Battered Burma’s unanswered question: when will the fighting end?...

"The horrors of war are all too visible on Myo Myint’s scarred body. The former Burma Army trooper has only one arm and one leg. The fingers of one hand are just stumps, he’s almost blind in one eye and pieces of landmine shrapnel still lodge in his body.

Myo Myint: Crippled and disillusioned by war

Myo Myint is one of countless thousands of men and women maimed for life in Burma’s ongoing civil war, which has been raging for more than half a century—one of Asia’s longest unsolved conflicts...

Landmines take a heavy toll in lives and livelihoods...

"A dozen or so years ago, Mee Reh was helping to secure a rebel-held area of Burma’s eastern Karenni State with landmines. Today he is helping to secure a new life for landmine victims.

Mee Reh, 38, is one of 11 workers making artificial limbs at a small workshop in a Karenni refugee camp in Thailand’s northern Mae Hong Son province. The enterprise is run by Handicap International, an international organization working to ban the use of landmines and to help landmine victims.

Big companies push small prospectors aside in hunt for Burma’s riches...

"In Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen tells Alice: “A word means what I want it to mean.” That sums up in one sentence the state of Burma’s statute books—particularly those decrees relating to mining the country’s rich resources.

Robert Moody, in his 1998 “Report on Mining in Burma,” put it more directly. The law on mining passed by the Rangoon regime in 1994, he said, “is not just one, but a parade of farts in a bucket.”

... In 2014, Myanmar(Burma)confounded industry analysts by emerging to become the World's third biggest tin producer, experiencing a 5-year tin production increase of ca.4900%. This surprise emergence of Myanmar as a major tin producer is a possible Black Swan event that potentially has significant re-percussions both for the future of global tin production, and for the economic development of Myanmar. This is a disruptive event that has likely contributed to a substantial drop in tin prices in 2015. The

Amidst ongoing conflict between the Tatmadaw and armed groups in eastern Dooplaya and Pa'an districts, civilians, aid workers and soldiers from state and non-state armies continue to report a variety of human rights abuses and security concerns for civilians in areas adjacent to Thailand's Tak Province, including: functionally indiscriminate mortar and small arms fire; landmines; arbitrary arrest and detention; sexual violence; and forced portering.

This report contains the full transcripts of seven interviews conducted between June 1st and June 18th 2010 in Dta Greh Township, Pa'an District by a villager trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions. The villager interviewed seven villagers from two villages in Wah Mee Gklah village tract, after they had returned to Burma following initial displacement into Thailand during May and June 2009. The interviewees report that they did not wish to return to Burma, but felt they had to do so as the result of pressure and harassment by Thai authorities.

Includes Cluster Munition Monitor Report, 2013

Includes Cluster Munition Monitor Report, 2013

Since the Scotland-based HALO Trust started work in Afghanistan in 1988 and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) cleared its first mine in Cambodia in 1992, the two NGOs have cleared and destroyed several million landmines and explosive weapons from conflict zones around the world. Their total haul in Myanmar? Zero.

“It is very frustrating,” says Henry Leach, HALO Trust representative in Yangon. “We are the biggest operator in the world but have not cleared a single mine in Myanmar in three years of being here.”

Key developments since May 2005: Both the military junta and non-state armed groups have continued to use antipersonnel mines extensively. The Myanmar Army has obtained, and is using an increasing number of antipersonnel mines of the United States M-14 design; manufacture and source of these non-detectable mines—whether foreign or domestic—is unknown. In November 2005, Military Heavy Industries reportedly began recruiting technicians for the production of the next generation of mines and other munitions.

Landmines are weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately, whether it be civilians, soldiers, elderly, women, children or animals
and cause injury and death long after the official end of a war. Contrary to trends in the rest of the world, rather than reduce or
abolish the use of landmines, the SPDC has actually increased production of anti-personnel landmines and at least in the case of
the Burma-Bangladesh border, is actively maintaining minefields. In Asia, Burma is currently second only to Afghanistan in the

This report is based on information submitted to KHRG in November 2012 by a community member describing events occurring in Pa'an District, between August 28th 2012 and November 1st 2012, where one landmine exploded in Htee Klay village tract, one landmine exploded in Noh Kay village tract and one landmine exploded in Htee Kyah Rah village tract. These explosions injured a 21-year-old man named Saw P---, who died, a man of around 40-years-old, named Saw B---, who lost one leg, and an unknown Tatmadaw soldier from Light Infantry Battalion #275, who lost both of his legs.