The Importance Of Human Rights In Myanmar

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Myanmar has endured pain under the military ruled government for most of its independent political existence. Myanmar, later on called Burma, became an independent state on January 4, 1948. Representative democracy flourished in Burma for fourteen years. However, its political freedom faded away in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup, overthrowing the democratically elected government to force the country along the “Burmese Way to Socialism.” Later on, he managed to rule for twenty-six years. General Ne Win government have made a horrific and larger amount of record of human rights violations during his reign over Myanmar. Violations committed by the armed forces, primarily against political activists, and journalists, have included extrajudicial and arbitrary killings, torture, and arrests for political reasons, forced labor, forced conscription into the military, denial of freedom of movement, and tight restrictions on press, religion, speech, and assembly. The U.S. Department of State assessed that the situation worsened during 2007 due to the government’s harsh crackdown on…show more content…
Myanmar’s civil liberties rating declined from 5 to 6 due to restrictions on media freedom, including the arrest and imprisonment of a number of journalists (Freedom House, 2007). The Burmese media is tightly controlled by the government. Newspapers, journals and other publications work under the Ministry of Information and undergo heavy censorship before publication. Reporters face bad consequences for criticizing government officials, policy, or even reporting on criticism In August 2012, the Burmese government announced that it was abolishing the system of censorship that had been in place, more or less uninterrupted, for the previous half century following demonstrations by hundreds of protesters who wore shirts demanding that the government "Stop Killing the Press". The period since then has witnessed a remarkable

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