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Myanmar: Re letter to Min Aung Hlaing ahead of the UN Transforming Education Summit in New York

August 12th, 2022  •  Author:   386 Civil Society Organizations  •  7 minute read
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12 August 2022

To:
Amnesty International
Avaaz
Campaña Latinoamericana por el Derecho a la Educación
Defense for Children International
Global Campaign for Education
Human Rights Watch
KidsRights
Malala Fund
Plan International
Save the Children
World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP)
World Vision International

Re: Letter to Min Aung Hlaing ahead of the UN Transforming Education Summit in New York

386 civil society organizations are writing to you, outraged by the letter your organizations co-signed on 11 August 2022 in which you addressed Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as “Prime Minister of the Government of Myanmar”. The letter sent to Min Aung Hlaing ahead of the United Nations Transforming Education Summit in New York also addressed sanctioned individual Wanna Maung Lwin as “Minister of Foreign Affairs” and Kyaw Zeya as “Ambassador Extraordinary” to France and “Permanent Delegate” to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

This is an affront to the people of Myanmar who have sacrificed their lives to resist the Myanmar military’s attempt to seize power through a brutal and illegal coup.

Min Aung Hlaing is not the “Prime Minister” of Myanmar, he is the leader of an illegal coup attempt. The military junta is neither a legitimate government of Myanmar nor can it be said to control several key functions of the government. They must not be referred to and addressed as the representatives of the state of Myanmar.

Min Aung Hlaing and his murderous band of military generals has killed 2,189 and detained 12,000 people since 1 February 2021. They hold no legitimacy in the eyes of the Myanmar people. Rather, this letter should be sent to the National Unity Government of Myanmar which is formed on the basis of the 2020 elections results.

Several of these organizations work or have worked in Myanmar, purportedly to improve the lives and rights of the people of Myanmar. By issuing a letter that potentially bestows a misguided sense of legitimacy onto the junta is an abrogation of responsibility that these organizations have to their ‘beneficiaries’.

We demand that you withdraw this letter and make a formal public apology for the gross mistake and misrepresentation. Furthermore, this letter must be submitted to the National Unity Government who are the only entity that can legitimately represent Myanmar at the UNESCO education conference.

The gravity of the situation also calls for an internal investigation by the signatory organizations. It is imperative that such mistake do not occur again.

We await your swift action and response to this letter.

For more information, please contact:

Sincerely,

Signed by 386 civil society organizations, including 230 groups who have chosen not to disclose their names:

