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Association and Assembly

  • Laws, decrees and regulations related to association and assembly (texts)

    Individual Documents

    Title: Regulations relating to the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession, 5 July 2012 (Burmese)
    Date of publication: 10 July 2012
    Description/subject: Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Ministry of Interior, Order No. 364/ 2012, Nay Pyi Daw, 5 July 2012..... ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ စုေ၀းခြင့္ ႏွင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ စီတန္းလွည့္လည္ခြင့္ ဆိုင္ရာ နည္းဥပေဒမ်ား - ျပည္ေထာင္စု သမၼတ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ေတာ္အစိုးရ၊ ျပည္ထဲေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာန၊ အမိန္႔ ေၾကာ္ျငာစာအမွတ္ ၃၆၄/၂ဝ၁၂၊ ေနျပည္ေတာ္၊ ၁၃၇၄ ခုႏွစ္၊ ပထမဝါဆုိလျပည့္ေက်ာ္ ၂ ရက္၊ (၂ဝ၁၂ ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇူလိုင္လ ၅ ရက္)
    Author/creator: Myanmar Ministry of the Interior
    Language: Burmese/ ျမန္မာဘာသာ
    Source/publisher: "The Mirror" ("Kyemon") ေၾကးမံု 10 July 2012
    Format/size: pdf (118K)
    Date of entry/update: 08 September 2012


    Title: Regulations relating to the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession 5 July 2012 (English)
    Date of publication: 05 July 2012
    Description/subject: "...1. These By-Laws shall be cited as the Regulations relating to the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession 2. The Terms mentioned in these By-Laws must follow the same definitions as in the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act and the terms mentioned below must be defined as follows: (a) The term Act refers to the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act..."
    Language: English (unofficial translation)
    Source/publisher: Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Ministry of Home Affairs (Order No. 364/2012)
    Format/size: pdf (84K)
    Date of entry/update: 18 May 2013


    Title: Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act - Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 15/2011 (Burmese)
    Date of publication: 03 December 2011
    Description/subject: ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ စုေ၀းခြင့္ ႏွင့္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ စီတန္းလွည့္လည္ခြင့္ဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒ Approved by the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw on 2 December 2011
    Language: Burmese/ ျမန္မာဘာသာ
    Source/publisher: "The Mirror" ("Kyemon") ေၾကးမံု
    Format/size: pdf (101K)
    Date of entry/update: 17 March 2012


    Title: Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act - Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 15/2011 (English)
    Date of publication: 02 December 2011
    Description/subject: "...In Article 354 Section (B) of the Union Republic of Myanmar Constitution Law, it is prescribed that if not contrary to the laws enacted for Union security, rule of law, community peace and tranquility, or public morality, every citizen shall be at liberty to assemble and hold a procession peacefully without arms. So that citizens can exercise these rights legally, Pyidaungsu Hluttaw has enacted this law... 1. This law shall be called the law of peaceful assembly and peaceful procession..." ... Approved by the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw on 2 December 2011
    Language: English (unofficial translation?)
    Source/publisher: Pyidaungsu Hluttaw
    Format/size: pdf (69K)
    Date of entry/update: 18 May 2013


    Title: SLORC Law No. 5/96 of 7 June, 1996: "The Law Protecting the Peaceful and Systematic Transfer of State Responsibility and the Successful Performance of the Functions of the National Convention against Disturbances and Oppositions"
    Date of publication: 07 June 1996
    Description/subject: Repealed, January 2013 (see Commentary and Alternate URL
    Language: English, Burmese
    Source/publisher: State Law and Order Restoration Council
    Format/size: pdf (English, 15K; - Burmese 33K), html (article on repeal)
    Alternate URLs: http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs4/SLORC-Law5-96-Bu..pdf
    http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/24300 (law repealed, January 2013)
    Date of entry/update: 03 June 2003


    Title: Law Relating to the Sangha Organization
    Date of publication: 31 October 1990
    Description/subject: State LORC Law No. 20/90 of Oct. 31, 1990
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: SLORC
    Date of entry/update: 03 June 2003


