Press Release on Chronology of Events of Armed Conflicts in Kachin Conflict

(Unofficial Translation)

We respectfully announce the followings to the people in Kachin State.

(1) There has been fighting between the KIA troops and the Burma army since 9 June 2011.

(2) The KIO (Kachin Independence Organization) never want to make and see the troubles and damages of people.

(3) We make this announcement with an intention to inform the people the true events and to counter the false news story published by Kyee Mon (Mirror) newspaper on 17 June 2011 […]

KIO/KIA ႏွင့္ SSPP/SSA တို႕အား ထိုးစစ္ဆင္တိုက္ခိုက္ေနျခင္းအေပၚ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

ျပည္ေထာင္စုၾကံ့ခိုင္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးေရးပါတီ (ၾကံ့/ဖြံ႕) အစိုးရသစ္၏ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္ က်မ္းသစၥာ ၾကိမ္ဆိုသည့္ေန႕က အစိုးရသစ္၏ ေပၚလစီကို ေျပာၾကားသြားရာတြင္

Stop Damming in War-Zones on Burma’s Major Rivers: A Briefer on Conflicts at Dam Sites in Burma

It is impossible to carry out effective community participation in dam projects under this conflict situation. Abuses associated with the fighting such as forced portering and destruction of farmlands directly impacts local communities. Foreign investors cannot follow dam building standards and risk damage to their reputation by contuing these projects […]

Burma Regime Attacks Civilians In Shan State – UK Must Act

Burma Campaign UK today called on the British government to publicly condemn the dictatorship in Burma for breaking ceasefire agreements with ethnic organisations in Burma, including breaking the ceasefire with the Shan State Army – North. The dictatorship in Burma is threatening to plunge the country into conflict […]

Community Groups denounce Widespread Atrocities against Civilians as Burmese Regime Breaks Ceasefire in Northern Shan State

Shan community groups strongly denounce the current Burma Army offensive against the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) and atrocities against civilians, including shelling of Buddhist temples, gang-rape and using women as cannon fodder […]

Ethnic Armed Groups Form New Alliance

Twelve ethnic armed groups in Burma have agreed to operate together as the Union Nationalities Federal Council (Union of Burma) during four days of meetings on the Thai-Burma border. The military regime has repeatedly ignored the grievances and aspirations of ethnic communities for political, social, and economic equality and […]

Woman and Children Injured by Mortar Shelling on Thai-Burma Border: WLB Urges the Thai Government to Ensure the Protection of Civilians Fleeing Conflict

A mother and two young boys seeking refuge in Thailand have been seriously injured by shrapnel from mortars that landed across the Thai-Burma border on Sunday 30 January. The three injured are refugees from Karen State, Burma; they had been hiding in the jungle in Thailand, near to the border, to avoid having to return to their villages inside the conflict zone […]

Repression Continues While Observers Naïvely Seek to “Wait and See”

More than six weeks following the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)’s elections to install a superficially civilian government dominated by the military and its allies, the reality on the ground in Burma has not changed for the better. The military regime continues to wage war against armed ethnic groups, the media, and the democratic forces working for progress. This repressive environment will undoubtedly remain in place as the same regime pursues identical oppressive policies from expensive new parliament buildings. Critics of the elections are asked again and again to “wait and see” before condemning the new parliament, but it begs the question: are the “pragmatic” supporters of the elections simply naïve? […]

Civilians in Danger as Election-Related Armed Conflict Continues in Eastern Burma

Since Burma’s fraudulent elections on 7 November, Thailand has seen the largest influx of civilians from Burma fleeing into the country in more than a decade. On 8 November alone, 25,000 civilians fled from fighting in the town of Myawaddy and another 10,000 crossed from Three Pagoda Pass. In the weeks following the initial outbreak of violence, the armed conflict, along with flows of fleeing civilians, has continued. The volatile situation illustrates the damage done by the SPDC’s authoritarian process to entrench military rule through their “Roadmap to Democracy” and their failure to facilitate genuine national reconciliation. Just as democratization in Burma requires global support, a collective, international effort is needed to ensure the protection of civilians under threat in Eastern Burma […]

Burma: Eyewitness Accounts of Abuses in Eastern Fighting

Thai Authorities Should Ensure Protection of Refugees Fleeing Conflict

The Burmese armed forces and ethnic insurgents should act to protect civilians as fighting in eastern Burma intensifies, Human Rights Watch said today. The Burmese army, or Tatmadaw, has conducted a major build up in the East following an attack and brief seizure of the border town of Myawaddy by ethnic Karen rebels on the date of the elections, November 7, 2010 […]