Situated in the triangle between South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China, Burma is a country of 50 million people struggling under the oppression of one of the world's most brutal military regimes. Yet, the voices of its people remain largely unheard in the international arena. Most of the limited media coverage deals with the non-violent struggle for democracy led by Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or the Army's repression of university students and urban dissidents, but these only form a small part of the story. This book presents the voices of ethnic Karen villagers to give an idea of what it is like to be a rural villager in Burma: the brutal and constant shifts of forced labor for the Army, the intimidation tactics, the systematic extortion and looting by Army and State authorities, the constant fear of arbitrary arrest, rape, torture, and summary execution, the forced relocation and burning of hundreds of civilian villages and the systematic uprooting of their crops. Three detailed reports produced by the Karen Human Rights Group in 1999 are used to give the reader a sampling of the life of Karen villagers, both in areas where there is armed resistance to the rule of the SPDC junta and in areas where the junta is fully in control. The Karen Human Rights Group is a small and independent local organization which has been using the firsthand testimony of villagers to document the human rights situation in rural Burma since 1992. Much of the group's work can be seen online at www.khrg.org. Kevin Heppner, who contributed the introductory sections of the book, is a Canadian volunteer who founded KHRG in 1992 and still serves as its coordinator. Claudio Delang, who edited this book, has a keen interest in Karen life and customs. He is currently completing a PhD dissertation on the Karen and Hmong in northern Thailand.

Since 1988, when Burma's military rulers crushed a popular uprising, Western governments have promoted democracy as a panacea for the country's manifold development problems, from ethnic conflict to weak governance, human rights abuses, and deep-rooted, structural poverty. Years of escalating censure and sanctions, however, have left the military firmly entrenched in power, the opposition marginalized, and the general population suffering from deepening poverty. In the first book-length study of Western human rights policy in Burma, Morten B. Pedersen argues that Western democracy rhetoric has not supplied the solution to these problems. Each year, Burma's human and natural resources are further eroding, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is mounting, and the prospect of turning the situation around is becoming less and less likely. Based on extensive field research, Promoting Human Rights in Burma proposes an alternative model of "critical engagement" that emphasizes more pragmatic efforts to help bring a deeply divided society together and promote socioeconomic development as the basis for longer-term political change. Although the focus is squarely on Burma, the fallacies in Western policy thinking that this case study reveals, as well as the alternative policy framework it offers, have wider relevance for other poor, conflict-ridden countries on the periphery of the global political and economic system.

Decades of military oppression in Burma have led to the systematic destruction of thousands of ethnic minority villages, a standing army with one of the world’s highest number of child soldiers, and the displacement of millions of people. Nowhere to Be Home is an eye-opening collection of oral histories exposing the realities of life under military rule. In their own words, men and women from Burma describe their lives in the country that Human Rights Watch has called “the textbook example of a police state.”

1. The UN Special Rapporteurs.

The 22nd annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than ninety countries and territories worldwide, reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2011 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with domestic human rights activists. World Report 2012 gives particular focus on the roles—positive or negative—played in each country by key domestic and international figures, and includes contributions from Joseph Saunders, Danielle Haas, and Iain Levine, and an introduction by Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth assessing the year’s most pressing human rights issue.

“Burmese Looking Glass is a contribution to the literature of human rights and to the literature of high adventure.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review As captivating as the most thrilling novel, Burmese Looking Glass tells the story of tribal peoples who, though ravaged by malaria and weakened by poverty, are unforgettably brave. Author Edith T. Mirante first crossed illegally from Thailand into Burma in 1983. There she discovered the hidden conflict that has despoiled the country since the close of World War II. She met commandos and refugees and learned firsthand the machinations of Golden Triangle narcotics trafficking. Mirante was the first Westerner to march with the rebels from the fabled Three Pagodas Pass to the Andaman Sea. She taught karate to women soldiers, was ritually tattooed by a Shan sayah “spirit doctor,” lobbied successfully against US government donation of Agent Orange chemicals to the dictatorship, and was deported from Thailand in 1988. “A dramatic but caring book in which Mirante’s blithe tone doesn’t disguise her earnest concern for the worsening conditions faced by the Burmese hill tribes.” —Kirkus Reviews

Offers new analysis of the complexities of the conflict and new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable

Life as a Soldier

Major changes in Burma's political situation since 2016 have raised questions concerning the appropriateness of U.S. policy toward Burma (Myanmar) in general, and the current restrictions on relations with Burma in particular. Various developments in Burma between 2010 and 2016 led the Obama Administration and others to perceive positive developments toward the restoration of a democratically elected civilian government in that nation after nearly five decades of military rule. Based on that perception, the Obama Administration waived most of the sanctions on Burma, particularly after Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy won the 2015 parliamentary elections and a new NLD-controlled Union Parliament took office in April 2016. Certain events since 2016, however, have led some to call for the reinstatement of some of the waived sanctions and/or the imposition of new restrictions on relations with Burma.

Myanmar is going through a period of profound - and contested - transition. The country has experienced widespread if sometimes uneven reforms, including the start of a peace process between the government and Myanmar Army, and some two dozen ethnic armed organizations, which had long been fighting for greater autonomy from the militarized and Burman-dominated state. This book brings together chapters by Burmese and foreign experts, and contributions from community and political leaders, who discuss the meaning of citizenship in Myanmar/Burma. The book explores citizenship in relation to three broad categories: issues of identity and conflict; debates around concepts and practices of citizenship; and inter- and intra-community issues, including Buddhist-Muslim relations. This is the first volume to address these issues, understanding and resolving which will be central to Myanmar's continued transition away from violence and authoritarianism.