Take Action: Write to the Government of Burma About the Air Force Officer Tortured and Jailed for 20 years Over Internet Use

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has been alerted to the case of an air force officer currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for posting articles online critical of the armed forces. Ne Lynn Dwe was taken by military intelligence […]

A Community Leader Jailed in Burma – Free Tun Aung

Burma Campaign UK today called for the immediate release of Tun Aung and all remaining political prisoners in Burma. Tun Aung is a 65-year-old medical doctor and a respected community leader who has been arrested and jailed for political reasons. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison under Section 24 (1) of The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act for having 100 Chinese Yuan in his wallet, which was given to him by his daughter as a present. He is suffering from a pituitary tumor and needs regular medication but he has been denied medical treatment […]

Arbitrary Arrests in Burma: A Tool to Repress Critical Voices

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) is highly concerned that the government of Burma continues to use arbitrary arrest as a tool to hold members of the democracy and human rights movement behind bars often without formal charges […]

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားမိသားစုမ်ား အက်ဳိးေဆာင္ကြန္ယက္ သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

၁၇.၉.၂၀၁၂ ရက္ေန႔က ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သမၼတ၏လြတ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ျဖင့္ အက်ဥ္းသား စုစုေပါင္း (၅၁၄) ဦးလႊတ္ေပးခဲ့ရာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား (၈၈) ဦးသာပါ၀င္ခဲ့ဟု သတင္းမ်ားအရ သိရွိရသည္။ ယခုဆိုလွ်င္ အင္းစိန္အက်ဥ္းေထာင္၊ ေတာင္ငူအက်ဥ္းေထာင္၊ သာယာ၀တီအက်ဥ္းေထာင္ […]

“None Should be Left Behind” – UN Expert Welcomes Latest Release of Prisoners of Conscience in Myanmar

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, welcomed the latest presidential amnesty resulting in the release of a number of prisoners of conscience, and renewed his call for the immediate and systematic liberation of all prisoners of conscience without conditions […]

Burma Prisoner Release Public Relations, Not Reform

Burma Campaign UK today accused Burma’s President Thein Sein of playing games with the lives of political prisoners, using them as pawns in his efforts to persuade the international community to lift sanctions […]

Burma: Free Remaining Political Prisoners

International Monitoring Needed; End Persecution of Those Freed

The Burmese government’s latest release of political prisoners falls short of meeting its commitment to release all political prisoners and shows the need for a transparent process to ensure that all political prisoners are immediately freed, Human Rights Watch said today […]

Burma: Former Political Prisoners Persecuted

End Passport, Education Restrictions; Provide Support for Those Released

The government of Burma should immediately release all remaining political prisoners and lift travel and other restrictions on those freed, Human Rights Watch said today. Independent international monitors should be permitted unhindered access to Burma’s prisons to provide a public accounting of all remaining political prisoners […]

Innocent Civilians Remain in Burma’s Jails – Free Brang Shawng!

Burma Campaign UK today called for the immediate release of Brang Shawng. Brang Shawng is a 25-year-old Kachin farmer who was arrested under suspicion of being a captain of Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and carrying out bombing operations near Myitkyina. While he was in interrogation he was tortured brutally and forced to confess to bombings in the area […]

Burma: Come Home But Be Quiet

On Thursday, the office of President Thein Sein released the names of some 2,000 people who were removed from Burma’s infamous blacklist. For most of the people who discovered their names on the list it must have been an unprecedented moment, coming home was finally conceivable after years in exile. Yet looking at it more closely it appears that Thein Sein’s invitation to come home is also an invitation to remain quiet.

Little was said in the news about the more than 4,000 names remaining on the blacklist. Who are they? Why are they still on the list? When will they be removed? The only person who does know is President Thein Sein, thus ensuring that he still has the discretionary power to select who is and who is not allowed back home.

Welcoming exiles back to Burma and truly opening a space for free speech would mean consigning the entire concept of a blacklist to the history books. For Thein Sein’s invitation to be serious and genuine it must extend to everybody […]