2007 Activities

Burma

In September and October 2007, people across the world and inside Burma watched, read, and heard about popular protests in Burma and how the government responded with a brutal military crackdown. Journalists inside Burma, 40 of them supported by an OSI grantee, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), formed networks that smuggled stories and images to international media outlets, including footage of the brutal killing of a Japanese journalist. Despite significant government repression, DVB remains the only Burmese language satellite channel sending TV and radio broadcasts from the region into Burma, and many Burmese use shortwave radios or satellite radios to listen to DVB’s daily programming.

The relationship between natural resources and repression in Burma remained significant in 2007. The country’s substantial natural gas and oil reserves continued to facilitate media repression and human rights abuses by providing revenues for the military regime. The recently discovered Shwe gas fields in the Bay of Bengal are likely to become one of the military’s newest and largest sources of foreign currency.

Arakan Oil Watch, an OSI grantee and leading member of the SHWE Gas Movement, worked to ensure that a construction project to transport gas from the Shwe fields to India via Burma will not result in exploitation and human rights abuses similar to those suffered by Burmese living near previous pipeline projects in eastern Burma. Foreign oil companies were successfully held accountable for those abuses by OSI grantee, EarthRights International, whose efforts were depicted in the 2007 award-winning documentary film, Total Denial.

Southeast Asia Initiative

Thailand

The Southeast Asia Initiative has responded to the increasing deterioration of democracy and press freedoms in Thailand by supporting independent media organizations such as the Prachdharma News Network (PNN). PNN works to create information about under-reported issues by helping communities produce grassroots news using websites, newsletters, and CDs for broadcast on community radio stations. With a grant from OSI, PNN trained 40 youth from northern Thailand to work as community journalists writing articles on natural resource use, gender issues, and human rights.

Malaysia

The Southeast Asia Initiative worked to increase access to justice for indigenous populations in Malaysia by supporting community legal clinics and educational programs that allow these communities to challenge exploitative government and private sector land-use policies. The Sarawak Dayak Iban Association, an OSI grantee representing the indigenous Iban community in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, established a pilot mobile legal clinic project that provides free paralegal services to villages in seven districts. As a result, indigenous villages and their leaders negotiated several peaceful solutions to land conflicts with private companies.

Cambodia

The lack of access to human rights information in Cambodia, especially in Khmer, the official language, adds to the problems of promoting human rights, particularly among women’s groups. The Southeast Asia Initiative and OSI’s Information Program funded Women Empowerment for Social Change, a project of the Cambodian NGO Open Institute, which created a Khmer language women’s web portal covering all news and information related to women’s issues and rights. The project also organized electronic forums for civil society and women’s groups, gender education courses, and six instructor trainings across the country in information and communications technology.

Regional

In November 2007, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted a charter, creating the region’s first human rights body. The Southeast Asia Initiative gave the South East Asian Committee for Advocacy a grant for a project to help inform people about the charter’s impact on their lives and inform governments about the concerns of their constituents. The project has also helped civil society representatives initiate advocacy campaigns on issues such as human rights, security, migration and labor, and conditions faced by Asia’s urban poor, a group that has been largely overlooked by ASEAN.