CFOB ကို႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားဘက္လိုက္ဖို႕ဖိအားေပးခံေနရျခင္း
မွ
တင္ေမာင္ထူး – အမႉေဆာင္ညြန္ၾကားေရးမႉး၊ CFOB
လေပါင္းမ်ားစြာစဥ္းစားျပီး ေနာက္ကြၽန္ေတာ္ဟာ CFOB (Canadian Freinds of Burma) အဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕ကြန္ယက္ထဲမွာျဖစ္ေနတဲ႕ျပသနာကိုဖြင့္ဟဖို႕ဆုံးျဖတ္လိုက္တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ CFOB အဖြဲ႕ဟာ၁၉၉၀ခုႏွစ္ထဲကျမန္မာျပည္လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးရရွိေရးအတြက္လႈပ္ရွားေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ႕တဲ႕အဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ယခုအခါမွာကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕အဖြဲ႕ဟာအထူးသျဖင့္လက္ရွိရခိုင္ျပည္မွာျဖစ္ေနတဲ႕ျပည္တြင္းေနရခိုင္ဗုဒၶဘာသာမ်ားနဲ႕႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာလို႕ေခၚတြင္ထားတဲ႕႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမူစလင္မ်ားအၾကားပဋိပကၡေတြမွာ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမူစလင္ မ်ားဖက္ကေနလိုက္ဖို႕အျပင္းအထန္ဖိအားေပးခံရပါတယ္၊ ဘယ္ေလာက္ထိဖိအားေပးခံရသလဲဆိုရင္ျဖင့္ CFOB ဟာ ကေနဒါ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားစုေပါင္းထားတဲ႕ေကာ္မတီျဖစ္တဲ႕ Canadain NGOs Committee on Burma (CNC) ကေနဖိအားေပးထုတ္ပယ္ခံ ခဲ႕ရတဲ႕အထိျဖစ္ခဲ႕ပါတယ္။
အထူးသျဖင့္ CNC ရဲ႕အဓိကအသင္းဝင္အဖြဲ႕ျဖစ္တဲ႕ အိုတဝါမွာအေျခစိုက္တဲ႕ Inter Pares လို႕ေခၚတဲ႕အဖြဲ႕ဟာအျမဲတမ္းဆိုသလို CFOB ကို႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမြတ္စလင္အဖြဲ႕ေတြကိုေထာက္ခံခိုင္းပါတယ္။မေထာက္ခံလို႔ဘက္မလိုက္လို႕ေငြေၾကးေထာက္ပံ့မႉေတြကိုရပ္တန္႕ျပီးတျခားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြဆီကေထာက္ပံ႕ေၾကးေတြပါမရေအာင္၊ရပ္တန္႕ေအာင္ပါလိုက္လံပိတ္ပင္ခဲ႕ပါတယ္။
သိသာထင္ရွားေစတာကေတာ႕ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕ရဲ႕ျမန္မာျပည္အေရးလုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးေနတာကိုပါရပ္ဆိုင္းသြားေစခ်င္တဲ႕ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ပါရွိတယ္။
တကယ္ေတာ႕ CFOBဟာလြပ္လပ္ေသာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းအျဖစ္ရပ္တည္ေနတာျဖစ္ျပီးမည္သည့္လက္ေအာက္ခံမွမဟုတ္ပါ၊ CFOBဟာလူတိုင္းအတြက္အေျခခံလူ႕အခြင့္အေရးရရွိေအာင္လုပ္ကိုင္ေပးေနျပီးယခုျဖစ္ပြါးခဲ႕ေသာရခိုင္ျပည္အေရးတြင္လည္းတဘက္ဖက္တြင္ရပ္တည္ေနသည္ဟုမျမင္ေစလိုပါ။
ဤသည္ကို Inter pares မွနားမလည္ပဲအတင္းပင္ဘက္လိုက္ခိုင္းျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕အေနျဖင့္လြပ္လပ္ေသာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းရဲ႕ရုံးတြင္းဆိုင္ရာေပၚလဆီအေပၚဝင္ေရာက္စြက္ဖက္ေနသည္ဟုခံစားနားလည္မိပါသည္။
တဖက္မွာလည္းကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕သိထားေသာ Inter Paresအဖြဲ႕ဟာCIDAလို႕ေခၚတဲ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းကေနတဆင့္ရရွိထားတဲ႕ကေနဒီယန္းမ်ားရဲ႕အခြန္ေဆာင္ထားတဲ႕ေငြေၾကးေတြကို႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြရဲ႕မီဒီယာေတြႏွင့္
