Democracy for Burma

SYDNEY EVENT - Sean Turnell Address 9th July 2024

In this address Professor Turnell will discuss the circumstances leading to his imprisonment, including the serious economic challenges facing Myanmar when he took up his consultant position in 2016 and his courageous efforts with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's government to address the situation until she and her government were overthrown and she too was imprisoned. He will describe how he not only survived his lengthy incarceration, but left with his sense of humour intact and his spirit unbroken.

He will assess the current situation in Myanmar and what the future might hold.

For 650 days Sean Turnell - an Australian economist and former special economic consultant to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi - was jailed in Myanmar on the trumped-up charge of being a spy. In his recently-published book An Unlikely Prisoner he recounts how a cheerful professor of economics, whose idea of an uncomfortable confrontation was having to tell a student that their essay was 'not really that good', ended up for nearly three years in one of the most notorious prisons in South-East Asia.

REGISTER TO ATTEND USING LINK BELOW

https://aiiansw.glueup.com/event/an-unlikely-prisoner-sean-turnell-reflects-on-myanmar-112391/

Position Vacancy: Program Coordinator for Myanmar Crisis Response

ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) was founded in June 2013 with the objective of promoting democracy and human rights across Southeast Asia.

APHR is looking to hire a Program Coordinator for Myanmar Crisis Response to support the organization’s response to major human rights crises and emergencies across the ASEAN region. The Program Coordinator for Myanmar and Crisis Response will identify advocacy opportunities and implement reactive strategies to empower parliamentarians to respond effectively and in a timely manner to human rights crises and situations of conflict with particular focus on Myanmar. The Program Coordinator for Myanmar and Crisis Response will also work on refugees and migrant issues in the region.

APHR is a regional network of current and former parliamentarians who use their unique
position to advance human rights and democracy in Southeast Asia. We seek to help create a
region where people can express themselves without fear, live free from all forms of
discrimination and violence, and where development takes place with human rights at the
forefront.

Representing a unique and strategically focused addition to the regional and international
human rights framework, APHR is supported by a young and dynamic team of human rights
professionals that make up the Secretariat, with staff currently based across the region. As part
of a member-driven organization, the Secretariat also works directly with legislators and
political leaders in Southeast Asia and beyond to craft strategies and respond effectively to
developing situations.

Contract duration: 12 months (with 3 months’ probation)
Location: Remote, preferably in Thailand.
Line Management: The Program Coordinator for Myanmar and Crisis Response will report directly to the Executive Director.
Deadline for applications: Saturday, 15 June 2024.

Send your CV and cover letter to [email protected] with the subject heading “Application: Program Coordinator for Myanmar and Crisis Response”

Job Vacancy: Program Coordinator for Myanmar and Crisis Response APHR is looking to hire a Program Coordinator for Myanmar Crisis Response to support the organization's response to major human rights crises and emergencies across the ASEAN region

Recruitment | IIMM Recruitment Vacancies for jobs, consultancies and internships with the Mechanism are posted on the UN’s online recruitment platform. In order to be considered, applications must be submitted through this platform. Jobs Jobs with the Mechanism are located in Geneva, unless otherwise indicated. The ...

Excerpt: "During eight months of SAC rule, all of the country’s economic indicators have become flashing red lights.

The junta leader’s import-substitution and industrialisation policies are relevant for the medium to long-term but they cannot address the immediate and worsening economic crisis.

The financial crisis is the result of a lack of trust and confidence in the economy, particularly private banks. The reason for this is the Tatmadaw’s seizure of power, and restoring confidence would almost certainly require a return to the status quo ante – a political settlement that enables the National League for Democracy to return to office.

Another possible solution is a massive injection of international funds – a bailout, essentially – but the Tatmadaw’s power grab and the human rights abuses it has inflicted over the past eight months mean there is little appetite to provide monetary assistance through the SAC.

Only the restoration of democracy and a legitimate government will unlock the international assistance Myanmar needs to alleviate the crisis."



https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/the-economics-behind-min-aung-hlaings-grand-delusions/

The economics behind Min Aung Hlaing’s grand delusions Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has attracted ridicule for airing grand development plans at a time when the economy is in crisis, but even the regime’s more rational economic goals are unlikely to be achievable.

