The Significance of Signing the Deed of Commitment to Peace and National Reconciliation

On Union Day, February 12, 2015, the President, senior Tatmadaw officers, both speakers of the Hluttaws, political parties, and four Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs)—the Restoration Council of Shan State, Karen National Union, Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, and KNU/KNLA Peace Council—signed the Deed of Commitment to Peace and National Reconciliation (the “Deed”) at Naypyidaw. By signing the Deed, the President is able to demonstrate a positive image to the country and the international community that Burma’s peace process is moving forward in advance of the election later this year […]

Myanmar: Prosecute Perpetrators, Not Human Rights Defenders Authorities Threaten Media & Critics for Implicating Military in Kachin Killings

(Yangon, February 3, 2015)— Myanmar authorities should stop prosecuting and threatening journalists and human rights defenders for reporting and speaking out about human rights abuses, Fortify Rights said today […]

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: Stop Christian cross Removal; Drop Trumped-up Charges

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) today urged the authorities in Burma to overturn an order to dismantle and remove a large Christian cross in the State capital Hakha, and to drop trumped-up charges against Tial Cem, a Chin elder involved in planting the cross. […]

British Government Defends Burma Reforms: Burma Campaign UK Responds

This briefing paper responds in detail to the British government’s misleading claims and the selective use of information that it uses to defend Burma’s reform process and its own trade-led policy […]

ကခ်င္ခရစ္ယာန္ လုပ္အားေပး ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦးတို႔အား အဓမၼျပဳက်င့္ၿပီး လူမဆန္စြာ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈအေပၚ အမ်ဳိးသား ဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္၏ ေၾကညာခ်က္

More Murders, Same Patterns as Burma Army Acts with Impunity

Yet another astonishing act of barbarity was committed by the Burma Army as two young ethnic Kachin teachers were raped and murdered in a village in northern Shan State. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case as this incident once again demonstrates the impunity that protects the perpetrators of such cruel acts.

According to Kachin Women’s Association – Thailand, (KWAT) Burma Army troops had arrived in the village of Kawng Kha Shabuk, near the town of Muse, northern Shan State on the morning of 19 January 2015. They had previously been involved in military operations against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). In the early hours of the morning, villagers heard screaming from the church compound where the two teachers were staying. They went to check but could not ascertain what had happened. The next morning, a neighbor went to the compound to find the two teachers dead with signs of sexual assault and of being viciously beaten. Boot marks were found nearby their living quarters. According to KWAT, “There is strong circumstantial evidence that the rape and killing was carried out by the Burma Army troops which had arrived on January 19. These troops were stationed on guard around the village, and no one else would have dared carry out these crimes with the soldiers present.” […]

Myanmar: Further steps needed to end army’s recruitment and use of children

London, 23 January 2015 – The Myanmar government should promptly implement measures to honour its stated commitment towards ending child recruitment and use, Child Soldiers International said in a report released today. While some important steps have been taken since the government signed the June 2012 Joint Action Plan with the UN, research conducted by Child Soldiers International found that children below 18 years of age continue to be forcibly recruited and used in the Tatmadaw Kyi, the Myanmar army. The report calls on the government to urgently address serious gaps in age verification protocols, recruitment procedures and accountability mechanisms to ensure children are not recruited and used as soldiers in state forces […]

႐ွမ္းျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း၊ ေကာင္ခါေဘာက္႐ြာတြင္ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းခ်ဳပ္ (KBC) မွ ေစတနာ့ဝန္ထမ္း ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦး အဓမၼျပဳက်င့္ အသတ္ခံရျခင္းအေပၚ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္( ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္ ပြင့္လင္းလူ႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္း) မွ ေပးပို႔ေသာ ဝမ္းနည္းေၾကာင္း သဝဏ္လႊာ

၁။ ၂ဝ၁၅ ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇန္နဝါရီလ (၁၉)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ႐ွမ္းျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ေကာင္ခါေဘာက္ရြာရွိ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္း အသင္းခ်ဳပ္ (KBC) မွ ေစတနာ့ဝန္ထမ္း ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦးျဖစ္ေသာ မရန္လုရာႏွင့္ တန္ေဘာင္ေခါန္နန္႔ဒင့္ တို႔ ႏွစ္ဦးမွာ အသင္းေတာ္ ဝင္းအတြင္း၌ပင္ အဓမၼျပဳက်င့္ အသတ္ခံရေၾကာင္း ၾကားသိရသည့္ အတြက္ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို႔မွ ေၾကကြဲ တုန္လႈပ္မိပါသည္။ […]

Ongoing Sexual Violence Highlights Urgent Need for Burma Army to Stop Offensives and Pull Back Troops from Kachin Areas

(ခ်င္းမိုင္။ ၂၀၁၅ ခုႏွစ္ ဇန္ႏၷ၀ါရီ ၂၂ ရက္) ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း တနလၤာေန႔က ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦး မုဒိန္းျပဳက်င့္ၿပီး သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရျခင္းသည္ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္ အေနျဖင့္ အရပ္သား ျပည္သူလူထုအား ထိတ္လန္႔ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕ေစရန္ လိင္ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈကို ဆက္လက္ က်င့္သံုးေနဆဲျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေထာက္အထား တရပ္ပင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္း အသင္းေတာ္ ေစတနာ့၀န္ထမ္း ဆရာမမ်ားျဖစ္ေသာ အသက္ ၂၀ အရြယ္ မရမ္လုရာႏွင့္ တန္ေဘာလ္ေခါန္နန္စင္ တို႔ ႏွစ္ဦးသည္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ေကာင္ခါရွဘုတ္ရြာရွိ သူတို႔၏ ဘုရားေက်ာင္း ၀င္း အတြင္းတြင္ အုပ္စုလိုက္ မုဒိန္းျပဳက်င့္ၿပီး သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းကို ခံခဲ့ၾကရသည္။ […]