The Indo-Myanmar money exchange market has crashed affecting Burmese currency from January 2009. It has caused difficulties for most traders in the Indo-Myanmar border areas which have a market in Mizoram state, India. (more…)

Burma’s Irrawaddy delta region faces an extreme shortage of drinking water this summer because lakes and ponds used for drinking water were destroyed by salty sea water after Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2007. (more…)

The Burmese Ambassador to the United Nations is spinning white lies at the Human Rights Council by denying the presence of political prisoners in Burma, activists alleged on Thursday. (more…)

A court in Rangoon on March 5 sentenced three men who didn’t know each other to a decade’s imprisonment for a crime that they never committed – or rather, for a crime so nebulous that if any of them had ever used a computer he wouldn’t know if he had committed it or not. (more…)

Once again, a United Nations (UN) investigator of human rights in Myanmar has urged its ruling generals to release all political prisoners. And once again the junta has brusquely brushed off the demand. Myanmar has no prisoners of conscience, only law breakers, its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Wunna Maung Win, brazenly asserted. (more…)

Burma VJ was supposed to be a modest little film: a half-hour, low-key yet intimate portrait of Joshua, a 26-year-old Burmese video journalist, or VJ. Joshua had decided to do his bit for a better Burma by taking his video camera, usually concealed, on to the streets of Rangoon to document what he could of everyday life. When we started work on the project, in early 2007, the footage Joshua was able to show us was, frankly, totally uneventful: little reports on street kids, life in his village, the miserable state of the railways. (more…)

In the past year, humanitarian assistance to Burma has been primarily focused on victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck the Irrawaddy delta on May 2, 2008. Though the initial delivery of assistance was hampered by government obstruction, the aid programs that have since developed in the delta have benefited from an ease of operations unseen in other parts of the country. Relief work in the delta is progressing smoothly, but attempts to expand access to the rest of the country are struggling. Nonetheless, to capitalize on the existing gains, the U.S. should provide significant funding for programs throughout the country. (more…)

The lawyer of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has sent a second letter to the government demanding a response to an appeal for her release, five months after the as yet unacknowledged initial demand. (more…)

A former student leader who was jailed for his part in the 1988 pro-democracy movement in Burma is in danger of losing his eyesight, his wife said, after getting a letter from Ko Hla Myo Naung last month. (more…)

Chairman of the Myanmar [Burma] State Peace and Development Council Senior-General Than Shwe met with Chen Bingde, visiting member of the Central Military Commission of China and Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw Wednesday. (more…)

Senior military officials of the Karen National Union (KNU) have not been allowed to re-enter Mae Sot, Thailand, since Thai authorities forced them to leave the country on February 25, according to a KNU leader. (more…)

Myanmar’s foreign investment rose sharply by 93.06 percent in 2008, reaching 974.996 million U.S. dollars compared with 2007, according to the latest figures released by the Central Statistical Organization. (more…)

A recent survey of female sex workers in Burma confirms a high incidence of HIV, threatening a dangerous and potentially devastating epidemic. (more…)

Singapore urged Myanmar’s military rulers to reconcile with the opposition and engage with West, even as the junta renewed a crackdown on pro-democracy activists. (more…)

Singaporean activists Wednesday denounced their government’s decision to honour visiting Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein by naming a new orchid strain after him. (more…)

The members of the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature has urged Burmese scribes to continue their work amidst tight restrictions imposed on them, by their military rulers, saying their solidarity remains with them. (more…)

While the world remains shocked by the story of the Rohingya boatpeople who washed up on Thailand’s shores in January, the media coverage has failed to open up a discussion on the wider Burmese refugee crisis. (more…)

Burmese monk Ashin Sopaka recently came to Prague on the invitation of the One World film festival to introduce one of the strongest human rights documentaries to be shown here in recent years. (more…)

Yangon, Myanmar – Authorities in Myanmar have arrested five members of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, a spokesman said Tuesday, a day after the U.N. called for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners in the military-run country. (more…)

Antonio Guterres, chief of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, recently wrapped up his assessment of the plight of one of the world’s most suppressed and controversial refugee groups, the Rohingyas. (more…)