Justice For Myanmar urges targeted sanctions against the entire Htoo network in order to prevent financial and arms support for the illegal Myanmar junta. 27th Sept 2021.

https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/htoo-groups-business-with-the-myanmar-military

Htoo Group’s business with the Myanmar military | Justice For Myanmar Justice For Myanmar urges targeted sanctions against the entire Htoo network in order to prevent financial and arms support for the illegal Myanmar junta.

Excerpt: "According to the US-ASEAN Business Council in early September, the number of military defections had doubled over the last month, reaching 1,500 from about 800 in June.

Captain Tun Myat Aung, was one such defector who switched sides after being sickened by the violence. “Soldiers no longer see the people as people...Whether people are protesting or in an armed rebellion, they are seen as destroying the state,” he said. “What [the army] is doing is a war crime.”

https://www-telegraph-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/17/teenagers-rounded-massacred-myanmar-junta-seeks-suppress-revolt/amp/

Teenagers rounded up and massacred as Myanmar junta seeks to suppress revolt Subscribe now to save over 85%... Enjoy your first four months for just £3 Unlock unlimited access to telegraph.co.uk, plus the latest news updates and daily newspaper in our app. Cancel anytime. Start free trial Myanmar's military junta massacred teenagers, mutilated their bodies and burned down h...

Excerpt: "The deal involved an arrangement in which U.N. member states would agree to put off any discussion in the U.N. Credentials Committee of the military junta’s diplomatic status until after the U.N.’s annual diplomatic jamboree. In the meantime, Kyaw Moe Tun, who has faced death threats since publicly breaking with the military regime, has agreed not to address the assembly during the session or sit in Myanmar’s seat in the General Assembly. In the telephone interview, Kyaw Moe Tun did not confirm whether Myanmar’s seat will remain empty during the high-level debate. But he said, “now, everything is OK with regard to my security.”.

"This behind-the-scenes diplomacy sheds light on how the United States and its allies are seeking to maintain pressure on the ruling junta in the aftermath of the military coup that ousted the elected government in February. It also reflects how seemingly simple logistical matters—such as who gets credentials to speak at an event—can turn into tricky diplomatic battles at the United Nations. The agreement to freeze the military junta out of U.N. deliberations also provides fresh evidence that the United States and China are looking to find areas of diplomatic cooperation, even as they clash over a range of other matters..."


https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/13/myanmar-united-nations-china-biden-general-assembly/

U.S. and China Reach Deal to Block Myanmar’s Junta From U.N. The informal deal offers common ground with Beijing and a blow to Myanmar’s hopes of legitimacy.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-07/myanmar-shadow-government-declares-resistance-war-against-junta/100441070

'A public revolution': Myanmar's shadow government declares resistance war against junta Myanmar's National Unity Government, formed by opponents of the country's military coup, urges all citizens to revolt against the junta government in a Facebook video.

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/atrocious-myanmar-military-at-risk-of-splitting-army-defectors.html

Atrocious Myanmar Military at Risk of Splitting: Army Defectors The regime’s atrocities against protesters have become a push factor for some military personnel to join the Civil Disobedience Movement.

https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/26/calculated-response-coalition-moves-to-protect-future-fund-from-foi-laws?__twitter_impression=true

‘Calculated response’: Coalition moves to protect Future Fund from FOI laws The push comes less than a year after it was revealed the fund invested in an Adani company that had dealings with the Myanmar military

Excerpt: "It took ASEAN four months to appoint an uninspiring Bruneian diplomat as its special envoy to Myanmar. But it has still not put any significant pressure on Myanmar's military regime and has avoided high-level talks with the country's ousted democratic leaders. The organization's response is certainly lamentable. It is not, however, surprising." - Ben Bland.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Weak-and-inadequate-ASEAN-yet-remains-indispensable

Weak and inadequate, ASEAN yet remains indispensable Myanmar crisis highlights the limits of the 10-member bloc's ambitions

Summit for Democracy - 9-10 December 2021

"Democracy and human rights are under threat around the world. Democracies — whether in transition or established for decades — are confronting serious challenges from within and outside of their borders. Public distrust and the failure of governments to deliver equitable and sustainable economic and political progress has fueled political polarization and the rise of leaders who are undermining democratic norms and institutions. Across the globe, weak state capacity, tenuous rule of law, high inequality, and corruption continue to erode democracy. At the same time, authoritarian leaders are reaching across borders to undermine democracies – from targeting journalists and human rights defenders to meddling in elections all while claiming their model is better at delivering for people. Hostile actors exacerbate these trends by increasingly manipulating digital information and spreading disinformation to weaken democratic cohesion."

