With what criteria did the ministry issue over 500,000 White Cards (temporary national registration cards) for Bengalis in 2010?

Two state-run Myanmar newspapers, the Myanmar Alin and the Mirror accused the Daily Eleven Newspaper in their June 18 editions for publishing an erroneous story about government plans to amend the 1982 citizenship law. The Daily Eleven headline published on June 13 was titled: “The government plans to amend the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law and submit it to Parliament but most Union Assembly representatives oppose it.”

In response to the accusation, the Daily Eleven showed its stance, strongly rejecting the false allegations in the June 19 edition.

However, the Ministry of Immigration and Population made a clarification again in the state-run newspapers on June 21. The Daily Eleven therefore made the following clarification.

The Daily Eleven has precisely clarified that the news published on June 13 was based on strong and credible sources.

In the first clarification, the Daily Eleven quoted the original wording of Minister Khin Yi as saying that plans are underway to early amend some words, usages and fines prescribed in the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law because these points are not appropriate with the current age.” The minister revealed the plans during a Parliamentary session held on November 6, 2012. Therefore, everyone with the knowledge of journalism will know that it is not necessary to ask again.

The ministry also stated in its clarification that reporters from the Daily Eleven failed to get confirmation from the ministry whether or not it is planning to amend and submit the law to Parliament. The Daily Eleven has already mentioned that the news was based on strong and credible sources, including the secretary of the Lower House Joint-Bill Committee.

All have been known that there are some difficulties in getting government sources, including those from some ministries. But the Daily Eleven is grateful to the ministry for opening up ways to ask questions.

As the Daily Eleven did not get confirmation from the ministry as stated in the June 18 editions of the state-owned newspapers, we contacted a high-ranking official on June 19 to reconfirm the minister’s clarification made in Parliament. He replied: “All the details about it are in the newspaper”. He also warned that we do not feature such kind of news again. So, the Daily Eleven kept silent in line with the code of ethics.

In its clarification, the ministry said the media should get confirmations from respective ministries/organizations regarding the news coverage in accord with the points described in the first paragraph of Code of Ethics of Myanmar Press Council (Temporary). However, such points are not clearly stated in the code of ethics. It only states that media must ensure every news item is correct in facts and data and assess them as much as possible.

The Daily Eleven therefore made this clarification that the government’s accusation was wrong because reconfirmation had been made from the ministry on June 19.

Later on, the Daily Eleven will officially ask for sources from ministries about public criticisms and rumours such as bribery and corruption in government ministries and organizations, assets of cabinet members, inappropriate acts of their children and abuse of power. If there is no reply, the Daily Eleven newspaper will feature what questions it has been asked. Moreover, it will carry the questions that the public should know and shoot them directly to government ministries and organizations with a view to helping eliminate corruption and highlight the government’s effort for change and transparency.
The Daily Eleven hereby asks some questions from the Ministry of Immigration and Population:

With what criteria did the ministry issue over 500,000 White Cards (temporary national registration cards) for Bengalis in 2010? Was there any assessment over the citizenship rights in line with 1982 Myanmar citizenship law?

With what decree and limitations did the ministry issue the White Cards, through which votes could be cast in elections according to Section 6 of Lowe House Election Law passed in March, 2010?

As the guest citizens and those holding White Cards had the equal voting of right of a national citizen, millions of eligible voters lost their voting right at that time. If that law continues to exist till 2015, the 1982 citizenship law will be nothing more than a torn paper.

How will the ministry mainly responsible for the issuance of the White Cards address the issue of Rohingya or Bengali?

For Immigration and Population Minister Khin Yi, who was the second most responsible official in the Home Affairs Ministry, does he have plans to legalize the White Cards or give the voting right to the Bengalis or regard them as citizens? This question is more important than whether the 1982 citizenship law will be amended or not.
Were there any corruption cases in issuing the White Cards?

Monks, Journalists decry Time Magazine’s cover portrayal of U Wirathu as Buddhist terrorist

July issue of Time Magazine has portrayed Myanmar Buddhist monk U Wirathu as a cover and labeled as “the face of the Buddhist terror” . It has been criticized by all level of facebook users with their point of views. Most of the people have felt that it was an insult to Buddhism. Based on public opinions, the comments have been made as follow:

Kyaw Min Swe, Chief Editor of the Voice Daily

I am not happy with Time’s cover story. It is inappropriate to label a person for religion. How much evidence do they have to prove that U Wirathu has been involved in violence? I do not agree with this matter. It doesn’t matter wherther I like him or not. It could impact on Myanmar and its religion how the Time’s represent that news. I think there is something behind the story. Neither does it meet journalistic ethic because it is using religion and violence together to damage a person’ dignity. It is absolutely not required to do that so. I don’t think I need to mention that Time is the world famous magazine.

Dr. Ashin Dhamma Piyaka, Information in charge of Buddha Sasana Ovada Cariya Acceptance and Preliminary Religious Talks

Myanmar has more than 500,000 Buddhist monks. Blame should not be put on the entire Buddhism. It is one sided story. History has it that Buddhism is a peaceful religion. Monks are committed to doing public well being as well as for the Sasana. The religion has been and will be peaceful.

Ashin Dayventa Bhivamsa, Sitagu

The scientist Einstein once said about Buddhism, if there was a religion that can bring the peace to world, it must be the Buddhism. So I do think I have to mention Buddhism as a peaceful religion. As monks are following the peaceful religion, they are peacefully minded. There has been no violence made by monks. But they were killed and they were terrorized. The weapon of the monks is tolerance. The Time magazine has accused U Wirathu as terrorist. Sitagu Sayadaw (Venerable monk Sitagu) said that U Wirathu is a person who desires to have peace. However the foreign media criticizes him.

