One woman pro-democracy activist who took the Burma government’s invitation to return home seriously is Daw San Dar Win, a teacher, who works at Burma Migrant Education Department in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.
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IMPHAL, India – Thrown face down in an open drain by a grenade blast, Maisnam Ratan’s bloodied corpse was the latest reminder of the lingering insurgency in India’s isolated, far-eastern state of Manipur, which elects a state legislature Saturday. (more…)
On a hot and humid summer afternoon in June last year, a delegation of urban officials met with the village representatives of Huotian village in China’s eastern Jiangxi province.
Huotian (“burning field”) village is a sleepy settlement of several hundred farmers, surrounded by fields and woods and with one main road intersecting a row of plain houses. Burning Field village has so far missed the seething industrial development so prevalent around it. (more…)
Yangon – Myanmar and India have pledged to ensure everlasting border stability, friendship and bilateral cooperation between the two countries, official media reported Friday.
The two sides stressed this at a meeting held in Nay Phi Taw Thursday. Deputy Home Minister Brigadier-General Kyaw Zan Myint from Myanmar and Home Secretary R.K. Singh from India attended the meting, said the New Light of Myanmar.
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Chiang Mai– The All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) on Tuesday agreed to have peace talks with the Burmese government, ABSDF Vice Chairman Myo Win said.
Most of the nine ABSDF battalions are based in areas controlled by the Karen National Union (KNU), which has signed a cease-fire agreement with the government.
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Chiang Mai– Burmese presidential special peace envoy and Rail Transportation Minister Aung Min has offered two exile-based democratic groups to meet for political talks the first week of February, said group leaders.
General-Secretary Dr. Naing Aung of the Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB), which consists of seven organizations, said that peace facilitators Hla Maung Shwe and Dr. Kyaw Yin Hlaing conveyed the message verbally. The same message was given to Aung Moe Zaw, the chairman of the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS). (more…)
A Burmese government delegation held peace talks in China on Wednesday with the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an ethnic armed group that has been engaged in armed conflict with the Burmese military since June when a 1994 ceasefire agreement collapsed.
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Troops from the ABSDF during a training exercise in March 2008 (Source: ABSDF website)
The armed All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, formed in the wake of a mass uprising in 1988, says 30 of its members remain behind bars in Burma despite a far-reaching amnesty of political prisoners last week.
The group says 13 detainees that were jailed in connection with their ties to the ABSDF, which at its peak had some 10,000 troops, were freed in the 13 January release. Some of those who remain have been in prison since the early 1990s, and are serving sentences of more than 60 years. (more…)
Border areas will be among the focus areas of Denmark’s engagement efforts with Burma, visiting Danish Minister for Development Cooperation Christian Friis Bach told The Irrawaddy earlier this week.
Bach made his remarks after returning from Burma, where he met with President Thein Sein, several government ministers and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi ,and also traveled to Shan State. (more…)
Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi (C) applauds during a ceremony at her National League for Democracy (NLD)’s headquarters in Rangoon, Jan. 9, 2012.
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A move by the Thai government to verify the millions of migrant workers from Burma has done little to improve conditions, a migrant advocacy group claims, with many still denied health insurance by employers.
Both the Thai and Burmese government have backed the National Verification Process that will award status to migrants whom to date have lived a life in limbo, largely unable to access healthcare and the workplace rights awarded to Thai citizens. (more…)
Teknaf, Bangladesh: Fifteen more Rohingya boatpeople were arrested at Shahpuri Dip, Teknaf Upazila, at midnight on December 7, according to locals and Teknaf police.
PKDS president Nsang Tu Awng gave welcome speech to Kachin representatives in the Chiang Mai Meeting on January 3.
A coalition of Kachin exiles meeting in Thailand jointly declared their desire for an independent Kachin state, if the country’s central government continues to reject federalism, according to a statement issued on January 4, Burma’s Independence Day.
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An unidentified rebel group fired grenades targeting Myanmar soldiers on the Mekong river near the border with Thailand, but missed their target, Thai police said Friday.
The grenades landed early Wednesday near the patrol boat, which was accompanying four Chinese cargo ships that had docked at a pier in Tachileik district in eastern Shan state, Police Colonel Atthawoot Onsub said.
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Despite signing agreement last month to consider having elected representatives for townships under their control to speak for them, both the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) say the first thing for them to deliberate is whether or not they should accept the 2008 constitution that had been ratified without their participation, according to sources from Sino-Burmese border.
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Burmese government troops this week mounted an aggressive assault to overrun another strategic Kachin Independence Army (KIA) base in Lwaigyai near the Sino-Burma border. According to the KIA, more than 90 battles or clashes have broken out since the president ordered his commanders to put an end to hostilities in the northern region.
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Recently Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigated and reported on human rights violations and humanitarian needs in Kachin state. PHR’s report, Under Siege in Kachin State, Burma, called for the government of Burma to permit humanitarian organisations access to Kachin state, where tens of thousands of internally displaced peoples (IDPs) are running low on food and relief supplies. (more…)
The Karen National Union (KNU) told representatives of the Italian-Thai Development Co., Ltd. (ITD) at a meeting on Dec. 28 that it will only allow construction of a new road linking Burma’s Tavoy Special Economic Zone to the Thai border to go ahead after an environmental impact assessment has been carried out. (more…)
Dickson wants to complete his education in a western country and help improve the lives of his students (Kate Kelly)
Dickson Hoo is 24 years old, a grade nine mathematics teacher and deputy principal at a mission school. He’s a bright young man who knows all his students by their first names. But instead of air-conditioned classrooms and computer screens, he teaches quadratics on a donated blackboard with a ragged piece of chalk while his students jostle for a place on rough wooden benches, their feet dangling above a well-swept dirt floor. (more…)
When their daughter died in an accident while helping to improve the lives of orphans living in Burma, Beryl and Steve Lee pledged to continue her work. They spoke to reporter KATIE BLACKBURN about fundraising £70,000 every year to help keep her legacy going (more…)