သူတို႕၏အက်ိဳးေဆာင္ေနေသာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားျဖစ္တဲ႕ Kaladen Press နဲ႔ Arakan Projects တို႕ကို CIDA ကေနတဆင့္ရတဲ႕ေထာက္ပံ့ေငြေၾကးေတြရဲ႕ ငါးရာခိုင္ႏွုန္း ကိုႏွစ္စဥ္ ေထာက္ပံ့ေနတာကိုေနတာေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။
ဒီKaladen Press နဲ႔ Arakan Projects အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြဟာတကယ္ေတာ႕မွားယြင္းေနတဲ႕သတင္းေတြ၊အပိုခ်ဲ႕ကားထားတဲ႕သတင္းေတြကိုႏိုင္ငံတကာစာမ်က္နာေတြကိုျဖန္႕ျဖဴးေပးေနတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီလိုမမွန္မကန္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတဲ႕ကမ္ပိန္းမ်ိဳး (Campaigns) ကို CFOB ကိုလဲပူးေပါင္းလုပ္ေဆာင္ေအာင္သိမ္းသြင္းေနတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ဒီလိုမ်ိဳးကိုကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕ဘယ္လိုနည္းနဲ႕မွလက္မခံႏိုင္ပါဘူး။
ဒီလိုမ်ိဳးဖိအားေပးေနတဲ႕အေၾကာင္းရင္းေနာက္တခုကယူေက (UK) ႏွင့္ အာရပ္ကမ႓ာမွာပူးေပါင္းၾကံစည္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေၾကာင္းထင္ရွားတဲ႕ Burma Campaign UK (BCUK) လို႕ေခၚတဲ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းနဲ လဲလက္တြဲလုပ္ေဆာင္ေနတာေၾကာင္႕လဲျဖစ္တယ္ဆိုတာကိုေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ Inter Pares ဟာ CFOB ကိုဒီလိုမ်ိဳးသူတို႕ႏွင့္အတူမပူးေပါင္းတဲ႕အတြက္ျပစ္တင္ေဝဖန္ပါတယ္။ မွန္ပါတယ္၊ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕ဟာလက္ေတြ႕က်တဲ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြနဲ႕လက္တြဲလုပ္ပါတယ္၊လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအေရျခဳံအစြန္းေရာက္ေတြနဲ႕ေတာ႕အတူအလုပ္မလုပ္ႏိုင္ပါ။
တကယ္က CFOB ဟာ Inter Pares အဖြဲ႕ကိုအေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာမီလီယံသုံးဆယ္နီးပါးျမန္မာျပည္နယ္စပ္နဲ႕သက္ဆိုင္တဲ႕လုပ္ငန္းေဆာင္တာေတြအတြက္စစဥ္ကထဲကအစိုးရေထာက္ပံ့ေၾကးေပးတဲ႕ေအဂ်င္စီျဖစ္တဲ CIDA ကေနရေအာင္ကူညီေပးခဲ႕တာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ႕ CFOB ဟာ CIDA ကေနတဆင့္ျမန္မာျပည္အေရးအတြက္ေငြေၾကးအကူအညီေတြရေအာင္ကူညီလုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးေနတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ယခုအခ်ိန္မွာေအာင္ျမင္ေအာင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးတာကေတာ႕၂၀၁၀ကေန၂၀၁၅အထိအေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သုံးမီလီယံ ႏွစ္စဥ္ပံ့ပိုးကူညီသြားေအာင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ႕ပါတယ္။ CFOB ကတႏိုင္ငံလုံးအတိုင္းအတာနဲ႕ကေနဒါမွာရွိတဲ႕ျမန္မာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြရဲ႕ကူညီပါဝင္မႉနဲ႕ဝန္ၾကီး ခ်ဳပ္ Stephen Harper ကိုျမန္မာျပည္ေထာက္ပံ့ေၾကးရေအာင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ႕ပါတယ္။ သို႕ေသာ္၊ Inter Pares သည္ကြၽန္ေတာ္တို႕အဖြဲ႕လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနသည္ကိုေက်နပ္မႉမရွိပဲမသင့္ေတာ္တဲ႕အျပဳအမူေတြနဲ႕အေနွာင့္အယွက္မ်ားေပးေနခဲ႕ပါတယ္။
