Journalists working in military-ruled Myanmar continue to face intimidation, torture and arrests in reporting on the country’s corrupt and brutal regime, despite international calls for more press freedom, a conference on media safety heard Tuesday. (more…)

New Delhi  – The Burmese military junta authorities in Rangoon Division have banned a sermon by abbot U Thumingla, organizers and friends said. (more…)

Rangoon – In a dark room in a dormitory for workers at a steel factory, a 58-year-old woman is fanning her daughter, who is moaning in agony and covered in sweat. “It hurts, it hurts,” the young woman groans. “Mother, it hurts.” (more…)

A striped rabbit, a rodent thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago, a frog with green blood and turquoise bones, and a hot-pink millipede that secretes cyanide are just a few of the new species that have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in just the last decade, according to a new report by the WWF. (more…)

Yangon – Myanmar and Thailand will continue to work for raising the momentum of mutually-beneficial economic cooperation between the two countries next year, the local weekly journal Yangon Times quoted Myanmar’s biggest business organization as reporting Wednesday. (more…)

New York – The United Nations said on Tuesday that there is no immediate plan for its special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, to visit the country. (more…)

Last month, U Gambira, a leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance, received a 68-year sentence for his role in organizing last year’s Saffron Revolution, when tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and political activists peacefully protested the junta’s brutal regime. Myanmar comedian Zarganar was sentenced to 59 years in jail by one of the military junta’s secret courts. His crime? Publicly criticizing the regime’s slow response to Cyclone Nargis. And poet Saw Wai received a lighter sentence: a “mere” two years. His crime? Penning an eight-line Valentine’s Day poem that contained a hidden message. Putting the first letters of each line of the poem together read “Power Crazy Than Shwe” in Burmese, mocking the junta’s leader. Two years in prison. That’s three months per line. 9.4 days per word. (more…)

When I finally picked up Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles earlier this week, I arrived with a unique array of biases:

I have not read either Pyongyang or Shenzhen, Delisle’s previous two travelogues from Drawn & Quarterly. I was, however, fresh off Secret Invasion Dark Reign. (more…)

ASEAN Should Monitor Jailed Activists
New York – Burma’s military government has used the country’s legal mechanisms to intimidate political prisoners and to deny them access to justice, Human Rights Watch said today, citing new testimony from a defense lawyer who has just fled the country. In a crackdown that started in October 2008, Burma’s courts have sentenced over 200 political and labor activists, internet bloggers, journalists, and Buddhist monks and nuns to lengthy jail terms. (more…)