In the six months since DKBA Brigade #5 troops under the command of Brigadier-General Saw Lah Pwe ('Na Kha Mwe') agreed to a ceasefire with government forces, and in the four months since a ceasefire was agreed between KNLA and government troops, villagers in Kawkareik Township have continued to raise concerns regarding ongoing human rights abuses, including the arbitrary detention and violent abuse of civilians, and forced labour demands occurring as recently as February 24th 2012.

A giant earthquake occurred off Sumatra Island of Indonesia, on December 26, 2004. The earthquake, an interplate event, caused by the subduction of Indo-Australian) plate beneath the Andaman (or Burma) microplate was the largest in size (Mw 9.1) in the world for the last 40 years. While the epicenter was located west off Sumatra Island, the aftershock zone extended through the Nicobar to the Andaman Islands. This earthquake generated a tsunami which devastated the shores of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India, and Thailand as far as the east coast of Africa.

The Asian Human Rights Commission condemns in the strongest terms the announcement of the commander of the Sagaing Region Police Force, Myanmar, that the police will arrest and charge eight human rights defenders whom it blames for inciting protests against the army-backed copper mine project at the Letpadaung Hills, in Monywa. The commission also condemns the latest round of needless police violence against demonstrators there.

Dirty coal mining by military cronies & Thai companies,
Ban Chaung, Dawei District, Myanmar.....Executive Summary: "This report was researched and written collaboratively by Dawei Civil Society Organizations
and documents the environmental and social impacts of the Ban Chaung coal mining project
in Dawei District of Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. Based on desk research, interviews
with villagers, and direct engagement with companies and government, it exposes how
the project was pushed ahead despite clear opposition from the local community. It

Dirty coal mining by military cronies & Thai companies, Ban Chaung, Dawei District, Myanmar.....Executive Summary: "This report was researched and written collaboratively by Dawei Civil Society Organizations and documents the environmental and social impacts of the Ban Chaung coal mining project in Dawei District of Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region. Based on desk research, interviews with villagers, and direct engagement with companies and government, it exposes how the project was pushed ahead despite clear opposition from the local community.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council...
The Myanmar Mines Law...
(The State Law and Order Restoration Council Law No 8/94)...
The 2nd Waxing Day of Tawthalin, 1356 M.E.
(6th September, 1994)

"The objectives of this Law are as follows:

a.to implement the Mineral Resources Policy of the Government;

b.to fulfil the domestic requirements and to increase export by producing more mineral products;

c.to promote development of local and foreign investment in respect of mineral resources;

Myanmar's Union government collects much of the trillions of kyat generated by oil, gas, gemstones and other minerals each year, primarily through its state-owned economic enterprises (SEEs).

This Photo Set shows development projects including road and bridge construction in Win Yay Township, Dooplaya District between December 2014 and January 2015. These development projects destroyed villagers’ fruit and rubber plantations. Villagers report having not yet received any compensation for their destroyed lands.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
"The transformation of Mount Pinpet, or "Pine Tree Mountain," in Burma's war-torn Shan State, for the excavation and refinement of the country's second largest iron ore deposit is changing the very nature of life there, and if not stopped could permanently destroy the home of more than 7,000 primarily ethnic Pa-O residents.

Antipersonnel landmines continued to be deployed in significant numbers in Burma during 2007, despite a growing international consensus that the use of landmines is unacceptable and that their use should be unconditionally ceased. As of mid-August 2007, 155 countries, or 80 percent of the world’s nations were State Parties to the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (also known as and henceforth referred to as the ‘Mine Ban Treaty’), leaving only 40 countries outside the treaty.

အစီရင်ခံစာအကျဉ်းချုပ်
ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် အရှေ့ပိုင်း တာချီလိတ်မြို ၏့ မြောက်ဖက် တောင်တန်းဒေများတွင် ဒေသခံများကို ထိခိုကေ် စသည့်
ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်ခြင်းလုပ်ငန်းကို ၂၀၀၇ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ခဲ့ကာ ယင်းကြောင့် လားဟူ၊ အာခါနှင့် ရှမ်းရွာ ၈ရွာမှာ လူပေါင်း ၂၀၀၀ကျော်ကို
ထိခိုက်စေခဲ့သည်။ ရွှေဖြူတူးဖော်မှုကို မြန်မာကုမ္ပဏီများက ဆောင်ရွက်နေပြီး တရုတ်နှင့် ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံသို့ တင်ပို့လျှက်ရှိသည်။
တာချလီ တိ ြ်မို ့ မြောကဖ် က ် ၁၃ကလီ မို တီ ာအကွာရ ှိအားရဲခေါ် အာခါရွာအနီးတငွ ်ကမု ဏ္ပ ၅ီ ခကု လပု င် န်း လပု က် ငို လ် ျှကရ် သှိ ည။်

Burmese and Chinese companies are pushing aside Akha, Lahu and Shan villagers
in eastern Shan State in a grab for platinum (“white gold” in Burmese). Women are
facing particular hardship due to the loss of livelihood and the contamination of water
sources. The Lahu Women Organization is calling for an immediate halt to these
damaging mining operations....Summary
Since 2007, destructive platinum mining has been taking place in the hills north of
Tachilek, eastern Shan State, impacting about 2,000 people from eight Lahu, Akha