Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 8 March 2010
• Nepalnews.com

The political standing of women has “improved” in Nepal in comparison to many countries in Asia and the Pacific where works are being done to enhance women’s participation in politics, according to a new Asia Pacific Human Development Report on Gender.

“The political voice of women has improved in Nepal with the recent secured 1/3 quota in the Constituent Assembly. In comparison, only about 1/3 of countries in Asia and the Pacific have quota systems to enhance women’s participation in politics,” says the report titled, “Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific” launched on the occasion of International Women’s Day in the capital on Monday.

• News source:
• 26 February 2010
• Globe and Mail
• By AP

The highest court in military-ruled Myanmar dismissed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s latest bid for freedom Friday, turning down an appeal to end 14 years of house arrest, her lawyer said.

The Supreme Court’s decision had been expected since legal rulings in Myanmar rarely favour opposition activists, and the junta appears determined to keep Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, detained through elections planned later this year.

Defence lawyer Nyan Win told reporters he would launch one final “special appeal” before the court after determining why the recent appeal had been rejected. “The court order did not mention any reasons,” he said.

• News source:
• Nobel Women's Initiative

Under the leadership of women Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and our partner organization, the Women’s League of Burma, the Nobel Women’s Initiative is planning an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Burma.

The Tribunal will take place in New York City on March 2, 2010 and will coincide with the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women meeting. Eminent Judges (including Nobel Peace Laureates) will hear personal testimony from several women of Burma who will share their personal stories of having lived through a range of human rights violations under the military regime in Burma.

• News source:
• 16 February 2010
• Amnesty International

Myanmar’s government must halt its repression of ethnic minority activists before forthcoming national and local elections, Amnesty International warned in a major report released on Tuesday.

The 58-page report, The Repression of ethnic minority activists in Myanmar, draws on accounts from more than 700 activists from the seven largest ethnic minorities, including the Rakhine, Shan, Kachin, and Chin, covering a two-year period from August 2007… more, including link to full report

• News source:
• 11 February 2010
• Irrawaddy
• By SAW YAN NAING

The former leader of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) , Tu Ja, who resigned to form the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), on Wednesday invited dozens of women and students in Myitkyina to a briefing on how to campaign for the party.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, a participant, Marry, a Kachin student at Myitkyina University, said that Tu Ja targeted students and women because they are often in key locations such as markets, schools and other public areas, and they can spread information about the KSPP and the national election.

• News source:
• 11 February 2010
• Irrawaddy
• By SAW YAN NAING

Burmese government troops have stepped up their attacks on Karen civilians, burning down dozens of houses and a clinic and forcing schools to close and around 2,000 Karen villagers to flee into the jungle, according to Karen relief groups…

The attacks are the latest in a series of raids targeting civilians in the region. In January, government army troops raided ten villages in Nyaunglebin District, killing four villagers and forcing about 2,000 into hiding in the jungle, according to Aung Din, executive director of the US Campaign for Burma.

“These attacks are further evidence of the urgent need for the United Nations to take effective action to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma, perpetrated by the regime with impunity,” said Aung Din in a press release on Wednesday.

• News source:
• 7 February 2010
• Bangkok Post
• By Larry Jagan

Election fever is already gripping Burma even though a date for the polls has yet to be announced. The election law which will govern the process is now expected to be published in May, with the elections at least six months away, according to Asian diplomats who closely follow events in Burma. “The elections will be held whether we like it or not,” a young Arakanese student in Rangoon, Nyi Nyi said.

“We know we will have no choice but to vote, our only hope is that there will be some candidates who are not stooges of the military regime,” he added. At the moment that seems a forlorn hope, though the main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) has yet to make up its mind whether it will field candidates in this year’s elections.

In the last elections, held on May 27, 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won convincingly, but Burma’s military rulers never allowed them to form a civilian government. This time the generals are not planning to make the same mistake, and are tightly controlling everything to ensure they do not lose.

• News source:
• Morung Express | Asia Times
• By Brian McCartan

The controversy over the scale of Myanmar’s opium production took another turn with the release of a new report that claims cultivation has surged in territories where the military government has recently taken control. The report draws more extreme conclusions than recent research released by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), whose Bangkok-based representatives declined an invitation to attend the new report’s release.

Entitled “Poisoned Hills: Opium cultivation surges under government control in Burma”, the report was released by the Palaung Women’s Organization (PWO), a non-governmental organization based in Mae Sot, Thailand.

