Ban Ki-moon Highlights the Plight of Kachin People as Fighting Intensifies

Last week saw the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, visit Burma and become the first overseas dignitary to speak at the Parliament. He also took the time to consult with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein regarding the nascent changes over the last twelve months. While he was full of praise of recent developments it is important not to lose sight the actual situation for most people in Burma. As Naw May Oo Mutraw, a Karen National Union negotiator, pointed out to journalists in Bangkok last week, “The current reform process is not yet irreversible” and yet the “international community displays its excitement beyond measure.”

An issue of grave concern to Ban Ki-moon, and one in which the international community certainly should not be excited about, is the on-going conflict in Kachin State, which he states is “inconsistent with the successful conclusion of ceasefire agreements with all other major groups.” This inconsistency has manifested itself in around 70,000 refugees, numerous cases of rape, forced labor, child soldiers being forcibly recruited, torture, and the burning of villages in Kachin State by the Burma Army […]

Statement on Peace and Development in Burma

With international donors preparing to significantly increase humanitarian and development assistance in order to promote peace in Burma, we are very concerned that cross-border aid to marginalized and vulnerable populations is being limited or cut at this crucial time […]

ျပည္သူလူထုထံသို႕ အသိေပး ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္ ဇြန္လ (၉) ရက္မွ စတင္ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္၏ စစ္ဆင္ေရးမွာ ယခုဆိုလွ်င္ (၁၀) လ ၾကာျမွင့္ခဲ့ျပီ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ၂၀၁၂ ခုႏွစ္ ဇႏၷဝါရီလ (၁၈) ရက္ေန႕အထိ တရုတ္ျပည္သူ႕ သမၼတႏိုင္ငံ ေရႊလီျမိဳ႕တြင္ က်င္းပခဲ့ေသာ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတြင္ ေကအိုင္အိုကိုယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕မွ ေဆြးေႏြးေရးအဆင့္ (၃) ဆင့္ပါရွိေသာ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္စာခ်ဳပ္အား […]

Untold Miseries: Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Kachin State

In his March 2011 inauguration speech, Burmese President Thein Sein emphasized the importance of ending Burma’s several ethnic armed conflicts, declaring that more than 60 years of ethnic warfare in Burma were due to “dogmatism, sectarian strife, and racism.” Burma’s ethnic minorities had, he said […]

Ceasefire and Political Dialogue, Highest Hurdles Ahead for Thein Sein’s Government

Thein Sein’s government has been applauded for some recent reforms, including last week’s release of 299 political prisoners. However, one of the biggest hurdles remaining for the regime will be dealing with the ongoing armed conflict in Eastern Burma and the political concerns of the country’s ethnic nationalities.

President Thein Sein has issued two separate orders to halt offensives against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the most recent of the two coming the day before the regime’s delegation led by Aung Thaung was set to meet with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). According to Minister of Immigration and Population, Khin Yi, this most recent order covered the entire country. However, the Burma Army continued launching attacks against the KIA, including on the second day of the ceasefire talks between the regime and the KIO, resulting in a premature end of the negotiations. The Burma Army’s ongoing attacks continue to raise serious questions about Thein Sein’s decision-making power within the regime […]

Statement on Dialogue Between KIO/KIA and Thein Sein’s Government

… The undersigned Kachin organizations call for an immediate end to offensives in Kachin State and all ethnic areas, and the initiation of politically meaningful dialogue between ethnic nationalities and Thein Sein’s government to achieve ethnic equality and self-determination. We would like to make the following calls regarding the ceasefire negotiations and political dialogue process […]

Burma: Army Committing Abuses in Kachin State

Burma’s armed forces have committed serious abuses against ethnic Kachin civilians in renewed fighting in Kachin State, Human Rights Watch said today. Since hostilities began over five months ago against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Burmese armed forces have […]

Letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

On 26 September, the President of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) Lanyaw Zawng Hra wrote a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon regarding national reconciliation Burma […]

KIO Stetement Regarding Naypyidaw Converence (Aug 17)

အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕သစ္၏ ပထမဦးဆံုးအၾကိမ္ က်င္းပသည့္ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲသည္ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕သစ္၏ မူဝါဒမ်ား၊ ျပည္သူႏွင့္ႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ ေရွ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ား ထုတ္ျပန္ေျပာဆိုျခင္းမဟုတ္ပဲ KIO ႏွင့္ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရး အင္အားစုမ်ားကို […]

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 […]