, polls that have been widely criticized as being not free or fair […]

Intimidation, Imprisonment and Repression: The Road to Military Victory in the 2010 Elections

This 2010 Election report of ND-Burma is based on 247 cases researched throughout Burma. The report presents violations of Human Rights under 9 headings explaining how the military government has committed widespread violations to ensure victory of USDP party in the 2010 election […]

Weekly Political Events Regarding the SPDC’s Election (040-2010)

In this week’s report, you will find:

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon demanded the SPDC regime again on October 29 to free all political prisoners and open the way to national reconciliation, saying that it was not late yet to carry out genuine democratization in Burma.

• Local authorities and SPDC army joined hands to extort money through Naungpein village tract headmen on the pretext of polling-station construction and military outpost fencing, local residents reported.

ယခုအပတ္ NDD ၏သတင္းမွတ္တမ္းတြင္ –

• ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္မွန္သည့္ဒီမိုကေရစီအသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းေရးအတြက္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ အခ်ိန္မေႏွာင္းေသးေၾကာင္း၊ စစ္အစိုးရအေနျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားအားလံုးကို ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးျပီး အမ်ဳိးသား ျပန္လည္ရင္ၾကားေစ့ေရးအတြက္ လမ္းဖြင့္ေပးရန္ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ ဘန္ကီမြန္းက ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၂၉ ရက္ေန႕တြင္ ထပ္မံတိုက္တြန္း ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္သည္။ […]

Don’t legitimize Burma’s elections

By Ashin Issariya

The government that emerges after Nov. 7 will be no less corrupt and unlawful than the present one.All actions are based on intentions. For instance, the goal of monks is to bring peace and kindness to the people, and so Burmese trust their actions. In contrast, when the military regime says they will hold elections, Burmese are skeptical because they know the intention is only to maintain power at their expense.

When Burma’s monks marched through the streets in 2007, we did so because we saw the pain of the people, and knew we had to respond. People have suffered needlessly for many years because of the military system of control and intimidation […]

Poverty Shades Elections in Eastern Burma

Regardless of the outcome in Burma’s first elections for twenty years, the incoming government will inherit a legacy of widespread and chronic poverty throughout the country. Government statistics disguise the extent of suffering, but aid agencies report the vulnerabilities in eastern Burma have been exacerbated by protracted armed conflict and restrictions on humanitarian access […]

“This is Not Democracy” – New Short Film About the 2010 Elections

Burma Partnership, in collaboration with Kestrel Media, is releasing today a 17-minute film that shows why the people of Burma do not believe that the upcoming elections will bring any genuine democratic progress to their country.

“This is Not Democracy” examines the historical context of the current elections, illustrating how the military regime’s so-called “Roadmap to Democracy”, including the 2008 Constitution, is nothing more than an attempt to cement military rule under a civilian façade […]

Action alert: calling for protests against ‘shame elections’ in Burma

Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) is calling on supporters across Canada to hold a ‘day of action’ on Nov. 6, 2010, in protest of the ‘shame elections’ scheduled on Nov. 7 in Burma.

We are deeply troubled with the ongoing elections in Burma that is not even meeting the lowest level of international standards and the process being carried out in a manner that is not inclusive, transparent and free […]

Activists urge ASEAN, UN to quickly act on Burma; see ‘zero democratic integrity’ on 2010 polls

With only 15 days to go before the scheduled November 7 multi-party elections in Burma, solidarity activists under the Free Burma Coalition – Philippines (FBC-Phils) today staged a rally in front of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) as part of the Global Day of Action denouncing what they call Burma’s “military elections” […]

Elections in Burma designed to legitimise military rule: Australia

Burma Campaign Australia congratulates Australia for saying the elections in Burma are designed to legitimise military rule in Burma.

During recent Senate Estimates in Australia the First Assistant Secretary South-East Asia Division of DFAT* Hugh Borrowman answered questions about Australia’s position on the upcoming elections […]

Activists to Hold Global Actions Against Military Elections in Burma

Burma Groups and Supporters Show their Support for the People of Burma’s Resistance

In the final two weeks before the military regime’s elections, Burma’s exiles and their supporters will be holding a series of actions around the world to show their solidarity with the people of Burma and their resistance against the elections […]