• News source:
• 21 January 2010 | report published 20 January 2010
• Abstract on Human Security Gateway
• By United States Department of State // Humanitarian Information Unit

Abstract : This is the second in the series of regional Conflicts Without Borders maps, produced by US Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit, that analyzes and visualizes conflict in Southeast Asia as sub-national and transnational areas of armed conflict and political violence that occurred in 2008 and 2009…. Examining conflict with a sub-national and transnational prism instead of through the lens of the nation-state highlights the following conclusions: · Conflict occurs in the least developed and the peripheral administrative areas of each country: Burma – Shan and Karen states; Thailand – Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces; Philippines – southern and western Mindanao Island; and Indonesia – Aceh and Papua provinces…

• News source:
• 17 December 2009
• Xinhua
• By Zhang Yunfei

YANGON – The neighborly and friendly ties of China and Myanmar continue to develop with concrete cooperation deepening in every sector, thanks to the joint efforts by the two countries, said Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Ye Dabo on Thursday.

• News source:
• 8 December 2009
• Sonoma State Star
• By Zeina Bekdache

Imagine being restricted from watching a soccer game or scolded for singing in public. These are just some of the gender inequalities that Iranian women face, and the Green Movement is striving to end.

On Tues., Dec. 1, Political Science professor Cynthia Boaz discussed the ways in which the Iranian women have been nonviolently working against the repressive Iranian regime. Boaz is an expert on nonviolent conflict and recently, her research has focused particularly on Iran and Burma.

• News source:
• 26 November 2009
• Mizzima
• By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK – Eighteen months after Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 140,000 people, hundreds of thousands of survivors remain in desperate need, according to the United Nations.

More than 170,000 people are still without adequate shelter, while the vast majority of the farmers in the Irrawaddy Delta devastated by last year’s cyclone, are slipping into enormous debt, the head of the UN operations in Burma, Bishow Parajuli told Mizzima on Wednesday.

• News source:
• 24 November 2009
• Al Jazeera
• By Larry Jagan

Barack Obama’s recent sortie into Asia has marked a radical change in Washington’s approach to the region, as the US president looks to re-engage after eight years of diffidence shown by the previous Bush administration.

• News source:
• 4 November 2009
• Reuters AlertNet
• By Sean Garcia, Refugees International

The dialogue is changing. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and his deputy Scot Marceil visited Burma and held talks with Burmese officials and Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. It is the highest-level visit to Burma in more than a decade, and follows the State Department’s September announcement of its Burma Policy Review, which began shortly after President Obama took office.

• News source:
• 2 November 2009
• The National (UAE)
• By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK – Two top-level US envoys arrived in Yangon yesterday for the start of a three-day “fact-finding mission”. They will meet the detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, but are not expected to meet the country’s military leader, Gen Than Shwe.

The trip is seen by diplomats in the region as another step in Washington’s offer of talks with the military leaders, who for the past decade they have effectively shunned. Some analysts believe this may even lead to Ms Suu Kyi being freed before elections next year.

• News source:
• 31 October 2009
• Mizzima
• By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK – A United States top level “fact-finding mission” is due to arrive in Rangoon on Monday. The Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, Kurt Campbell and the US Ambassador to ASEAN Scot Marciel will spend two days – Tuesday and Wednesday – in Burma. So far there has been no official announcement, and US diplomats in Rangoon refused to comment on the forthcoming trip when contacted by Mizzima. The programme is still being finalised, according to Burmese government officials.

• News source:
• 4 November 2009
• Asia Times Online
• By Brian McCartan

BANGKOK – Mounting tensions between Myanmar’s military government and ethnic groups with which it has ceasefire agreements in the country’s northern regions have spurred a surge in drug trafficking. Driven by militias’ growing demand for weapons to counter anticipated government offensives, a narcotics fire-sale is raising concerns of greater instability along the borders of several neighboring countries, including China.

Myanmar’s military regime has demanded that the insurgent groups with which it agreed ceasefires in the late 1980s and early 1990s hand over their arms to government control. A deadline set for the end of October has been allowed to pass and discussions between the military and two main ethnic armies, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and the National Democratic Alliance Army (Eastern Shan State) (NDAA), are reportedly continuing.

• News source:
• 22 October 2009
• Bangkok Post

The Asean Economic Ministers’ meeting on Thursday agreed to press on with the plan to reduce developmental gaps in a bid to bring the Asean Economic Community into effect in 2015.

• News source:
• 22 October 2009
• Bangkok Post
• By AFP

The United Nations urged Asian nations to make their new regional human rights body “credible” Thursday, as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) prepared for its official launch.

• News source:
• 20 October 2009
• KI Media
• By DENIS D. GRAY (AP)

BANGKOK — Southeast Asian nations unveil a landmark human rights watchdog this week, but critics charge that it will be both toothless and include in its membership one of the world’s worst human rights offenders — military-ruled Myanmar.