Thank you to everyone that attended our Leap Year Party & Concert at Busboys & Poets on February 28, 2008!

Through gathering testimonies, training grassroots organizations, and distributing information through campaign work, the Burma Project has made a significant contribution to human rights and environment protection in Burma. Where possible, the Burma Project links its grassroots fact-finding missions and community organizing with regional and international level advocacy and campaigning. Working alongside affected community groups, they aim to prevent future human rights and environmental abuses associated with large-scale development projects in Burma.

Southeast Asia’s longest free flowing river, the Salween River, runs along the Thai-Burma border and is home to several plant and animal species as well as over thirteen ethnic minority groups living in traditional communities along its banks. Currently there are plans underway for large-scale hydropower development at various locations along the river in Burma; developments which ERI fears would lead to environmental degradation and human rights abuses. As part of ERI's efforts to raise awareness for these issues and its commitment to training local human rights and environmental activists, the EarthRights Mekong School recently took a group of students on an educational fieldtrip to the Salween River.

Thank you to everyone that has attended our events and a special thank you to those that have helped coordinate these events.

The situation of women in Burma is complicated. On the one hand, the most famous Burmese person in the world is a woman, Aung San Suu Kyi. On the other hand, as in many countries, women are perceived as inferior to men.

Imagine what it would be like to come home from work one day and find that all has changed. A few hundred yards from your house, you are stopped by a neighbor with a look of panic on his face. He whispers to you that you shouldn't go home; the army has just entered the village.

While public works projects are generally undertaken with the goal of improving the lives of the population, news of such projects in Burma is greeted by a wave of fear and anxiety by local villagers. Such was the case of the Ye-Tavoy Railway.

The U.S. Department of Labor, the International Labor Organization (ILO), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, EarthRights International, and numerous other governmental and nongovernmental organizations have documented and condemned the systematic use of forced labor in Burma.

The Yadana Gas Pipeline Project is so far the largest foreign investment project in Burma. Transnational oil companies Unocal (US) and Total (France) have chosen to invest in a regime with one of the most deplorable human rights and environmental records in the world. Even worse, the companies have contracted with the SLORC army (the Tatmadaw) to provide security for the pipeline project.

EarthRights International (ERI) is a founding member of the Oilwatch network. Headquartered in Ecuador, the network brings together human rights advocates, environmentalists, scientists, lawyers and indigenous peoples to monitor the petroleum industry worldwide.

For the people of Burma who have been forced to flee their homes, refugee camps are often not a place of refuge. Over 100,000 people currently seek safety in refugee camps in Thailand. What they receive when they arrive is quite different.

The Burmese army is itself a brutal institution. Soldiers are treated badly: They are starved, overworked, underpaid, beaten, psychologically abused, denied medical treatment, and sometimes killed by their own officers or peers.

Many of us take physical security for granted because we live in a country governed by the rule of law. If we are subjected to abuse, it is an aberration with a corresponding legal remedy. The people of Burma have no such luxury.

On any given day, out of the world’s view, clouds of white smoke journey towards the sky deep in the jungles of Burma. This smoke is evidence of the Burmese military’s forced relocation program, marked by its unceremonious burning of villages.

At a workshop organized by ORAU, the regional indigenous federation for the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon, and OIRA, the indigenous organization for the Atalaya area within the Ucayali, the leaders discussed the pending oil drilling by Repsol and its partner, US-based Burlington Resources.