“Our brothers and sisters are yet to be released. It would be very sad for future generations if we, the youth, cannot fulfill the responsibility of pulling our country out of this downward spiral… It would be hard for us to call this government a truly democratic one without releasing the prisoners of conscience.” – Zeya Thaw, co-founder of Generation Wave

Yangon – Just 47 political prisoners were among those freed in a mass amnesty in Myanmar this week, an opposition group said on Wednesday, urging the military-backed government to release the estimated 2,100 that remain behind bars. (more…)

Washington – The United States will send a senior U.S. diplomat to Myanmar this week for its first talks with the reclusive state’s new military-backed civilian government and a meeting with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. (more…)

One of the handful of political prisoners released yesterday in the much-criticised amnesty has said that little has improved in Burma during his three years behind bars. (more…)

Yangon — A bomb blast on a train near Myanmar’s capital left at least two people dead Wednesday during a visit by a US envoy for talks with the new government, a Myanmar official said. (more…)

The Burmese Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) has rejected attempts by local journals to print the words spoken by UN Special Envoy to Burma Vijay Nambiar at a press briefing following his three-day visit to Burma, according to sources from the Rangoon media community. (more…)

Armed clashes have been occurring across Karen State on a near-daily basis for the past four months with no end in sight. (more…)

Manila, Philippines — The British government has cautioned Southeast Asian countries not to allow Myanmar to take the leadership of their regional bloc. (more…)

The amnesty announced by Burma’s president Thein Sein on Monday is a tasteless scheme that demonstrates how his new government intends to abide by the same arbitrary application of the law exercised by his predecessor, Than Shwe, one of the world’s most notorious dictators. (more…)

Burma has been rendered in journalism, activism and art as a country of plain dichotomies: good vs. evil, liberty vs. suppression, the saintly Aung San Suu Kyi vs. the brutal monolith of the military junta. By its very premise, Burma Soldier, which airs this evening on HBO, muddies this picture. The documentary’s subject, Myo Myint, is a former soldier who gave his adolescent years to the regime but came in adulthood to join the democratic opposition against it. Says Nic Dunlop, writer-photographer and a co-director of the film with Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern: “Myo Myint’s story is extraordinary because it incorporates victim and perpetrator in a single narrative.” Extraordinary, yes, and yet this project’s greatest strength is its willingness to consider that the lowest ranks of the Burmese army are rife with men as petrified and cynical of the regime as the people they terrorize in its name. (more…)

Prominent Burmese dissident Ludu Sein Win has sent a message to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) in which he calls on people around the world to unite in the struggle for freedom and justice. (more…)