South Asia | Burma | Leadership

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Party Takes Control Of Myanmar’s Parliament

For the first time in decades, a freely elected parliament took its seats in Myanmar on Monday, with the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi preparing to run the country. The change comes after years of strife — and a weekend of celebration. That celebration included both incoming and outgoing officials, who sang and danced onstage at a huge party — an uplifting end to an era of military junta rule that had forced Suu Kyi into years of living under house arrest.

South Asia | Burma | Economy

On the road with the women building Myanmar

Source: theguardian

In the mountain village of Kalaw, Myanmar, women in bamboo hats are busy laying the foundations of a road. They woke at dawn, ate mohinga fish soup for breakfast and then joined other female colleagues in the boiling sun. Surrounded by red soil and gravel, the five-month baby of 21-year-old Cho Mi Ko is also on the roadside. He is sleeping under a makeshift shelter, oblivious to his mother’s hard labour. The sight of women building roads is common in Myanmar. From the rural areas of Rakhine state to touristic Bagan, fuming tarmac and piles of debris are mostly handled by female workers, w

South Asia | Burma | Politics

Aung San Suu Kyi’s election victory in Myanmar comes after a lifetime of personal sacrifice

Source: Quartz

Aung San Suu Kyi’s father is known as the “father of Burmese independence,” because he led what was then known as Burma in its fight against British colonialists who had occupied the country for decades. Now that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party has won majority control of the country’s parliament, her supporters—both inside and outside the country—are hoping she will become the mother of an independent democracy in Myanmar. Under her leadership, the country could be the first democracy in many years to peacefully flourish from the ashes of an authoritarian go

South Asia | Burma | Society

Myanmar: women’s fight against verbal taboo symbolises wider rights battle

Source: theguardian

In Myanmar there are no vaginas. Linguistically, at least, that part of the female body does not exist in Burmese – a lexical omission that highlights the intense cultural taboos facing women’s rights activists as they battle against the country’s woeful maternal health record and entrenched gender prejudices. Rights and health organisations are beginning to address inequality issues in the long-isolated country, but the advent of Buddhist extremism threatens to derail the women’s movement in Myanmar just as it starts to gain more powers. When the word “vagina” recently appea

South Asia | Burma | Culture

Myanmar bill limits women’s right to wed non-Buddhists

Source: Aljazeera

Myanmar's parliament has approved a law that would regulate marriages between Buddhist women and men from outside their religion. The move by legislators on Tuesday was condemned by activists and human rights groups, who said the law was passed under pressure from hardline Buddhist monks. "They [MPs] are not thinking about the people, they are just thinking about themselves to maintain their seats in parliament, " activist May Sabai Phyu told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. "If they do not approve, Ma Ba Tha [Committee to Protect Race and Religion] will challenge them, and tell people not to

South Asia | Burma | Culture

Burmese women could be forced to have fewer children under new law

Source: theguardian

Burma’s president has signed off on a law requiring some mothers to space their children three years apart despite international objections that it could be used to repress women and minorities such as the Rohingya Muslims now fleeing the country for other parts of south-east Asia. The population control health care bill — drafted under pressure from hard-line Buddhist monks with a staunchly anti-Muslim agenda — was passed by parliamentarians last month.