Thein Sein Prosecution Raised In UK Parliament

Lord Alton of Liverpool has asked the British government whether it might be possible to arrest Thein Sein for human rights abuses if he goes ahead with a planned visit to the UK early next year.

The UK applies universal jurisdiction for the use of torture, but only under certain limited conditions […]

Violent Crackdown Against Buddhist Monks, New Regime with an Old Method

Thein Sein’s government has revealed its true colors with the surprisingly reckless and bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters in Monywa, Sagaing Region. The crackdown on the protest camps came at 3am, without any chance for the protesters to withdraw. It was an ambush and an old tactic that characterizes the old military regime that the world has been trying to believe has reformed.

The Letpadaung copper project near Monywa – the largest copper mine in Burma – is a joint venture between military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd., and Wan Bao, a unit of the weapons manufacturer China North Industries Corp. The project has been facing a growing objection since August by the local communities in the Letpadaung area who say the project has confiscated as many as 7,800 acres of land, forcing them out of their villages and ruining the environment.

Riot police aggressively dispersed protesters using water cannons, tear gas and, according to protesters, incendiary devices that set the camps on flames leaving at least 50 people injured by the fire. Many of those who were severely wounded were Buddhist monks […]

Rangoon Lawyers Take to the Streets – Again

Some 200 lawyers held a demonstration along Maha Bandula Road in Rangoon on Wednesday morning to protest the lack of government response to their previous calls to resist the sale of the city’s 101-year-old High Court and the Police Commissioner Office to a consortium of local and Chinese businessmen […]

President Thein Sein’s UN Speech Disguises the Truth Behind Burma’s Reforms

As President Thein Sein was busy at the UN General Assembly describing “the amazing changes” in Burma as “irreversible,” the Burma Army offensive in Kachin State continues unabated, hundreds of political prisoners remain incarcerated and peaceful protesters are detained and summoned to court. The reality of the changes in Burma is that they are merely tentative and minimal; substantive change is yet to occur.

This reality is perhaps most keenly felt in Kachin State where more and more people are fleeing their homes as clashes continue. President Thein Sein addressed the Kachin issue by stating that the government’s Peace Negotiation Team and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) are “working to further strengthen the confidence building measures.” Yet what confidence measures are these? Human rights violations are ongoing while more and more troops are being sent to the frontlines. The government is also blocking humanitarian aid. These are not confidence building measures. It is of no surprise that members of the Kachin community in the US staged protests at President Thein Sein’s visit and wrote an open letter to Thein Sein urging him to “stop the harassment, interrogation, and detention of innocent Kachin civilians by the local authorities.” […]

Thailand: Press Burmese President on Rights

Thein Sein’s Visit Offers Opportunity to Promote Reforms

The Thai government should press Burmese President Thein Sein to take immediate and concrete steps to address serious human rights problems in Burma when he visits Thailand from July 22-24, 2012, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday […]

Open Letter to the President of Burma and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh

The Asian Human Rights Commission is taking the unusual step of writing to you jointly today with regards to the ongoing communal violence in the Rakhine State of Myanmar, which borders Bangladesh; violence that has been […]

69 People from Shan State Sign Letter Calling for 24-hour Electricity and Sufficient Water Supply

A group of 69 people signed letter to President Thein Sein calling for 24-hour electricity and sufficient water supply. The letter highlighted the issue of electricity shortage that has got worse and the need of sufficient water supply for Shan State’s highland. […]

Former Political Prisoners Appeal the President for Release of Ko Aye Aung and Other Political Prisoners

Former political prisoners appealed to President Thein Sein for the release of Ko Aye Aung who was sentenced 59 years imprisonment since 1999 for his participation in a protest in Rangoon […]

ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရက ၁၉၉၈ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့ၿပီး ပုဒ္မ ၅ (ည) ၊ ၁၇ (၂၀) ၊ ၁၇ (၁) တို႔ျဖင့္ ၁၉၉၉ ခုႏွစ္ ဇန္န၀ါရီ ၁၅ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ အင္းစိန္ေထာင္တြင္း အထူးတရားရံုးက ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ၅၉ ႏွစ္နဲ႔ အက်ဥ္းခ်ထားသူ ဒဂံု အေ၀းသင္တကၠသိုလ္၊ ရူပေဗဒ အထူးျပဳ […]

Women’s League of Burma Calls for Greater Women’s Participation in Peace Process

The Women’s League of Burma welcomes the inclusion of two women parliamentarians in the newly formed union level Peace Committee. However, the WLB urges U Thein Sein’s government to consider a much greater increase in women’s participation as a start towards […]

405 villagers from Maubin Township Reclaim Confiscated Lands

405 farmers from Maletto Village, Maubin Township, Irrawaddy Division sent an appeal letter to President Thein Sein on May 12 requesting help in reclaiming their farming lands confiscated by U Pai company. These more than 1,000 acres […]