Two countries should forget past, start anew. (more…)

The new and supposedly progressive government of Myanmar faces many challenges in throwing off the sordid past of 48 years of military tyranny. One deeply troubling heritage is the drug trade. Neighbours including Thailand have given President Thein Sein a long rope, but all agree that the long years of Myanmar drug trafficking must end. (more…)

Burmese Vice-President Tin Aung Myint Oo is famous for his foul mouth and being one of the former regime’s most corrupt generals. But recently, some visitors were astonished to see the battle-hardened military man preach teachings from the Buddha. (more…)

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of the National League for Democracy have taken their seats in the Southeast Asian nation’s parliament, a month after the party’s victory in widely-watched by-elections. In a protest over the wording of the oath of office that they “safeguard” Burma’s controversial 2008 military-drafted Constitution, they had initially refused to take their seats until the wording of the oath was amended. But in a compromise, they were sworn in on May 2 and it is hoped they and the government will work together to continue to build Burma’s future.  (more…)

AS U.N. SECRETARY General Ban Ki-moon was urging the world last week to expand investment into Burma, the Irrawaddy, a Burmese magazine-in-exile, was publishing a story about 7,800 acres of Burmese farmland being confiscated by the government to make way for copper mining. (more…)

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s long resistance to Myanmar’s brutal dictatorship gave her people — and the world — hope that her country would someday be free. Her swearing in this week as a member of Myanmar’s Parliament is an important step forward, but the struggle to establish a real democracy is not over.
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It has become a pattern. Whenever the ethnic Muslim Rohingya boat people from Myanmar reach Thai shores, the authorities arrest them as a matter of course, then provide them with water and food before pushing them out to sea again so they can go to their intended destination. (more…)

When authoritarian rulers embrace reform they almost always do so in the hope of retaining power rather than transferring it (more…)

In Burma, it takes real nerve to accuse the military of anything. That’s why it came as a surprise to many when the family of a Kachin woman last seen on Oct. 28 filed a lawsuit against soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 321 for her alleged abduction. The husband and father of the missing woman, 28-year-old Sumlut Roi Ja, said that the soldiers arrested all three—supposedly on suspicion of having links to the Kachin Independence Army—but only the two men managed to escape. (more…)

On Thursday, Burma’s President Thein Sein’s delivered a speech before Parliament to mark the anniversary of his government’s first year in power. The speech, which was broadcast live on the state-run MRTV television station, was generally well-received by most Burmese. However, some longtime political observers were more skeptical, noting that the president appeared to be papering over a number of issues that could undermine his efforts to deliver further reforms. (more…)

The US this month waived objections to limited World Bank assistance for Myanmar. The UN has agreed to work jointly with Naypyidaw to hold an international aid conference. The European Union says it will provide €150m over the next two years, nearly as much as its contribution in the past 15. Myanmar is coming in from the cold. (more…)

Furthering its promise to partner with Burma in its reform process, the U.S. has increased dialogue on another important rights issue: human trafficking. (more…)

Releasing the roughly 2,000 political prisoners would quell doubts. (more…)

“It is encouraging that political prisoners have been released, but over a thousand are still not free.” (more…)

From a distance, the recent landmark visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma looks nice and should be welcome. It gives the impression that Burma is closing ranks with the rest of the Asean members and the international community after decades of isolation as a pariah state. (more…)

If Myanmar’s regime was looking for approval from the superpower as it goes down the road of political reform, it has got one now, even if this is somewhat cautious and with conditions attached. The visit of Hillary Clinton was the first by a United States Secretary of State since John Foster Dulles’ in 1955, and for this reason, it carried symbolic value. In 1988, the U.S. downgraded diplomatic relations with Myanmar after a military crackdown on pro-democracy activists; it still does not have an Ambassador there. After the junta rejected the 1990 election victory of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy and placed her under arrest, Washington imposed economic sanctions. But the perestroika President Thein Sein set in motion earlier this year has clearly changed the way the world looks at Myanmar now. The Thein Sein regime’s decision to introduce political reforms was born out of the realisation that it needed to end its isolation and make connections with the world outside China, the ASEAN countries, and India, which have remained engaged with it over most of the last two decades. That Ms Suu Kyi is participating in these reforms, in a measured way, has given the process much credibility. Ms Clinton was careful to describe her visit to Myanmar as “a first date, not a marriage.” She stressed that further steps, including the lifting of sanctions, would depend on “real” progress towards democratic reforms, including an unconditional release of all prisoners. Washington also wants the regime to cut military ties with North Korea. Still the announcement of projects worth $1.2 million in education and health sectors is a major step forward. American restrictions on international financial assistance to Myanmar have also been eased. (more…)

Exactly one year after her release from nearly two decades of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi seems be on the threshold of a new role in Myanmar, still in opposition to the military-backed civilian regime, but no more standing outside the political system that it has set up. Earlier this month, the government changed the rule that required political parties to “preserve” the military-drafted 2008 Constitution; they are now expected to “respect and obey” it. This change has paved the way for Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to register as a political party. NLD leaders are likely to meet later this month to take the call. Indications are that the regime is thinking of setting some 600 political prisoners free. If it does so, it will make the decision easier for the NLD. The party boycotted last year’s elections, but it is now widely expected that Ms Suu Kyi will contest an election in December, and thus enter Parliament. On the first anniversary of her release on Monday, the Nobel laureate told journalists that the Myanmar regime had taken some steps towards political reform. She described recent developments in the country as “eventful, energising and, to a certain extent, encouraging.” One of these was a statement by the Speaker of the Parliament’s Upper House, Aung Khin Myint, that he recognised the results of the 1990 election. The NLD swept the 1990 polls, and it was following that victory the junta put Ms Suu Kyi in what turned out to be the first of long spells of detention for the next two decades. (more…)

IN March last year, the National League for Democracy faced probably the toughest decision in its history: whether to contest the country’s first election in two decades or cease to exist as a legal entity. (more…)

You would think that in a country as overwhelmingly agrarian as Burma, the plight of the rural poor would receive far more attention than it does. Agriculture accounts for more than 40 percent of Burma’s GDP and supports around 70 percent of its population. And yet, since President Thein Sein vowed in his inaugural address to Parliament in March to do something about the persistent poverty of those who toil in the fields, precious little has been said about this issue by those in high places. (more…)

If one cuts through the hype about change in Burma, about how the supposedly civilian administration in Naypyidaw is turning away from its repugnant policies of the past, concrete evidence of new thinking and a new approach by the regime headed by President Thein Sein is relatively slim. Yes, there has been dialogue – an encouraging series of meetings by senior officials – with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as international officials. But with a regime as vicious and untrustworthy as the one that has ruled Burma since the massacres in 1988, it is worth remembering that actions speak a lot louder than words. (more…)