Karen people in Tanintharyi region fear project to protect 800,000-acre area will cut them off from ancestral lands
A British conservation charity has become embroiled in a row with villagers displaced by civil war in Myanmar over plans to protect pristine forests housing wild Asian elephants, (...)
Violation of the press freedom in Myanmar: ARTICLE 19’s statement regarding the decision by a Yangon court to charge Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who helped expose a massacre of Rohingya civilians.
The decision by a Yangon court to formally charge Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters (...)
A Land at the Crossroads in Myanmar
Kayah State, historically known as “Karenni State”, is an example of the reform dilemmas that the ethnic nationality peoples in Myanmar face today. Although the country’s smallest state, it reflects many of the challenges in peace-building and socio-political (...)
Can Myanmar take a path to sustainable development that avoids the pitfalls of the orthodox development paradigm? This report argues that this is not only necessary but possible.
Before elucidating this alternative paradigm, the report discusses Myanmar’s economic past and where it’s headed (...)
When Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar 10 years ago, 140,000 lives were lost and 800,000 were displaced. The category 4 storm slammed into Myanmar’s low-lying Irrawaddy Delta, an area that usually escapes major typhoons. High winds and a 12-foot storm surge devastated the area, affecting millions. (...)
Amid Myanmar’s transition towards democracy, a dangerous Buddhist nationalist movement is on the rise, and women are playing a key role.
In the hastily-built displacement camps of Rakhine state, in the western part of Myanmar, where some 129,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya people have been interned (...)
After almost seventy years of civil war and armed con ict the peace process is considered to be the centerpiece of a future peaceful coexistence of the various ethnic groups in Myanmar. Peace negotiations under the former Thein Sein government led to the so called Nationwide Cease re Agreement (...)
Her failure to condemn the persecution of Rohingya Muslims has led to the Burmese politician’s dramatic fall from grace
Perhaps no one in the modern world has been so admired as a moral icon, then fallen so far in global estimation, as Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burmese democracy champion turned (...)
Critics of Ashin Wirathu and his denim-clad disciples say the monk incites racial violence against Rohingya refugees. He claims he is merely protecting his people. Myanmar army allegedly left Rohingya refugees with bullet wounds and burns.
“Aung San Suu Kyii would like to help the Bengali, but (...)
Ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha has been spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric across Myanmar for years. Cosmopolitan Mandalay is at the heart of this hostility – which many fear is here to stay.
In a cluttered room in a monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city, a group of crimson-robed (...)
Despite its natural resources, Rakhine is one of Myanmar’s poorest states – some 78 per cent of the population live below the poverty line, nearly double the national average.
Battered by global outrage over an army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, Myanmar has found comfort in an old friend – (...)
Myanmar’s National Land Use Policy promises to make profound changes to the current economic, social, and political-institutional landscape. This is an important and bold step, but its impact will depend on how it addresses the often “messy” details of actual land based social relations. (...)
This month’s tragic anti-Muslim violence in Mandalay has again revealed that dark forces are alive and well in Myanmar. The violence left two dead and many injured, causing damage to property and generating a climate of fear in the country’s cultural and historic capital.
In the aftermath of the (...)
Despite public assurances to address arbitrary detention, the government is still placing activists under arrest.
On July 15, on an official diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom, Burma’s President Thein Sein pledged to release the country’s remaining political prisoners by the end of the year. (...)
The new land and investment laws benefit large corporate investors and not small- holder farmers, especially in ethnic minority regions, and do not take into account land rights of ethnic communities.
Burma’s ethnic minority groups have long felt marginalized and discriminated against, (...)
Thousands watch YouTube videos of 45-year-old ’Burmese Bin Laden’ who preaches against country’s Muslim minority.
His name is Wirathu, he calls himself the “Burmese Bin Laden” and he is a Buddhist monk who is stoking religious hatred across Burma.
The saffron-robed 45-year-old regularly shares his (...)
When Dr. Maung Zarni, an outspoken activist academic, labeled the ongoing anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim movement in Burma as neo-Nazi, some Burmese said Zarni was exaggerating. Western commentators have also avoided the term.
But Zarni has been proven right by emerging photos of an anti-Muslim (...)
Unless foreign direct investment in Burma’s war-torn borderlands is refocused towards people-centered development, it is likely to deepen disparity between the region’s most neglected peoples and Burma’s new military, business and political elite and exacerbate a decades-long civil war.
Burma has (...)
23 August 2012 Kathmandu, Nepal
The South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), a regional civil society network encompassing all eight countries of South Asia, absolutely condemns the sectarian violence in Burma targeting the Rohingya Muslims and calls for an immediate end to this (...)
Un-learning from Southasia: Will Aung San Suu Kyi help Burma rise above the region’s dismal record on ethnic issues?
Burma, while firmly a part of Southeast Asia, has also had historical and contemporary links to Southasia through the time of the British Raj to the present. The Southasian (...)
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