အခုေတာ့ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ပဋိပကၡေၾကာင့္ CFOB လုိ႔ လူသိမ်ားတဲ့ အားေကာင္းတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔မွာ ျပႆနာေတြ တက္လာခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
အေၾကာင္းကေတာ့ ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာဆုိတဲ့ ဘက္က ရပ္မေပးခဲ့တဲ့ အတြက္ အခုဆုိရင္ ကေနဒါက NGO စုစည္းထားတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔ထဲက ထုတ္ကာ အဖြဲ႔ကုိလည္း ရံပံုေငြ ျဖတ္လိုက္ၿပီး ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမႉး ဦးတင္ေမာင္ထူးကိုလည္း ရာထူးက ႏုတ္ထြက္ေပးဖုိ႔ ဖိအားေပးလာပါတယ္။
ဦးတင္ေမာင္ထူးက
မည္သည့္ဘက္မွ မလုိက္ႏို္င္္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ဘက္လုိက္တာ ဒီမုိကေရစီ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း၊
အေျခအေနမွန္က ရုိဟင္ဂ်ာ ဆုိသူေတြတင္မက ရခိုင္တိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ားလည္း
ေသေၾကပ်က္ဆီးေနရတယ္လို႔ ေျပာဆုိခဲ့တဲ့အေပၚ
ျပႆနာ က စခဲ့တာပါ။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ အဆုိပါ CFOB ကို ကန္႔သတ္ၿပီး NGO အစုက ထုတ္ပယ္ခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ အားလံုးက ေအာက္ပါ စာပါ အတုိင္း Report လုပ္ေပးၾကပါလုိ႔ ေမတၱာ ရပ္ခံအပ္ပါတယ္။
Burmese Civil Society Organizations Dismayed by Inter Yamil ParesWe, the undersigned Burmese civil society organizations from around the world, are expressing our dismay with an Ottawa-based NGO, Inter Pares, for its unreasonable handling of a policy dispute with Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) on Burma's inter-communal conflicts. We appreciate the dedicated work of Inter Pares on the Thai-Burma border. However, we strongly object Inter Pares in the method and means employed in compelling CFOB to accept its preferred policy. Such action is unworthy of a social justice organization like Inter Pares and raises questions regarding its motives and ethical standards.
Last week, we learned that CFOB is in crisis due to enormous pressure exerted by Inter Pares, with a series of actions aimed at bringing CFOB’s operations and its advocacy work to a halt for not agreeing to a contentious policy related to Burma. We are stunned about such a punitive move in a free and democratic country like Canada and the serious lack of ‘tolerance over differences' – a political culture that Canadians are proud of, adhere to, promote and practice.
We affirm our solidarity with CFOB which stands firmly on its ground and fully support CFOB’s position embracing the recommendation of Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi . She has articulated the urgent need for the rule of law to prevail and to put in place a process of verification for persons who have illegally immigrated into western parts of Burma.
Notwithstanding the fact that Burma only recently embarked on a long-awaited political reform process, all steps taken so far are still fragile and lack institutional underpinnings. A longstanding and complicated inter-communal conflict such as the one we are witnessing in Rakhine State defies any quick and easy solutions as called for by organizations such as Inter Pares. All stakeholders in this huge international tragedy hold justifiable concerns regarding possible expansion of the conflict that could lead to a political backlash and derailment of the reform process in the country.
We urge Inter Pares to acknowledge and recognize the delicate political climate and to respect the concerns of the people of Burma. We also remind Inter Pares that their unscrupulous action against CFOB blurs the line between social justice advocates and political and ethnic entrepreneurs and raises serious ethical questions regarding their motives. We therefore call upon Inter Pares to be the true friend of Burma and understand the challenges that the country and all its citizens are facing.
