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Burma Campaign Australia & New Hope Foundation
Writers for Burma

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Burma Campaign Australia & New Hope Foundation

Burma Campaign Australia is committed to peace, democracy and human rights in Burma.

Burma Campaign Australia is a network of groups and individuals located around Australia campaigning for peace, democracy, good governance and human rights in Burma. We include human rights advocates, academics, aid agencies and a broad range of Australia-based ethnic and pro-democracy groups from Burma. Also included are Burmese Members of Parliament-elect living in exile. Crucially, we are connected to and coordinate with people inside Burma, around its borders and the global network of campaigns on Burma.

Burma has been wracked by civil wars since independence in 1948 and ruled by a military regime since 1962. The military regime, currently named the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), is one of the world’s most brutal. It has been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations (UN) for its systematic and widespread abuse of human rights and political oppression. The military regime refused to honour the results of the 1990 general election in which 82% of parliamentary seats were won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest while many other NLD and ethnic leaders remain imprisoned. There are currently around 1800 political prisoners in Burma and several million people, the majority of whom are ethnic minorities, displaced internally and cross-border.

Burma Campaign Australia calls for an immediate end to all violence and human rights abuses, the release of all political prisoners and for the international community to exert the necessary political will to bring positive change to Burma. We believe peace and security in Burma depends on achieving national reconciliation. Genuine political progress towards this goal depends on meaningful dialogue between the NLD, ethnic nationalities representatives and the SPDC.

Burma Campaign Australia encourages the Australian Government and international actors to proactively building conditions conducive to positive change in Burma. We do this through raising awareness of Burma’s crises among the broader Australian community and working with Australia’s government’s at all levels, particularly the Australian Federal Government to ensure political change in Burma is a foreign policy and security priority.

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Writers for Burma

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