Rangoon – Restricting the Burmese media’s freedom of speech holds back the development of the nation, National League for Democracy chairman Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday. (more…)

Yangon — The United States is concerned about the plight of thousands of people displaced by fighting between troops and ethnic rebels in northern Myanmar, a US special envoy said Thursday. (more…)

Kyonku, Myanmar – For most of his career, he was a loyal apparatchik in one of the most brutal military regimes in the world. But in the 12 months since he became the president of Myanmar, U Thein Sein has been leading this country of 55 million down a radical path from dictatorship to democracy, vowing, as he told the country this month, to ”root out the evil legacies deeply entrenched in our society.” (more…)

Dhaka – Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has thanked Myanmar for resolving the discord over maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal peacefully under the international law. (more…)

More than 2,300 villagers in the town of Anyarphyar have signed a petition against the construction of a hydropower dam on the river outside their village in Tenasserim Division. The petition was sent to President Thein Sein on Monday. (more…)

Bangkok — Myanmar’s new law allowing peaceful protests falls well short of international standards because of provisions such as the threat of jail for permit violations, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. (more…)

International optimism toward Myanmar is at a fever pitch. The government is allowing the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to run in parliamentary by-elections in less than two weeks, hundreds of former political prisoners now walk the streets, and media censorship has been relaxed. Governments and policy makers around the world are rightly impressed. (more…)

With the world’s eyes fixed on Burma, there’s been much commotion about free and fair elections, political prisoners and ceasefire talks. Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has endorsed these three issues as criteria for lifting sanctions against the new government. But beyond the media frenzy, perhaps the country’s greatest challenge will be the continued mismanagement of its abundant resource wealth. (more…)

In Burma, bribery is a way of life. There seems to be no escaping it in all its many forms. From the tea or beer money paid to low-ranking officials to the car keys and cookie tins full of cash or gold reserved for those with real influence, corruption exists at almost every level of society. (more…)