  1. Actions Against Myanmar Military Coup (Sydney)
  2. All Arakan Students and Youths’ Congress
  3. ALTSEAN-Burma
  4. Arakan Rivers Network (ARN)
  5. Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition
  6. Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
  7. Association of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
  8. Association of United Nationality in Japan (AUN)
  9. Association Suisse-Birmanie (ASB)
  10. Athan – Freedom of Expression Activist Organization
  11. Ayeyarwaddy Youths’ Union
  12. Basic Education Student Unions Network
  13. Blood Money Campaign
  14. Burma Human Rights Network
  15. Burma Refugee Saving Association (B.R.S.A)
  16. Burmese Women’s Union
  17. Chin Community of Japan (CCJ)
  18. Chin MATA Working Group
  19. Chin Resources Center
  20. Chin Youth Organization of Japan (CYO-JP)
  21. Colorfulspring (ရောင်စုံနွေဦး)
  22. CRPH, NUG Support Team Germany-Deutschland
  23. Dawei Development Association – DDA
  24. Dawei Youths in Japan (DYJ)
  25. Dawna Tenasserim – IDPs Supply Force
  26. Democracy, Peace and Women’s Organization
  27. Digital Rights Collective
  28. Doh Atu – Ensemble pour le Myanmar’
  29. Dragon Dawn
  30. Educational Initiatives Prague
  31. Equality Myanmar
  32. European Karen Network (EKN)
  33. Federation of Worker’s Union of Burmese Citizens in Japan (FWUBC)
  34. Free Rohingya Coalition
  35. Future Light Center
  36. General Strike Committee of Nationalities (GSCN)
  37. General Strike Coordination Body – GSCB
  38. GenY For Revolution Japan
  39. Global Myanmar Spring Revolution
  40. Global Myanmar Spring Revolution – Japan
  41. Grass-root People
  42. Green Network (Myeik)
  43. Heroes Behind Bar
  44. Hope For Youth -Kyushu Japan
  45. HTY Scout Channel
  46. HKASHI (သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်းကျင် နှင့် သယံဇာတများကို ချစ်မြတ်နိုးသောအဖွဲ့)
  47. Human Rights Foundation of Monland
  48. India For Myanmar
  49. Information & Scout News (Hlaing)
  50. Initiatives for International Dialogue
  51. Insein Scout Channel
  52. Inter Pares
  53. Interfaith Youth Coalition on Aids in Myanmar (IYCA-Myanmar)
  54. International Society of Myanmar Scholars and Professionals (Japan)
  55. Japan Myanmar Future Creative Association (JMFCA)
  56. Japan Myanmar Help Network – JMHN
  57. Justice For Myanmar
  58. Kachin Affairs Organization -Japan (KAO (Japan)
  59. Kachin Gender Star Group
  60. Kachin Women Activist Group
  61. Kamayut Scout Channel
  62. Kansai Group Japan
  63. Karen Human Rights Group
  64. Karen National League Japan
  65. Karen Peace Support Network
  66. Karen Swedish Community (KSC)
  67. Karen Women’s Organization
  68. Karenni Civil Society Network
  69. Karenni National Society (KNS)Japan
  70. Kayan Internally Displacement Supervising Committee (KIDSC)
  71. Kayan Women’s Organization
  72. Keng Tung Youth
  73. KnowUsMoreMyanmar (KUM)
  74. Kobe Myanmar Community (KMC)
  75. Kyauktada Strike Committee (KSC)
  76. Kyimyindaing Scout Channel
  77. Land In Our Hands
  78. Lanmadaw,Latha & Pabedan Scout Channel
  79. League For Democracy in Burma (L.D.B Japan)
  80. LGBT Alliance Myanmar
  81. LGBT Community Yangon
  82. LGBT Union Mandalay
  83. MASBO-Myanmar Active Students & Businesspeople Organization
  84. Mayangone News
  85. Metta Campaign Mandalay
  86. MilkTeaAlliance Calendar
  87. Minority Affairs Institute – MAI (Myanmar)
  88. Mon Youth For Federal Democracy (MYFD)
  89. Monywa LGBT Strike
  90. Muslim Youth Network
  91. Myanmar Action Group Denmark
  92. Myanmar Alliance for Transparency and Accountability
  93. Myanmar Development Support Group (MDSG)
  94. Myanmar Nationalities’ Support Organization – JP (MNSO)
  95. Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)
  96. Myanmar Spring Revolution Japan (MSRJ)
  97. Myanmar Tozan Club (MTC)
  98. Netherlands Myanmar Solidarity Platform
  99. Youth and Student Association, Japan (MYSA)
  100. Myanmar’s Youth Association Hokkaido (MYAH)
  101. Network for Human Rights Documentation Burma (ND-Burma)
  102. New Rehmonnya Federated Force
  103. NOK Information & Scout Echo
  104. North Dagon & East Dagon News
  105. Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica
  106. Okinawa Myanmar Association (OMA)
  107. Olive Organization
  108. Palaung National Society Japan, PNS-Japan
  109. Palaw Supporting Group Japan
  110. People’s Hope Spring Revolution (PHSR)
  111. Progressive Voice
  112. Punnyakari Mon National Society Japan, PMNS-Japan
  113. Revolution Tokyo Myanmar (RTM)
  114. Second Tap Root
  115. Shan Community in Japan (SCJ)
  116. Shan MATA
  117. Shizu Youth For Myanmar
  118. Shwe Pyi Thar News
  119. Sisters 2 Sisters
  120. Sitt Nyein Pann Foundation
  121. Sone See Yar (Volunteer Group)
  122. South Dagon Scouting Infos (SDG)
  123. Southern Youth Development Organization
  124. Spring Revolution Interfaith Network-SRIN
  125. Spring Revolution Myanmar Muslim Network-SRMMN
  126. Spring Revolution Restaurant
  127. Synergy – social harmony organization
  128. Tai Youths Network Japan (TYNJ)
  129. Tamwe Nway Oo Channel
  130. Tanintharyi MATA
  131. Tanintharyi Nationalities Congress
  132. Tanintharyi People Voice
  133. Thaketa & Dawbon Scout Channel
  134. Thanlyin Information & Scout channel
  135. Try Together At Japan (TTAJ)
  136. Union of Karenni State Youth
  137. Union of Myanmar Citizen Association – Japan
  138. U.S. Campaign for Burma
  139. Voice For Justice
  140. We Are One Saga MOSA
  141. We for All
  142. We Support
  143. White and Green
  144. Women Activist Myanmar
  145. Women Alliance Burma (WAB)
  146. Women’s League of Burma
  147. Yangon Medical Network
  148. Yaw Funding Japan
  149. Yokohama Pamphlet Campaign – Myanmar
  150. Youth Scout For Democracy (YSD)
  151. Z Fighter News
  152. Zeegwat News
  153. ဂျပန်ပြည်မှတွဲလက်များ
  154. တနင်္သာရီအခြေစိုက်ကျောင်းသားသမဂ္ဂများကွန်ရက်
  155. ပွင့်ဖြူလယ်ယာမြေကွန်ရက်
  156. 一般社団法人 ミャンマーグローバル支援財団 (MGSF)

