IMPORTANT NOTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH “RAKHINE REPORT”

BURMA DEMOCRATIC CONCERN

Human Rights Watch Report 2013 on Burma regarding recent communal violence in Arakan state is not credible and biased. We totally reject the term using “Ethnic Cleansing” by Human Rights Watch Report author Matthew Smith. We warn Human Rights Watch that they will be held accountable for any further consequences for their irresponsible comment on this particular matter. We call for Burmese government, ethnic leaders, student leaders, religious leaders and opposition leaders as well as all the Burmese citizens to challenge the Human Rights Watch Report 2013 regarding Arakan conflict and its author Matthew Smith regarding the term using “Ethnic Cleansing” relating to Arakan conflict.

HRW should maintain their standards regarding reports. Rakhine conflicts is nothing to do with Meithtila conflicts, so as other ethnic issues. They should maintain their standards on analysing each and every cases not by drawing assumptions and concluding with bias reports.

They should look into details of the root causes of each and every conflicts. We don’t want our country falling aparts. Our country is in fragile position and we believe that the international community should help us move forward not by stiring the conditions, arousing hatred and spread the reports which will make others believe to take part against the country as a whole.

As clearly stated in State Department country report, “Rohingya do not dispute their origins from present day East Bengal”, we believed that it has been clarified that they are not indegenous people of Burma. Also the incidents happened in Rakhine state is communal violence and not religiously perpetrated. Inserting and labelling the religious context in the rakhine communal violence conflicts is inappropriate. This is like intentionally drawing attentions from religious extremists around the world and so far our country had been threatened by several terrorists groups. 

We, Burmese people want to stay peacefully getting out of isolations which we had suffered for decades and urge the international communities to help us out from these bombarded news and reports arousing hatred on both sides.

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ျဖစ္လု နီးပါး အေျခအေနထိ ေရာက္ခဲ့ေသာ စစ္ေတြ အဓိဂရုဏ္း အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက အခ်ိန္မွီ ထိန္းသိမ္း

ရခုိုင္ျပည္နယ္ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕  ျမိဳ႕ျပင္တြင္ ျဖစ္လုနီးပါး အေျခအေနထိ ေရာက္ရွိခ့ဲေသာ  အဓိဂရုဏ္း ပံုစံမ်ိဳး လူအုပ္ဖြဲ႕ တိုက္ခိုက္ၾကမည့္ တိုက္ခိုက္မူ တစ္ခုအား ယေန႕တြင္ အာဏာပိုင္မ်ားက အခ်ိန္မွီ ထိန္းသိမ္း ခဲ့ရသည္ဟု သတင္း ရရွိသည္။

အဆုိပါ အျပန္အလွန္ တိုက္ခိုက္ၾကမည့္ အဓိဂရုဏ္းမွာ စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕နယ္ က်က္ေတာျပင္ ရခိုင္ ေက်းရြာသားမ်ားႏွင့္ ေအာင္ဒိုင္ေက်းရြာ အုပ္စု ေခါင္တုတ္ကာ မြတ္ဆလင္ ေက်းရြာသားမ်ား အၾကားတြင္ ျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့သည္ဟု သိရသည္။

“ ပထမ က်က္ေတာျပင္ရြာထဲကို ဘဂၤလီ အုပ္စု တစ္ခုက ၀င္လာတယ္လို႕ ေျပာတယ္။ အဲသလို ၀င္လာေတာ့ ရြာသားေတြက ဘာေၾကာင့္ ၀င္လာတာလဲဆိုျပီး သကၤာမကင္း ျဖစ္ရာကေန ဖမ္းတယ္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ဖမ္းမိတယ္။ တခ်ိဳ႕က လႊတ္သြားတယ္။ လႊတ္သြားတဲ့ လူေတြက ရြာကုိသြားျပီး အေၾကာင္းၾကားေတာ့ ေခါင္တုတ္ကာ ရြာက လူ ၂၀၀ ခန္႕ တုတ္ေတြ၊ ဓါးေတြနဲ႕ တက္လာၾကတယ္။ ဒီဘက္ကလည္း အဆင္သင့္ ေစာင့္ေနေတာ့ တပ္က ခ်င္ခ်င္း ေရာက္ရွိလာျပီး အေျခအေနကို ထိန္းသိမ္းခဲ့ရပါတယ္” ဟု စစ္ေတြျမိဳ႕နယ္ ျပည္နယ္ လႊတ္ေတာ္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ ဦးေအာင္ျမေက်ာ္က ေျပာသည္။

