My father was born here, and carved out a successful career as a doctor until the military siezed control in 1962

Targeted by the state for being an Indian national, he was forced to abandon his home and flee overseas

As part of a mass exodus of an estimated 300,000 ethnic Indians.

Modern day Myanmar is still racked by ethnic divisions, but life here is transforming.

One of the biggest changes is in free speech.

Tonight a live comedy show is being broadcast to the nation to mark international peace day.

The organiser is Zarganer. Myanmar's most famous comedian, and a former political prisoner.

Zarganar, what does tonight symbolise?

We can say this is the first time in the history of our country that everybody

can watch and every comedian can speak their jokes freely. There is no censor, no ban.

Over the 35 numbers of the Ministers will come to here, and sit there and they can listen

how they criticise them, the comedians.

Former Major General Aung Min is a Government Minister and a key peace negotiator. He is

taking up Zarganar's invitation to hear the comedians barbs first hand. But the opening

act begins with an unexpectedly serious message.

I'd like to criticise the military offensives. We really....we really pity the suffering

of the victims, our fellow citizens. Please stop the military offensives. Please be united,

our fellow ethnic nationalities.

The jokes that follow take aim at the Government's economic mismanagement, the soaring price

of living and widespread corruption.

In hell, the electricity meter is stuffed down the officials' throats!  Even though

they happily chew on them!

They are very happy even though they are in hell!

The humour may seem mild but this is a country

where until recently comedians had to submit their gags to Government censors. Tonight

even the Minister is laughing along.

What have you witnessed as far as the pace of change in Myanmar?

Things have definitely quickened up immensely. It wasn't so long ago that people were riding

around with push bikes.

Few Australians are watching the transition to democracy as avidly as Ross Dunkley, the

country's only foreign media magnate.

People are enjoying their first taste of democracy in half a century.

He arrived here 13 years ago, building a unique and sometimes testy relationship with the

generals to set up the nation's first independent weekly newspaper.

A lot of people were critical about the 'Myanmar Times', that we were lackeys of the

Junta that we were prostitutes. We were just on the ground engaging with the military dictatorship.

We were of the view that it's better to be on the field and playing than off the field

and screaming. Like some hysterical housewife. Every week we were attempting to lift the

bar just a little bit higher.

While newspaper readership is collapsing elsewhere in the world, in Myanmar business is booming.

It was only in April this year that the Government ended a state monopoly on the daily press.

For the previous five decades it had been more interested in censoring, jailing or torturing

journalists deemed critical of the State.

You know, here in Myanmar it's a booming media scene and with the relaxation of censorship

in the last six months we've had 13 dailies open up.

That's incredible - 13 dailies in six months.

Here is a selection of the dailies, 'The Voice', 'The Yangon Times', 'The Seven Day

Daily'. The freedom of speech for me has got to be at the forefront of any change. Unless

you can have a free and open media, how can you claim to have any sort of democracy? For

me that's the baseline.

Whose land is it in Mikyaung Kan?

Our land!  Our land!

Does the land belong to the military?

No, no.

This protest is about one of the most contentious issues in the new Myanmar. Land grabbed by

the former military rulers. Just a few years ago, a gathering like this would never have

been tolerated by the authorities. These people have been fighting for more than 20 years

to regain their land in south-east Yangon.

The army forced all of us to move out at gunpoint. Some fearful people moved out but some didn't.

The army bulldozed the land and sent them to Insein Prison.

A 1,000 families lost their homes. It's the

kind of injustice we hear again and again.

We dared not speak up in the past.  Now we dare to because we have been given the right.

We think the president and the government will consider our demand favourably.  So

we are demanding very bravely.

Under old laws still in place, demonstrators can face hefty jail sentences simply for protesting

without permission. In this case, the authorities had agreed but protestors were being closely

watched. Around the corner, we found four truckloads of police ready to react to any

trouble.

May the whole country be peaceful! May Burma be peaceful!

We are here because we need peace.  Also because of the 2008 constitution we have so

many problem and we have so many conflict in our country.

For activists like this Generation Wave leader Ko Moe Thway, political change isn't much

easier. Last year he led a peace rally without getting permission. He and eight other organisers

now face up to 20 years in prison and a gruelling trial process that's more like a full-time

job.

How many times have you been to court?

I think more than once at a time we have been in the court 130 times.

130 times, wow.  How do you view this particular Government?

I would say that the country has changed than before but the thing is, we need to wait

and watch carefully where this change is leading to. So we cannot say everything will be good.

One of the key milestones of Myanmar's reforms

has been the release of hundreds of political prisoners. But many remain behind bars, with

new arrests and trials still being reported every month. I've come to see Than Maw, a

woman who knows only too well how those viewed as troublemakers are treated. Her husband

Ko Htin Kyaw is a veteran political campaigner.

I am really proud of him.  I couldn't have done it.

How does it make you feel when you look at

pictures of your husband?

Only a few politicians can nurture that kind of political commitment.  So I am proud

of him, not just as a husband, but as a good citizen of the country.

We don't want crony-ocracy!!!

We don't want it!!

At a protest three months ago he planned to make a citizens arrest on a businessman he

accused of land grabbing but he ended up in custody himself, charged with insulting the

state, he faces two years in jail.

