Over 650 Myanmar/Burma Civil Society Actors Speak Out on the Reality of the Transition

The forum titled, “Civil Societies’ Review on Myanmar/Burma’s Transition Process: Prospects for 2015 and Beyond”, held on 15 – 17 October 2014 at the Myanmar Christian Fellowship of the Blind Center in Rangoon, brought together over 650 representatives from 257 organizations and networks from across the country and border areas to discuss and strategize a wide range of key issues currently facing Burma in the context of the recent economic and political reforms since 2011. This is the first forum of this scale to assess the reform and the wide range of problems currently facing Burma.

Despite the hailed “transition to democracy,” exalted particularly by the international community, civil society organizations (CSOs) spoke of the decades old challenges that remain unresolved, the stagnation of the reform process, and new emerging issues, in addition to the need for meaningful inclusion of the voices of civil society, democratic opposition forces, ethnic peoples, women and youth in the reform process.

The forum addressed six core issues; (1) law reform, (2) peace and conflict, (3) media, hate speech and communal violence, (4) Parliament, Government and accountability, (5) economic reform and foreign direct investment, and (6) the international community’s role and involvement, which were discussed under six panel discussions and six workshops. The forum produced a statement that gave concrete recommendations from civil society groups to the Burma Government, United Nations, international governments and international non-governmental organizations (lNGOs) […]

Myanmar: Need for Permission Dropped from Assembly Law

The notorious provision in the Law on the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession required permission to protest and is infamous in Myanmar as “Section 18”. ARTICLE 19 has tracked 132 cases where the government has arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned people for failing to get prior permission to protest. Many of those people were protesting against Section 18 itself […]

Burma Uses Old Tactics to Silence the People

Enact a repressive law, use thugs to crackdown, arrest and imprison protesters – it’s a strategy that never gets old for the Burmese authorities.

With the ongoing implementation of such a strategy, it has become more clear than ever that Burma does not tolerate critical voices that question the acts of the government or its cronies. The country has witnessed crackdowns and widespread and systematic arrests of peaceful demonstrators and activists throughout President Thein Sein’s term in office. Many of them have been charged under Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, as well as Section 505 (b) of the Penal Code, and the number is growing every day.

The latest crackdown came on 7 December in Michaungkan Quarter of Thingungyun Township, Rangoon, where more than 200 protestors were demanding the return of land that they claimed was confiscated by the Burma Army in 1990, the time when protesting against the military regime was out of the question. At least 8 protestors were injured as a group of men in civilian clothes armed with batons who claimed to be “cleaning workers from the army” attacked the peaceful protestors. Since the protest started on 26 November, two protest leaders have been arrested and sentenced to three months in prison each. Township authorities have told the demonstrators to disband their protest site or face forceful removal […]

Burma Activists Urge Protest Law Reform

More than 50 activist groups have called on lawmakers to amend a controversial provision of Burma’s Peaceful Assembly Law that has put scores of people behind bars since its enactment two years ago.

The coalition, including the influential 88 Generation Peace and Open Society and the youth-oriented Generation Wave, convened a meeting on Sunday at which they drafted a letter urging Parliament to repeal the law’s Section 18, which requires would-be demonstrators to get permission from government authorities before staging a protest. The letter will be sent to Parliament and President Thein Sein […]

The Use of Section 18 to Continue Human Rights Abuses in Burma

Section 18 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law is being frequently utilized to arrest and imprison political activists for undertaking human rights activism in Burma. AAPP (B) wishes to highlight the ongoing human rights abuses section 18 permits and to make the international community aware of the dangers this poses to the political freedom in Burma […]

Rule By Law: An Analysis of the Use of Legislation to Stifle Civil Society Space in Burma

This paper is primarily an analysis of the raft of legislation that is in the process of being pushed through parliament to target HRDs, activists, protestors and CSOs, and the threat that such legislation poses to their fundamental rights – which Burma is legally bound to respect and protect under the 2008 Constitution. This paper will also look at the current situation of political prisoners to demonstrate how the legislation is being misused in collaboration with a compliant judiciary and the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission […]

Myanmar: UN Expert Welcomes Latest Release of Prisoners of Conscience, but Raises Alarm over Ongoing Arrests

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, has welcomed the latest presidential amnesty on 23 July resulting in the release of 73 prisoners of conscience, while raising concerns over ongoing arrests of activists […]

Burma: China-led Oil, Gas Projects Spark Arrests

Authorities in Burma should drop charges against ethnic Arakanese activists who participated in peaceful protests against Chinese-led oil and gas projects, Human Rights Watch said today. Ten activists are scheduled to face criminal charges in court on May 13, 2013, for demonstrating and holding […]

Burma Continues to Repress Critical Voices

According to Freedom House’s annual global survey on political rights and civil liberties released this week, Burma is still rated as “Not Free.” A “Not Free” country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.

This could come as a surprise after the reforms that President Thein Sein and his government have started implementing but as Freedom House explains freedoms of expression and association improved in the last two years “but they depend more on current government policy than on deep institutional changes.”

One of the noticeable areas of reform is freedom of information. Thein Sein released bloggers and journalists, ended pre-publication censorship, and authorized the publication of privately-owned dailies. Regrettably, as explained in a report released this week by Reporters Without Borders, “as things stand, the possibility of the reforms being perverted cannot be ruled out.” The Press Scrutiny and Registration Division is still in place and can suspend any weekly that publishes “forbidden” content, there is no law providing protection to media and journalists, the old oppressive laws remain unamended and privately owned weeklies have been facing legal proceedings […]

A Protest Law With Genuine Rights and Freedom is Needed in Burma

Burma Campaign UK today urged the Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire MP to call in the Burmese ambassador to Britain to question him regarding why people are still being arrested under the right to protest law in Burma. Burma Campaign UK also urged the Foreign Office Minister to demand the military-backed government pass a protest law with genuine rights to protest and to form a joint domestic and international board with the involvement of the UN to investigate the numbers of political prisoners remaining in Burma’s jails […]