“From Genuine Peace Negotiation, Toward Federal Union”

We, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB), on the occasion of the International Day of Peace on September 21st, send our wishes to the ethnic people of Burma to be healthy and happy […]

အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေန႔ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

စက္တင္ဘာလ(၂၁)ရက္ေန႔သည္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအပါအဝင္ကမၻာတဝွမ္းမွ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးလိုလားသူမ်ားက အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေန႔အျဖစ္သတ္မွတ္ကာ ႏွစ္စဥ္က်င္းပၾကပါသည္။ ဤေန႔မွစ၍ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရွိ တုိင္းရင္းသားျပည္သူမ်ားအားလုံး ကိုယ္စိတ္ႏွစ္ပါး က်န္းမာခ်မ္းသာျပီး စစ္မွန္သည့္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး အျမန္ဆုံးရရွိႏုိင္ပါေစေၾကာင္း ဦးစြာ ဆုေတာင္းေမတၱာ ပုိ႔သလုိက္ပါသည္ […]

Arrest of Student on Trumped-up Charges is a Damning Indictment of Justice in Burma

On 13 September 2014, police arrested female human rights defender (HRD) Phyu Hnin Htwe at her house in Patheingyi Township, Mandalay Region, and sent her to Monywa Prison, Sagaing Region, where she is currently being detained. Phyu Hnin Htwe is a second-year Burmese student at Mandalay’s Yadanabon University, and is also an activist and member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU). She has helped farmers who have been forcibly evicted to make way for the infamous Chinese-backed Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing Region, going to the Letpadaung area at weekends and supporting displaced farmers.
Her arrest ostensibly relates to a murky incident that took place on 18 May of this year. Two Chinese workers – employees of Wanbao company, the main company involved in the joint venture – were seized from the Letpadaung area, taken to a monastery in Hsete Village, and held there for about 30 hours. The incident followed efforts by Wanbao employees to restart measuring plots of land for which compensation had not even been provided, in spite of villagers’ protests, thereby provoking their anger.

As a result, Phyu Hnin Htwe and six villagers were charged with kidnapping and abduction under Articles 364 and 368 of the Penal Code, which prescribe sentences of up to ten years’ imprisonment. While the case against five of the villagers was quickly dropped, charges still remain against Phyu Hnin Htwe and local villager Win Kyaw, neither of whom attended court in May […]

International Peace Day

Hundreds of peace marchers passed four different townships on Sunday, International Peace Day. The peace marchers called for ending war and to restore peace, while singing Peace songs. (Photo: Thaw Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy)

Hundreds Gather in Rangoon to Mark World Peace Day

RANGOON — At several sites in Rangoon on Sunday, hundreds of activists gathered to mark the International Day of Peace and call for an end to conflict in Burma.

A festive mood prevailed at the Women’s Peace March, one of three peace rallies held in the city this weekend, where several hundred women belonging to various women’s organizations showed up wearing blue shirts emblazoned with the peace symbol and a slogan ‘No Women, No Peace.’ […]

SYCB’s Statement on the International Day of Peace

In order to immediately implement genuine peace in Burma, the students and youth wanting peace will organize a Peace Day Movement on the 21st of September 2014. This will be done in cooperation with local citizen from different ethnicities and together with community based organizations. This union of the civil society will through different activities carried out during the day create a foundation for long-lasting peace […]

Civil Society Commemorates International Peace Day in Burma

On 21 September, civil society from Burma and the region marked the International Day of Peace with many activities to highlight the urgent need for lasting peace in Burma.

Civil society in Rangoon organized a large event, including many young activists who were charged under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law and are still facing charges for marching on International Day of Peace last year. Around 300 people from 60 different civil society organizations marched through 8 townships from City Hall to the People’s Park, shouting slogans “May the Union be peaceful,” “Build national reconciliation” and “Stop war.” Though plagued by constant heavy rain, the event, unlike previous years, was held with permission of local authorities. It was also attended by high-level government officials, including government peace negotiator, Minister Aung Min, and Minister of the President’s Office, Soe Thein.

Members of civil society, after giving the opportunity for the government officials to make speeches, publicly stated their demands for peace, right in front of the ministers. They called for the immediate cessation of the Burma Army’s offensives in Kachin State, a nationwide ceasefire, and most important of all, the realization of federalism through an all-inclusive national conference, reinforcing the statement endorsed by thousands of people on the 8888 Silver Jubilee […]

Statement on International Day of Peace

In order to establish long-term peace-building in Republic of Union of Myanmar, monks, public, ethnic nationalities and civil societies who long for peace collaborated and participated peace-making activities in various approaches across the country on September 21, 2013 as International Day of Peace […]

Burma: Drop Charges Against Peaceful Protesters

End Protest Denials; Amend Law on Assembly for International Standards

Authorities in Burma should drop charges against activists who participated in peaceful protests against government policies, Human Rights Watch said today. Nine peace activists now face criminal charges for demonstrating in Rangoon without a permit on September 21, 2012, International Peace Day. Anti-mining protesters and land rights activists elsewhere in Burma have also been subject to intimidation and prosecution […]

Just Saying Peace is Not Enough, It Needs All of Us to Take Action

Karen Women Organization celebrates the 2012 International Day of Peace with great hope. The UN declared that this International Day of Peace’s theme would be “Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future”. We celebrate the recent negotiations for ceasefires and peace in Burma. We hope this beginning will bring sustainable peace someday soon […]