Articles

During this year’s Songkran (water festival) celebrations Thailand again witnessed carnage on the road. Road deaths and injuries caused by a deadly combination of driving while under the influence of alcohol pushed the number of people killed to by Wednesday 15 April to 248 and injuries to 2643. The New Year celebrations saw people killed on the roads in both…

Mae Sot children and adults ride pickup trucks engaged in water battles as they circle the town centre. Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border is home to tens of thousands of migrant workers from Burma who also celebrated the Songkran water festival (known in Burma as Thingyan). Songkran – Thailand’s New Year celebration – is perhaps the country’s most visible…

Burma Army soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 515 have allegedly stabbed and robbed a villager in Shan State on the 23rd of March. Shan Human Rights Foundation said that the victim, a 46 year-old villager, was handing out invitation letters for his son’s ordination ceremony when two Burma Army soldiers held him at knife point and badly beat him. “The…

The Burma Army attacked the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) positions on Thursday 10 April. The 10-hour Burma Army offensive took place in the La Gat Yang and Man Win areas on the Kachin-Shan border. A report released by a humanitarian organization, the Burma Free Rangers, documents that, “Burma Army soldiers from Military Operation Command (MOC) 16, Division 88, and Light…

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…