အေရးအခင္း ျဖစ္ပြားျပီးေနာက္ပုိင္းတြင္ ဘဂၤလီေက်းရြာသားမ်ားႏွင့္ ရခိုင္ ေက်းရြာမ်ား အၾကား တရြာႏွင့္ တရြာ အသြားအလာ မရွိၾကဘဲ ရွိေနရာက ဘဂၤလီရြာသားမ်ား  ရုတ္တရက္ ရြာထဲ ၀င္ေရာက္လာရာမွ မသကၤာသျဖင့္ ဖမ္းဆီးျပီး ေက်းရြာသားမ်ားက ရဲလက္သိုိ႕အပ္လိုက္သည္ဟု ဆိုသည္။

“ အခု လံုျခံဳေရး တပ္ဖြဲ႕၀င္ေတြက ရြာကို ေရာက္သြားပါျပီ။ အခ်ိန္မွီ တားဆီးႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။  ျပႆနာကေတာ့ မရွိေတာ့ဘူးလို႕ ၾကားရတယ္။ အေျခအေန ျပန္တည္ျငိမ္သြားျပီလို႕ ၾကားရပါတယ္” ဟု ဦးေအာင္ျမေက်ာ္က ဆုိသည္။

အဆိုပါ ကိစၥႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ျပီး အေသးစိတ္ သိရွိႏိုင္ေအာင္ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕သုိ႕ ဆက္သြယ္ ေမးျမန္းရာ “ ခင္ဗ်ားဖံုး အသံ မၾကားရဘူး။ ဘာမွ မၾကားရရဘူး” ဟုဆိုကာ ဖုံးခ်သြားခဲ့သည္။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ဆက္သြယ္ေသာ္လည္း မရရွိခဲ့ေတာ့ပါ။

ဖမ္းဆီး အေရးယူမူမ်ား ရွိေၾကာင္း သိရွိရေသာ္လည္း အေသးစိတ္ သိရွိရျခင္း မရွိပါ။

http://www.narinjara.com/burmese/?p=5156

sittway-jail

Rakhine report likely to be publicized on April 23

22.APRIL 2013 EMG

Rakhine Issue Investigation Commission will possibly publicize the final report on Rakhine conflicts on April 23, said Than Than Nu, the secretary for Democratic Party (Myanmar) lately. She is also a commission member.

“The commission office informed us about it. But it’s not still that sure,” she added.

The report which includes recommendations to prevent further violence in the Rakhine will be made public [to a degree] after having it submitted to the President.

“It includes recommendations long-term and short-term to prevent further violence from taking place in the state. Government authorities are responsible for what to do next in accordance with the recommendations. They will investigate whether there is any illegal immigrant in the state and make reconciliation efforts among local communities. The main task of the commission is only to advise,” she added.

The commission members have no right to speak about the report in detail, she said.

“The report is prepared at best not to be biased.”

The commission recently released a statement saying it could not meet March 31 deadline even though the report was complete, and the report addresses the long-term social and economic development needs of the people living in the state, and included information and recommendations that went beyond the boundaries of the Rakhine State, and the information and recommendations were included to make the report more practical.

The deadly communal violence which started on June 8 last year in the state had displaced tens of thousands of people, killing 50 people and injuring 54 people. It also destroyed 2230 houses and 14 religious buildings, according to official figures from President’s office.

And another violence which was occurred again in last October killed 89 people and injured 136, destroying 5151 houses to displace 32231 people in the state, according to official figures released on October 31 by the office.

