Oral Statement Delivered by Mr. Aung Myo Min on Behalf of Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) at UPR Plenary on Burma

Thank you, Mr. President. FORUM-ASIA and its member organization HREIB make this statement on behalf of the Burma Forum on the Universal Periodic Review (BF-UPR).

Mr. President, despite the November 2010 elections’ illusory promise of a democratic transition in the country, “systematic militarization contributes to widespread abuses of human rights which remain essentially unaddressed by the authorities”, as noted by the Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana in his recent mission to Thailand […]

Statement by Amnesty International at 17th Session of UN Human Rights Council

Mr. President,

Amnesty International estimates that there are more than 2,200 political prisoners in Myanmar held under vague laws frequently used by the government to criminalize peaceful political dissent. Some have been detained since the 1990s and others have more recently been sentenced to more than 60 years’ imprisonment. Many are held in

Oral Statement Delivered by Ms. Mariana Duarte on Behalf of Conectas Direitos Humanos at UPR Plenary on Burma

Mr. President, Conectas Direitos Humanos, on behalf of the Burma Forum on the Universal Periodic Review (BF-UPR), wishes to draw the Council’s attention to the deteriorating status and well-being of women in Burma/Myanmar, in particular due to the lack of political participation and scarce humanitarian assistance. Also, systematic and widespread sexual violence is being perpetrated against ethnic women by the Burmese army […]

ျမန္မာ့အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ဖြဲ႕စုံစမ္းဖို႔ UPR မွာလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႕ေတြ ေတာင္းဆုိ

UPR လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္လို႔ ေခၚတဲ့ ကုလသမဂၢ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး ေကာင္စီရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံအလိုက္ လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး အေျခအေန ပံုမွန္သံုးသပ္မႈ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြမွာ ဒီကေန႔ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကိစၥကို ေဆြးေႏြးပါတယ္။ ပါ၀င္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ လူမႈ လူ႕အဖဲြ႕အစည္းေတြကေတာ့ လက္ရိွ UPR လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက လူ႕အခြင့္အေရး အေျခအေနဆိုးေတြကို ဟန္႔တားႏိုင္ဖို႔ ထိေရာက္မႈ မရိွဘူးလို႔ သံုးသပ္ၿပီး ျမန္မာ့အေရးအတြက္ ကုလသမဂၢ စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရး ေကာ္မရွင္တရပ္ ဖဲြ႕ေရးကိုသာ တညီတည္း ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္ […]

US Senator McCain’s Calls for “Concrete Action” Distorted by Regime

Last week, US Senator John McCain embarked on a three-day trip to Burma to assess potential progress towards democratic reform since the November 2010 elections. At the conclusion of the trip, Senator McCain said at a press briefing that US sanctions on the country would remain in place until “concrete actions” are taken to improve the human rights and political situation, and warned the regime that it could face an Arab-style revolution if no progress is made. McCain went on to call for the release of all political prisoners, the guarantee of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s safety during her upcoming tour through Burma, a democratic process of national reconciliation and fulfilling non-proliferation obligations under international law.

During his visit, Senator McCain met with senior leaders in the regime, political opposition leaders, ethnic leaders and former political prisoners. He also met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to listen to her views on the US’ Burma policy […]

‘It has been too long for us already—way too long’

Khin Ohmar has pledged over 23 years of her life to the fight for democracy in Burma. As a leading student figure in the 1988 anti-military uprising, she was forced to flee Burma to seek refuge in Thailand. Since completing university in the U.S., she has gained considerable experience in international and regional advocacy, working with the Women’s League of Burma, the Burmese Women’s Union, and now Burma Partnership.

Her profound experiences have not changed her warm demeanor. She remains humble and open, and generously devotes her time to Burma’s cause in any way she can – whether at prominent ASEAN summits or in spontaneous intimate gatherings at The Best Friend Library in Chiang Mai […]

Press Briefing by Senator John McCain

Thank you for being here this morning, and I want to thank our Chargé and the U.S. Embassy for all of their support. It is a true pleasure for me to return to this country after 15 years. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world, full of decent, amazing people who inspire me every day. It is wonderful to be back.

Over the past two days, I have had a chance to meet with senior leaders in the new civilian government, including both speakers of parliament and the First Vice President. I have met with political opposition and ethnic minority leaders, both in and out of the government […]

Depayin Massacre Remembered Amid UN Special Rapporteur’s Call for Commission of Inquiry

During a press conference held in Bangkok on 23 May 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, said that the continued treatment and conditions of ethnic groups in the country’s border areas were seriously restricting the government’s intended transition to democracy. He called, once again, for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate serious human rights violations, stating that this could be a step towards national reconciliation. On this trip, Quintana focused on the issue of economic, social and cultural rights, specifically referencing the lack of opportunities in education and employment for young people. Quintana’s statement came at the end of a fact-finding mission that was mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council to assess any progress in Burma since the 2010 elections in its ‘intended’ transition to democracy. Information gathered through this mission will be used to inform Quintana’s report to the General Assembly later in 2010 […]

Statement of 8th Karen Unity Seminar

The 8th Karen Unity Seminar was successfully held from May 24 to 27, 2011, at a certain place in the area of Karen revolutionary resistance. The Seminar was attended by 117 representatives from 42 Karen organizations based at home and abroad.

At the Seminar, discussions were held particularly on the subjects of strengthening unity among the Karen people, current political situations in Burma and the sufferings the entire Karen people have to go through […]

KNU Statement on the Use of Karen Civilians for Forced Labor and as Human Shield by Burma Army

Though the leading members of the Burma government have shed their military uniforms for a civilian image and rule, treatment of the ethnic civilians by the Burma Army troops is the same as it has been under the military rule. As before, the Burma Army troops continue to perpetrate widespread […]