သူတို႕အဖြဲ႕ရဲ႕လုပ္ေဆာင္မႉေတြဟာတကယ္ေတာ႕လူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအတြက္ရရွိေအာင္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေပးေနပါတယ္ဆိုတဲ႕ေခါင္းစဥ္နဲ႕မလိုက္ဖက္ပဲေသြဖီေနတာကိုေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္၊လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ေတြဟာဘာအတြက္လဲဆိုတာေမးခြန္းထုတ္စရာျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ဒီအတိုင္းဆက္လက္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနအုန္းမယ္ဆိုရင္ကေနဒါမွာေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ႕ျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြအျပင္သန္းေျခာက္ဆယ္ေသာျမန္မာျပည္သူေတြအတြက္မ်က္ႏွာပ်က္စရာျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။
သို႕ျဖစ္ပါ၍ကြၽန္ေတာ္႕အေနနဲ႕ Inter Pares ဘုတ္အဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ားကိုတိုက္႐ိုက္ေမးခြန္းထုတ္လိုတာကမိမိတို႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းရဲ႕လုပ္ကိုင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ပံုေတြကိုျပန္လည္ဆန္းစစ္ဖို႕လိုေနျပီးမတူညီတဲ႕သေဘာထားနဲ႕ရပ္တည္ေနတဲ႕ CFOB အဖြဲ႕နဲ႕ညိႏိႈင္းအေျဖရွာဖို႕တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါတယ္။ Inter Pares ရဲ႕ဘုတ္အဖြဲ႕ဝင္ေတြနဲ႕စီမံခန္႕ခြဲမႉအသင္းကိုဒီလင့္မွာၾကည့္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
http://www.interpares.ca/en/who/staff.php
ကြ်နု္ပ္အေနျဖင့္လဲ CFOB အဖြဲ႕အစည္းကိုတတ္ႏိုင္တဲ႕ဖက္ကေနရပ္တည္ရွိေနဖို႕အတြက္နဲ႕အတိုက္အခိုက္အသြင္ေဆာင္တဲ႕အျပဳအမူေတြကိုကာကြယ္ဖို႕အတြက္လုပ္ေဆာင္သင့္တာကိုဆက္လက္လုပ္ကိုင္သြားမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္၊ကြၽန္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ရခိုင္ပဋိပကအေရးနဲ႕ပတ္သက္လို႕သေဘာထားကိုဒီေနရာမွာသိရွိႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/7549-communal-conflicts-in-rakhine-state.html
မွတ္ခ်က္။။ မူရင္းစာကိုမိမိဖာသာဘာသာျပန္ထားျခင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ မူရင္းလင့္မွာhttp://cfob.org/news/CFOBinCrisisWithRohingya.html
Letter stated as follow:
CFOB in Crisis with Rohingya Issue
Action Alert – Nov. 5, 2012
By Tin Maung Htoo, Executive Director, Canadian Friends of Burma
After hesitation for months, I’ve now decided to inform our network that Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) working in support of democracy and human rights in Burma since 1990, has been going through a crisis, especially under enormous pressure to side with ‘Rohingya’ Muslim in ongoing conflict with local Buddhist Rakhine community in Burma. The pressure is up to a point that CFOB was forcefully suspended from a group of NGOs – Canadian NGOs Committee on Burma (CNC).
In particular, Ottawa-based Inter Pares, a key member NGO of CNC, consistently put pressure on CFOB to stand with ‘Rohingya’ Muslim, to the extent that they cut off their funding and even blocked the funding coming from other sources.
