Defending Human Rights Still a Risky Business in Burma

Last week former political prisoner Wai Lu, who was helping protesting farmers win back land confiscated by a copper mining company in the Latpadaung mountain range, was taken off a bus and arrested on his way back to Rangoon. Family members have been told he is being charged under Burma’s Religious Offenses Act, yet they haven’t had a chance to see him since his arrest and don’t know where he is being held.

Wai Lu is not an isolated case. In the last two months, human rights defenders have been arbitrarily arrested for defending people’s freedom of assembly and for participating in protests. On 7 August, police in Mandalay detained labor activist Aye Thein after he represented vendors protesting against their relocation. In early July, the government harassed and detained student activists in order to prevent them from holding commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the military regime’s crackdown on students. In May, the Police arrested and intimidated more than 40 protesters who took part in the nationwide peaceful candlelight protest for electricity. Naw Ohn Hla, a former political prisoner, claims the authorities continue to spy on her since she led these protests […]

ေျမသိမ္းတိုက္ပြဲ

4,000 local people and representatives of civil society organizations and networks launched a protest against copper mining in Latpantaung area on 5 September 2012 and called for the full termination of the mining project. Protesters included farmers whose lands have been confiscated […]

၅.၉.၂၀၁၂ ရက္ေန႕ ေျမသိမ္းတိုက္ပြဲ (၁၃) ရက္ေန႕ေျမာက္ေန႕တြင္ ေဒသခံျပည္သူမ်ားမွ မံုရြာ-ပုသိမ္လမ္းဆံု၌ ေန႕လည္ (၁၁း၀၀) နာရီမွ စတင္ကာ ဆႏၵျပမႈမ်ားကို စတင္ခဲ့ျပီး လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေၾကးနီစီမံကိန္း လံုးဝရပ္ဆိုင္းရန္ ဆႏၵကို ထုတ္ေဖာ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေဒသတြင္ လက္ပန္ေတာင္းေတာင္ ေၾကးနီစီမံကိန္းေၾကာင့္ […]

Burma’s Military and Economic Elites Continue to Steal the Livelihoods of Rural People

As more and more farmers are losing their lands and livelihoods to corrupt businesses long-associated with the Burma Army, the current government is doing its best to preserve the interests of these wealthy elites at the expense of disempowered rural people. With the onset of the gold rush into Burma, these cronies of the military-backed government are abusing their position to reap the financial rewards of the potential flood of new investment while rural people, who make up 90% of the population, are losing their livelihoods.

One such example is from Bwi Daw Village in Kachin State where residents reported last week of local businessmen confiscating their land at gunpoint and subsequently destroying their crops with tractors to make room for a fish farm. For these villagers, there is no legal remedy and have now lost the ability to put food on the table for their families […]

Kachin Protest for Refugee’s Release

More than 1,500 people staged a peaceful protest in Myitkyina on Friday calling for the release of a detained Kachin refugee, Lahtaw Brang Shawng, who they say has been brutally tortured by security forces for three days and nights.

The protesters are mostly Christian Kachin locals in the state capital, including youths and women, as well as pastors from Jan Mai Kawng Baptist Church and Kachin Baptist Convention […]

Gold Miners Claim Victory After Demands Granted

More than a thousand gold miners called off a weeks-long protest on Thursday after their demands to restart work were granted by their parent company.

“The company agreed to 95 percent of our demands. Finally we achieved what we deserve and will call off the protest and will leave the area late this evening,” said Than Lwin, one of the miners […]

Thousands of Miners Protest Government Order

Thousands of miners in Mandalay division’s Yamethin township rallied after an order from the Ministry of Mining demanding the suspension of all mining operations across the country left them jobless […]

Protests Demanding Increased Power Supply Illustrates Burma’s Unpreparedness for Influx of Foreign Investment

Last week saw various inspiring actions bravely undertaken by the people against injustice and the government’s irresponsibility in fulfilling their daily needs such as electricity. There were actions against land confiscations, low wages, violations of labor rights, and, largest of all, against the significant shortage of power in various areas across Burma.

During the past few weeks there have been worker strikes in as many as 20 different factories. These include the 25 people on hunger strike that continued into its second day on Saturday at Yangon Crown Steel factory in Hmawbi, Yangon Division, where almost 400 workers have been on strike since May 20. Despite the number of worker strikes, only a few have had successful negotiations with factory owners. Many have suggested that this is due to the lack of a government policy outlining a minimum wage and laws that protect the rights of workers. This is a reminder again of how the government is unprepared to accommodate foreign investment and manage the type of development it will bring […]

Peaceful Protestors Face Violence by Burma’s Police

Peaceful demonstrators calling for a regular supply of electricity in Pyi Township have faced a brutal crackdown by police in Burma.
AAPP firmly condemns the way police have mistreated protestors during non-violent demonstrations against chronic electricity shortages, when 5 protestors were beaten and arrested by 80 policemen on May 24, 2012 […]

Massive Protest Shines a Light on Power Cuts

More than 1,000 people in Burma’s second-largest city have held a protest against severe power cuts, residents told AFP, the country’s biggest public demonstration in five years.

A large crowd was again expected to gather in Mandalay on Monday evening as residents vent their anger at three months of power cuts that have left the city with as little as four hours of electricity a day […]

The International Community Must Support the People of Burma in Their Efforts to Exercise Their Rights

“We’re still on strike. We are fighting for our rights, because we want to be treated fairly” said a female worker representative from the Tai Yi shoe factory in Rangoon, on Wednesday. It has now been more than a week since nearly 2,000 workers went on strike because of the factory’s refusal to pay them for the five days they were prevented from working during Chinese New Year.

“We are being forced to get off our own land and the company is threatening legal action against us. So we have authorized someone to act on our behalf in filing a lawsuit against Khin Shwe” said Kyaw Sein, a farmer who lost 50 acres of land, talking to the Irrawaddy this week.

Farmers from Rangoon’s Mingaladon Township said that they will sue Khin Shwe, the chairman of Zay Kabar Company and a member of the Lower House of Parliament, for allegedly confiscating their farmland […]