St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., June 23, 2005 – The Shan Women‘s Action Network (SWAN), which runs community-based programs for refugee women and children who have fled the civil war in Burma‘s Shan State, and the Women‘s League of Burma, an association of eleven women’s groups that SWAN helped to establish, have been selected by an international panel of experts to receive the 2005 Women‘s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation. 

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In its dealings with the military junta that controls Burma, the outside world tends to focus on the disgraceful suppression of that country’s democratic movement. This is understandable, since Burmese democracy has a powerful figurehead in Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won 80 per cent of the vote in the country’s last democratic election. Ms Suu Kyi, held under house arrest by Burma‘s generals since 2003, is enormously respected around the world. Burma will be free, it is widely assumed, only when she is free. 

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It was the cooking pot that gave Guy Horton pause. It was upside- down on the ground in the devastated village, and its bottom had been smashed in. 

 

Horton, a university lecturer in English literature, reinvented himself in his forties as a one-man research programme into what the Burmese army, the Tatmadaw as it is known, was doing to the Burmese people. 

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Officials of an exiled pro-democracy group on Wednesday made a public announcement on the dismissal of their party Chairman, Dr. Tint Swe, charging him of violating central committee decisions and financial rules.
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Takua Pa, Thailand: Migrant workers from Myanmar were the cheap labor that built Thai resorts where 2,000 foreign tourists died in the tsunami. Now, they’re rebuilding bungalows and hotels on this splendid beach to lure back tourists. 

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Singapore: ASEAN members cannot force Myanmar to give up its turn as chairman next year but the country might do so voluntarily to uphold the group’s interests, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said here Friday. 

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The United Wa State Army, an ethnic ceasefire group in Burma, is to hold a low-key ceremony to mark its opium production ban on International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Sunday. The total ban on the production of opium in the Wa region takes effect from June 30. The ceremony had originally been scheduled for today and was to include members of the Burmese government, journalists, foreign diplomats and United Nations representatives. However, Rangoon has postponed the event until the end of the year. The UWSA said it changed the timing of the event to Sunday to avoid offending the junta, which it claims reneged on its promised plans for the event. 

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Former student leaders have recently requested improved conditions for political prisoners jailed by Burma‘s military regime, said one prominent member of the group on Friday. 

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