In Mae Sot, six hours south of Chiang Mai, hundreds of migrants from Burma have been surviving for years on a large rubbish damp. They have fled decades of turmoil in their own country, and now struggle in a makeshift community of their own cretaion.

Dear Best Friend Members and Supporters,

We have several upcoming events in Chiang Mai to let you know about, but first we'd like to share details about a very important campaign...

As many of you know, the staff and volunteers of The Best Friend Library in Chiang Mai have worked incredibly hard over the past four years to sustain our programs with small donations and the slight profits received from selling our fundraising items. We are now ready to launch our first-ever, large-scale fundraising campaign, and we need your help to make it a success!

In recent years, the international community has witnessed many positive changes in Myanmar, including greater space for civil society, an expansion in freedom of expression, and evident government concern about environmental and local livehood issues resulting from large-scal development projects. With new foreign investment laws and the lifting of economic sanctions by Western countries, Myanmar is opening repidly to the global market economy. With the country's plentiful resources and the input of foreign investment, Myanmar is ready to pursue economic growth under the name of "development".

April 22, 2013

Statement by the Shan Human Rights Foundation

The Shan Human Rights Foundation is gravely concerned at fresh widespread atrocities by the Burma Army against civilians in Tangy an, northern Shan State, and is calling on the international community to hold the Burmese government accountable for these abuses.

Hello and many apologies that this is in English only,

I am writing to you from an Art and Activism Project called Roots To Resistance which does it's work in the eastern US. We bring issues, campaigns and challenges from World Communities to International audiences through Public Art and through a series of Postcard and Street Postering campaigns that we send across the Planet free to all. We are painting the 8 foot high larger than life sized Portraits of 12 Global Women Activists doing profoundly important work and it is through these Women that we focus on the issues, battles, challenges and triumphs being faced by their People and Communities.

April 26, 2013 13.00-16.30
4th floor meeting room Operational Building Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University

Presentations:

“Surging Forward? Progressing research on Religion and Development” by Philip Fountain, National University of Singapore

“Civilizing Across Border: Christian Propagation among Hmong People in Upper Mainland Southeast Asia”

Reinhard Hohler, Chiang Mai (09.04.2013)

Lao Airlines re-instates flights to Yangon in Myanmar in October 2013, some 33 years after axing the once unprofitable route.

In the context of connectivity Lao Airlines aims to become the jewel of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). The airline already connects the Lao capital Vientiane to Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City in Viet Nam, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh in  Cambodia, Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand as well as Kunming and Jinghong in Yunnan/China.

April 5, 2013

Press release by Shan Community Based Organisations

Northern Shan farmers are submitting demands to Burma’s government today for China’s giant oil and gas pipelines to be removed from their lands immediately, citing rights abuses, poor construction and safety fears.