Apparently, this is the act to terminate our work for Burma. CFOB is an independent organization and we are not in no way subordinate to any organization. CFOB stands for human rights for everyone, but we don’t want to be seen siding with any group in the conflict. Inter Pares does not seem to understand this point and put enormous pressure to amend our position. We see this as interference in the internal affairs of an independent organization’s policy-making process.
On one hand, we are aware that Inter Pares is using Canadian taxpayers’ money from CIDA to support Rohingya media and advocacy groups such as Kalandan Press and Arakan Project with 5% of a total CIDA funding each year. These organizations are indeed responsible for sending out false news and exaggerated information to the outside world. It appears that Inter Pares wants CFOB to be part of this wrongly guided campaign. That is something we can not accept and will not accept at any cost.
For this mounting pressure, Inter Pares also seems to have worked closely with Burma Campaign UK (BUCK) that has cozy relationships with many Rohingya Muslim elements in UK and Arab world. And Inter Pares blames CFOB for not being able to work with them. Of course, we work with organizations that are pragmatic, but not with radical elements under the banner of so-called human rights.
In fact, CFOB helped secure Inter Pares almost $30 million for Burma border projects since the beginning of funding from the government aid agency, CIDA. CFOB was indeed the platform and the springboard for the funding from CIDA.
The latest successful effort was the continuation of the funding from 2010 to 2015 with $3 million each year. CFOB lunched a nation-wide campaign with the support of Burmese communities across Canada in beseeching Prime Minister Stephen Harper to make sure of this funding for Burma. However, Inter Pares does not seem to appreciate our effort and is continuously using unethical and ambitrary act to disrupt our work.
Their action is a contradiction to what they call themselves as social justice and human rights organization in Canada and their intent is thus questionable. If continued, it would definitely tarnish the image of Canada in the eyes of thousands of Burmese-Canadians and 60 millions of Burmese people.
Therefore, I would request you to directly ask Inter Pares’ Board of Directors to review its management’s tactic in solving the difference with CFOB. Please see their Board of Directors and management team a http://www.interpares.ca/en/who/staff.php
I will also take other necessary actions to save the existence of CFOB from all these destructive acts and keep the operation running as much as it can.
You can also see my position on the conflict in Arakan state of Burma
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The Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) is federally incorporated, national non-governmental organization working for democracy and human rights in Burma. Contact: Suite 206, 145 Spruce St., Ottawa, K1R 6P1; Tel: 613.237.8056; Email: cfob@cfob.org ; Web:www.cfob.org
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Thank you very much and let’s show our solidarity with Ko tin Maung Htoo and Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB).
Yours faithfully,
Canadian Friends of Burma – News Flash
cfob.org
Canadian Friends of Burma is a non-governmental organization operating in partnership with other national and international NGOs, including those along the Burma-Thai border. Affiliated with Peacefund Canada, CFOB works in a non-parisan manner for the
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Mizzima commentary
Tin Maung Htoo Photo: FacebookApplying the liberties of a free and democratic society, I, over the past few weeks, presented my personal points of view and shared information in an attempt to balance what I perceive to be some unfair and imbalanced reports disseminated on some media and social media websites regarding the conflicts occurring in Burma’s Arakan State.
In the time that has ensued since I released my personal points of view, some people made judgments on my stand that have resulted in confusion among Burma supporters in Canada and elsewhere.
For example, I wrote a brief note, citing as historical background, “In 1950s, a Jihad movement started in Burma and Mujahedeen took up arms. When failed, Rohingyas started seeking for an ethnic nationality status that is widely rejected by the majority of people in Burma” [sic.]. However, a journalist who wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy of Burma’s pro-democracy movement” on the Asian Correspondent website interpreted my note as followed: “Tin Maung Htoo, director of Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB)… said the Rohingya were the remnants of a Mujahideen movement in western Burma that had tried to gain citizenship after their ‘Jihad’ failed.” Furthermore, and unfortunately, many of the personal views that I expressed as an individual have been misinterpreted as the views and positions of the organization with which I work and am affiliated, Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB). Therefore, there is an urgent need for me to clarify my position. The following is entirely my own personal view and is in no ways meant to reflect upon CFOB.