List of endorsing organizations:
Conflict in [Burma] breeds homegrown turmoil in Friends of Burma group
By Sneh Duggal, Embassy Magazine (Canada's Foreign Policy Newspaper)
Published: Wednesday, 11/21/2012 12:00 am EST
http://www.embassynews.ca/news/2012/11/21/conflict-in-myanmar-breeds-homegrown-turmoil-in-friends-of-burma-group/42875?page_requested=1 ]
Ethnic clashes in Myanmar’s western Rakhine province have stirred up Canada’s NGO community, resulting in a leadership struggle within the Canadian Friends of Burma.
The NGO working to support the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma, is at a stalemate stemming from disagreement over who is leading the group. One CFOB board member considers the organization to be “defunct” currently.
Some members of the group have called for the resignation of Tin Maung Htoo from his position as executive director and are looking to appoint an interim head. But Mr. Maung has said he has no plans to step down yet, and says he would like to keep the organization alive.
One of the group’s main funders, non-profit group Inter Pares, has decided to temporarily suspend its funding and collaboration with the CFOB until its internal issues are sorted out.
CFOB is well known in NGO and government circles. The group celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year. At an anniversary celebration, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the organization has “been a marvellous Canadian partnership of newcomers...and Canadians who had a heart for the situation of the Burmese people.”
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, also know as Arakan state, started after a Rakhine woman was raped and murdered on May 28, according to the UN’s July 27 daily news service update.
“This was followed by the killing of 10 Muslims by an unidentified mob on June 3.”
The government of Myanmar declared a state of emergency in Rakhine state.
Another wave of violence started in October, and hundreds of homes were reportedly destroyed. More than 110,000 displaced people are in need of shelter, food, and health care, read a Nov. 5 UN news service report.
Since June, UN officials and various governments, including in Canada, have voiced concern about the ongoing clashes. Foreign Minister John Baird said he is “deeply concerned by the latest outbreak of inter-communal violence in Rakhine state” in an Oct. 26 statement.
CFOB conflict ‘a real tragedy’
Some volunteers and board members with the CFOB issued a statement on Nov. 19, stating that the “unfortunate situation” with the organization started in June when clashes were occurring in Rakhine state.
“Tin Maung Htoo became understandably distraught about the tragic events that have been taking place there...[but he] reacted in a way that was not appropriate for the director of an organization.”
Kevin McLeod, a board member since 2003 and Nisha Toomey released the statement. Antoine Nouvet, who has also been involved in the group, said he agreed with it.
Mr. Maung said some of the information being disseminated after the clashes didn’t depict what was really happening on the ground, and that it wasn’t just one side attacking the other. Members of the group, meanwhile, say that some of his statements at the time seemed to make assertions against Rohingya Muslims.
The group’s statement alleged that Mr. Maung released a factually flawed press release and other public statements that were not endorsed by CFOB’s board.
Mr. Maung said he didn’t say anything wrong in his initial statement and just included some history on Rohingya Muslims.
Inter Pares executive director Rita Morbia said that at the time there were some “disturbing comments” coming from CFOB.
Mr. Maung said he changed the press release after Inter Pares asked him to.
He also had a Facebook site, and it was unclear as to which comments represented his personal views and which represented the organization’s views, Ms. Morbia said.
“I shared some information from both sides on my Facebook,” Mr. Maung said. Currently, his association to CFOB is not listed on his Facebook profile.
“I’m trying not to side with any group. I am Burmese origin, so I know the situation there very well. This is not the first time this kind of communal conflict [has] happened,” Mr. Maung said.
He said he respects the “beauty of diversity.”
In a July 26 letter, CFOB board member Toe Kyi outlined that Mr. Maung was born and raised in Rakhine state, and thus has strong personal ties to the region.
“While [Mr. Maung] recognizes the vulnerability of the Rohingya people based on lack of citizenship and the need to amend their citizenship status for a lasting solution...he no doubt felt very upset to hear about the violence committed by both the Rohingyas and Rakhines against one another.”