Source: https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/

The Summit for Democracy - United States Department of State Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. February 2021 Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has made clear that revitalizing democracy in the United States and around the world is essential to delive...

Myanmar protesters mark pivotal 1988 uprising anniversary Myanmar protesters on Sunday marked the anniversary of a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that brought Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence, with flash mobs and marches of defiance against the ruling junta.

သြဂုတ်လ သည် စစ်တပ်အုပ်ချုပ်မှုကိုဆန့်ကျင်သော ၁၉၈၈ လူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှု၏ ၃၃ နှစ်မြောက်နှစ်ပတ်လည်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထိုအချိန်ကဗြိတိသျှသံအမတ်သည် Martin Morland ဖြစ်ပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအကြောင်းကို ကောင်းစွာသိရှိသူဖြစ်ပါသည်။ သူသည် ၁၉၅၀ နှစ်နှောင်းပိုင်းတွင်တတိယအတွင်းဝန်အဖြစ် ရန်ကုန်သို့ ရောက်ရှိခဲ့ပြီးမြန်မာစကားပြောတတ်သူလည်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထို့နောက် ၁၉၈၆ မှ ၁၉၉၀ အထိမြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ ဗြိတိသျှသံအမတ်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့ပြီး ၁၉၈၈ ဒီမိုကရေစီလှုပ်ရှားမှုများအပေါ် စစ်တပ်ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သောအကြမ်းဖက်မှုများကို မျက်မြင်တွေ့ရှိခဲ့သူလည်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။