In my perspective, Burma is a country with diversity in culture, ethnicity and religion. The majority of Burmese Buddhist population is tolerant of such differences. For example, churches and mosques are everywhere in Burma – even at the centers of major cities.
The recent communal conflicts that broke out in Arakan State run counter to such tolerance and what is occurring is beyond my comprehension due to the back-and-forth of accusations regarding the various atrocities that have taken place.
Due to my role in a campaign and advocacy group, I have tried to stay personally neutral to the best of my abilities. However, I had a hard time keeping my personal views silent due to what I perceived to be unbalanced reports and fabricated information disseminated by some exiled Rohingya Organizations and news groups, portraying one side of the conflict as “racists” and “oppressors.” They are even calling for “international intervention” for what they call “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” in Burma. I am sure those descriptions are used for their convenience rather than to describe objective events. Such accusations are one-sided, orchestrated and quite ridiculous to me. I chose to speak out.
Using the social media, I presented some facts and evidence in order for my colleagues and friends to see an alternative to what I perceive to be unbalanced and fabricated information on the situation on the ground.
However, my personal opinion does not mean to reflect or represent the organization I am working for. I am simply taking up my liberty and freedom of expression afforded to me in a democratic country to speak my mind. I apologize for any confusion caused when some of my personal opinions were inaccurately understood to represent or reflect the organization for which I work.
In terms of “conflict resolution” for the situation in Arakan State, I personally support the position of Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. That is, the importance of the rule of law and the pursuit of a review process for the country’s citizenship law, in order to address the plight of the stateless people in the western part of Burma.
However, as a note of caution, what we need to keep in mind in the pursuit of this solution is that there is no country on earth with a perfect immigration law that fully embraces the international norms and standards set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the case of Burma, the stipulation of Article 15 of the Declaration, “Everyone has the right to a nationality,” is a challenging one.
Note that “ethic nationality status” and “citizenship status” is different in Burma and “nationality” refers specifically to Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Mon, Bama, Rakhine, Shan persons/groups. Both the Burmese citizenship laws enacted in 1948 and 1982 made it clear that ethnic people of Burma are the ones who lived in Burma on a permanent basis prior to 1823. Both laws defined the citizenship rights to people who are decedents of those ethnic people of Burma and people who can prove that two generations of their accentors lived in Burma prior to 1948. In other words, Burma’s laws do not interface perfectly with Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I am of the opinion that due to the sensitive situation in Burma, it is unhelpful to insist from abroad that this Declaration be instituted in Burma until the Burmese have themselves addressed their domestic laws.
In that regards, I am personally concerned with some international campaign groups trying to impose their ideal immigration law reform goals upon Burma by uncompromisingly taking up this contentious issue without carefully considering consequences for Burma’s delicate transition process and without undertaking comprehensive consultation with Burmese colleagues.
Such a stance by international campaign groups is indeed contentious, in my opinion: I am aware of growing sentiments among Burmese people against those international campaign and interest groups for their lack of understanding and consideration on the issue and for their throwing support and showing solidarity with only one side of the conflict.
Ultimately, though I believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, immigration reform in Burma is indeed the “immigration issue” of a sovereign state, and Burmese people I know deeply perceive it as a “national issue” which needs to be resolved locally. Such people and I believe that, because sentiments are so high amongst Burmese on this issue and because the country is in such a delicate transition, there are serious potential backfires if the immigration law reform is not carefully sorted out and handled. Therefore, I do not want the international campaign groups to cross this extremely sensitive line for the time being, especially when the democratic transition in Burma is in its embryonic stage and the ongoing “reform process” is still a long way from fruition. In the case of this specific issue, I think a greater sensitivity to the desires of most Burmese and a less hasty approach should be adopted by the international campaign groups.
In conclusion, we might have differences in our opinion but when it comes to freedom, democracy and human rights, we have a common goal. However, I think the means to the ends of this shared goal need to be reconsidered so as to avoid upsetting the majority of Burmese population at a moment of high emotion and delicate political transition. Ultimately, I hope we can work out our differences and continue to work for a free and democratic Burma.
http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/7549-communal-conflicts-in-rakhine-state.html
 Tin Maung Htoo is executive director of Canadian Friends of Burma. |
democracy for burma 