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Region losing 2m hectares of forest and grasslands every year, with area the size of India and Burma together requiring restoration ...

Alan Morison and Thai colleague Chutima Sidasathian face defamation charges for reporting alleged abuse and human trafficking Kate Hodal ...

s International Labour Organisation and Human Rights Watch (pdf). Myo Zaw Do's case was recorded by the EJF last month, after he managed to escape and take refuge in a temple outside Bangkok. He says he was 20 when he left the small town of Kamarsay Sanpya in Burma to find work. He travelled to the border town of Myawaddy, where he paid traffickers to help him make an illegal crossing into Thailand....

s no soil. Everyone wants to go back to our old village." But 70-year-old Lapai is not allowed back to his ancestral home just 12 miles to the north, even though the massive dam that was going to flood the village is now in limbo. The Myitsone dam project lies unfinished in Kachin state, northern Burma, caught in a tug of war between the Burmese government and a powerful Chinese corporation. Lapai,...

s clinics on Thursday. Media reports said the suspension was imposed because of comments made by MSF on the situation in Rakhine. The group has been providing medical treatment to both ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, a mostly stateless minority who live in apartheid-like conditions and who otherwise have little access to healthcare. The UN and human rights groups say at least 40 Rohingya...

s government to suspend all operations in a conflict-riddled state because of what officials described as a lack of impartiality in medical treatment. "The state government decision is not against MSF as an organisation," the presidential spokesman, Ye Htut, told the Guardian. "But in Rakhine state, even the local authority do not fully trust their impartiality in the crisis and that is why we have...

s teenage news bulletin Newsbeat as part of an £8m attempt to gain a younger overseas audience. Peter Horrocks, the BBC's director of global news, will tell staff on Tuesday that radio will remain the bedrock of the World Service, which sits alongside the BBC's World News television channel and BBC News online. But Horrocks will outline a range of new investments, including an African edition of the...

UN human rights agency says it has information of 48 Muslims killed in Rakhine by Buddhist mobs, the deadliest in a year At least 48 Muslims were killed when Buddhist mobs attacked a village in an isolated corner of western Burma earlier this month, the United Nations has said, calling on the government to carry out a swift, impartial investigation and to hold those responsible accountable. Presidential...

Mastermind behind plot to strike Burmese embassy in revenge for attacks on Rohingya Muslims is jailed for seven years An Indonesian court has sentenced an Islamist militant to seven and half years in prison for masterminding a plot to attack the Burmese embassy in Jakarta. Judge Haryono, who presided over the trial on Tuesday at the South Jakarta district court, said the defendant, Sigit Indrajit,...

meeting in Bagan: "We have had no information about killings." Burma, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million people, has been grappling with sectarian violence for nearly two years. More than 240 people have been killed and another 250,000 forced to flee their homes, most of them Muslims from the western state of Rakhine. The northern tip of the state, where Tuesday's violence occurred, is...

s biggest city to protest against a jail term given to a reporter who was working on a story about corruption. Wearing black T-shirts with slogans saying: "We don't want threat on press freedom", and carrying banners that read: "Right to information is life of democracy", nearly 60 reporters marched down a busy Rangoon street decrying the three-month prison sentence given to Ma Khine from the Daily...

t want threats to press freedom." Others carried banners saying "Right to information is the life of democracy." It followed the three-month prison sentence given to Ma Khine from the Daily Eleven newspaper. She was convicted last month of trespassing, using abusive language and defamation. Journalists in Burma have gained new freedoms under the reformist government of President Thein Sein, who has...

Australian journalist Alan Morison faces up to seven years’ jail if convicted over story about rights abuses against Rohingya refugees ...

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...

s worst ongoing violent conflicts over the past few years is the extraction and trade of natural resources. Recently in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Séléka rebels , who have carried out acts of violence against their people, have taken advantage of the diamonds trade to consolidate their power. This has led to the exclusion of the CAR from the Kimberley process aimed at tackling conflict...

Child’s Rohingya family, who are not recognised in their home country of Burma, are fighting against being returned to Nauru ...

s final years in power, as many as 2,500 people – including activists, journalists, politicians and even comedians – were under detention. Many were subjected to torture. A committee appointed by Thein Sein assesses the cases of remaining detainees and provides him with a list of those determined to be genuine political prisoners recommended for release. Among those released on Wednesday was D Nyein...

s struggle against British colonial rule, has died. Ye Htut died at a hospital in Rangoon on Wednesday, family members said. He was 91. The Thirty Comrades were led by General Aung San, father of the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. During the second world war the men went to Japan for training to fight British colonists. Aung San later negotiated independence from Britain. He was assassinated in...

Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi meets Tony Abbott in Canberra as part of her Australian visit ...

s Nobel peace prize winner gets hero's welcome in Sydney, despite discomfort on Rohingya questions Australia's rule of law "must be tempered by mercy" when dealing with asylum seekers such as the Rohingya child born in a Brisbane hospital to parents fighting to prevent their transfer to Nauru , Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in Sydney on Wednesday evening. Suu Kyi told the Opera House...