Burmese authorities have been instructed by the government to block marriage ceremonies between Burmese women and foreign men, according to legal sources.Burmese law allows marriages between Burmese citizens and foreigners, provided they give divisional courts 21 days notice.
In this photo taken on November, 2009, Burmese women light candles during a light festival at the famed Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. (Photo: AP)“That law is now being suspended on the instructions of the government,” legal adviser Aung Thein told The Irrawaddy.
Aung Thein suggested the suspension of the law could be aimed at preventing human trafficking, but he described it as unfair. “It will prohibit the rights of couples if they truly love each other and want to get formally married,” he said.
The Rangoon journal Flower News journal reported this month that local brokers were involved with foreigners in trafficking Burmese women.
Lawyer Kyaw Hoe, said the suspension of the marriage law dates back to an incident five years ago when a young woman committed suicide after being forced by her parents to marry a foreigner.
“Since then all legal practitioners, including notaries, have not been allowed to officiate marriages between foreigners and Burmese women,” Kyaw Hoe said.
A well known Mandalay woman writer on social issues said Burmese should be free to marry whomever they wished. “I don't have any objection as long as it is not human trafficking,” she told The Irrawaddy, anonymously.
A representative of a Rangoon-based Myanmar Women Entrepreneurs' Association pointed out that Burmese women abroad had the right to marry whomever they liked.
A Burmese woman who married a foreigner 11 years ago and now lives in Thailand said: “What is most important is understanding and loyalty to each other. Race or religion don't matter.”
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