လွန်ခဲ့သည့် ဆယ်စုနှစ်အကျော်တွင် ဖြစ်ပေါ်ခဲ့သော ၁၉၈၈အရေးတော်ပုံကို ကြုံတွေ့ခဲ့သော Morland က -"...မြို့တွင်းမှာ ရက်စက်စွာပစ်ခတ်မှုတွေဖြစ်ခဲ့ပြီးလူများစွာသေဆုံးခဲ့ပါတယ်။ရန်ကုန်မြို့အနှံ့မှာလည်း စစ်တပ်များလှည့်လည်ပြီး လူများကိုပစ်ခတ်တဲ့မြင်ကွင်းတွေ၊ လူ့ခန္ဓာကိုယ်၊အလောင်းတွေကို သယ်ဆောင်သွားတဲ့မြင်ကွင်းတွေ နေရာအနှံ့မှာ ရှိနေတဲ့ဆန္ဒပြပွဲတွေ အစရှိတဲ့ရှုပ်ထွေးနေတဲ့ မြင်းကွင်းတွေဟာ နောက်နှစ်ရက် သုံးရက်ကြာတဲ့ အထိရှိနေခဲ့ပါတယ်"လို့ ပြောခဲ့ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ်တွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ စစ်တပ်ကထပ်မံအာဏာသိမ်းခဲ့သဖြင့် Morland ၏မှတ်ချက်များသည် ယခုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွက် တဖန်ပြန်လည်လာသောစကားသံများဖြစ်ပါသည်။စစ်တပ်၏ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်မှုနှင့်ဖိနှိပ်မှုများကို ရင်ဆိုင်နေရသောမြန်မာလူမျိုးများ၏ရဲရင့်မှုများအတွက် ကျွန်တော်တို့ထပ်မံအံအားသင့်ရပါသည်။
ယနေ့မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏လက်ရှိနိုင်ငံရေးအခင်းအကျင်းနှင့်ကိုက်ညီရန်အဖြေတစ်ခုကိုကျွန်တော်တို့ရှာဖွေနေစဉ် Martin Morland ၏ကိုယ်တွေ့အတွေ့အကြုံများသည်ထိုအချိန်ကကဲ့သို့ပင်အရေးပါနေဆဲဖြစ်ပါသည်။
"နိုင်ငံသည် အဆိုးဆုံးအကျိုးသက်ရောက်မှုကိုချက်ချင်းခံစားရမှာမဟုတ်ဘဲ နောင်လာမယ့် နှစ်တွေမှာ အရည်အချင်းရှိတဲ့ဆရာဝန်တွေ၊ အင်ဂျင်နီယာတွေ၊ ရှေ့နေတွေရှိတော့မှာမဟုတ်ပါ။ နိုင်ငံအပေါ် အကျိုးသက်ရောက်မှုက တဖြည်းဖြည်းချင်းခံစားရမှာဖြစ်ပေမဲ့ ဒါကကြောက်စရာကောင်းပါလိမ့်မယ်။ ထိုကဲ့သို့ပုံစံမျိုးနဲ့ဆက်သွားလို့ မရဘူးဆိုတာကို စစ်တပ်ထဲမှ တစ်ဦးတစ်ယောက်ကသိရှိပြီး ပြန်လည်သင့်မြတ်ရေးကိုမဖြစ်မနေလုပ်ဆောင်ရမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ” ဟု ၁၉၈၈ ကျောင်းသားလှုပ်ရှားမှုကို ဖြိုခွဲခြင်းနှင့် ပတ်သက်ပြီး Morland က ပြောခဲ့ပါသည်။
၈ ရက် ၈လ ၁၉၈၈တွင်ဖြစ်ပေါ်ခဲ့သော လူထုအုံကြွမှု အရေးတော်ပုံ နဲ့ အတူမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် လွတ်လပ်သောဒီမိုကရေစီ ရရှိရေး၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး၊ လွတ်လပ်သောရွေးကောက်ပွဲနှင့် ပိုမိုတရားမျှတသောဘဝတို့ကိုရရှိရန် တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ရင်းအသက်ဆုံးရှုံးခဲ့ရသူများကို ယနေ့မှာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ အမှတ်ရမိပါသည်။ ၁၉၈၈ ခုနှစ်တွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ပြည်သူများ ဖိနှိပ်ခံရမှုအတွက် ယူကေအစိုးရက ရပ်တည်ပေးခဲ့ပြီး ယခု ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် တွင်လည်းပြည်သူများနဲ့အတူ ဆက်လက်ရပ်တည်သွားမှာဖြစ်ပါသည်။မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်ဒီမိုကရေစီစနစ်ကို မဖြစ်မနေပြန်လည် ဖော်ဆောင်ရမှာဖြစ်ပါသည်။

August marks the 33rd anniversary of the 1988 uprising against military rule. The British Ambassador at that time was my predecessor Martin Morland. He knew the country well. He had been posted to Yangon as Third Secretary in the late 1950s and spoke Burmese. He then returned as Ambassador from 1986 to 1990, and witnessed the military crushing the democracy movement in 1988.
Reflecting ten years afterwards on the events of 1988 Morland said: "...there was brutal shooting and a lot of people were killed and for the next two or three days it was a mixed scene, with army bands roaming round Rangoon, shooting people, taking the bodies away, demonstrations springing up here, springing up there...".
Morland's comments have a particular resonance in Myanmar today in 2021, as once again, the military have seized power in Myanmar. And, once again, we are inspired by the bravery of the Myanmar people in the face of brutality and oppression.
As we look towards a solution to fit today’s Myanmar and the current political landscape, Martin Morland's reflections remain as important now, as they were then.
As he said of the crushing of the 1988 student movement: "The worst effect, and it won't be felt immediately, is that in X years' time there will be no doctors who were qualified in these years, there will be no engineers, there will be no lawyers. The effect on the country will be felt gradually, but it will be nonetheless awful for that. And one would hope that somewhere in the army there will be people who realise that you simply cannot carry on like this, that you must do some kind of a reconciliation..."
Today we remember the 8th of August 1988 Uprising and all those who lost their lives fighting for their democratic freedoms, human rights, free elections and a fairer way of life in Burma for all. We stood by the peoples of Myanmar against oppression in 1988, and we will continue to stand in solidarity and support with all the peoples of Myanmar today in 2021. Democracy in Myanmar must be restored.

Today on the 33rd anniversary of the uprising against the military dictatorship in Burma on the 8.8.88. We remember all those who have sacrificed so much for democracy and freedom.

