Myanmar was never a frontrunner when it came to press freedom in the Southeast Asian region. However, there was a glimmer of hope when the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate kept under house arrest for years because of her democratic activism, won historic elections in 2015. This led many to expect that more media freedom would follow.Fast forward to today, it seems that the country’s press freedom has only been shrinking.

At 4:20 am – a time which was deemed auspicious by a Burmese astrologer – on the 4th of January 1948, a new nation was born. Myanmar celebrates the 70th anniversary of its independence from the British today.

Myanmar is set to raise the minimum wage to around $3.60 a day, state media announced Wednesday, as Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government struggles to project economic progress after almost two years in power.The new daily figure of 4,800 kyats represents a 33 percent increase on Myanmar's first-ever minimum wage introduced in 2015 by the previous army-backed administration."The new minimum wage will be applied across all regions and states to all businesses with 10 or more wo

Two sides of women’s rightsThis week, The ASEAN Post reported on Malaysia’s increased efforts to add women to boardrooms in 2018.

Two Myanmar journalists working for an international newswire who have not been heard from since they were arrested last week should be immediately released, the EU demanded Tuesday.The sudden detention of reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, who work for Reuters, has spread fears about diminishing press freedoms in Myanmar, where Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government is under growing global pressure over human rights abuses.The two men, who have been held incommunicado since Dec

In the shadow of one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, Pope Francis who is in Myanmar for a four-day visit, refrained from mentioning the word “Rohingya” throughout his speech at the capital, Naypyidaw.

Pope Francis will hold talks with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, a key moment of a tour aimed at soothing religious and ethnic hatreds that have driven huge numbers of Muslim Rohingya from the country.

Myanmar has agreed to take back hundreds and thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees who’ve been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka said in a statement.Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the bilateral agreement in Myanmar on Thursday, just a day after U.S.

Father William's 16-strong flock on Myanmar's eastern border is one of the Catholic Church's tiniest outposts, but next week they will join a tide of 200,000 faithful in Yangon for a historic mass led by Pope Francis.The Pope, renowned for powerful entreaties for peace no matter how highly-charged the issue, arrives on Monday in a country on the defensive over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.Some 620,000 Rohingya have been driven from western Rakhine state to Bang

Myanmar troops gang-raped countless Rohingya women and girls during a military campaign that sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.The US-based rights group said in a report that the sexual violence, along with other atrocities committed by Myanmar security forces, amount to crimes against humanity.Based on interviews with rape survivors, aid organisations and Bangladeshi health officials, the report details cases of what it calle