Free Republic

A Sky News investigation has uncovered evidence that the Burmese military is targeting other ethnic minorities. The investigation, which involved travelling to remote parts of Myanmar, follows months of persecution against Rohingya Muslims by the country's military. More than 700,000 have been forced to flee to Bangladesh in what the United Nations called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing". Now another ethnic group - the mainly Christian Kachin people - believe they are being increasingly targeted because the Myanmar military's persecution of the Rohingya went unpunished. The attacks by the military are increasing in intensity and severity. Kachin rebels, who...

London: A giant jade boulder that could be worth billions of pounds has been discovered in Burma. The 50-tonne block was found half buried in soil and rock in the gem-rich north of the country. Villagers discovered the 5.5 metre-wide boulder in the mountainous state of Kachin, where rebels have been fighting the government for more than 50 years. It is now under armed guard as officials negotiate with rebels about what to do with it. Burma, also known as Myanmar, is one of the world’s biggest producers of precious stones. Jade expert Jason Holt, of Holts Jewellers in Hatton...

A pipeline pumping natural gas from Myanmar to energy-hungry China has gone fully operational, state-run Chinese media said on Monday. BEIJING: A pipeline pumping natural gas from Myanmar to energy-hungry China has gone fully operational, state-run Chinese media said on Monday. The project, stretching more than 2,500 kilometres from western Myanmar to southwest China, will help the world's second-largest economy feed its growing energy needs. It comes as close political ties between the two nations have weakened, after Myanmar's quasi-civilian regime took office in 2011 and brought in sweeping reforms that have led to the scrapping of most Western sanctions....

This week deadly armed clashes near Burma’s border with China ended a nearly two-decade-old ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burma’s government. About 10,000 people have fled to refugee camps along the Chinese border and 215 Chinese workers from the Datang United Hydropower Developing Co. returned home after the KIA captured a Chinese-built and operated hydropower plant last week. A KIA spokesperson told the Thailand-based Irrawaddy that the uprising began when the government reneged on an agreement to share electricity generated from the region’s Chinese-built hydropower plants with local people. “This electricity is now going to China, not...