Empowering the Myanmar Human Rights Commission

Skepticism regarding the value of the Myanmar Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has been virtually universal—leading to tired jokes that the very term is in itself an oxymoron. A perpetual cycle of human rights violations exposed over the course of half-a-century—including systematic rape, forced labor, child soldiers, land confiscations and extrajudicial killings—has not inspired optimism that […]

Statement of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission on Its Establishment and Its Current Status of Functioning

On 16 March 2012, the Speaker of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, based on the opinion of the Joint Bill Committee that the establishment of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) is not consistent with the Constitution and existing laws […]

Untold Miseries: Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Kachin State

In his March 2011 inauguration speech, Burmese President Thein Sein emphasized the importance of ending Burma’s several ethnic armed conflicts, declaring that more than 60 years of ethnic warfare in Burma were due to “dogmatism, sectarian strife, and racism.” Burma’s ethnic minorities had, he said […]

Villagers Sign Complaint Letter About Anyarphya Hydropower Project in Tavoy

As many as 3,000 villagers sign a complaint letter addressed to President Thein Sein about the ongoing Anyarphya Hydropower Project in Tavoy, Tenasserim Division, expressing their concerns over the local impact of the project and the losses that villagers will have to bear […]

တနသၤာရီတိုင္း ထားဝယ္ျမိဳ႕အနီးတြင္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လ်က္ရွိေသာ အညာဖ်ား ေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ စီမံကိန္းႏွင့္ ပက္သတ္၍ သက္ေရာက္မည့္ ဆိုးက်ဳိးမ်ားအေပၚ ၎တို႕၏ စိုးရိမ္ပူပန္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ နစ္နာဆံုးရံႈးမႈမ်ားကို ေရးသားေဖာ္ျပထားသည့္ တိုင္ၾကားစာတစ္ေစာင္ကို ရြာသား ၃၀၀၀ ခန္႕က လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးကာ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္ထံသို႕ ေပးပို႕ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ […]

Local Communities and Supporters Express Concerns About Development Projects in Burma

As Thein Sein’s government takes small steps towards democratic transition, the people of Burma are expressing concerns about problematic development projects already underway. These projects, many of which are in ethnic states, directly contribute to human rights violations and increased militarization in project areas, as well as having negative social, economic and environmental impacts.

On 1 March, activists from Burma and around the world participated in a Global Day of Action against the Shwe Gas Pipeline Project that cuts across the country from western Arakan State to China. One hundred and thirty organizations from more than 20 countries signed an open letter to President Thein Sein calling for the suspension of the Shwe Gas project. The letter condemned the confiscation of thousands of acres of farmlands and restriction of access to traditional fishing areas for the project, as well as increased militarization and displacement along the pipeline corridor. The project will generate the country’s largest source of foreign revenue at US$29 billion over 30 years. Furthermore, the gas will be exported to China, while around 75% of the people in Burma do not receive electricity from the national grid […]

Campaigners Around the World Call to Postpone Destructive Chinese Pipelines in Burma

130 organizations over 20 countries today held demonstrations and submitted letters calling on Burma’s President Thein Sein to postpone China’s trans-Burma oil and gas pipelines project. The letter expressed serious concerns over human rights abuses as well as […]

Philippine Activists Call to Postpone Gas and Trans-Burma Pipeline Projects; Urge Thein Sein Regime to Exercise Social and Environmental Responsibility

Philippine solidarity activists today joined the Global Day of Action against the construction of oil and gas pipelines in Burma called the Shwe Gas and Trans-Burma Pipelines Project led by Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise and the Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Company […]

Press Release at the Conclusion of the Visit to Myanmar of the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General for Myanmar

The Special Adviser to the Secretary-General for Myanmar, Mr Vijay Nambiar, concluded today a five-day visit at the invitation of the Government of Myanmar. In Naypyitaw, the Special Adviser was received […]

Women’s League of Burma Urges All Parties to Work Together Towards Genuine and Long-Lasting Peace in Burma

Women’s League of Burma (WLB) calls for U Thein Sein Government to implement a nation-wide ceasefire, which was announced officially in August 2011, and urges all parties to work together towards genuine and long-lasting peace in Burma […]

Budget, Not By-Elections, Next Big Test For Thein Sein

As Burma’s Parliament prepares for its next session, Burma Campaign UK called on the international community to pay close attention to the new budget proposed by Thein Sein’s government, as an indicator […]