By KYAW PHYO THA / THE IRRAWADDY

RANGOON— It happened one night in the summer of 1989. Mutineers invaded their party headquarters at a border town near the Burmese-Chinese frontier in northeastern Shan State.

In an outburst of anti-party feeling, they took full control on the central armory and smashed the portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Zedong hung on the walls of the office in Panghsang. They destroyed Communist literature and kicked out their aging leaders to China.

After more than four decades of armed struggle against Burma’s central government, the Communist party of Burma (CPB) fizzled out.  Within one month, one of Asia’s longest Communist insurrections, a perpetual headache to the Southeast Asian country’s government since 1948, came to an end.

By SAMANTHA MICHAELS / THE IRRAWADDY

RANGOON — Following pledges to enhance military ties with Burma, the United States has maintained a block on military assistance to President Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government for its use of child soldiers in armed conflict, US officials said on Thursday.

Burma is one of five countries that will not receive US military assistance in 2014 under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA), which places restrictions on security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment for governments found to use child soldiers.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said the sanctions would affect Burma, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Syria.

By Kim N. B. Ninh and Matthew Arnold

With a much-heralded democratic transition underway in Myanmar, the future holds the potential for impressive gains but also significant challenges. Among the latter, decentralization and state-local relations as mandated by the 2008 constitution are emerging as a critical issue for both the country’s stability and long-term development. A history of highly centralized governance, subnational conflicts, and ongoing disputes over the constitution, however, mean that the implementation of decentralization in Myanmar is likely to be a contested and convoluted process.

BY KHIN MAUNG WIN

Buddhist mobs have been attacking Muslims in the Asian nation

THANDWE, Myanmar (AP) — Terrified Muslim families hid in forests in western Myanmar on Wednesday, one day after fleeing a new round of deadly sectarian violence that erupted even as the president toured the divided region. The discovery of four bodies brought the death toll from the latest clashes up to at least five.

Tuesday’s unrest near the coastal town of Thandwe, which saw Buddhist mobs kill a 94-year-old woman and four other Muslims and burn dozens of homes, underscored the government’s persistent  by Instant Savings App” href=”http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/myanmar_muslims_hide_amid_deadly_sectarian_clashes/”>failure to stop the sectarian violence from spreading.

Rights groups say President Thein Sein, visiting the region for the first time since clashes flared there last year, has done little to crack down on religious intolerance and failed to bridge a divide that has left hundreds of thousands of Muslims marginalized and segregated, many of them confined by security forces in inadequately equipped camps for those who fled their homes.

BERNAMA PADANG BESAR, Oct 3 — The General Operations Force and police detained 21 illegal immigrants during a border patrol at 8.30 am here today. The Perlis Immigration Department deputy director Hazmi Sulaiman said they were all men, between 15 and 42, and comprised...