Yangon residents started on Thursday to celebrate Myanmar’s Thingyan traditional water festival for the first time since the administrative capital moved to Naypyidaw city outside Pyinmana in November last year.
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The head of the Burmese junta, Senior General Than Shwe, will visit Arakan State with his family for Thyangyan, the Buddhist New Year Celebration which kick off today. The visiting entourage will have to be welcomed with an Arakanese ritual of drum beating that was employed by the Arakanese kings in ancient times, says a member of the drum team that has been instructed to prepare by the state’s military authority.
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The appeal submitted on behalf of detained Burmese lawyer Aye Myint who was accused of giving ‘wrong’ information to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), was rejected by Pegu divisional court on 7 March after it was also rejected by the district court.
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April 12, The authority of Ma-U-Pin Township in Burma’s Irrawaddy Division and the Energy Ministry of the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), jointly confiscated paddy fields from farmers for oil exploration without giving any compensation to their owners.
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Maungdaw, Burma: In continuance of the Burmese military regime’s gross violation of human rights a Rohingya couple were sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nasaka (Burmese Border Security Force) for marrying without permission from the authorities in northern Arakan, reports our correspondent.
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A consortium of Korean companies is pushing to participate in a Canadian company’s copper mine development project in Myanmar.
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Infantry Battalion 34, based in Kyauk Pru, Arakan State, has saved more than 30 million kyat in its battalion fund at Myanmar Holdings Bank, Ltd.
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April 12,The military regime’s Castor oil plantation project is creating a major problem for the people in North-western Burma. The military government’s insistence that people be involved in such plantations will give them no time to eke out their livelihood.
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Southeast Asian parliamentarians urged ASEAN today to take a tougher stance on Burma and increase pressure on the military to accept the National League for Democracy’s latest negotiation offer.
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ASEAN should take a stronger stand against Burma’s military junta in the wake of the disappointing visit last month of its special envoy, Malaysian Foreign Minister Dato’ Seri Syed Hamid Albar, to Burma which failed to bring the country and its long suffering people any closer to democratic transition.
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