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Press Release:

Prime Minister Sein Win and Leading Burma Activists Arrive in Canada to Testify on Junta’s Escalating War Crimes

 

According to leading members of Burma’s pro-democracy movement arriving in Ottawa today, the Burmese regime is intensifying its war crimes against civilians in eastern Burma.

On August 27th the military regime’s attacks caused 30,000 ethnic civilians to flee into China. In the last 10 years, over 3,300 villages in eastern Burma have been systematically destroyed or depopulated by the Burmese Army.
Charm Tong, an internationally recognized human rights activist with the Shan Women’s Action Network, says, “Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent trial has once again put Burma under the international spotlight. Despite this the regime has decided to escalate attacks against civilians in our ethnic states. The regime is thumbing its nose to the world."   
Dr. Cynthia Maung, recipient of numerous international humanitarian awards says, “The regime’s abuses have not only forced hundreds of thousands to flee to Thailand but also led to over half a million villagers becoming internally displaced. Access to humanitarian aid for internally displaced people is blocked by the Burmese regime, forcing them to rely on community-based organizations for help.”

Dr. Maung’s Mae Tao Clinic, which treats more than 100,000 Burmese people every year on the Thai-Burma border, is one such organization as well as her Back Pack Health Worker Team, a group of mobile medical workers who are the only source of medical services for 175,000 displaced people in five of Burma’s border states.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has spent years studying the link between human rights abuses and the chronic health emergency in Eastern Burma. “These systematic campaigns in Burma's eastern ethnic regions have been marked by torture, extrajudicial executions and rapes of ethnic minority women and girls. The junta is creating humanitarian emergencies in its quest for control.”
Dr. Sein Win, Burma’s prime minister in exile, also denounced the junta’s actions. “The latest assault on our people is another example of the regime’s contempt for democracy and human rights. Its actions are not only destabilising our country but also the region”
All three activists and Prime Minister Sein Win will be in Ottawa, along with their colleague Naw K'nyaw Paw, as part of a visit coordinated by Canadian organization Inter Pares. They will be in Ottawa until October 2nd and are available for interviews about these human rights abuses and the continued need for humanitarian aid.

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For more information:
Rebecca Wolsak or Peter Gillespie, Burma program managers, Inter Pares
rwolsak@interpares.ca, pgill@interpares.ca, (613) 563-4801, ext. 146 (office), 613 797 4704 (mobile)
Inter Pares: www.interpares.ca

Inter Pares has been working with people from Burma since 1991. With the support of the Canadian International Development Agency, Inter Pares supports border-based institutions addressing Burma’s crises of health, human rights, and displacement, and promotes the leadership development of civil society organizations so they may contribute to building a peaceful future in Burma.

Biographies:
Charm Tong – internationally recognized human rights activist Available Sept 26th – Oct 2nd
Burma activist Charm Tong is an Advocacy Team member of the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN) and director of the School for Shan State Nationalities Youth (SSSNY), a school for refugee youth from Burma she founded at the age of 20. She has received numerous human rights awards, and was named one of Asia's Heroes by TIME Magazine in 2005 in recognition of her advocacy against the junta’s human rights abuses, particularly their systematic use of sexual violence against ethnic women in the ongoing war in Burma. She has addressed the United Nations several times since the age of 17, and was invited to the White House by President George W. Bush to discuss human rights and the future of Burma in October 2005.

Shan Women’s Action Network): www.shanwomen.org

Dr. Cynthia Maung, M.D. – award winning humanitarian and activist Available Sept 26th – Oct 2nd
I am extremely grateful to Dr Cynthia Maung. What she has done for our people, and what she has done for our country, has shown that we have people like her in our country – people who care and people who will build up the future of our country.
— Aung San Suu Kyi, upon Dr. Cynthia’s receipt of the John Humphrey Freedom Award
(http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3190/assk/asskmsg17.html)

Since fleeing her native Karen State in Burma during the pro-democracy uprising in 1988, Dr. Cynthia has tended to fellow refugees’ health needs. Over the past twenty years, she has built the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand, into a major health care and training centre. The Clinic provides comprehensive inpatient and outpatient medical care for three to four hundred people daily. It is a major training centre for health care providers and also offers services in prosthetics and rehabilitation, counselling and child protection. Dr. Cynthia is also the director of the Backpack Health Worker Team, which provides mobile medical services to over 160,000 displaced people in Burma. Dr. Cynthia has received many honours for the Clinic's humanitarian work, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award (known as the Asian Nobel Peace Prize), the John Humphries Freedom Award in Canada, and was recognized as an Asian Hero by TIME Magazine in 2003.

