Karen News

The Karen Women Organization held ceremonies on April 5 marking its 29th anniversary in locations in Karen State and along the Thai Burma border. The KWO used its anniversary to draw attention to the status of women’s legal protection, the need to respect women and the need to promote women’s role in the peace process. The KWO released a report…

Chin refugees in India fleeing persecution in Burma are left to fend for themselves as the UNHCR and local organisations tasked with protecting them fall prey to a “culture of denial and victim-blaming,” says the Chin Human Rights Organisation. The Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO), a non-governmental human rights watchdog founded in 1995, has warned that hundreds of Chin refugee…

A human rights advocacy group calls for investigation into Britain’s decision to give millions in aid money to assist the Burma government’s census as international criticism mounts over the census process. Burma Campaign UK, a human rights advocacy group based in Britain, has called for an official inquiry into the “decision making process” that saw Britain’s government decide to give…

Burma’s census discriminates against ethnic Rohingya Muslims by refusing to recognise their existence, according to international rights groups, with even the UN agency tasked with carrying out the census expressing deep concerns. A man picks at a bruised piece of fruit, takes a bite and sets it down on a bench in a small shop on the Thai Burma border.…

For villagers in southeastern Burma, a tentative 2012 ceasefire between ethnic Karen rebels and the government has yet to address an intractable threat that lurks along their trails, in their rice paddies and even dangling from branches – landmines and unexploded ordinance. Mine risk educator Pah Dah has spent the past six years traveling to remote villages in Karen State,…

At Mae Tao Clinic’s Prosthetic Department on the Thai-Burma border, the overwhelming majority of patients are land mine victims from Burma, human proof of the ongoing toll of more than six decades of armed conflict. 
Two men and a woman sit silent watching their new legs taking shape at Mae Tao Clinic’s prosthetic department. The two men and one woman…

International rights group condemns marriage law proposal in Burma’s parliament as violating the rights of women and religious minorities. In an interview with Karen News a human rights advocate warns that the proposed law is a “bluntly racist answer to a paranoid racist agenda.” Human Rights Watch has said that marriage legislation currently being considered by Burma’s government would “strip…

Residents of Ka Mawt Ka Kyo village allege that area village heads are using the census to collect money from villagers. Civilians claim the village heads have been running the ‘census scam’ since last week under the pretense of supporting the census. Villagers spoke to Karen News. “The village heads collected money in our village,” a Ka Mawt Ka Kyo…

More than 130 villagers from 20 villages in Hlaingbwe and Hpa-An Township signed a petition letter and sent to the state parliament demanding a solution to the dispute over farmland that was granted concession to businessman for a rubber plantation. Daw Nan Say Awa, a member of parliament from the Pyithu Hluttaw [House of Representatives], Karen State said that the…

From out of Mae Tao Clinic’s Child Outpatient Department the sound of crying babies can be heard. A queue of parents, children in tow, wait outside the basic concrete building for their children to be weighed, measured and checked for serious diseases. “We have six medics and four community health workers to cope with the children.” Dixie, a medic from…