The government must solve the problems the people are facing, if the government ignores

the suffering of the people we cannot call it a democratic government.  It is a crony-ocracy

government that protects the cronies.

Than Maw is three months pregnant and is faced with bringing up her baby alone.

Despite them saying the country is changing,

we cannot say we see any noticeable changes.  In the past anyone who called for democracy

was jailed.  Now the government itself calls for democracy, but it's just rhetoric. I think

that this government is about 10 percent better than the last government.

Talky, Shell and Bobo are former political

prisoners, between them they have spent 30 years in jail. Faced with the difficulties

you have life on the outside, they set up Golden Harp, a taxi company with a difference.

Hi, can I hop in? Thanks.

There's a deep stigma attached to being a political prisoner in today's Myanmar. It's

hard to find employment or to be accepted by society.

The main objective of Golden harp is to help

and support the former political prisoners as much as we can.

Golden Harp provides valuable stability for

former prisoners. It also gives drivers like Shell a chance to educate their mainly foreign

passengers.

We share our Burmese politics with them and we highlight the abuses and wrongdoings of

the previous government with constructive criticism.

We are on our way to a place well-known to employees of Golden Harp, Yangon's sprawling

Insein prison. Notorious for the mental and physical torture inflicted on its inmates.

The most difficult time for me was being alone in prison without a visitor for more than

a year. I was not allowed to talk to anyone and I was starving.  We tried to endure in

the prisons.  Some people went mad. Some people have stayed mad. Some people have lost

their speech. Once some of our friends were released from prison, they died soon afterwards

because of what they'd suffered. I feel really sad about that.

Have you ever asked Shell to stop being involved

in politics?

Sometimes I will like him to stop, but he doesn't want to stop, but he does not want

to stop.

Shell's wife Lwin Mar says like everybody in Myanmar, all they want is a life free from

oppression. But even now that the couple are worried that Shell could be arrested at any

time.

Even nowadays I worry for his health, because he was mentally or physically tortured for

nearly 14 years.

Do you still see evidence of all of that time that Shell spent in prison?

Sometimes he doesn't want to stay alone in the home because he thought he will be captured,

so he will always try and go out if I'm not at home.

oh my goodness!

Because he was locked in the isolated for

many many years - this is our life we cannot stop it.

It's the younger generation lapping up new

freedoms and pushing boundaries. None more so than the Me N Ma girls. Modelled on Britain's

Spice Girls they are the country's first all girl group, and today they have invited me

to their Yangon studio to watch a rehearsal for their latest single.

I am strong # Got to stand tall # This

is my world # Nothing is going to shake it.

We girls stand for like everybody who are sad, down and who feel unhappy about their

life. Because now everything is changing and it starts to change right now.

# I'm stronger now # So it's goodbye.

The Me N Ma Girls are out to smash the stereotype that the women in Myanmar are timid and modest.

Breaking the mould has its challenging even for a pop band. In the past the girls have

had their lyrics and their fashions censored by the State.

So these days do you feel like you are allowed to sing about whatever you want?

We can sing whatever we want but we have to

sing within the boundaries. We know how far we can go so we are in the boundaries but

we are still pushing the boundaries.

The girls have been working hard for years to cut through the conservatism of their country.

Now with growing freedoms, these talented young women see a bright future.

What do you think about the direction of this

country right now?

I believe our President and he is going really well, and also we support our President to

get good democracy. I do believe and I want to believe that this will last forever. We

just want to go forward, that's all we need to do and all we want to do.

With its exposure to the world Myanmar is

attracting plenty of attention. The country has thrown its doors open to visitors. In

the last year, the number of tourists has doubled and investors are flocking. So how

does Myanmar's Government rate its progress? I've come to one of the capital emptiest cities

to find out. Naypyidaw was born in 2005, when parliament was built on a Greenfield site

300km north of Yangon. Here, farmers live in the shadow of Myanmar's most powerful people

and constant reminders of military rule.

If there's a symbol of the bad old days it's this, a 20-lane Highway running past Parliament

that rarely sees more than a handful of cars, the sort of waste of the former military Government

everybody hopes is consigned to the past as Myanmar travels its own road to democracy.

U Ye Htut is the Information Minister and spokesman for the President.

U Ye Htut, thank you very much for speaking

to us today. First of all, where are we on the path to democracy in this country?

So now we are entering the second 2.5 years

of our transition to democracy. So if we look back at those past 2.5 years we made a lot

of achievements. But now we also have a lot of challenges.

Let's talk about the issue of political

prisoners. How many are there in jail right now in Myanmar?

I cannot tell that in exact number.

Around about?

I think just maybe 200 or 300.

It does seem entirely contradictory to the notion of democracy though that there would

be any political prisoners in jail right now?

The President promised that at the end of this year there will be no more political

prisoners in our country.

And yet people who are protesting on political grounds are still finding themselves in prison

for violating Article 18....

Yes.

....which is about not getting permission to protest. That seems to me and to many others

I'm sure watching this, nowhere near a serious enough issue to go to jail for, not even for

a day.

Yeah but that's a law. So that now that law was approved by the Parliament. Now

the Parliament is trying to review that particular article, Article 18.

It wasn't that long ago that somebody would

be jailed for criticising the administration. How does it feel now to be on the side where