New York: A United Nations human rights expert has urged Myanmar’s military government to release all political prisoners including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by June, while estimating the total number of political prisoners in Myanmar at 1,144 as of the end of last year, according to a recent U.N. report obtained by Kyodo News on Monday.
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As the two growing powers of Asia sort out their places in their continent and the world, India has a comparative advantage over China that it doesn’t always exploit: its status as the globe’s largest democracy.
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Burma’s military government claimed last week that the country’s economy has grown 12.2 percent in 2005, according to a local media report.
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Mae Sot: As Myo Myint tells it, his torturers opened the door to a large room heaving with naked prisoners, some moaning, others unconscious, all lying soaked in their own blood and feces, and screamed at him: “If you don’t tell us everything, you will be joining them.”
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February 21: Na Soi: Lu Khu Paw says soldiers shot her father as he gathered bamboo in the forest, laid waste to the rice fields and burned down their home three different times. The 16-year-old vividly remembers her village in flames, survivors fleeing and her mother dying of disease in a jungle hide-out.
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Bangkok: Southeast Asian parliamentarians have urged governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to expel Myanmar from the regional grouping unless it frees opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, Thai Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, Chairman of the Thai Senate’s Foreign Affairs Commission, said here on Thursday.
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New Delhi’s decade-old “look east” policy is poised to take another significant step with the first visit by an Indian head of state to military-ruled Myanmar next month.
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February 23: UN special human rights envoy for Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro urged Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to press Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) for democratic transition as promised by the junta, when he visits Burma in March.
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Bangkok: The “cacophony” of criticism against Myanmar is not forcing the military-ruled state to reform, an outgoing UN rights envoy said Friday, urging the international community to be more diplomatic.
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February 23: Johns calls for release of political prisoners, beginning of democratic process
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February 18-21: Three months ago, on November 27 2005 Myanmar authorities extended a serving order that has kept NLD, National League for Democracy party leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest by six months. (more…)

The duration of the on-and-off going National Convention will not rest on the assurance given by Gen Than Shwe to the UN chief last April that the constitutional process would be completed by the end of 2005 but only on how soon the junta’s quasi-political organization will prove up as a full fledged political party, according to two convention delegates.
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February 22: Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw San warned that effective actions will be taken against all political parties including the National League for Democracy (NLD) as they are operating against the existing laws, according to a report by Xinhua.
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February 22: The State Peace and Development Council has been confiscating land in Mon State to build camps for forced labour for brick kilns. The bricks are used to construct military camps, according to a young Mon environmentalist.
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Officials in Dhaka have expressed their frustration over the slow repatriation of Burmese refugees living in long-term camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar district.
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An association of Thai-Burmese border-based opposition groups today denied the Burmese government’s accusations that they were involved in a series of deadly bombings in Rangoon last May.
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A conference to find a solution to the problems plaguing the Mons will be hold in April. Representatives of Mon nationals worldwide will participate, according to a decision of the implementing committee.
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Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who will visit military-ruled Myanmar next month, may raise the issue of its transition to democracy, his spokesman said Thursday.
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Twenty-three years after 17 high-ranking Seoul government officials were killed in a North Korean bombing in Burma, now Myanmar, the full truth may be known soon as one of the Northern communist agents involved wants to live in South Korea, according to a South Korean lawmaker.
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February 22: Aye Tha Aung first told DVB the essence/summary of the latest Committee Representing People’s Parliament (CRPP) in Rangoon as follows:
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