With the crackdown on nationwide demonstrations in September, the number of political prisoners in Burma increased in the year 2007. There are currently at least 1864 political prisoners in Burma, not including all cases of detention since the crackdown. This is 706 more political prisoners than there were in 2006.

Bao Youxiang, the leader of Wa who had been ill for the past few years, has now recovered and has taken back all of his former duties including military and finance, according to a close friend who is now in Yunnan. The source, who is an ethnic Chinese Thai businessman, said the credit goes to a herbal doctor from Dali, near the capital of Yunnan, Kunming, who managed to purge the worms originating from improperly cooked meat in his body. “He often has memory lapses, headaches and can’t walk straight. Sometimes he doesn’t remember what you have told him,” reported Maximillian Wechsler in Bangkok Post, 27 November 2005, quoting one of Bao’s aides.

Today we were at an IDP site - above the burned village of Lay Kee village on the border of Toungoo District and Muthraw District. Lay Kee village was burned down on 15 and 16 August 2007. Everyone fled the village, and the Burma Army put landmines in and around the village. However, on 16 November some villagers came down from their hiding places and went back to see what they could find in their village. A boy, Hsa K'Tray Saw, age 13, was with his family and sitting on a log in the destroyed village. He was hitting the ground with a machete as he waited for his mother to collect some vegetables. As he was hitting the ground with the machete, it hit a landmine that the Burma Army had placed there. The blast blinded him in both eyes and wounded his face and upper torso.

A Shan conference was held at an undisclosed location on Thai-Burma border and 60 representatives from different parts of Shan State participated in the conference from 19-21 of January 2008. ‘I think first of all, everybody agrees on some basic principles and also agrees on what the objective is of the Shan groups….. and then the conference was able to form a coordinating committee,’ Harn Yawnghwe, a well-known participant expressed some of the achievements from the 3 day conference.

After killing hundreds and displacing more than 30,000 villagers in northern Karen State in 2006 and early 2007, the Burma Army has significantly expanded its military infrastructure, replacing the villages and farms cleared during the offensive with a growing web of army camps and roads. The re-supply of these camps is now in its final stages, and the yearly improvement of the previously existing roads has now been completed.

A Shan State Army (SSA) South patrol recently ran into its Burma Army opposite number on the Thai-Burma border, resulting in a five minute clash, according to the rebel bulletin. On 13 January 2008, an 8 men patrol from Khun Hsarng Ton Hung Column based in Loi Taileng, the SSA's main base, by Sergeant Sai Korn encountered a patrol from the Burma Army's Infantry Battalion (IB) 131 at Kawng Pek, 2 km north of Nawng Aw village, opposite Maehangson's Pang Mapha district. The ensuing clash lasted 5 minutes, from 11:45-11:50 local time.

The 8th annual meeting of Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), the political arm of the Shan State Army (SSA), was held at Loi Tai Leng on the Thai-Burma border, according to rebel source. A total of 198 members had participated at the meeting, held 10-14 January, at the rebel base, opposite Maehongson's Pang Mapha district.

While the killings of demonstrators in the cities of Burma in September 2007 shocked the world, the attacks against the ethnic people are equally shocking, have gone on for over 59 years and continue to this day. Here in the Karen State, from where we are sending this report, the Burma Army continues its campaign of brutality.

In this new video release, host Antonio Graceffo takes you back inside of Burma, to meet the children, orphans, and students of Loi Tailang. Their parents were murdered by the Burmese army (SPDC). Their villages were burned. But their education continues at Loi Tailang, under the protection of the Shan State Army (SSA), where they try to continue living their lives as normal, happy young people.

His parents were murdered by the SPDC, now a young Shan man becomes a soldier and future leader of his people. He lives his life surrounded by landmines, trapped on one side by Burmese soldiers who would kill him if they had the chance and on the other side, by Thai police who would arrest him as an illegal alien. His entire world is approximately two miles long and eighty feet wide, along a fortified ridge top, where the soldiers, orphans, widows, amputees, and refugees, men, women, and children wage a defensive war, praying for the day that the SPDC reign of terror will end.

We reported earlier on a young girl and her aunt who had been shot in their farm huts by Burma Army soldiers. The young girl and her aunt are now recovering and are still in the Hti Blah area of Shwegyin Township, Nyaunglebin District. We are now attempting the evacuate them for more extensive medical treatment.

In the latest episode of “Martial Arts Odyssey” host, Antonio Graceffo, returns to the war zone of Burma, and goes on a jungle patrol with the Shan State Army (SSA) rebels. At the edge of the Shan controlled area, Antonio could see into the camps of three other armies, including the enemy’s. “The Burmese army guns are pointed into the camp twenty-four hours per day. Every man woman and child living on the SSA headquarters, at Loi Tailang, knows that the shooting could start at any minute.”

Myanmar's army has moved reinforcements into ethnic minority areas for the probable renewal of an offensive whose past human rights violations have been far greater than those against urban protesters that riveted world attention last fall, aid and rebel groups say. The groups provide continuing reports of killings of civilians, rapes, forced labor, burning of crops and mass relocations as Myanmar troops attempt to wipe out die-hard guerrillas of the Karen National Union and other ethnic rebel forces.

This is a photo essay of some of the FBR relief teams, children and the Good Life Club (GLC) Program. The pictures here are of new teams with displaced people in attacked areas in Nyaunglebin District, Western Karen State, Burma, in December, 2007. Thank you for all of your help for this program. God bless you and Merry Christmas, all the GLC counselors and FBR teams here.

The Japanese news agency whose reporter was shot dead by Burmese security forces during a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests has lashed out at an official newspaper for its coverage of his death. Toru Yamaji, head of the Tokyo-based APF news agency, said his agency was considering suing the junta's New Light of Myanmar newspaper for insulting Nagai Kenji's professionalism in an article on the Sept. 27 shooting that killed him. “The piece really was a big insult to Kenji's journalistic integrity,” Yamaji told RFA's Burmese service. “Nagai Kenji followed the Burmese democratic movement with great interest since 1997 up until his death. He had watched the movement with great admiration.”