The commission was set up on August 17 last year by the President’s office with 27 members to investigate the deadly communal clashes that began in the state in June last year.

AUSTRALIAN MEDIA MOGUL ROSS DUNKLEY BARRED FROM LEAVING MYANMAR

 CREDIT EMG

AUSTRALIAN MEDIA MOGUL ROSS DUNKLEY BANNED FRPM LEAVING MYANMAR

 

Ross Dunkley, managing director of Myanmar Consolidated Media (MCM), was banned from leaving Myanmar for which his court case was claimed as reason despite court’s permission in his hand according to The Myanmar Times journal published yesterday.

Dunkley, the Australian media magnate in Myanmar, co-founded MCM with Sonny Swe (Myat Swe) in 2000, and the company is publishing The Myanmar Times, a well-known weekly journal in the country.

Dunkley and Khin Moe Moe, managing director of Swe Sone Media Group and wife of Dr Tin Tun Oo who is the chief executive officer of MCM, have filed reciprocal lawsuit on personal conflicts last January, as the latter took five strangers into the MCM office and the former argued over it.

Dunkley was stopped at the airport by the immigration officers when he arrived there for his business trip to Cambodia and Thailand. This was despite the court’s permission Dunkley received on April 8 as he promised to appear at court on trial.

The immigration officers stopped him at the airport on April 11 failing to give proper reasons. On the following day, Dunkley went to the airport and showed the airport officers the court’s permission and the appeal letter to the respective minister. He did not receive any reply for green light until April 17 yet, even though he sent the original certificates to the Ministry of Immigration and Population in capital Nay Pyi Taw on April 16.

There were public criticisms over the incident as Dunkley was banned from leaving the country despite the court’s permission and some people questioned the country’s reforms towards democracy.

The Myanmar Times quoted a foreign investor’s comment that he was very surprised at the incident. He said that the reason why investors brought their hard-earned money here is because they believe they can come here freely and will be treated fairly in accordance with the country’s laws.

Similar events were common during previous military regime. However, this is the first time such incident has occurred since the civil administration ruled the country, although some journalists from time to time find unnecessary delays at passport application process before their overseas trips.

Dr Tin Tun Oo (right) at the meeting of Myanmar Printers and Publishers Association attended by Information Deputy Minister Ye Htut (left) (Photo - EMG)
Dr Tin Tun Oo (right) at the meeting of Myanmar Printers and Publishers Association attended by Information Deputy Minister Ye Htut (left) (Photo – EMG)

U YE HTUT: Myanmar Government is not agree Rhakine Report of HR Watch-က ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ပဋိပကၡမ်ားနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့အစီရင္ခံစာ တစ္ေစာင္ကို ဧျပီလ ၂၂ ရက္ေန႕မွာ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

Myanmar Government is ‘ not agree Rhakine Report of Human Rights Watch .

Myanmar Government will follow their own investigator Team.
Myanmar Government want to know why are Human Rights Watch announce
when Europe council meeting for Myanmar .

————–

HRW should maintain their standards regarding reports. Rakhine conflicts is nothing to do with Meithtila conflicts, so as other ethinc issues. They should maintain their standards on analysing each and every cases not by drawing assumptions and concluding with bias reports.

They should look into details of the root causes of each and every conflicts. We don’t want our country falling aparts. Our country is in fragile position and we believe that the international community should help us move forward not by stiring the conditions, arousing hatred and spread the reports which will make others believe to take part against the country as a whole.

As clearly stated in State Department country report, “Rohingya do not dispute their origins from present day East Bengal”, we believed that it has been clarified that they are not indegenous people of Burma. Also the incidents happened in Rakhine state is communal violence and not religiously perpetrated. Inserting and labelling the religious context in the rakhine communal violence conflicts is inappropriate. This is like intentionally drawing attentions from religious extremists around the world and so far our country had been threatened by several terrorists groups.

