Burma Government Blocks British Aid To Ethnic Refugees

As Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, visits Burma this week, Burma Campaign UK called on him to do more to ensure British aid reaches internal refugees who have fled increased attacks by the Burmese Army in the past year […]

Small Concessions From Naypyidaw Must Not Overshadow Increasing Number of Human Rights Abuses

A year after the flawed election of 2010 in Burma, it is time to take stock of where the country stands. The regime might have taken some positive actions, including suspending the Myitsone Dam in Kachin State, releasing some political prisoners, and most recently making changes to the political party registration laws that would allow the NLD to officially register. But this year was also marked by a dramatic increase in the number of human rights abuses being committed, especially in ethnic areas. Regional civil society and exiled activists from Burma based on the Thai-Burma border gathered today in Jakarta to remind ASEAN and the international community of this outrageous reality. Some small concessions may have been made by Naypyidaw, but these have not affected the majority of Burma’s civilian population, especially ethnic nationalities […]

Burma: A Year After Elections, Rights Concerns Persist

Positive actions by Burma’s new government should not obscure the serious human rights problems persisting in the country one year after the November 2010 elections, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released on November 3, 2011 […]

Discrimination, Conflict and Corruption: The Ethnic States of Burma

Since achieving independence in January 1948, successive Burmese governments, elected and military dictatorships, have sought to address the complex issues involving the country’s many ethnic groups. They have sought to do this primarily through confronting […]

Statement of Union Minister for Foreign Affairs Republic of the Union of Myanmar at the 18th Session of the Human Rights Council

On behalf of the Delegation of Republic of the Union of Myanmar, may I, first of all, congratulate Your Excellency Ms. Laura Dupuy Lasserre, Permanent Representative and Ambassador of Uruguay […]

Press Statement of Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma

Mingalaba. Good Morning. Let me read a brief prepared statement. I have just completed my first visit to Burma as U.S. Special Representative and Policy Coordinator. I have spent the past five days in intensive consultations with a full spectrum of interlocutors […]

Demonstrations for Real Change in Burma Continue Despite Regime’s “Charm Offensive”

In a continuation of its recent attempts at improving its public image, Burma’s regime officially established a national human rights commission (NHRC) on 5 September. The commission was formed “with a view to promoting and safeguarding fundamental rights of citizens described in the constitution”. Given that the NHRC will be headed by retired ambassadors Win Mra and Kyaw Tint Swe, who have previously denied well documented human rights abuses committed by the military regime, it is hard to believe that the commission will actually take measures to end the commission of crimes against the people of Burma. Additionally, given that the commission is explicitly based upon the 2008 constitution, which enshrines impunity for military and civilian leaders, its ability to provide justice and accountability is inherently limited […]

BURMA: Third Party Mediation Crucial to Burma’s Peace Talks

By Sai Wansai, General Secretary of the exiled Shan Democratic Union

It has been a few weeks now, since the 18th August announcement by Naypyitaw inviting “national race armed groups wishing to make peace” to peace talks. So far, Naypyidaw has used its concerned state governments to contact various armed ethnic groups to make its peace overture known, through letters and also verbal communication. The positions of the non-Burman ethnic armed groups and the Naypyidaw seem incompatible or one would say “not communicating on the same wave length” […]

Quintana Sees Through Burma Regime’s Public Relations Tricks

Throughout the course of the past few weeks the regime has put a great deal of effort into burnishing its image, taking a number of steps aimed at appearing to be responsive to international demands for democratic change. Sadly, most of these steps are simply window dressing and have not reduced the incidences of human rights abuses in Burma.

One action the regime has taken that is designed to improve its reputation internationally is the very public meeting between President Thein Sein and opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But all talks between Daw Suu and the regime have focused on avoiding “conflicting views” rather than engaging in the genuine dialogue necessary for national reconciliation. Similarly, the second session of parliament opened this past week as part of the regime’s campaign to appear as if it has transitioned to civilian government. Given that 76% of the seats are held by MPs from the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, this parliament is still little more than a rubber stamp for the military regime […]

ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး ေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚျခင္းအေပၚ အေၾကာင္းျပန္ၾကားျခင္း

ျပည္ေထာင္စု သမၼတ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ၊ ျပည္ေတာင္စုအစိုးရ၏ ေၾကညာခ်က္အမွတ္ ၁။၂၀၁၁ ျဖင့္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဆြးေႏြးရန္ ဖိတ္ေခၚခ်က္ကို မိမိတို႕ ညီညႊတ္ေသာတိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ […]