Pretoria – South Africa will use its second term on the UN Security Council to promote and protect human rights across the globe, said President Jacob Zuma. (more…)

It was hard not to be moved both by the demeanour of Aung San Suu Kyi when she was freed from house arrest in Yangon on November 13th, and by the popular reaction to her freedom. Her grace, courage and good humour seem undiminished. Meanwhile, the thousands who flocked to her gate demolished the myth that she is no longer central to Myanmar’s politics. Yet in the euphoria of the moment, it was easy to forget that those politics, too, are in essence unchanged. The foundations for the optimism she herself professes seem flimsy. (more…)

Yangon, Myanmar — Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday that her recent release from seven years of detention did not signal a softening in the military’s harsh, decades-long rule of the Southeast Asian nation. (more…)

Aung San Suu Kyi says she wants to hold wide-ranging talks on Burma’s future. (more…)

New York – United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held his first telephone conversation Thursday with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar pro-democracy icon, in which they called for the release of all political prisoners in the Asian country. (more…)

The pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has won Burma’s elections after gaining 76.5 percent of seats across the three parliaments, according to the country’s supreme election authority. (more…)

Bangkok – The release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, has revived the prospect that the sanctions which have locked western energy, engineering and tourism companies out of one of the last untapped economies of Asia may be lifted. (more…)

Geneva — The World Health Organization says countries are not doing enough to detect drug-resistant malaria, which is spreading in Southeast Asia. (more…)

Tokyo – Visiting U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres met Thursday in Tokyo with some 25 refugees from Myanmar who recently arrived in Japan from a camp in Thailand under a U.N.-promoted program, and expressed his wish that they be successfully resettled. (more…)

Beijing – China is now the only country to detain a Nobel Peace laureate after Myanmar released Aung San Suu Kyi, but experts say the unwonted limelight will not prod Beijing into freeing dissident writer Liu Xiaobo anytime soon. (more…)

Washington – The United States criticized China, North Korea and Myanmar as well as Iran for restricting religious freedom by persecution and urged them to improve the situation in a report released Wednesday. (more…)

Burma’s military regime may have released pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in order to convince countries that have imposed sanctions on the junta to ease or lift the restrictions and to strengthen economic ties with its trading partners, according to some Burma analysts. (more…)

Bangkok – Just days after releasing Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, Myanmar’s military rulers have a message for investors with a steely appetite for risk: their isolated country is open for business. (more…)

What happened in Yangon’s University Avenue as the light began to fade last Saturday took many serious Myanmar watchers by surprise. (more…)

(This interview is translated from Burmese.)

Chiang Mai – Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from seven year’s house arrest on November 13. Mizzima’s managing editor Sein Win spoke to her by phone four days later to receive her comments on India’s policy on Burma, using the internet and social weblogs, ethnic issues, the intrusion of John Yettaw, youth issues and women’s rights. (more…)