Naw Zipporah Sein, the Karen National Union’s general secretary welcomed a statement from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi calling for more development in ethnic areas. (more…)

Three groups representing Burma’s journalists say that they will submit a letter to the country’s Ministry of Information objecting to rules relating to a proposed Press Council that will be formed after the current censorship board is abolished. (more…)

Ethnic rebels in the far north of Myanmar have urged the United Nations to send observers to monitor fighting with government troops, a Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) official said on Thursday. (more…)

Nearly 150 Burmese migrant workers, who for up to two years had been locked inside a shrimp factory in Mahachai near Bangkok, were rescued on Tuesday by Thai police and social organizations. (more…)

Dawei, Myanmar – A simple, red sign on a white beach marks the start of a billion-dollar highway that will, one day, lead to a vast industrial project to be built close to impoverished Myanmar’s border with Thailand. (more…)

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay offered her encouragement to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in drafting a regional human rights declaration, and called for a meaningful consultation on the draft with the widest spectrum of people in the region before it is presented to Asean foreign ministers in July. (more…)

On May 14, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Myanmar, partly with the aim of using the formerly isolated country as an example to North Korea of how it might benefit from improved relations with Seoul and the international community. (more…)

United Nations – U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called for an end to attacks by all parties in Myanmar on Thursday after receiving a letter from a rebel independence group in the country’s Kachin State asking the United Nations to help end its conflict with the government. (more…)

Washington — The Obama administration announced on Thursday that it will ease the ban on investments in Myanmar, rewarding the country’s political and economic opening over the last year. The move would allow the first significant American trade with Myanmar in decades, a step that worries human rights advocates who say the United States is moving too quickly to help a repressive country that is still far from free. (more…)

Military-dominated Myanmar’s international rehabilitation gets another boost when its foreign minister meets Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and looks for progress in U.S. plans to ease economic sanctions. (more…)

Sixty-six British MPs across all parties called for the continued increase of UK aid to victims of conflicts in Burma, Burma Campaign UK said on Thursday in a statement. (more…)

In northern Myanmar, government troops continue to push into the heartland of the ethnic Kachin armed opposition. Next month, the renewed conflict will mark its first birthday, and while protracted fighting has eased in other areas of the ethnically diverse country, the battle for Kachin State rages on. (more…)

Since last week, more than 1,000 Rohingya people displaced from Burma have been camping in the Indian capital, Delhi, seeking refugee status from the UN refugee agency. Over the years, thousands of Rohingyas – a Muslim minority group in Burma – have fled to India to escape persecution. Avinash Dutt of the BBC Hindi service speaks to some to them to find out about their problems. (more…)

Today the U.S. Campaign for Burma (USCB) expresses its concern over the US Administration’s announcement that the U.S. is lifting the financial transactions and investment ban on Burma through a presidential waiver.  Lifting these major economic measures, just one week after the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), the alliance of nearly all ethnic resistance groups that have engaged in negotiations with the Burmese government to end the world’s longest civil war and reach a peaceful political settlement, called on foreign governments “to oppose and pressure Bamah Tatmadaw (The Burmese military) for its wrong actions. Accordingly, we would like to request the international community not to suspend or lift the remaining political, military, financial and economic sanctions” is effectively undermining their pursuit for an end to the Burmese military’s human rights abuses and genuine national reconciliation. (more…)