Attacks Against the Kachin, Shan and Ta’ang Escalate as Peace Talks Near

The conflict in Kachin state continues to escalate in Kachin State and Northern Shan State. Clashes and infantry assaults backed by mortar attacks are now a daily occurrence, and civilians are frequently caught in the crossfire […]

The Humanitarian Crisis Update and Key Messages for Kachin State and Northern Shan State

The Joint Strategy Team (JST) for Humanitarian Response in Kachin and Northern Shan State would like to raise its deepest concern over the recent increases of clashes and military actions near the Central Shan State and Moenyin in Kachin State which have created new displacements over 10,000 civilian population. JST would like to request your urgent action and support for the safety and protection of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) as well as ensuring unhindered and continuing humanitarian access and assistance for the IDPs […]

ရကၡိဳင့္တပ္မေတာ္ စစ္႐ံုးခ်ဳပ္ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာခ်က္

၂၀၁၅ ခုႏွစ္ ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေျခအေနသည္ အေျပာင္းအလဲအတြက္ အလွည့္အေျပာင္းမ်ားျဖင့္ ျပည့္ႏွက္လွ်က္ရွိၿပီး အေထြေထြေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအား ႏိုဝင္ဘာလ (၈) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ က်င္းပျပဳလုပ္ေတာ့မည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ရကၡိဳင့္တပ္မေတာ္အေနျဖင့္ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံုအေျခခံဥပေဒကို လက္မခံေသာ္လည္း အဖိႏွိပ္ခံျမန္မာလူထုတစ္ရပ္လံုးႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ျပည္သူမ်ားအတြက္ ျပည္သူ႔ဆႏၵသေဘာထားႏွင့္အညီ ေရြးေကာက္တင္ေျမႇာက္ထားျခင္းခံရေသာ ျပည္သူ႔ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားျဖင့္ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္အစိုးရတစ္ရပ္အား ယခုက်င္းပမည့္အေထြေထြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွတစ္ဆင့္ ထြက္ေပၚလာရန္ သံုးသပ္ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ပါသည္ […]

Statement by the Women’s League of Burma A non-inclusive Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement will not Bring Peace

The Women’s League of Burma (WLB) is gravely concerned that the government’s planned signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) on October 15 with only eight armed groups will not lead to peace, but to an escalation of conflict […]

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 […]

U.S. Embassy Statement on Kachin Fighting

The U.S. Embassy is deeply concerned by reports of intensifying military action in Kachin State and northern Shan State. Continued fighting needlessly puts the lives of vulnerable communities at risk and undermines the trust that will be essential to achieving a nationwide ceasefire agreement […]

World Press Freedom Day or World Press Restrictions Day?

Sunday 3 May, 2015 was World Press Freedom Day and the Burma Army embraced the sentiment of this day by issuing a gaging order on the media, aimed at stopping them from reporting on statements by the ethnic armed group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) with which the Burma Army is at war with. Meanwhile, 12 journalists remain in prison, demonstrating why the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) designated Burma as the 9^th most censored country in the world.

Five of the most high profile incarcerated media workers, four journalists and the chief executive officer of the Unity Journal, have been in prison since reporting on a secret chemical weapons factory of the Burma Army in January 2014. They are serving seven years with hard labor after being charged under the colonial-era State Secrets Act. International human rights group, Amnesty International, brought attention to this issue on World Press Freedom Day, encouraging supporters to post ‘#FreeUnityFive’ on the Burma Government’s Information Minister’s Facebook wall. It is not just the Unity five that are in prison. Seven more media workers spent World Press Freedom Day without their freedom, including five from the Bi-Midday Sun newspaper and two from the Myanmar Post Weekly […]

UNFC Statement on Current Talks and Raging of Ferocious Battles on the Ground

We all know that members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), together with fraternal ethnic armed resistance organizations, have been endeavoring by various means, with the specific intent of ending over 60-year-long civil war in Burma/Myanmar and resolving the political problems, through round-table talks and consultations with successive governments, and now the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordinating Team (NCCT) and the Union Peace-making Work Committee (UPWC) are holding talks for realizing the signing of Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement […]

Myanmar “Needs Urgently to Get Back on Track”

GENEVA (25 February 2015) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein today warned that Myanmar “seems headed in the wrong direction and needs urgently to get back on track” in a crucial year for the country’s democratic transition and long-term reconciliation […]

The Significance of Signing the Deed of Commitment to Peace and National Reconciliation

On Union Day, February 12, 2015, the President, senior Tatmadaw officers, both speakers of the Hluttaws, political parties, and four Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs)—the Restoration Council of Shan State, Karen National Union, Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, and KNU/KNLA Peace Council—signed the Deed of Commitment to Peace and National Reconciliation (the “Deed”) at Naypyidaw. By signing the Deed, the President is able to demonstrate a positive image to the country and the international community that Burma’s peace process is moving forward in advance of the election later this year […]