He has been called the man who toppled Mubarak, a description he says demeans what he sees as a wholly Egyptian uprising against authoritarian rule. Before that, he was the victim of a whispering campaign in which his work was alleged to be a US front for regime change in the guise of citizen uprisings. He calls those allegations “a joke” and reminds that he went to prison in the US for civil disobedience there. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Recently, Burmese political parties gave the EU delegation a letter, signed by 10 political parties, calling for an end to sanctions against Burma. (more…)

Yangon – Local authorities in Pyinmana, a town neighbouring Myanmar’s capital of Naypyitaw, have banned massage parlours and slapped restrictions on other fronts for prostitution, media reports said Monday. (more…)

Burma’s Election Commission (EC) is reportedly planning to take legal action against top leaders of the National Democratic Force (NDF) party for alleged misappropriation of funds during last year’s election. (more…)

Maungdaw: 80 local Muslims who are suspected of having connections to the militant Islamic Taliban have been arrested by Burmese border security force Nasaka in northwestern Maungdaw in Arakan State, Burma. (more…)

Yangon – Myanmar’s army is launching a new daily newspaper focusing on military affairs that is likely to be up and running by the end of the month, an official said Friday. (more…)

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) has reportedly ordered all of its frontline units along the Salween that serves as a shared boundary with its ally the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘North,’ which has been fighting with the Burma Army for a week, on an 24 hour alert, according to sources from the UWSA. (more…)

Former Burmese political prisoners who have fled their country are struggling to access UN or Thai “avenues for protection” and are confined to a life in limbo away from their homes, a letter sent to the European Commission (EC) today warns. (more…)

China has signed a major agreement with Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco to supply its Yunnan province with oil, which will likely travel through Burma to the southwestern Chinese region. (more…)

The UN has been conducting crop-substitution programmes in northeastern Burma and northern Laos since 1996. Although these programmes have helped reduced opium production in Southeast Asia, from 1,176 tonnes in 1996 to 312 in 2006, production has been on the increase since 2006. (more…)

The Myanmar authorities are carrying out inspections on incoming passengers arriving Yangon International Airport from Japan to check if they carry radioactive substances following the series of explosions of Fukushima nuke plant reactors in Japan hit by massive earthquake and tsunami. (more…)

Myanmar is now a ‘disciplined’ multiparty democracy, but it would be a mistake to expect a major shift in the balance of power away from the junta and its leading clique. (more…)

India has abandoned the Aung Sun Suu kyi, the democratic icon of Myanmar is the startling revelation that WikiLeaks has made with regards to Myanmar, courtesy, “The Hindu”, India’s national newspaper since 1878.   (more…)

Internet voice calls are a precious lifeline in Burma. Naturally, the government wants to ban it. (more…)

Rangoon – As the Internet and social media spread news of civil unrest and demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya, the military junta in Burma is afraid that the young generation here will follow suit. All news is suppressed and–as the best indicator of the junta’s concerns–Internet speed is down to a trickle. (more…)

Since Sunday, the ceasefire Shan State Army (SSA), better known as the SSA North (to differentiate it from the non-ceasefire SSA, commonly known as the SSA South) that had been under siege since last month, was attacked by an estimated 2,000 strong Burma Army units. (more…)

In an attempt to thaw the tension between them, National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with members of the party’s breakaway faction, the National Democratic Force (NDF), on Thursday despite the fact that their differing political standpoints were openly exposed in a recent meeting with European diplomats. (more…)

Burmese junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe appeared in photographs in the state-run media on Friday alongside six leading officials in the military hierarchy, all of whom are expected by observers to remain with the State Supreme Council in the near future. (more…)

Begum Fatema was five years old when she and her family left her home in Arakan State and fled to Bangladesh 15 years ago because of brutal treatment by the Burmese Military.

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Residents of the Burmese border town of Myawaddy began fleeing the area on Thursday amid reports that a breakaway faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), a former cease-fire armed group, is preparing to launch an offensive against Burmese troops based in the town.

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