Statement of civil society organization on students’ actions against National Education Law following the overdue 60-day deadline for negotiation

Education sector reform during transition period is very important and vital for the future of Myanmar
The 60-day period for negotiation declared by students has passed and students have resumed their protest activities against the National Education Law. Student from Mandalay have begun their march from Mandalay to Yangon on the 20 January while students from other parts of the country have carried out their protest activities in their respective areas as well […]

Burma’s Religious Conversion Bill is “Major Setback for Religious Freedom and Human Rights”

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has expressed profound concern that a new law restricting religious conversions, passed earlier this week by the upper house of Burma’s parliament, would be a major setback for religious freedom and human rights in the country. […]

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။ […]

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.” […]

Statement of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar

Today is the final day of my second official visit to Myanmar as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. It has been a visit rich in its diversity, geography, viewpoints and experiences. I have engaged with government officials, parliamentarians, religious and community leaders, civil society representatives, victims of human rights violations and members of the international community. My discussions have been frank, open, sometimes passionate but always welcoming. I am feeling more and more a part of this country and am privileged to be accompanying the people of Myanmar on this journey of reform towards greater enjoyment of human rights. My visit would not have been possible without the genuine cooperation of the Government of Myanmar and the committed support of the United Nations Country Team. I wish to express my sincere appreciation to both organisations […]

Burma: Amend Biased Citizenship Law

(New York) – The Burmese government should accept the United Nations call to amend the discriminatory law that deprives Rohingya Muslims of Burmese citizenship, Human Rights Watch said today in a letterto President Thein Sein.

On December 29, 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the Burmese government to amend the 1982 Citizenship Law so that it no longer discriminates against the Rohingya. Successive Burmese governments, including the current administration of Thein Sein, have used the law to deny citizenship to an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million Rohingya by excluding them from the official list of 135 national races eligible for full citizenship […]

Letpadaung Crisis Takes a Turn for the Worse

As 2014 ended seeing Burma’s reforms backsliding and the peace process stalling, Burma welcomed 2015 with many unresolved issues continuing to face people across the country.

The ongoing dispute between local villagers and the Burma Government and Wanbao, a Chinese mining company, over land grabs and environmental damage continues to rumble on as police shot dead Daw Khin Win as she was demonstrating against the controversial Letpadaung mining project in Sagaing Region. Meanwhile, the police continue to arrest and detain activists who speak out against such violence on politically motivated charges, underlining the dire need for legal and judicial reform and the complete lack of the rule of law in Burma […]

Statement from First European Rohingya Conference

Europe based Rohingyas held a very first conference in Esbjerg, Denmark from 27th to 28th December 2014. All Rohingya organizations in Europe joined to work collectively for the suffering of Rohingyas in Arakan State and to raise stronger voice against quasi-civilian Burmese government […]

Our Lives Not For Sale: Tavoyan Women Speak Out Against the Dawei Special Economic Zone Project

This report exposes the damaging impacts of the Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) project on rural Tavoyan women living in six affected villages in southern Burma. Most of the local population are fisherfolk and farmers, who have lived sustainably for generations in this isolated coastal area. They have been given no choice about accepting this multi-billion dollor Thailand-Burma joint venture, which will turn their pristine lands into the largest petrochemical estate in Southeast Asia […]