According to Human Rights Watch, Myanmar’s citizenship law from the 1980s “effectively denies” citizenship to the Rohingya population.
Mr. Kyi also wrote that Mr. Maung was upset that statements from some Myanmar-focused NGOs were mostly showing sympathy towards Rohingya victims and not to the suffering of the Rakhine people.
“This does not mean that Tin is racist—only human I believe,” Mr. Kyi wrote.
He continued, saying that Mr. Maung’s frustration might have got the better of him.
“Making statements and writing comments [publicly] on this issue claiming they were his personal views, not CFOB’s was problematic,” Mr. Kyi said.
Mr. Nouvet said a letter asking Mr. Maung to resign was sent to him on Aug. 14.
“It was with great regret that the Board requested that he resign,” said the Nov. 19 statement from Mr. McLeod and Ms. Toomey.
Mr. Nouvet said in an email that the question of Mr. Maung’s dismissal has to do in part with the fact that “Tin spoke vociferously on these issues publicly, as an individual person, and as CFOB, on numerous occasions, despite wide disapproval amongst those close to and/or accountable to CFOB.”
But Mr. Maung said he has no plan to resign. He said he would like to hold an annual general meeting early next year, when new board members could be elected.
He said he would consider stepping down if he was satisfied the organization would run in accordance with its original mission.
Mr. Maung said he is not with the organization because of personal gain or for the money.
He said one concern is that the CFOB would become an organization seen to be siding with only Rohingya Muslims, which could become a problem for some Burmese Canadians.
Meanwhile, Ms. Toomey said they are looking to appoint an interim executive director within the next week.
The group asking Mr. Maung to resign, and two others—Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland, who is a member of CFOB’s advisory board, and former board member Sam Cartmell—said that Mr. Maung hasn’t been filing up-to-date information on CFOB’s board meetings and its members to Industry Canada.
It’s disputed whether Ms. Toomey and Mr. Nouvet have ever been board members. Mr. Maung said he designated them as board members, but their names weren’t filed to Industry Canada because changes required signatures from all board members, who he said have been out of the country.
According to its website, CFOB is a federally incorporated, national non-governmental organization. Organizations can register as a corporation or a not-for-profit corporation through Industry Canada.
NGOs butting heads
Meanwhile, the recent events also caused some tension between CFOB and Inter Pares.
On Nov. 5, Mr. Maung posted a press release to the CFOB website, stating that the organization had been facing pressure from groups like Inter Pares to side with Rohingya Muslims.
Ms. Morbia refuted the claim in a joint statement with the chair of Inter Pares’ board, Tamara Levine. They said that Inter Pares raised concerns during the summer about CFOB’s public statements on the Rakhine state conflict.
They said some of the “statements we believed to be, at times, biased and inflammatory towards the Rohingya community.”
“At no point has Inter Pares asked CFOB to raise the issue of the Rohingya situation to the public or to the government,” their statement read.
In an interview with Embassy, Ms. Morbia said that Inter Pares contributed about $25,000 to CFOB this year from money it fundraised.
Currently, funds to CFOB and collaboration with the group have been temporarily suspended.
CFOB and Inter Pares are also part of a committee of NGOs doing public education programming and other advocacy work related to Myanmar. She said they decided to temporarily suspend CFOB from the group on Oct. 15.
The budget for the group of NGOs varies according to proposals made, said Ms. Morbia, but could be around $10,000 each year. The money comes from the $15 million that the Canadian International Development Agency is providing to Inter Pares from 2010 to 2015.
Ms. Morbia said CFOB has done a lot of great work in raising awareness and advocating.
During his speech in February, Mr. Kenney said CFOB’s strong voice over the years has resulted in policy change. “The fact that Canada came in with some of the world’s toughest sanctions on the junta was a direct result of the relentless pressure from the CFOB,” he said.
“We think the situation is unfortunate, and we hope that the irregularities are cleared up, that the governance structure is put in place again and that we can continue to work together with them in the future,” Ms. Morbia said.