    Title: Form for registration of associations and organizations (Directive No. 1/88 of the Ministry of Home and Religious Affairs)
    Date of publication: 01 October 1988
    Description/subject: "Directive No. 1/88 of the Ministry of Home and Religious , signed by Maj-Gen. Phone Myint, prescribes the following Form for registration of associations and organizations, to be submitted to the Township LORC under the State/Division LORC where the organization is located: Form (A) Application for formation of associations in accordance with the Law for Formation of Associations or Organizations..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: SLORC
    Format/size: html (6K)
    Date of entry/update: 03 June 2003


    Title: Law relating to Forming of Organizations (State LORC Law No. 6/88 of Sept. 30, 1988)
    Date of publication: 30 September 1988
    Description/subject: The State Law and Order Restoration Council hereby enacts the following Law— Chapter I Title and Definitions 1. This Law shall be called the Law relating to Forming of Organizations. 2. The following expressions in this Law shall have the following meanings-- (a) an organization means an association, society, union, party, committee, federation, group of associations, front, club and similar organization that is formed with a group of people for an objective or a programme either with or without a particular name. (b) a political organization means an organization that has a political movement based upon a certain political ideology..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: SLORC
    Format/size: html (13K)
    Alternate URLs: http://www.blc-burma.org/html/Myanmar%20Law/lr_e_ml88_06.html
    Date of entry/update: May 2003


    Title: SLORC Order 2/88 of 18 September 1988
    Date of publication: 18 September 1988
    Description/subject: Order No. 2/88 of the Organization for Building Law and Order in the State, dated 18 September 1988 - the 8th day of the waxing moon of Tawthalin, 1350... "In order to ensure law and order, and peace and tranquility, as well as to ensure the security and ease of transport and communications and the people's livelihood, the chief of staff, Office of the Chief of Staff, issues the following order for all monks and people to abide by:..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: SLORC
    Format/size: html (6K), Word (25K)
    Alternate URLs: http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs3/SLORC_Order_2-88.doc
    Date of entry/update: 08 August 2005


    Title: The Unlawful Associations Act
    Date of publication: 11 December 1908
    Description/subject: [India Act XIV, 1908.] (11th December 1908)] 1-14. PART II. Unlawful Associations.
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: Government of the Union of Burma
    Format/size: pdf (25K) html
    Alternate URLs: http://www.blc-burma.org/html/Suppressive%20Law/ulaa_e.html
    Date of entry/update: 03 June 2003


  • Laws, decrees, regulations and bylaws related to association and assembly (commentaries)

    Individual Documents

    Title: SPECIAL DOSSIER: CASES UNDER THE UNLAWFUL ASSOCIATIONS ACT 1908 BROUGHT AGAINST PEOPLE ACCUSED OF CONTACT WITH KACHIN INDEPENDENCE ARMY
    Date of publication: 21 January 2013
    Description/subject: "This special dossier of 36 cases brought under the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act against people accused of contact with the Kachin Independence Army was researched and compiled in 2012 by independent human rights defenders in Burma who have requested that the Asian Human Rights Commission disseminate the material...At a time that the conflict in Kachin State between the Kachin Independence Army and Burma armed forces is only getting worse, this dossier marks an important contribution to documentation on human rights abuses in the region, because it signals very sharply the intersection between war and law, between violence in armed combat and violence in interrogation, in the use of torture and other techniques against persons who have been branded enemies of the state...the human rights defenders who gathered and translated this material have two stated objectives: to document and inform people about the use of the Unlawful Associations Act; and, to secure the release of the accused. Both of these objectives are laudable, and strongly supported by the AHRC. Clearly, not enough has been done to document cases of this sort in a way that makes explicit the connection between strategic practices of the military and those of other parts of the state apparatus for the targeting of internal enemies. We firmly hope that by taking these steps, not only will the connections be better understood but also those whose cases are documented will obtain relief through some publicity and attention to their specific plights..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) & Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC)
    Format/size: pdf (2.7MB-OBL version; 3.46-original)
    Alternate URLs: http://www.humanrights.asia/countries/burma/reports/Unlawful_Association_Dossier.pdf/view
    Date of entry/update: 21 January 2013


