Yangon, Myanmar – Myanmar’s new president has appointed a nine-member advisory board that includes an economist who is close to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. (more…)

Following a meeting between five ethnic political parties, the participants called for peaceful discussions between Burma’s new government and the country’s ethnic armed groups, according to a representative from the Rakhine Nationals Development Party (RNDP). (more…)

Despite a popularly ‘elected’ government, human rights violations in ethnic states carried out by Burma Army soldiers are still coming out. 7 villages in Shan State East’s Mongpiang township, having an estimated 70 households were razed  down to the ground by locally based Burma Army soldiers, alleging people there as agents of Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, according to local sources. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Politicians Khine Maung Yee and Win Htain claim they have been to hell and back. Both were jailed for political offenses. Both are now calling on Burma’s newly elected government to release their fellow political prisoners. (more…)

The Burmese Army’s Light Infantry Battalion 36, based in Irrawaddy Division’s Kyonpyaw township are forcing local villagers to buy tickets for an army fund raising music concert, according to local residents. (more…)

Australian publisher Ross Dunkley, facing immigration and assault charges in Burma, remains “optimistic” the charges will be overturned despite facing further delays in his court hearing, a senior associate says. (more…)

Yangon – Myanmar’s garment export amounted to 243 million U.S. dollars in the fiscal year 2010-11 which ended in March, up 30 percent from over 187 million dollars in 2009-10, a local weekly report said Wednesday. (more…)

Bangkok – The Thai Cabinet has issued a new order to deal with illegal immigrant workers, including reopening registration for workers who failed to meet the February deadline, The Nation newspaper reported on Wednesday. (more…)

Every article published in Burma must first pass through the office of the country’s chief censor in Rangoon, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD). It’s been that way since Ne Win’s military government enacted the Printer’s and Publisher’s Registration law after seizing power in 1962. (more…)

For the past 20 years, foreign interest in Burma, or Myanmar, has been understandably concentrated on the problems of democracy and human rights. Although this is of continuing concern, the central, unresolved issue facing the state since independence in 1948 has been finding the solution to the problem of governance of this profoundly multi-cultural society. (more…)

After nearly 50 years of military rule and countless efforts to restore democracy by every means imaginable, Burma has become a land where hope springs eternal, but caution rules the day. And so the appointment of Derek Mitchell as the first ever US special envoy to Burma has been greeted by veterans of the country’s democratic struggle as an occasion for guarded optimism. (more…)