Myanmar: Free Prisoners of Conscience in Rakhine State End Ongoing Persecution of Rohingya

(SITTWE—March 14, 2015) The government of Myanmar should immediately and unconditionally release a group of five Rohingya prisoners of conscience being held in Sittwe prison, Rakhine State, Fortify Rights said today. The group includes three prominent Rohingya community leaders imprisoned earlier this week […]

UN Myanmar Rights Expert: Backtracking on Democratic Space Gains Momentum in Election Year

YANGON / GENEVA – “Valuable gains made in the area of freedom of expression and assembly risk being lost,” United Nations Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee said at the end of her ten-day official visit* to the country. “Indeed, there are signs that since my last visit, restrictions and harassment on civil society and the media may have worsened.” […]

Myanmar’s Proposed Race and Religion Laws are Discriminatory and should be Scrapped

BANGKOK — Southeast Asian lawmakers today called on Myanmar to scrap a package of discriminatory laws to be submitted for review by the parliament, saying they violate international human rights laws and threaten to destabilize the county in its transition to democracy. […]

The FCO’s Human Rights Work 2013

Summary

In this report, we examine the 2013 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Report on Human Rights and Democracy (2013 Report), and highlight some areas of particular concern. Promoting human rights should be a foreign policy priority, but for this to be meaningful, we believe that the Department would benefit from the establishment of clearly defined objectives and benchmarks to measure the outcomes of all of its human rights policies, and further prominence being given to these in the Report.

Countries of concern

The FCO designated 28 countries of concern in its 2013 report, where it judged the gravity of the human rights abuses to be so severe that a particular focus should be applied. We have concentrated our attention on three of these countries: Sri Lanka, Burma, and Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Favourable trade concessions to the EU market should be removed from Sri Lanka if the Government of Sri Lanka continues to deny the OHCHR investigation team access into the country. The Government should advocate re-imposition of sanctions by the EU if there is no improvement in the human rights situation in Burma. The human rights of Israeli, Palestinian and Bedouin citizens living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories continue to be of serious concern to the UK. […]

BROUK Welcomes US Senate Resolution on Rohingya

Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK today welcomed the introduction of a Resolution in the US Senate condemning all forms of persecution and discrimination against the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group from Burma. BROUK would like to express many thanks to US Senator Menedez and Senator Mark Kirk for introducing this resolution. […]

KIA ဗိုလ္သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းသို႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရစစ္တပ္မွ လက္နက္ႀကီးျဖင့္ ပစ္ခတ္တိုက္ခိုက္မႈအေပၚ ရကၡိဳင့္တပ္မေတာ္၏ သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

International Community Silent on New Rohingya Crackdown

International Community Silent on New Rohingya Crackdown Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK today called on the international community to end its silence over a new wave of repression against the Rohingya which began in September. […]

Myanmar: A Tipping Point for Rohingya Rights?

Two years after a wave of violence hit the region, Myanmar’s Rakhine State has become a segregated zone. Two million ethnic Rakhine live apart from 1.2 million stateless Rohingya, who are trapped inside displacement camps or barred from leaving their villages. Ending this segregation and protecting the rights of the Rohingya are necessary components of Myanmar’s move toward democracy. However, the Rakhine leadership has rejected – both politically and with force – any reintegration of the two communities, and it is seeking to exclude the Rohingya from any role in the state’s development, distribution of resources, and political representation. […]

Obama’s Chance to Make Burma a Genuine Foreign Policy Success

As President Obama prepares to make his second visit to Burma, it is worth looking back at the promises made to him by Burma’s President Thein Sein on his last visit in November 2012 and to assess the worth of these promises. Burma, after all, is largely seen as a foreign policy success by the current administration amid the mess of Ukraine, Libya and the threat of ISIS […]

Burma: Religious Freedom and Related Human Rights Violations are Hindering Broader Reforms

Executive Summary

The dramatic political developments in Burma in recent years are of historical and geopolitical significance. Bur-ma has progressed much further than most might have imagined possible only a few short years ago. Despite these achievements, Burma still has a long journey along the road to democracy and respect for human rights. Serious violations of religious freedom and human rights continue, accompanied by disturbing evidence of prejudice and intolerance, trends that will inevitably and dramatically impact the prospects for a brighter future. In short, the political reform process in Burma is at great risk of deteriorating if religious freedom and the right to equal treatment under the law are not honored and protected. […]