We, Burmese people want to stay peacefully getting out of isolations which we had suffered for decades and urge the international communities to help us out from these bombarded news and reports arousing hatred on both sides.

———————

Myanmar government will not accept one-sided report on Rakhine conflict issue written by Human Rights Watch, government spokesman Ye Htut who is deputy information minister posted on his Facebook account on April 22.

The Human Rights Watch issued Rakhine conflict report on April 22.

Ye Htut wrote in his Facebook account that the government formed an investigation commission as to Rakhine conflict and it comprised experts of good reputation and respectable persons from two ethnic societies. The report is being compiled following several field trips to the conflict-affected areas. The words and usages contained in the Human Rights Watch’s groundless report are unacceptable to Myanmar government. Myanmar government will place special emphasis on the findings and suggestions of the officially-organized commission regardless of the Human Rights Watch’s report.

As Rakhine State Government is keeping a close watch on how the conflict situation develops, it is well aware of the communal violence. The Human Rights Watch issued the one-sided report mistakenly. The true situation is wrongly assessed, Rakhine State’s attorney-general Hla Thein said.

Human Rights Watch, based in New York, released a statement on the Rakhine violence today.

In the statement, the organisation accused the Myanmar authorities and Buddhist monks of having their role in ethnic cleansing against the Muslims in Rakhine State.

Rakhine State Parliament MP Aung Mya Kyaw of Rakhine Nationalities Development Party said the HRW’s statement was unfounded and unacceptable.

Aung Mya Kyaw said: “This is unfair. Our party does not accept the statement at all. All the local people in Rakhine State know the incidents from A to Z. The violence did not occur racially or religiously. It happened between those who want to seize the territory and those who want to defend that territory. Ethnic cleansing is not the matter of that issue.”

Dr U Maung, vice chairman of the Arakan League for Democracy, said: “I don’t know whether the HRW’s wording is linked to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. We will say that their use of term ‘Rohingya’ is wrong.”

“We don’t have Rohingyas in our country. We can only say that they are Bangladeshi or foreign Bengalis. Now, the words used by this group have reached the level of hurting the country and its people. [They] often kept saying ethnic cleaning. Actually, it’s not a racial or religious issue. It’s called communal violence… Politically, it includes competition of groups living inside the country and abroad. We have been living together with Muslims since a long time ago and we didn’t have any problems. The group will know if they come [to Myanmar],” said Dr U Maung.

Coincidentally, the report came out on the day the European Union is meeting to review the restrictions imposed on Myanmar.

It also came out a day before the Rakhine Issue Investigation Commission, formed by President Thein Sein, release their final report to the public.

“The action of the Human Rights Watch for releasing the report in sync with the European Union’s meeting on removing restrictions imposed on Myanmar,” Ye Htut wrote on Facebook.

“Although there are some who criticized [Myanmar] quoting the Human Rights Watch’s report, [you can see]Myanmar has been praised recently for its human rights progress by the US which promotes human rights activities around the world,” said Zaw Htay, the director for the President’s Office on his Facebook page on April 22. Continue reading “U YE HTUT: Myanmar Government is not agree Rhakine Report of HR Watch-က ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ပဋိပကၡမ်ားနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့အစီရင္ခံစာ တစ္ေစာင္ကို ဧျပီလ ၂၂ ရက္ေန႕မွာ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။”

Myo Yan Naung Thein Letter: Voter Education and Electoral Cycle Management.

Myo Yan Naung Thein’s Letter

Dear colleague,

I will attend the roundtable discussion with EU , UEC and stakeholders of Election .

I will attend representing Myanmar Network for Free Election , the only group who do election watch in 2010 election , facing risk.

I will discuss on the electoral frauds made by UEC in 2010 election and what to be prepared in order to prevent frauds in 2015 election and how to make 2015 election free and fair . And ways on which we can work together on Voter Education and Electoral Cycle Management.

I am happy to answer any question concerning with MYNFREL and its works

Best regards,

Myo Yan Naung Thein

09 4211 58936

09 730 21874

09 731 66269