Torture, extrajudicial killing, and use of civilians as human shields by Burma Army during new offensive against SSPP/SSA near Upper Yeywa dam site in Kyaukme

During May 2016, the Burma Army has committed grave human rights violations, which meet the definition of war crimes, during a new offensive against the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) in Kyaukme township, northern Shan State, close to the Upper Yeywa dam site on the Namtu/Myitnge river […]

FBR Report: July Update – Kachin and northern Shan State

The Burma Army continues its attacks in Kachin State and northern Shan State, Burma. Clashes continue unabated, as the Burma Army attacks Mali Yang Village in northern Shan State, and abuses such as killings, torture, forced labor, and theft remain a tool of the Burma Army to oppress ethnic groups in Burma. Please see below the list of figures for specific accounts of Burma Army abuses […]

ND-Burma Releases its New Report About Acknowledgement and Reparation for the Crimes of the Present and of the Past

ND-Burma releases its new report, titled “To Recognize and Repair: Unofficial Truth Projects and the Need for Justice in Burma,”focusing on the need for acknowledgement of human rights violations victims’ experiences and for addressing their needs through reparation policy […]

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။ […]

As the Burma Army Fires Live Rounds, the MNHRC Fires Blanks

The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) once again proved the futility of its existence with a deeply unsatisfactory investigation into the murder of journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, a.k.a. Ko Par Gyi by the Burma Army. Rather than providing meaningful avenues for redress for the victim and his family, the investigation report serves to act as a cover for the Burma Army, which is continuing to commit such human rights abuses throughout Burma’s ethnic areas.

Ko Par Gyi was a freelance journalist covering the conflict between the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and the Burma Army when he was taken into military custody. Five days later he was tortured before being shot to death. The marks of torture were obvious to Ma Thandar, Ko Par Gyi’s wife, when she viewed the dead body. After calls from human rights groups as well as the US State Department, for an independent investigation, President Thein Sein consequently asked the MNHRC to conduct an investigation, the results of which were released on 2 December 2014.

The MNRHC investigation report, however, does not address the key issues surrounding this case, is full of inconsistencies, and does not include key pieces of evidence. It does not provide any explanation of the signs of torture that were clear on his body. The report claims that there had been a fight in which the gun had gone off; however, according to forensic experts that Ko Par Gyi’s wife has spoken to, he had been shot five times, one of which was point blank through the chin, implying that he had been shot four times before being killed. […]

[Burma] Government Using New Media Law to Stifle Criticism

SEAPA views with utmost concern the latest move of the Ministry of Information (MOI) in Myanmar to pursue legal action against the Myanmar Thandawsint (Myanmar Herald) using the new Media Law for publishing scathing commentary about the words of President Thein Sein. […]

Par Gyi Killing Highlights Continuing Impunity in Southeast Myanmar

The recent killing by the Myanmar Army of the journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, also known as Par Gyi, highlights the need to end impunity in Southeast Myanmar, according to the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), a leading community based organisation in the region. […]

Fortify Rights Briefing and Recommendations: November 6, 2014

In ongoing fighting in Kachin State and northern Shan State, the Myanmar Army has targeted and attacked civilians and non-military targets, and killed civilians with impunity.

For instance, in October 2011, the Myanmar Army entered Hka Wan Bang village, Kachin State following nearby clashes with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Soldiers detained and tortured three local men suspected of involvement with the KIA, two of whom spoke to Fortify Rights. Myanmar Army soldiers detained “Doi Seng,” a 27-year-old Kachin man, along with two other Kachin men and then shot and killed an unarmed Shan civilian man on a motorbike […]

Myanmar: End Military Attacks On Kachin And Shan Civilians

(Yangon, November 6, 2014)— The Myanmar Army has targeted, attacked, and killed civilians with impunity in ongoing fighting in Kachin State and northern Shan State, Fortify Rights said in a briefing published today. The government of Myanmar should act to end such attacks and hold perpetrators accountable […]

Burmese Journalists Call for Govt Protection

Burmese journalists took to the streets in Rangoon on Sunday to mark the UN International Day to End Impunity For Crimes Against Journalists. The demonstration was staged to send a message to the Thein Sein government to take active measures to protect reporters within the country.

About 100 demonstrators gathered in solidarity in front of Rangoon City Hall wearing black wrist bands to protest what they say is an ongoing repression of media freedom in Burma and the continuing arrest of reporters […]