Even as cyclone victims reel under the devastating impact of Nargis, the military rulers are lining their pockets from the aid funds donated by the international community including the UN. The money is being made by way of a twisted currency exchange mechanism – dollar to local Burmese kyat, a source in the Burmese military establishment said. (more…)

Thousands of people in hundreds of villages are being forced to labor for free under a military-led reconstruction effort in the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta, according to sources in the area. (more…)

School pupils returning to their studies in the cyclone-affected Pyin district of Hai Gyi, Irrawaddy division, are still waiting for their school buildings to be repaired. (more…)

Opposition figures and a political analyst have expressed doubts over whether the planned visit of United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Burma in mid-August will bring about any positive outcomes. (more…)

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) plans to set up at least 100 amusement centers for survived children in Myanmar’s two cyclone-hard-hit divisions, the local-language weekly Myanmar Times reported Thursday. (more…)

Thai army on Thursday pushed back 58 Karens, mostly women and children, displaced by fighting between Burmese government troops and rebel soldiers from Karen National Union, according to a border sources. (more…)

Two junta officials and two Chinese teak traders from Taunggyi were killed by each other in Kholam, Namzang township, after quarreling over the division of the proceeds from teak trading, according to SHAN sources. (more…)

The United Nations’ top humanitarian relief official, John Holmes said on Wednesday that he would visit Burma next week to assess the progress of humanitarian relief work in cyclone-affected areas of the country. (more…)

A U.N. food agency is appealing for $33.5 million to help small farmers and fishermen in cyclone-hit Burma. (more…)

The workability of most local media outlets in Burma is now apparently harder not just because of irregularities of the censorship board but also the unscrupulous approach of military cronies at their own expenses, resulting in an obstruction of the growth of private media. (more…)

In May 2002, with Aung San Suu Kyi temporarily released from house arrest, I was doing poetry workshops and readings in Mandalay and Rangoon. It was just before the monsoon, and the dawn air was like a sauna as I walked round the Golden Palace, destroyed by the Japanese and rebuilt with forced labour. Restored, it feels like an emptied concentration camp, aggressively regimented and dead: the way the junta would like to keep the whole country. Above is Mandalay Hill, from which, at dusk, the largest lit-up building you can see is Mandalay Correction Facility, the city’s jail. (more…)

I’ve just returned from Laputta in the Irrawaddy delta, where the situation is appalling and vastly different than government accounts. (more…)

The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has had little to brag about with its handling of bad-boy member Myanmar over the past 11 years. (more…)