***We have received overwhelming support for the letter. Below are list of additional organizations that have signed-on to the letter after its sent

  1. Ah Nah Podcast – conversation with Myanmar
  2. Arakan CSO Network
  3. Arakan Humanitarian Coordination Team- AHCT
  4. Asian Democracy Network (ADN)
  5. Association Suisse-Birmanie
  6. Basic Education General Strike Committee – BEGSC
  7. Basic Education Workers’ Union Steering Committee
  8. Burma Action Ireland
  9. Burma Support
  10. Burma Task Force
  11. Burmese Canadian Network (BCN)
  12. CDM Support Team Mandalay (CSTM)
  13. CRPH & NUG Supporters Ireland
  14. CRPH Funding Ireland
  15. Democracy Movement Strike Committee – Dawei
  16. Democratic Youth Council
  17. Future Thanlwin
  18. Info Birmanie
  19. International Association, Myanmar-Switzerland
  20. Justice Movement for Community (Innlay)
  21. Kachin State Civilian Movement
  22. La Communauté Birmane de France
  23. Mandalay Civil Society Organizations
  24. Mandalay Engineer Group
  25. Mandalay Engineer United Force
  26. Muslim Youth Union
  27. Myanmar Emergency Fund – Canada
  28. Myanmar People in Ireland
  29. Myanmar Teachers’ Federation
  30. Myaung Education Network (မြောင်ပညာရေးကွန်ရက်)
  31. Myaung Medical Team (နွေဦးရောင်နီဆေးအဖွဲ့)
  32. Network for Advocacy Action
  33. Rohingya Youth Association
  34. Save and Care Organization for Ethnic Women at Border Areas (SCOEWBA)
  35. Shatjam Revolution Journal
  36. Technological Teachers’ Federation
  37. Tenasserim Student Unions’ Network
  38. The Helpers for Perfect Democracy (HPD)
  39. Universities Kachin Literature and Culture Association – Yangon
  40. Youths for Community-YfC Myaung
  41. MIIT ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  42. LGBTIQ (လိင်စိတ်ခံယူမှုကွဲပြားသူများ) သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  43. ကျန်းမာရေးမိသားစု – မန္တလေး
  44. ချမ်းမြသာစည်မြို့နယ် လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  45. စိန်ပန်း သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  46. တမ္ပဝတီ လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်
  47. တိုင်းရင်းသားလူငယ်များ အထွေထွေသပိတ်ကော်မတီ
  48. တိုက်ကွမ်ဒို အားကစားအသင်း
  49. ဒေါင်းစစ်သည်
  50. ပညာရေးမိသားစု (စစ်အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင်ရေး ပညာရေးစစ်ကြောင်းများ ချိတ်ဆက်ညှိနှိုင်းရေးကော်မတီ)
  51. ပုဂ္ဂလိက မူကြိုဆရာ၊ ဆရာမများအဖွဲ့
  52. ပြည်ကြီးတံခွန်သပိတ်
  53. ဘုရားကြီး ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  54. ဘာသာပေါင်းစုံ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  55. မဟာအောင်မြေမြို့နယ် စုပေါင်းလူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  56. မန္တလေးလူငယ် သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  57. မန္တလေး ကုန်စည်ဒိုင်သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  58. မန္တလေးမြို့အခြေစိုက် လူထုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်
  59. မန္တလေးမဟာမိတ် သပိတ်တပ်ပေါင်းစုစစ်ကြောင်း
  60. မန္တလာတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူများသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  61. မန္တလေးတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသား ကျောင်းသူဟောင်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  62. မန္တလေး၊ တက္ကသိုလ် ဒီဂရီ၊ ကောလိပ် ဆရာ၊ ဆရာမများ၊ ဝန်ထမ်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  63. မြတောင် သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်
  64. မြန်မာ့မီးရထား တိုင်းအမှတ် (၃) CDM ဝန်ထမ်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  65. မျိုးဆက်-Generations
  66. သံဃသမဂ္ဂ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  67. သမဝါယမတက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသူ၊ ကျောင်းသားများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  68. သပြေညို သတင်းလွှာ
  69. အ.ထ.က (၇) ကျောင်းသူ၊ ကျောင်းသားဟောင်းများ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  70. အ.လ.က (၁၂) ထခွဲ၊ အခြေခံပညာကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂ (အ.က.သ)
  71. အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး)
  72. အဖမ်းဆီးခံပြည်သူများ ကိုယ်စားပြုသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  73. အောင်ပင်လယ် ပင်မသပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း
  74. အောင်မြေသာစံ ပညာရေးကျောင်းပေါင်းစုံ သပိတ်စစ်ကြောင်း

***Additional 23 undisclosed organizations endorsed.


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