    Title: Thein Sein Repeals Repressive Law on Public Speeches
    Date of publication: 16 January 2013
    Description/subject: "Burmese President Thein has repealed a draconian law that was used to stifle public speeches and sentence dissidents to lengthy spells in prison under the previous military regime, according to an announcement in a state-owned newspaper on Wednesday. The Burmese-language version of The New Light of Myanmar carried an announcement signed by President Thein Sein, which stated he had revoked Law 5/96, or the Law Protecting the Peaceful and Systematic Transfer of State Responsibility and the Successful Performance of the Functions of the National Convention against Disturbances and Oppositions. It provided for up to 20 years imprisonment for anyone who criticizes the government in speeches or written statements that “belittle the National Convention” and make people misunderstand its proceedings..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy"
    Format/size: html
    Date of entry/update: 19 January 2013


    Title: Myanmar: The Decree on the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession 2012 - Legal Analysis (English and Burmese)
    Date of publication: 20 September 2012
    Description/subject: Executive Summary and Recommendations: In July 2012, "ARTICLE 19 analysed the Decree on the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession of Myanmar, adopted by the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar on 5 July 2012. The provisions of the Decree were examined for their compliance with international standards on human rights. Myanmar has neither signed nor ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or other principal human rights treaties. Nevertheless, ARTICLE 19 suggests that guarantees to the right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as provided by Article 364 of the Constitution of Myanmar, allow a wide scope for interpretation and that international standards regarding these rights should provide guidance to such an interpretation. In the analysis, ARTICLE 19 appreciates the Decree’s recognition of the state duty to protect assembly participants. However, the requirement for permission to hold an assembly, the grounds for denying permission, the lack of a court appeal and the absence of guarantees for media access to assemblies are problematic and must be urgently revised. ARTICLE 19 also calls on the Government of Myanmar – in consultation with civil society - to review other legislative measures in light of international standards and to make them compliant with these standards. Recommendations ARTICLE 19 calls on the Government of Myanmar: • To sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; • To invite the UN special rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and association and the special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression to visit Myanmar; • To ensure that the right to peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression are safeguarded in line with international standards; • To revise the Decree on the Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession in accordance with international standards on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as recommended by ARTICLE 19; • To initiate public discussion about the current legal framework on peaceful assemblies and engage in consultation with civil society representatives on how to improve the relevant legislation. ARTICLE 19 calls on civil society in Myanmar: • To engage in public debates and consultation with the government on how to improve the domestic legislation on peaceful assembly; • To form coalitions between civil society organisations and launch public education campaigns on the right to peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression; • To draft legislative proposals and advocate for specific changes in domestic legislation aiming at the improvement of the protection of the right to peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression; • To seek partnerships with international organisations in a specific mandate on the right to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly."
    Language: English, Burmese/ ျမန္မာဘာသာ
    Source/publisher: Article 19
    Format/size: pdf (346K-English; 6.54MB-Burmese))
    Alternate URLs: http://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/3440/12-09-19-LA-Myanmar-BU.pdf
    http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3440/en/myanmar:-law-on-assembly-and-procession-inc...
    Date of entry/update: 24 September 2012


    Title: Burma: New Law on Demonstrations Falls Short
    Date of publication: 15 March 2012
    Description/subject: "...Legal Reforms Should Meet International Human Rights Standards ...Burma’s new law on assembly rejects the previous ban on demonstrations, but still allows the government to trump the Burmese people’s basic rights. There is a lot of excitement about changes in Burma these days, but the government shouldn’t be given credit for allowing some freedom just because none existed before. Instead, it should be pressed to make sure its laws meet international standards..."
    Language: English
    Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch (HRW)
    Format/size: html
    Date of entry/update: 17 March 2012