Open Letter to President Thein Sein and Ethnic Armed Groups

(Unofficial Translation)

The (post-independence) Union of Burma was co-founded by different nationalities. Like siblings from a single family, all these nationalities had cohabited this land since time immemorial. Therefore, forging peaceful ties and unity among the nationalities is of paramount importance […]

ဦးသိန္းစိန္ႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား ထံသို႕ေပးပို႕ေသာ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ အိတ္ဖြင့္ေပးစာ

ျပည္ေထာင္စုသမၼတ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သည္ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးစုမ်ားႏွင့္ ေပါင္းစပ္ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားေသာ ႏိုင္ငံျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ယင္းတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား အားလံုးသည္ ႏွစ္ပရိေစၦဒ မ်ားစြာကပင္ တေျမတည္းေန တေရတည္းေသာက္ အတူေနထိုင္ခဲ့ၾကေသာ ညီအစ္ကို ေမာင္နမမ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကပါသည္ […]

Spirit of Resistance Strong as Activists Attend Large Public Gatherings on Martyrs’ Day

In a stirring reminder of the strength and resilience of pro-democracy and human rights movement in Burma, over 3,000 people marched in a public demonstration led by democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to commemorate Martyrs’ Day on 19 July in Rangoon.

The day marked the anniversary of the assassination of the independence hero General Aung San and his colleagues in 1947. Burma’s military regime has consistently sought to wipe General Aung San from public memory, not least because of the legacy that his daughter, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, continues to this day.

This year, sparked by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s presence, the National League for Democracy (NLD) and other pro democracy and ethnic rights organizations rallied over 3,000 people in a march towards the Martyrs’ Mausoleum, the largest public gathering in the country since the Saffron Revolution in 2007. The democracy leader visited the mausoleum twice; once in the regime organized ceremony, and the second as the leader of the public procession […]

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Travels Outside Rangoon Despite Regime’s Threats

Today, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi flew to the ancient city of Bagan in Mandalay Division for a personal trip with her son Kim Aris, marking her first time outside of Rangoon since her release from house arrest in November last year. The first of the leader’s planned trips, it came less than a week after the regime issued threats against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD).

On 28 June, Daw Suu and NLD Chairman U Aung Shwe received a letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs pressuring the party to cease their “unlawful” activities. State-run New Light of Myanmar followed up the letter with a commentary quoting the threatening letter: “If they really want to accept and practice democracy effectively, they are to stop such acts that can harm peace and stability and the rule of law as well as the unity among the people including monks and service personnel.” […]

NLD Letter of Response to Ministry of Home Affairs Regarding the Party’s Legal Status

Burma’s Ministry of Home Affairs recently issued a letter claiming that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and National League for Democracy’s activities are unlawful. The letter warned the party to stop engaging in activities against the regime. In response, the National League for Democracy (NLD) sent the following letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The NLD’s letter, with references to existing laws stated in 2008 Constitution, explains why the NLD is still a legally registered party. The letter also proposes a meeting with the Ministry of Home Affairs to discuss the rule of law in Burma […]

Burma Regime’s Threats to Suu Kyi a Sign of Ban’s Failure

Burma Campaign UK today condemned threats made by Burma’s dictatorship against Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to abandon his ‘wait and see’ policy on Burma […]

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Calls for a Commission of Inquiry as Conflict Continues in Eastern Burma

Earlier this week, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi vocalized her strong support for a UN-led Commission of Inquiry in a video message recorded for a hearing of the US House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. The hearing was held to highlight the fraudulent November 2010 elections, as well as the ongoing conflict in Kachin State.

The Congressional Committee hearing was entitled “Piercing Burma’s Veil of Secrecy: The Truth Behind the Sham Election and the Difficult Road Ahead.” Representative Don Manzullo, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on East Asia, criticized last year’s elections and drew on the ongoing fighting in Kachin State to highlight the lack of change in Burma: “The recent news of clashes in Burma’s Kachin province between government troops and ethnic minorities, which has been the heaviest fighting in 17 years, adds further evidence to the argument that the situation in Burma has not changed,” wrote Manzullo in his statement […]

Aung San Suu Kyi supports UN ‘commission of inquiry’ on Burma

Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said she supports the establishment of ‘commission of inquiry’ into human rights violations in Burma.

She made the endorsement for the first time in her video-taped message sent to a hearing of US House Sub-committee on Asia-Pacific earlier today […]

Burma’s Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to Address an U.S. Congressional Committee for the First Time Ever

On Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 12:30pm, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, chaired by Congressman Donald Manzullo (R-IL), will hold a hearing, entitled “Piercing Burma’s Veil of Secrecy: The Truth Behind the Sham Election and the Difficult Road Ahead.” Chairman Donald Manzullo (R-IL) just announced he has received a pre-recorded video message from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to be played during the hearing, a significant event as it is her first address to a Congressional Committee […]

Statement on the 66th Birthday of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

June 19th, 2011, is the 66th birthday of Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. This is the first birthday she will celebrate free after spending fifteen of the last twenty years under house arrest. Since her release, she has enthusiastically continued her struggle with unwavering political conviction. Therefore, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) would like to express our great respect for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and honor her on this special occasion […]