Myanmar (Burma)
Burma, also known as Myanmar, is ruled by a military junta which suppresses almost all dissent and wields absolute power in the face of international condemnation and sanctions.
The generals and the army stand accused of gross human rights abuses, including the forcible relocation of civilians and the widespread use of forced labour, which includes children. The armed forces - and former rebels co-opted by the government - have been accused of large-scale trafficking in heroin, of which Burma is a major exporter. Prostitution and HIV/AIDS are major problems. Prominent pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK) has had various restrictions placed on her activities since the late 1980s. In 1990 her party won a landslide victory in Burma's first multi-party elections for 30 years, but has never been allowed to govern. She was held under de facto house arrest for six year from July 1989- July 1995 and again from September 2000 until May 2002.
On 30 May 2003, supporters of the military authorities, including the Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA) attacked ASSK and her convoy of NLD supporters in Depayin, central Burma. ASSK was taken into 'protective custody' by the regime and held incommunicado until September 2003, when she was moved to house arrest where she remains. NLD party offices, except the Rangoon headquarters, remain closed.ASSK was last visited in custody by Ibrahim Gambari, UN Under Secretary of Political Affairs, in May and November 2006.
The state controls Burma's main broadcasters and publications. For the most part, the media are propaganda tools and tend not to report opposing views except to criticize them. Editors and reporters are answerable to the military authorities. Burma is also a paradise for censors. Scissors in hand, the agents of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division check every article, editorial, cartoon, advertisement and illustration ahead of publication.
In 2005, they even began going through death notices placed in Burmese newspapers. They strike out all references to the United Nations, accused of wanting to overthrow the government. Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has placed Burma among the bottom 10 countries in its world press freedom ranking. It says the press is subject to 'relentless advance censorship'.
Speaking at a Minister's meeting in March 2007 of the European Union and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ian McCartney MP Minister for Trade, Investment and Foreign Affairs spoke of the ' UK's increasing concerns about Burma and the grave human rights abuses suffered by the Burmese people, such as the detention of over 1,150 political activists, including Aung San Suu Kyi.'
The Burmese regime continues to severely restrict freedom of information and expression despite two major events in the past two years that have brought fierce international scrutiny. During, and following, both Cyclone Nargis and the Saffron Revolution, Burmese citizens have tried repeatedly to communicate with the outside world through the internet, journalism and organized demonstrations.
The internet is still controlled very tightly, with the opening of only a few cyber-cafés since the Web was introduced to the country in 2001, and only a few thousand email addresses permitted, all under strict surveillance. Foreign journalists and aid workers are rarely permitted into Myanmar, and only then under strict supervision.
Following the destruction caused in May 2008 by Cyclone Nargis, the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Burma, the government even stopped counting the dead to minimize political fallout, and restricted free movement, especially for journalists, in and out of the epicentre of the disaster - the Irrawaddy Delta. The final death toll will never be known, though the UN estimates that it could be as high as 100,000.
Some months before Nargis, on 19th August 2007, state-imposed fuel price rises provoked small scale protests which quickly swelled into a mass nationwide demonstration against the totalitarian regime. This became known as the Saffron Revolution. Though it achieved much international attention, the government brought it to a violent halt in late September 2007.
The fallout from the Saffron Revolution has shown the Burmese military junta's continued lack of progress towards political freedom. Between three and four thousand people were detained during the wave of protests, including children and pregnant women, and 700 of them were believed to still be in prison at the end of 2008.
On 13th November 2008, Amnesty International reported that 14 anti-government protestors had been handed down sentences of 65 years imprisonment each at closed door hearings in Yangon's Insein prison, for their involvement in the 2007 demonstrations and membership of pro-democracy organisations. Charges against the prisoners also included planning to distribute news from overseas broadcasts within Insein Prison, and planning to contact the United Nations Human Rights Commission about conditions in the prison. Some of the prisoners had been tortured.
Only two days before these sentences were handed down, blogger Nay Phone Latt, received a jail term of 20 years and six months for, among other offences, showing disrespect for Senior General Than Shwe in his blog. The owner of two internet cafés in Yangon, Nay Phone Latt was arrested in Yangon on 29 January 2008 in possession of a video that was banned by the military government. The 28-year-old also kept a blog (http://www.nayphonelatt.net/) in which he wrote about the difficulties that young Burmese people faced in the aftermath of the September 2007 protests.
In September 2008, the Burmese government completed drafting guidelines for a new Constitution, the second step in their seven-step "Road Map" for moving toward democracy. In December, the government appointed a 54-member commission of military and other officials to draft the Constitution. However, the National League for Democracy (NLD), the main opposition party, has not participated in this process since the early stages, and legislation criminalizing criticism of the process remained in place. NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi also remains under house arrest.
Update written by Patrick Loughran.
Sources: For further information, please see the annual reports from Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/), the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/), Reporters Without Borders (http://www.rsf.fr/) and the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (http://ifex.org/) . See also Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/). For more general information on Myanmar, see the Foreign and Commonwealth Office country profile (www.fco.gov.uk).
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