CFOB future in question
Mr. Kyi said Mr. Maung pioneered Myanmar’s democracy movement in Canada.
He said he is concerned about the independence of CFOB since its survival depends on funders, and some of them have conflicting interests with the group.
He said the structure of the CFOB needs to be reformed and that the organization needs to be less dependent on a few major funders.
“I’m hoping we can sort things out and come to some understanding where the organization can move forward, but at the moment it’s not functioning,” Mr. McLeod said.
“I think that’s a real tragedy because it was functioning for 20 years consecutively,” he said.
Until CFOB can reorganize itself, it is “pretty much defunct,” he added.
ျပႆနာ က စခဲ့တာပါ။
ဒါေၾကာင့္ အဆုိပါ CFOB ကို ကန္႔သတ္ၿပီး NGO အစုက ထုတ္ပယ္ခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ အားလံုးက ေအာက္ပါ စာပါ အတုိင္း Report လုပ္ေပးၾကပါလုိ႔ ေမတၱာ ရပ္ခံအပ္ပါတယ္။
Burmese Civil Society Organizations Dismayed by Inter Yamil ParesWe, the undersigned Burmese civil society organizations from around the world, are expressing our dismay with an Ottawa-based NGO, Inter Pares, for its unreasonable handling of a policy dispute with Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) on Burma's inter-communal conflicts. We appreciate the dedicated work of Inter Pares on the Thai-Burma border. However, we strongly object Inter Pares in the method and means employed in compelling CFOB to accept its preferred policy. Such action is unworthy of a social justice organization like Inter Pares and raises questions regarding its motives and ethical standards.
Last week, we learned that CFOB is in crisis due to enormous pressure exerted by Inter Pares, with a series of actions aimed at bringing CFOB’s operations and its advocacy work to a halt for not agreeing to a contentious policy related to Burma. We are stunned about such a punitive move in a free and democratic country like Canada and the serious lack of ‘tolerance over differences' – a political culture that Canadians are proud of, adhere to, promote and practice.
We affirm our solidarity with CFOB which stands firmly on its ground and fully support CFOB’s position embracing the recommendation of Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi . She has articulated the urgent need for the rule of law to prevail and to put in place a process of verification for persons who have illegally immigrated into western parts of Burma.
Notwithstanding the fact that Burma only recently embarked on a long-awaited political reform process, all steps taken so far are still fragile and lack institutional underpinnings. A longstanding and complicated inter-communal conflict such as the one we are witnessing in Rakhine State defies any quick and easy solutions as called for by organizations such as Inter Pares. All stakeholders in this huge international tragedy hold justifiable concerns regarding possible expansion of the conflict that could lead to a political backlash and derailment of the reform process in the country.
We urge Inter Pares to acknowledge and recognize the delicate political climate and to respect the concerns of the people of Burma. We also remind Inter Pares that their unscrupulous action against CFOB blurs the line between social justice advocates and political and ethnic entrepreneurs and raises serious ethical questions regarding their motives. We therefore call upon Inter Pares to be the true friend of Burma and understand the challenges that the country and all its citizens are facing.
List of endorsing organizations:
Conflict in [Burma] breeds homegrown turmoil in Friends of Burma group
By Sneh Duggal, Embassy Magazine (Canada's Foreign Policy Newspaper)
Published: Wednesday, 11/21/2012 12:00 am EST
http://www.embassynews.ca/news/2012/11/21/conflict-in-myanmar-breeds-homegrown-turmoil-in-friends-of-burma-group/42875?page_requested=1 ]
Ethnic clashes in Myanmar’s western Rakhine province have stirred up Canada’s NGO community, resulting in a leadership struggle within the Canadian Friends of Burma.
The NGO working to support the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma, is at a stalemate stemming from disagreement over who is leading the group. One CFOB board member considers the organization to be “defunct” currently.