Social activist Myint Myint Khin Pe

I was asked in an interview by French journalist that Most Myanmar people are accepting the violence or I accept the violence. I had answered I never accept any violence. The image of Buddhism will be protected by its own religion. To protect the Buddhism, every Buddhist should behave well in time. If not, Myanmar could be recognized as terrorist Buddhist country.

Hanthawaddy U Win Tin, the Veteran Journalist

It is terrible to use the word “Buddhist terror”. I think international community may have sided with Muslims. “969” has appeared in Buddhist community as well. No one can deny that Muslims are usually extremists. They kill other people as well as their own. Now there could have been Buddhist extremists like 969 or U Wirathu. It is not a good sign. There can be conflicts among people and it should be solved in accord with rules and regulations. The violence was not solved with the rules and regulations and the problem was titled as religion issue which is getting bigger later on. Those who want to back track from the current political situation are taking advantage of the situation. Now it is even harder to solve the problems. It is terrible that the influential Time magazine wrote about the events in Myanmar by portraying Buddhist monk U Wirathu. The extent of the danger is bigger now. The response of U Wirathu and his followers and those who are against them will accelerate. So I think aggressiveness of both sides will get higher.

Dr. Myat Thu, Managing Directo of Asia Taw Win

U Wirathu’s love for his religion is too much. He is not insulting other religions so the statement of TIME Magazine is totally wrong. My opinion is the same as Sitagu Sayadaw.

When the Daily Eleven interviewed U Wirathu, he said that he is really surprised by the fact that he is dubbed a Buddhist terrorist.

“I won’t be shattered by attacking me like this. What I want to say is about comparing me with a Binladen of Myanmar. Binladen’s hands were bloodied. Mine are really free from impurity. Their example is like referring a lion to a fox. It was a very rude comparison. What we are doing now is for preventive measures. There is no means of attacking. America’s intrusion into Iraq was to its national security. We are enacting laws for the safeguard of our nation and our race. Does it mean that we are extremists? We gave sermons to love ad cherish our own religion and people. Do they mean we are terrorists? I have a video file about an interview with me in order to check if something fishy is going on. I am now planning to post on the internet the interview with TIME Magazine. They didn’t ask what they did and nor my answers. The photo they used made me look terrible,” he said.

Wanna Shwe of Islamic Religious Council (Headquarters)

We don’t like a person’s doing comparing to one religion. Similarly, in Islam, I don’t accept a person’s doing comparing a religion.

Dr. Than Htut Aung, the CEO of the Eleven Media

“Let me be clear, I don’t agree with the opinions of U Wirathu. We have different views. But neither do I accept Time Magazine’s unfair portrayal. For a Buddhist monk, he will always be regarded as a monk until he breaks the rules of the Sangha. I know it is not easy to become a patron monk at the Masoeyein Monastery.”

“I do not agree with religious involvement in the affairs of the judiciary, administration or legislation. Neither do I agree with Buddhist extremism or the anti-Muslim sentiments being spread by a minority intent on jeopardizing their social and economic affairs,” he said

But as a journalist, I think Time Magazine’s criticism is unfair and harmful to our religion and Sasana. Such acts can cause unnecessary conflict and will only serve to disrupt our fragile democratic transition. So I categorically oppose Time’s story, Dr Than Htut Aung said.

U Wirathu is being accused of inciting continuing clashes that broke out in Myanmar. Those clashes also happened at instigation of ‘969’ Buddhist groups.

credit eleven media

ယာယီသက္ေသခံလက္မႇတ္ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားသူသည္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ ဆႏၵမဲေပးပိုင္ခြင့္ ရႇိေၾကာင္း ျပည္သူ႕လႊတ္ေတာ္၊ အမ်ဳိးသားလႊတ္ေတာ္၊ တိုင္းေဒသႀကီးလႊတ္ေတာ္ (သို႔မဟုတ္) ျပည္နယ္လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒမ်ား၏ ပုဒ္မ ၆ တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထား

ယာယီသက္ေသခံလက္မႇတ္ ကိုင္ေဆာင္ထားသူသည္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတြင္ ဆႏၵမဲေပးပိုင္ခြင့္ ရႇိေၾကာင္း ျပည္သူ႕လႊတ္ေတာ္၊ အမ်ဳိးသားလႊတ္ေတာ္၊ တိုင္းေဒသႀကီးလႊတ္ေတာ္ (သို႔မဟုတ္) ျပည္နယ္လႊတ္ေတာ္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ဥပေဒမ်ား၏ ပုဒ္မ ၆ တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထား

LAW

Read More >>>> http://www.news-eleven.com/politics/20305

Letter to Time magazin ”RULES OF ENGAGEMENT HAS BEEN BROKEN BY YOU.”

 

from myo chit myanmar

To TIME magazine editors,

I as many other Myanmar national professionals was on the fence with Myanmar Buddhists VS. Rohingya Muslims situation and we were very strict about not offending Muslims and related medias.

But today you’ve just crossed that fine line between us.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT HAS BEEN BROKEN BY YOU.

You will see that we are not what you’ve accused us of.

We may be different at times but when it comes to our nation,

WE ARE ONE AGAINST ALL.

You can count on that.