The recent attempted military coup highlights how fragile democracy is an how much we can learn from the 88 generation.

I met many of the 88 generation students who came to Australia as refugees and it helped change the course of my life. I’ve had a long association with the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma and I am confident the criminals who have tried to take control of the government in Burma wont succeed.

I’ll be attending the online event today at 2pm via the National Unity Government support group details in comments.

"A Day of Unity That Must Live On" – Contributed by Khin Ohmar (The Irrawaddy) It has been 22 years since 8.8.88, but the memory and spirit of that fateful day still lives on vividly in my heart, and the heart of so many activists inside and outside Burma. Even to this day, I…

Excerpt: "The State Department said Sherman spoke with Zin Mar Aung, who has been appointed acting foreign minister in the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) for Myanmar, also known as Burma."

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-state-dept-no2-sherman-speaks-with-myanmar-shadow-government-2021-08-04/

U.S. State Dept. No.2 Sherman speaks with Myanmar shadow government The No.2 U.S. diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, spoke on Wednesday with a representative of Myanmar's government in exile, the first announced contact between a senior U.S. official and the rival administration to the generals who overthrew a democratically elected government.

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United Nations Secretary-General welcomes the appointment of Erywan Yusof, Second Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brunei Darussalam as Special Envoy of the ASEAN Chair on Myanmar. This appointment is an important step towards the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus adopted at the ASEAN Leaders Meeting on 24 April.

UN Secretary-General renews his urgent call to the country's military to respect the will of the people, refrain from acts of violence and repression, and act in the interest of peace, sustainable development and human rights. As Myanmar is facing growing humanitarian needs and the devastating impact of Covid-19, the United Nations is focusing its efforts, in cooperation with international and regional partners, notably ASEAN, to provide humanitarian and life-saving assistance. The Secretary-General reiterates his call to ensure full and unimpeded humanitarian access to those in need.

https://melbourneasiareview.edu.au/myanmars-human-rights-crisis-justifies-foregoing-neutrality-for-a-solidarity-based-approach-to-humanitarianism/

Myanmar’s human rights crisis justifies foregoing neutrality for a solidarity-based approach to humanitarianism | Melbourne Asia Review The human rights crisis in Myanmar justifies a solidarity-based approach to the provision of international aid.

Breaking: After months of division and a final meeting today, ASEAN foreign ministers have appointed Erywan Yusof from Brunei as special envoy to Myanmar, sources tell Reuters. Myanmar backs down after favouring Thai candidate.

Source: https://twitter.com/tom_allard/status/1422804050706272257

Tom Allard on Twitter “Breaking: After months of division and a final meeting today, ASEAN foreign ministers have appointed Erywan Yusof from Brunei as special envoy to Myanmar, sources tell Reuters. Myanmar backs down after favouring Thai candidate. ”

Top Myanmar General Says Military Rule Will Continue Into 2023 https://nyti.ms/3xhZvos

Top Myanmar General Says Military Rule Will Continue Into 2023 Six months after seizing power, the junta’s leader on Sunday extended a state of emergency for two more years. Protesters said they would persevere.

https://www.facebook.com/148604588516366/posts/4365942590115857/

Remarks at a UN Security Council Arria-Formula Meeting on Burma | United States Mission to the United Nations The United States remains committed to helping vulnerable persons from Burma seeking protection and assistance, including Rohingya, and is the leading contributor of humanitarian assistance in response to the Rakhine State and Rohingya refugee crisis. But the long-term crisis in Rakhine cannot be ad...

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/after-months-failed-talks-asean-under-pressure-appoint-envoy-2021-08-01/

After months of failed talks, ASEAN under pressure to name Myanmar envoy Foreign ministers from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are under pressure to appoint a special envoy to Myanmar this week after months of negotiations failed to find a consensus candidate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58045792?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=facebook&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=58045792%26Myanmar+emergency+extended+with+coup+leader+as+PM%262021-08-01T11%3A12%3A44.731Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn%3Abbc%3Acps%3Acurie%3Aasset%3Ac6737952-2027-422b-a9b1-4266f12b95ce&pinned_post_asset_id=58045792&pinned_post_type=share

Myanmar: State of emergency extended with coup leader as PM Gen Min Aung Hlaing takes on the new title and says emergency rule may last until August 2023.