AIPMC Calls on ASEAN Leaders to Place Ethnic Conflict and Human Rights Situation in Myanmar on ASEAN Agenda

The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) today called on leading ASEAN delegates to urgently address concerns regarding democratic reform, ethnic conflict and human rights abuses in Myanmar at the upcoming 19th ASEAN Summit in Bali this week […]

One Year On From Suu Kyi Release – Most Political Prisoners Still In Jail

Burma Campaign UK today sounded a note of caution about the pace of political change in Burma, and called on the international community not to move too fast to relax pressure on the Burmese government.

One year on from the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s democracy movement, most political prisoners remain in jail and human rights abuses have actually increased […]

Myanmar National Human Rights Commission’s Open Letter to President Thein Sein

Myanmar National Human Rights Commission had in an open letter dated 10, October, 2011 submitted an appeal for the release of prisoners by granting amnesty to them. In our submission, Myanmar National Human Rights Commission […]

The Recognition of Political Prisoners: Essential to Democratic and National Reconciliation Process

Reconciling divide on political prisoner numbers

The exact number of political prisoners in Burma has been hotly disputed over the past few months. It comes as no surprise that members of the U Thein Sein regime, such as the Presidential Advisor and Foreign Minister, dispute the numbers of political prisoners, saying estimates of political prisoners are inflated and erroneous. The burden of proof rests on the U Thein Sein regime, not the opposition, and calls for the regime to publicly disclose its prisoner lists along with evidence proving the status of each political detainee […]

AAPP Calls to Bridge the Gap on Political Prisoner Numbers

In order for the deep divide on political prisoner numbers to be reconciled, it has become increasingly urgent for there to be a consensus on the number of political prisoners in Burma. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma (AAPP) fully supports recent statements by Tomas Ojea Quintana, Special Rapporteur on human rights situation on Burma, that the International Committee of the Red Cross should be allowed independent and regular access into Burma’s prisons with the aim of investigating the political status of each prisoner in Burma […]

Myanmar Political Prisoners Held in Dog Cells and Denied Water

The Myanmar authorities must act immediately to end the ill-treatment of some15 political prisoners in Yangon’s Insein Prison, where they have been denied water and some reportedly held in “dog” cells, Amnesty International said today […]

Political Prisoners Continue to Suffer Despite the Claim that Change has Come to Burma

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa recently undertook a mission to Burma in which he sought to determine whether the country has made sufficient changes to be granted the chair of ASEAN. Sadly, it appears that Mr. Natalegawa did not visit any of the ethnic states where conflict is ongoing and heinous human rights abuses are rampant. He also failed to meet with activists from the 88 generation who requested the opportunity speak with him. This may help to explain why Mr. Natalegawa’s comments at the conclusion of his visit focused on recent initiatives by the regime and declared that political reforms appear “irreversible.”

While change may be coming to Nyapyidaw and Rangoon, there is little evidence of change for those civilians living in conflict areas of Karen, Shan or Kachin State. Similarly, the 1700 political prisoners still behind bars have not experienced any positive change at all. Fifteen of these political prisoners being held in Burma’s notorious Insein prison, have attempted to bring some change to their situation, beginning a hunger strike to protest a ruling barring the majority of prisoners from the right to have their sentences reduced […]

Statement Calling for the Release of U Gambira

President U Thein Sein and his government have declared that they are leading Burma towards a democratic country but there are still many monks and others who are political prisoners and who are tortured in various ways.

Ashin Gambira, a leader of ABMA, was tortured in different ways. As a result, his health is now in a grave condition […]

ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္၏ ၄၉ ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ေမြးေန႕ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

ယေန႕သည္ ျမန္မာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး လႈပ္ရွားမႈ၏ ေခါင္းေဆာင္တဦးျဖစ္သူ ကိုမင္းကိုႏိုင္၏ ၄၉ ႏွစ္ျပည့္ ေမြးေန႕ ျဖစ္ေပသည္။ “မ်က္ရည္ေတြ သိမ္းႏိုင္မွ က်ေနာ္ အားလံုးကို မဂၤလာပါလို႕ ႏႈတ္ခြန္းဆက္တာ အဓိပၸါယ္ ရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္ဗ်ာ။ […]

Japan: Press Burma’s Foreign Minister on Rights

Political Prisoners, Not Just Aid and Trade, Should Top Agenda

Japanese officials should press Burma’s visiting foreign minister on the need for genuine reforms to improve human rights in Burma, Human Rights Watch said today. Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin will visit Tokyo from October 20 to 22, 2011.

Wunna Maung Lwin’s visit to Japan is the first by a foreign minister from Burma in 16 years. His meetings with Japanese officials are expected to include discussion of increased development assistance and possible trade agreements […]