Some members of the group have called for the resignation of Tin Maung Htoo from his position as executive director and are looking to appoint an interim head. But Mr. Maung has said he has no plans to step down yet, and says he would like to keep the organization alive.
One of the group’s main funders, non-profit group Inter Pares, has decided to temporarily suspend its funding and collaboration with the CFOB until its internal issues are sorted out.
CFOB is well known in NGO and government circles. The group celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year. At an anniversary celebration, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the organization has “been a marvellous Canadian partnership of newcomers...and Canadians who had a heart for the situation of the Burmese people.”
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, also know as Arakan state, started after a Rakhine woman was raped and murdered on May 28, according to the UN’s July 27 daily news service update.
“This was followed by the killing of 10 Muslims by an unidentified mob on June 3.”
The government of Myanmar declared a state of emergency in Rakhine state.
Another wave of violence started in October, and hundreds of homes were reportedly destroyed. More than 110,000 displaced people are in need of shelter, food, and health care, read a Nov. 5 UN news service report.
Since June, UN officials and various governments, including in Canada, have voiced concern about the ongoing clashes. Foreign Minister John Baird said he is “deeply concerned by the latest outbreak of inter-communal violence in Rakhine state” in an Oct. 26 statement.
CFOB conflict ‘a real tragedy’
Some volunteers and board members with the CFOB issued a statement on Nov. 19, stating that the “unfortunate situation” with the organization started in June when clashes were occurring in Rakhine state.
“Tin Maung Htoo became understandably distraught about the tragic events that have been taking place there...[but he] reacted in a way that was not appropriate for the director of an organization.”
Kevin McLeod, a board member since 2003 and Nisha Toomey released the statement. Antoine Nouvet, who has also been involved in the group, said he agreed with it.
Mr. Maung said some of the information being disseminated after the clashes didn’t depict what was really happening on the ground, and that it wasn’t just one side attacking the other. Members of the group, meanwhile, say that some of his statements at the time seemed to make assertions against Rohingya Muslims.
The group’s statement alleged that Mr. Maung released a factually flawed press release and other public statements that were not endorsed by CFOB’s board.
Mr. Maung said he didn’t say anything wrong in his initial statement and just included some history on Rohingya Muslims.
Inter Pares executive director Rita Morbia said that at the time there were some “disturbing comments” coming from CFOB.
Mr. Maung said he changed the press release after Inter Pares asked him to.
He also had a Facebook site, and it was unclear as to which comments represented his personal views and which represented the organization’s views, Ms. Morbia said.
“I shared some information from both sides on my Facebook,” Mr. Maung said. Currently, his association to CFOB is not listed on his Facebook profile.
“I’m trying not to side with any group. I am Burmese origin, so I know the situation there very well. This is not the first time this kind of communal conflict [has] happened,” Mr. Maung said.
He said he respects the “beauty of diversity.”
In a July 26 letter, CFOB board member Toe Kyi outlined that Mr. Maung was born and raised in Rakhine state, and thus has strong personal ties to the region.
“While [Mr. Maung] recognizes the vulnerability of the Rohingya people based on lack of citizenship and the need to amend their citizenship status for a lasting solution...he no doubt felt very upset to hear about the violence committed by both the Rohingyas and Rakhines against one another.”
According to Human Rights Watch, Myanmar’s citizenship law from the 1980s “effectively denies” citizenship to the Rohingya population.
Mr. Kyi also wrote that Mr. Maung was upset that statements from some Myanmar-focused NGOs were mostly showing sympathy towards Rohingya victims and not to the suffering of the Rakhine people.
“This does not mean that Tin is racist—only human I believe,” Mr. Kyi wrote.
He continued, saying that Mr. Maung’s frustration might have got the better of him.
“Making statements and writing comments [publicly] on this issue claiming they were his personal views, not CFOB’s was problematic,” Mr. Kyi said.
Mr. Nouvet said a letter asking Mr. Maung to resign was sent to him on Aug. 14.
