Vice Chair of Democratic Caucus Joe Crowley on the Announcement of an Election Date in Burma

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens, the Bronx), Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus and a leader in the House of Representatives on Burma, released the statement below on the announcement by Burma’s leaders that general elections will be held on November 8 […]

Advance Unedited Version: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee LEE

Since 2011, Myanmar has undergone far-reaching changes that have affected many aspects of life in the country. However, there continue to be signs of backtracking by the Government and increasing concerns over discrimination and ethnic conflict […]

Joint Statement on Election Support from the Embassies of Australia, Denmark, the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America

The embassies of Australia, Denmark, the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America warmly welcome the political reforms that have occurred in Myanmar, particularly the Myanmar Government’s announcement that a general election will be held in late […]

WORLD REPORT 2015

Burma

The reform process in Burma experienced significant slowdowns and in some cases reversals of basic freedoms and democratic progress in 2014. The government continued to pass laws with significant human rights limitations, failed to address calls for constitutional reform ahead of the 2015 elections, and increased arrests of peaceful critics, including land protesters and journalists […]

Burma: Rights Heading in Wrong Direction

(Bangkok, January 29, 2015) – Burma’s human rights situation declined in 2014, setting back progress made since the reform process began three years ago, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2015. Donors and influential governments have done little to pressure the army and government to keep reforms on track.

ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ မူေဘာင္ ေရးဆြဲေရးဆိုင္ရာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ပါတီမ်ား စံုညီအစည္းအေဝး သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

Constitutional Stalemate Sinks Hopes of Genuine Democracy and National Reconciliation

On Tuesday 18 November, Parliamentary Speaker of the lower house of the Burma Parliament Thura Shwe Mann boldly announced – to everyone’s great frustration but no one’s great surprise – that there would be no amendments made to the controversial 2008 Constitution before the 2015 national elections. So, what are the implications of this announcement, and why is the timing significant?
The implications for democracy in Burma are threefold. First, unless Article 59(f) is amended, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not be able to lead her NLD party and run for President in the 2015 elections. Although many have long feared the worst, thus far hope has persisted, especially in light of the NLD’s highly successful campaign in favor of constitutional amendment, which attracted five million signatories in support. However, Thura Shwe Mann now seems to be calling time on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s political career – and the dreams of so many long-suffering and long-hopeful Burmese – smoothly but ruthlessly side-lining her until such time as she can safely be labeled a political irrelevance, and dumped for good. At the same time, his comments can be interpreted as an oblique, discreet and wily announcement of his own ambitions for a tilt at the presidency next year.

Second, without a significant overhaul of the 2008 Constitution to ensure that the rights, autonomy and self-determination of ethnic minority nationalities are respected and enshrined in law, the peace process does not stand a chance. Fighting rages on in Kachin State – not to mention in northern Shan and Karen State – with no sign of abating. The day after Thura Shwe Mann made his announcement, 23 Kachin and other ethnic nationality soldiers were killed and as many as 15 wounded when Burma Army troops fired on a military training base in Laiza, the strategic headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army. […]

KIA ဗိုလ္ေလာင္း သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းသို႔ ပစ္ခတ္တိုက္ခိုက္မႈအေပၚ ညီညႊတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ၏ သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

Readout of the President’s Call to Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma

President Obama spoke by phone with Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. President Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi discussed the status of Burma’s ongoing political and economic reforms and the need to ensure an inclusive and credible process for conducting the 2015 elections […]

ညီေနာင္တိုင္းရင္းသားပါတီမ်ား ဖက္ဒေရးရွင္း၏ (၂၀)ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ပုံမွန္အစည္းအေ၀း သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္