Hong Kong – China Mobile Ltd , the world’s largest mobile operator by market value, said on Thursday that it is seeking acquisition opportunities in Asian emerging markets, including Myanmar. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Thirty-one of the 34 Arakanese and Karen rebels arrested in 1998 by Indian security forces on Landfall Island in the Andaman Islands were released from prison in Kolkata on Thursday. (more…)

In a program aired on May 13, Aung San Suu Kyi says it is premature for Burma to chair the regional grouping ASEAN, discusses party discipline in building democracy, and urges Burma’s government to curb inflation. (more…)

Kyaw San, 79, was a political prisoner for more than 15 of the 21 years that Than Shwe’s military regime held power. Conscripted into the army in 1949, he attended the Defense Service Academy No 18 and later was promoted to colonel. After serving over 36 years in the army, he retired in 1986 and went on to participate in the 1988 uprising with Tin Oo, who is the current vice-president of the National League for Democracy (NLD). In 1990, Kyaw San was elected to be an MP in Parliament, but the election was not honored by the regime and in 1992 he was sentenced to a seven-year, seven-month prison term for praising Aung San Suu Kyi for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He was released after serving three years, but rearrested for misbehavior and forced to complete his original sentence plus two additional years. In 2005, he was once again sentenced to seven years, this time for assisting in the transportation of illegal goods. On Tuesday, Kyaw San was released from prison after serving 6-years and 2 months of his seven-year prison term. (more…)

“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…)

Yangon — Myanmar began releasing 17,000 prisoners on Tuesday, an official said, in a limited jail-term reduction slammed by critics as it leaves more than 2,000 political prisoners still languishing behind bars. (more…)

New Delhi – The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) top leader, Maung Oo, told community leaders and government employees in Pauktaw Township in Arakan State that real power was  transferred to the USDP, not to the newly elected Parliament. (more…)

Five parties representing Burma’s myriad ethnic nationalities will call on the government to lift a nominal ban on teaching young children in their respective native languages in schools. (more…)

Rangoon — Recent moves to open up Burma’s economy are not expected to bring much relief to the impoverished Southeast Asian nation because numerous obstacles to growth, including monopolistic control of key sectors by cronies of top military officials, an inconsistent taxation system, and an unrealistic official exchange rate, remain in place, according to members of the country’s business community. (more…)

Washington — The United States renewed its economic sanctions against Myanmar and urged the military-backed regime to go much further after it reduced prisoners’ terms by just one year. (more…)