Ongoing Conflict Continues to Engender Human Rights Abuses with no End in Sight

While the attention of the international community remains on developments in Naypyidaw, armed conflict between the Burma Army and ethnic resistance groups continues in Karen, Shan and Kachin States, largely outside the view of the international community. As part of these conflicts Thein Sein’s government has been targeting civilians for attacks that likely constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. On Friday 7 October the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) released a report entitled Burma’s Covered up War: Atrocities Against the Kachin People. The report describes the atrocities, including rape, torture, forced portering, murder and the use of human shields, committed by the regime and its army in the four months since the regime launched its attack on the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), breaking a seventeen year ceasefire […]

Civilian and Military Order Documents: March 2008 to July 2011

This report includes translated copies of 207 order documents issued by military and civilian officials of Burma’s central government, as well as non-state armed groups now formally subordinate to the state army as ‘Border Guard’ battalions, to village heads in eastern Burma between March 2008 and July 2011 […]

Kachin Conflict Escalates as Talk of Change Grows

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) is deeply concerned by reports of a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Kachin State, Burma. Information received by CSW from Kachin sources indicate an escalation in the Burma Army’s offensive against Kachin […]

ျပည္တြင္းျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအတြက္ တျပည္လံုးအတိုင္းအတာျဖင့္ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး လုပ္ေဆာင္ရန္ တိုက္တြန္း

ျမန္မာအစိုးရတပ္ႏွင့္ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္ (KIA) တို႕ လက္တေလာအေျခအေနတြင္ တိုက္ပြဲမ်ား ျပင္းထန္စြာ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနျခင္းအေပၚ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ား အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေနျဖင့္) အထူးစိုးရိမ္ ပူပန္မိသည္ […]

Burma Regime Demonstrates Continued Lack of Interest in Genuine National Reconciliation

Over the course of the past week the military regime has made several statements suggesting that it wishes to begin the national reconciliation process with ethnic armed groups and opposition activists. Unfortunately, none of these overtures can be considered genuine.

On 17 August, President Thein Sein gave a speech in which he invited any of the ethnic armed groups currently engaged in conflict with the Burma Army to “hold talks with respective [regional] governments if they really favour peace.” But by issuing the invitation only for groups to talk individually with regional government, the regime clearly signaled its intention to continue its policy of only piecemeal talks and agreements, part of its divide and rule strategy […]

Growing Numbers of Displaced Kachin Suffer from Burmese Regime’s Blockage of Aid

The refusal of Burma’s military regime to allow international aid to the growing numbers of war-affected Kachin is causing critical hardship for these displaced communities […]

Over 30,000 Displaced by Burma Army Attacks Face Humanitarian Crisis in Northern Shan State

Numbers of villagers fleeing Burma Army atrocities have soared to over 30,000 during recent intensified attacks against the Shan State Army North (SSA-N), causing a dire humanitarian crisis in northern Shan State […]

Burma Army gives rapists free rein in northern Shan State offensive

The Burma Army is clearly authorizing rape as a terror tactic in its offensive against the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), according to information documented by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) […]

From Prison to Front Line: Analysis of convict porter testimony 2009 – 2011

Over the last two decades, KHRG has documented the abuse of convicts taken by the thousands from prisons across Burma and forced to serve as porters for frontline units of Burma’s state army, the Tatmadaw. In the last two years alone, Tatmadaw units have used at least 1,700 convict porters during two distinct, ongoing combat operations in Karen State and eastern Bago Division; this report presents full transcripts and analysis of interviews with 59 who escaped […]

Defections Show Deep Dissatisfaction Within Burma’s Military Regime

On 4 July, the second highest-ranking diplomat at Burma’s Embassy in Washington, DC defected, claiming frustration at a lack of tangible change in the political system in his country.

Kyaw Win, a career diplomat, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upon defecting that outlined his reasons for leaving the embassy and seeking asylum. He asserts that his suggestions of “actions to improve bilateral relations between Burma and the US,” have resulted in him being “deemed dangerous” by the regime. In his letter, Kyaw Win continued, “Because of this, I am also convinced and live in fear that I will be prosecuted for my actions, efforts and beliefs when I return to Naypyidaw after completing my tour of duty here” […]