Mae Tao Clinic: www.maetaoclinic.org


 

Dr. Chris Beyrer, M.D., M.P.H – international expert on health and human rights
Available Sept 27th & 28th only
Dr. Chris Beyrer is the founder and Director of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University, which is engaged in research, teaching, and policy work on a range of public health and human rights issues. He has been active on health and human rights issues related to Burma, China and the region for over fifteen years; during this time he has done numerous briefings for the US Congress and for the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. He is the author and co-editor of numerous books on public health, human rights and conflict, and collaborated in the Backpack Health Worker Team’s landmark 2006 report Chronic Emergency: Health and Human Rights in Eastern Burma.

John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: www.jhsph.edu

 

Dr. Sein Win – Burma’s prime minister in exile Available Sept 28th, 29th and 30th only
Prime Minister Sein Win was elected as parliamentarian in Burma’s May 1990 election that saw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win more than 80 per cent of the vote. He and a group of fellow MPs left Burma in December of that year with a mandate to establish a government-in-exile until Burma’s Parliament was allowed to convene. Dr. Sein Win was elected as prime minister of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma – the government-in-exile currently based in Washington, D.C.

National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma: www.ncgub.net

 

Naw K'nyaw Paw –human rights activist Available Sept 26th – Oct 2nd
Naw K'nyaw Paw is a 28-year-old Karen woman who grew up in a refugee camp. She started working with the Karen Women’s Organization (KWO) in 1999 as a leadership trainer and later as a human rights and democracy trainer. She is a member of KWO’s advocacy team and sometimes travels to Geneva to present at the UN Human Rights Council to raise human rights, women and refugee issues. K'nyaw Paw was elected to the executive of KWO in 2008 and currently holds the position of Education Program Coordinator and director of their Emerging Leaders Program.

Karen Women’s Organization: www.karenwomen.org

 

 

32,000 Canadians calling for ‘Free Political Prisoners in Burma’
Coordinated campaign obtained almost 700,000 signatures worldwide

Ottawa (June 16, 2009) – over 32,000 Canadians have supported for the release of more than 2100 political prisoners in Burma including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi by signing an online petition. The unprecedented international campaign obtained 680,000 signatures within six weeks.

A delegation of former political prisoners and human rights activists from Burma is now in New York to deliver the petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today. They will also participate in a press conference hosted by Permanent Mission of the Czech Republic to the United Nations today at 3pm in United Nations Plaza.

“Political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, are the hope for democracy and future leaders of our country.  Their lives are at stake," said Tate Naing, a former political prisoner and Secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma).

Tate Naing, along with Khin Ohmar, Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Forum for Democracy in Burma, and Nyi Nyi Aung, whose mother and two cousins are serving jail terms of up to 65 years for their pro-democracy activities, is now in New York to deliver the petition to Ban Ki-moon. 

The UN Secretary-General is planning to visit Burma to press for the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. He is reported to have discussed a date for the visit with Burmese military authorities. The global petition urges him to secure the release of all Burma's political prisoners.    

The Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) encouraged supporters in Canada to sign the online petition in support of this international campaign.

CFOB applauds the efforts of Tate Naing, Khin Ohmar, Nyi Nyi Aung and the organizations they represent. Many in the Burma democracy movement including CFOB have been disappointed with the glowing terms that some senior UN staffs have used to describe the supposed progress that the Burmese military regime claims to have made. Ban Ki Moon and the UN must be reminded that the facts on the ground in Burma do not represent the military regime's propaganda.

CFOB Executive Director Tin Maung Htoo hopes that UN members will take the Burma issue seriously and push the UN to do more for Burma.

Tin Maung Htoo believes “the situation in Burma is very grave at this point, there are a huge number of political prisoners languishing in horrible conditions, as I speak there are many Karen refugees being killed in brutal military raids in Eastern Burma, in Chin state many are still suffering from a famine and in the Cyclone Nargis affected Irrawaddy delta area thousands are still homeless. All of Burma is suffering because of the brutality and incompetence of Burma's generals.”

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For media interviews, please contact:

Khin Ohmar, Forum for Democracy in Burma +1-240 4812482
Tate Naing, Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) +1 646-9205744
Aung Din, US Campaign for Burma +1 301-6020077
Ricken Patel, Executive Director of Avaaz +1 646 229 5416
Tin Maung Htoo Canadian Friends of Burma 1-613-297-6835

 

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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 since 1991.
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Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB)
145 Spruce St. Suite 206
Ottawa, ON   K1R 6P1
Tel: 613.237.8056
Mobile: 613.297.6835
Fax: 613.563.0017
Email: cfob@cfob.org
Website: http://www.cfob.org
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