Bi Mon Te Nay Journalists Must Be Freed!

Burma Campaign UK today called for the immediate and unconditional release of the Bi Mon Te Nay journalists. Bi Mon Te Nay Journal’s three journalists Kyaw Zaw Hein, Win Tin, Thura Aung, and owners Yin Min Htun and Kyaw Min Khaing were arrested in July, and were investigated by the Special Branch police in Burma […]

Thousands in Mandalay Rally for Faith Laws

MANDALAY — Thousands of Buddhist monks, nuns and laypeople marched through downtown Mandalay on Thursday afternoon to demand that the government take action on a set of highly controversial and currently stagnant interfaith bills.

Organized by the upper Burma chapter of the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, locally referred to as the Ma Ba Tha, the rally was joined by sympathizers from several nearby townships including Sagaing, Myingyun and Mandalay’s immediate surrounds […]

Sagaing Protestors Say Drug Addicts Need Help

Protestors took to the streets of Banmauk in Sagaing Division this weekend, calling for official measures to tackle rampant drug problems in the region.

“My husband died from drug addiction and it left me scared, angry and inconsolable,” said one protestor. “I get very upset seeing young people whose lives are dictated by their drug habit – it brings tears to my eyes […]

အလြတ္တန္းသတင္းေထာက္ ကိုေအာင္ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ (ခ) ကိုပါႀကီးကို ပစ္ခတ္ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈအား ပြင့္လင္းျမင္သာစြာ စုံစမ္းေဖာ္ထုတ္၍ ျပစ္မႈ က်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ားကို ျပည္သူေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ မွန္ကန္စြာ တရားစီရင္ေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုျခင္း

AAPP’s Statement Regarding the Death of Freelance Journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, aka Par Gyi

The death of well known freelance journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, aka Par Gyi, while in military custody in Kyaikmayaw Township, Mon State, comes as a shocking reminder of how extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention and torture are still being used against citizens in Burma […]

Pro-Business or Pro-Poor?

Making Sense of recently unveiled Draft National Land Use Policy

October 18, 2014 saw the official unveiling by the government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar of its much-awaited draft national land use policy. Once it is finalized, the new policy will guide the establishment of a new overarching framework for the governance of tenure of land and related natural resources like forests for years to come. As such, it is of vital importance.

This preliminary assessment aims to shed light on the key aspects of the draft policy and its potential implications for the country’s majority rural working poor, especially its ethnic minority peoples, although they are not the only ones whose future prospects hinge on how this policy making process will unfold. […]

ညီညြတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား လူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ၏ ပထမအႀကိမ္ ေကာင္စီ မ်က္ႏွာစုံညီ အစည္းအေ၀းမွ ထုတ္ျပန္ေက်ညာခ်က္

Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The situation in Rakhine State contains a toxic mixture of historical centre-periphery tensions, serious intercommunal and inter-religious conflict with minority Muslim communities, and extreme poverty and under-development. This led to major violence in 2012 and further sporadic outbreaks since then. The political temperature is high, and likely to increase as Myanmar moves closer to national elections at the end of 2015. It represents a significant threat to the overall success of the transition, and has severely damaged the reputation of the government when it most needs international support and investment. Any policy approach must start from the recognition that there will be no easy fixes or quick solutions. The problems faced by Rakhine State are rooted in decades of armed violence, authoritarian rule and state-society conflict. This crisis has affected the whole of the state and all communities within it. It requires a sustained and multi-pronged response, as well as critical humanitarian and protection interventions in the interim […]

Media Release – Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State

The highly volatile situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State adds dangerously to the country’s political and religious tensions. Long-term, incremental solutions are critical for the future of Rakhine State and the country as a whole […]

Over 650 Myanmar/Burma Civil Society Actors Speak Out on the Reality of the Transition

The forum titled, “Civil Societies’ Review on Myanmar/Burma’s Transition Process: Prospects for 2015 and Beyond”, held on 15 – 17 October 2014 at the Myanmar Christian Fellowship of the Blind Center in Rangoon, brought together over 650 representatives from 257 organizations and networks from across the country and border areas to discuss and strategize a wide range of key issues currently facing Burma in the context of the recent economic and political reforms since 2011. This is the first forum of this scale to assess the reform and the wide range of problems currently facing Burma.

Despite the hailed “transition to democracy,” exalted particularly by the international community, civil society organizations (CSOs) spoke of the decades old challenges that remain unresolved, the stagnation of the reform process, and new emerging issues, in addition to the need for meaningful inclusion of the voices of civil society, democratic opposition forces, ethnic peoples, women and youth in the reform process.

The forum addressed six core issues; (1) law reform, (2) peace and conflict, (3) media, hate speech and communal violence, (4) Parliament, Government and accountability, (5) economic reform and foreign direct investment, and (6) the international community’s role and involvement, which were discussed under six panel discussions and six workshops. The forum produced a statement that gave concrete recommendations from civil society groups to the Burma Government, United Nations, international governments and international non-governmental organizations (lNGOs) […]