“It was with great regret that the Board requested that he resign,” said the Nov. 19 statement from Mr. McLeod and Ms. Toomey.
Mr. Nouvet said in an email that the question of Mr. Maung’s dismissal has to do in part with the fact that “Tin spoke vociferously on these issues publicly, as an individual person, and as CFOB, on numerous occasions, despite wide disapproval amongst those close to and/or accountable to CFOB.”
But Mr. Maung said he has no plan to resign. He said he would like to hold an annual general meeting early next year, when new board members could be elected.
He said he would consider stepping down if he was satisfied the organization would run in accordance with its original mission.
Mr. Maung said he is not with the organization because of personal gain or for the money.
He said one concern is that the CFOB would become an organization seen to be siding with only Rohingya Muslims, which could become a problem for some Burmese Canadians.
Meanwhile, Ms. Toomey said they are looking to appoint an interim executive director within the next week.
The group asking Mr. Maung to resign, and two others—Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland, who is a member of CFOB’s advisory board, and former board member Sam Cartmell—said that Mr. Maung hasn’t been filing up-to-date information on CFOB’s board meetings and its members to Industry Canada.
It’s disputed whether Ms. Toomey and Mr. Nouvet have ever been board members. Mr. Maung said he designated them as board members, but their names weren’t filed to Industry Canada because changes required signatures from all board members, who he said have been out of the country.
According to its website, CFOB is a federally incorporated, national non-governmental organization. Organizations can register as a corporation or a not-for-profit corporation through Industry Canada.
NGOs butting heads
Meanwhile, the recent events also caused some tension between CFOB and Inter Pares.
On Nov. 5, Mr. Maung posted a press release to the CFOB website, stating that the organization had been facing pressure from groups like Inter Pares to side with Rohingya Muslims.
Ms. Morbia refuted the claim in a joint statement with the chair of Inter Pares’ board, Tamara Levine. They said that Inter Pares raised concerns during the summer about CFOB’s public statements on the Rakhine state conflict.
They said some of the “statements we believed to be, at times, biased and inflammatory towards the Rohingya community.”
“At no point has Inter Pares asked CFOB to raise the issue of the Rohingya situation to the public or to the government,” their statement read.
In an interview with Embassy, Ms. Morbia said that Inter Pares contributed about $25,000 to CFOB this year from money it fundraised.
Currently, funds to CFOB and collaboration with the group have been temporarily suspended.
CFOB and Inter Pares are also part of a committee of NGOs doing public education programming and other advocacy work related to Myanmar. She said they decided to temporarily suspend CFOB from the group on Oct. 15.
The budget for the group of NGOs varies according to proposals made, said Ms. Morbia, but could be around $10,000 each year. The money comes from the $15 million that the Canadian International Development Agency is providing to Inter Pares from 2010 to 2015.
Ms. Morbia said CFOB has done a lot of great work in raising awareness and advocating.
During his speech in February, Mr. Kenney said CFOB’s strong voice over the years has resulted in policy change. “The fact that Canada came in with some of the world’s toughest sanctions on the junta was a direct result of the relentless pressure from the CFOB,” he said.
“We think the situation is unfortunate, and we hope that the irregularities are cleared up, that the governance structure is put in place again and that we can continue to work together with them in the future,” Ms. Morbia said.
CFOB future in question
Mr. Kyi said Mr. Maung pioneered Myanmar’s democracy movement in Canada.
He said he is concerned about the independence of CFOB since its survival depends on funders, and some of them have conflicting interests with the group.
He said the structure of the CFOB needs to be reformed and that the organization needs to be less dependent on a few major funders.
“I’m hoping we can sort things out and come to some understanding where the organization can move forward, but at the moment it’s not functioning,” Mr. McLeod said.
“I think that’s a real tragedy because it was functioning for 20 years consecutively,” he said.
Until CFOB can reorganize itself, it is “pretty much defunct,” he added.
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