Karen Communities Worldwide Call for Peace on International Day of Peace

Karen communities around the world strongly welcome the statement made by the Karen National Union on 15 September 2011, to call for peace in Burma on International Day of Peace on 21st of September. This is the second successive year the KNU have called for such […]

BURMA: Third Party Mediation Crucial to Burma’s Peace Talks

By Sai Wansai, General Secretary of the exiled Shan Democratic Union

It has been a few weeks now, since the 18th August announcement by Naypyitaw inviting “national race armed groups wishing to make peace” to peace talks. So far, Naypyidaw has used its concerned state governments to contact various armed ethnic groups to make its peace overture known, through letters and also verbal communication. The positions of the non-Burman ethnic armed groups and the Naypyidaw seem incompatible or one would say “not communicating on the same wave length” […]

Potential Exists for Dialogue Towards Nationwide Ceasefire but Concrete Action Needed

On 31 August Burma’s parliament approved the creation of a peace committee aimed at ending the conflict that has been going on for decades in Burma’s ethnic states. The committee has been named the “Committee for Eternal Stability and Peace in the Union of Burma” and will have a mission to mediate between the regime and ethnic armed groups currently engaged in conflict with the regime. The committee members have not yet been identified but Dr. Aye Maung, chairman of Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and a member of parliament, suggested that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi should serve on the committee. However, at this point “it was not clear whether Suu Kyi will be allowed to participate in the committee or even whether Suu Kyi herself wanted to join or not.” […]

ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚျခင္းအေပၚ အေၾကာင္းျပန္ၾကားျခင္း

ျပည္ေထာင္စု သမၼတ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၊ ျပည္ေတာင္စုအစိုးရ၏ ေၾကညာခ်က္အမွတ္ ၁။၂၀၁၁ ျဖင့္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚခ်က္ကို မိမိတို႕ ညီညႊတ္ေသာတိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ […]

KIO Stetement Regarding Naypyidaw Converence (Aug 17)

အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕သစ္၏ ပထမဦးဆံုးအၾကိမ္ က်င္းပသည့္ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲသည္ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕သစ္၏ မူဝါဒမ်ား၊ ျပည္သူႏွင့္ႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ ေရွ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ား ထုတ္ျပန္ေျပာဆိုျခင္းမဟုတ္ပဲ KIO ႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရး အင္အားစုမ်ားကို […]

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Ethnic Nationalities: Nationwide Ceasefire and Genuine Dialogue Necessary for National Reconciliation

On 25 July, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with the military regime’s representative, Aung Kyi at a state-run guesthouse. This was the tenth meeting between Daw Suu and the regime’s Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Minister, appointed as liaison to the democracy leader. After the 70-minute meeting, Aung Kyi read a statement that failed to give any details about what was discussed, but declared that both sides were happy about the meeting. However, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s serious demeanor and body language suggested otherwise.

Khin Ohmar, Coordinator of Burma Partnership and Chairperson of the Network for Democracy and Development, told the Irrawaddy, “I don’t think the government is honest about this meeting. It is just window dressing. They want the international community to know that they have started a dialogue toward national reconciliation. They are using Aung San Suu Kyi.” This meeting was nothing more than an attempt by the regime to convince ASEAN that they are deserving of the bloc’s chairmanship in 2014. When ASEAN makes its decision, likely to be at the Summit in Bali in November, the bloc must not consider this meeting as a sign of serious dialogue and must certainly not reward the regime for such empty actions […]

UK Minister – Government of Burma should ‘reinstate ceasefire agreements’

Jeremy Browne MP, Minister of State at the Foreign Office with responsibility for Burma, has written to Burma Campaign UK stating that the government of Burma should ‘reinstate ceasefire agreements with a view to a lasting political settlement.’ […]

Hydropower Dams Fuelling Conflict in Burma

Recent fighting near the Dapein and Shweli hydropower dams in northern Burma shows how the buildup of Burma Army troops to secure deeply unpopular Chinese dam projects is fuelling conflict.

Fighting broke out between the Burma Army and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) last week at the Dapein No. 1 and 2 dams, which are being constructed by China’s state-owned Datang Company […]

CSW Calls for Ceasefire and International Support for Refugees in Burma’s Kachin Civil War

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) is calling for a ceasefire in Burma’s Kachin state and urges the international community, including the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU), to press Burma’s nearest neighbours, China and India, to protect refugees who have fled the Kachin conflict to seek refuge in the border regions […]

Condemnation of Burmese Regime’s Attacks on the Ethnic Ceasefire Groups to Provoke Civil War

The root cause of Burma’s problems is denying equal rights to ethnic nationalities and the brutal dictatorship which is desperate to prolong state power by making enemies of its own people. The only solution to the conflict in Burma is inclusive and meaningful political dialogue; this cannot be achieved by military means […]