ETHNIC NATIONALITIES COUNCIL

The reaction was swift. On Jan. 13 (an auspicious Friday the 13^th, it turned out), Burma released 651 prisoners, among them hundreds of democracy activists, ethnic leaders, senior monks and even a former Prime Minister who had fallen out with the country’s ex-military junta chief. Hours later, the U.S. announced that it was normalizing relations with Burma

One of the world’s longest civil conflicts may finally be over. On Jan. 12, a “peace delegation” from the quasi-civilian government of Burma signed a cease-fire agreement with ethnic Karen rebels who have been waging battle for more than six decades on the country’s eastern front. Since taking over from the ruling military junta last year

The United States restored full diplomatic relations with Myanmar Friday, saying it was making good on a commitment to “meet action with action” as the long-isolated Southeast Asian country has moved rapidly on political and economic reforms. Just hours after Myanmar’s new civilian government announced the release of hundreds of political prisoners, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the US would exchange ambassadors with Myanmar, also known as Burma

Burma's mysterious president insists that he wants democracy. But can he deliver?

One sweltering day in August of last year, Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi arrived for the first time in the capital of her country. The city of Naypyidaw, inaugurated six years ago by Burma's mercurial military rulers, is a supremely artificial creation, a place of vacant boulevards and echoing plazas built in the foothills some 200 miles away from the old capital of Rangoon.

Watching Burma's ongoing progress towards democratic reforms and political dialogue from afar is like seeing sprinkling rain turning into a light downpour after a long drought over two decades. It is a spectacular and stunning sight thus far, partly because the long drought stirred pent-up demands and grievances for ways forward.

Bogyoke Nyar De, or “Burmese General Aung San, you lied,” was a song popularized among Burma’s ethnics by Shan singer Sai Seng Mong in the early1970’s.  It was in reference to the unrealized promises of equality that Bogyoke Aung San pledged to the minorities at the time of the Panglong Conference—a political meeting of ethnic leaders and other relevant stakeholders in 1947 which not only provided a basis for the federal state