Yesterday, as diplomats and journalists caught a rare glimpse into the notoriously secretive Burmese judicial system, there was the briefest glimmer of hope that international pressure had finally worked its way to the heart of Burma’s ruling junta. (more…)

The lady in the kangaroo court of the Burmese junta made a smart and important move when she met with diplomats in the Insein Prison compound on Wednesday. It concerned national reconciliation. (more…)

Lawyers representing Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will press for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council if she is convicted and imprisoned by the court now trying her in Rangoon, according to her Washington-based counsel Jared Genser. The interview with The Irrawaddy in full: (more…)

New report from Harvard Law School finds that UN documents on Burma provide grounds for investigation into international crimes; calls for more concerted UN action on Burma. (more…)

Aung San Suu Kyi sat confidently in the prison courtroom, listening over the din of a clacking typewriter and noisy ceiling fans. (more…)

Thirty diplomats and 10 journalists were allowed to attend the third day of Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial in Rangoon’s Insein Prison on Wednesday. (more…)

The Burmese military junta is providing long term training to selected supporters for the 2010 election in Kyaukpru district starting from May 15, said a village authority from Kyaukpru town. (more…)

After a lull of several months, students in Burma’s northern Kachin State have become active yet again against the Burmese ruling junta. They have demanded the immediate release of democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from Insein Prison. The students pasted 50 hand-written posters in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State this morning, said student activists. (more…)

TENSIONS are building up again in the Bangladesh-Myanmar border for attempts on the part of Myanmar border security forces to lay wire fences. More serious is the issue of the Rohingya Muslims of Arakan again facing threats to leave their homes and enter Bangladesh. For their ethnicity and religion, they have been under harassment by the predominant Burmese people of Myanmar who run that country and form its elite, especially among the ruling armed forces. The Rohingyas have for long been persecuted in their homeland for their distinct entity. In 1991, following some incidents, the Burmese border security forces and the army drove out over 250,000 Rohingyas from Arakan into Bangladesh. (more…)

If Europe imposes new sanctions on Myanmar’s military regime they would hit the French energy giant Total’s operations in the country and have far reaching consequences, France said Wednesday. (more…)

Businessmen from the Singapore-Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Association (SICCI) and the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) have been seeking ways to enhance economic and trade cooperation between the two countries. (more…)

It is as if the soldiers have befriended all of Aung San Suu Kyi’s democracy activists. Several days before she was to be released from house arrest, a ‘crazy’ man named John William Yettaw swam to see Suu Kyi. For two days the Vietnam War veteran stayed in the democracy fighter’s house in Burma. It’s not clear just what Yettaw, who is said to share her views, did while there. (more…)

Myanmar’s trial of Aung San Suu Kyi is outrageous and its planned 2010 election will be illegitimate because of its treatment of the opposition leader, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday. (more…)

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta and the Burma Lawyers’ Council have announced they are ready to appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to charge Snr-Gen Than Shwe with criminal acts. (more…)

For all of its repressive power and privilege, the military junta in Myanmar is frightened of its people – and one especially. Otherwise, why would the generals be using a show trial, and a bogus infraction, to tighten the already unconscionable restrictions on the country’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi? (more…)

Many of the images in “Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country” are shaky and blurred, captured with video cameras small enough to be quickly concealed in circumstances of danger and chaos. The lack of cinematic polish emphasizes the urgency of these pictures and the bravery of the anonymous camera operators – “VJ” stands for “video journalists” – who risked their safety, their freedom and their lives to record popular protests against the military government of Myanmar and the regime’s brutal response. (more…)

The relationship between Burma and the international community can worsen if the military junta unjustly sentences Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, said Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst. Suu Kyi, the leader of National League for Democracy, has been detained in Insein prison and is being sued for allowing an American into her house. (more…)

Generally speaking, the more depraved a military dictator is, the stupider his actions. This rough rule of thumb certainly seems to hold true for Than Shwe whose decision to place Burma’s much-persecuted pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on trial on trumped-up charges has backfired spectacularly. (more…)

167 parliamentarians from 16 European countries, members of the European Parliamentary Caucus on Burma (EPCB), today called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to personally secure the release of the opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is on trial after being accused of breaching the terms of her house arrest. The EPCB have written the letter in support of the Free Burma Political Prisoners Now Campaign, which collected more than 400,000 signatures calling for Ban Ki-Moon to take Action. (more…)

Bangladesh stepped up vigilance at its border with Myanmar after a fresh influx of Rohingya Muslims was reported, officials said on Friday. (more…)