Statement by Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun at Informal briefing by Special Envoy on Myanmar (26 Feb 2021)

Statement by Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar to the United Nations at the Informal briefing by Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar to the United Nations General Assembly

(New York, 26 February 2021)

Mr. President,

I thank Special Envoy Ms. Christine Schraner Burgener for her comprehensive briefing and her continued support towards Myanmar.

First and foremost, I would like to make it clear and reaffirm that I am representing the NLD led civilian Government elected by the people of Myanmar. Right after the Military coup, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Parliament) (CRPH) was formed on 5 February with some members of parliaments democratically elected by the people of Myanmar at the recently held free and fair general elections. In this regard, Mr. President, I am honoured to deliver the message of the CRPH at this august meeting.

I quote “+ + + + +” unquote.

Mr. President,

As the democracy in Myanmar is at the nascent stage, the free and fair general elections successfully held on 8 Nov 2020 in Myanmar is indeed a significant milestone in our history. It was set by the people. The people of Myanmar had shown their eagerness and attachment to democracy through their ballots at the elections. They had also demonstrated their desire to build a nation where all the democratic values can be flourished, a place where each and every peace loving individual can play a role in that nation building. The landslide victory of the National League for Democracy at the general elections clearly manifested that the people of Myanmar are solidly united behind State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to overcome any obstacle in our journey to a peaceful and prosperous society where democratic values will become a norm.

Mr. President,

Ignoring entirely the people’s desire, the Tatmadaw (Military) staged a coup on 1 February 2021. That was the day that the new Parliament supposed to convene its first meeting. The Military detained State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other political leaders and social activists. Since then, people have come out on the streets all over the country and expressed their disappointment with the military coup as well as demanded the immediate release of all detainees and return the state power to the people through the elected government. The people of Myanmar are resilient and determined for achieving the demands. I agree with the Secretary-General that the military coup is not acceptable in this modern world and the coup must fail.

The people of Myanmar are resilient, perseverance and united in fighting for the end of military coup, immediate release of all unlawful detainees, return of state power to the people and restoration of democracy in Myanmar. It is attested to by the ongoing persistent protest since the military coup on 1 February 2021. It is clear for all of us that we all do not want to go back to the system we used to have before. Here, I wish to recall the words of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said in her inspiring book, “Freedom from fear”. I quote “Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day.” Unquote.

At this important juncture, the continued and strong support from the international community is imperative for the people of Myanmar for our fight against the military regime. Taking this opportunity I would like to thank all countries who have expressed their support as well as the Secretary-General, the Special Envoy and the Special Rapporteur for their support.

However, in addition to the continued support, we still need strongest possible action from the international community to immediately end the military coup, to stop oppressing the innocent people, to return the state power to the people, and to restore the democracy. As such I would like to appeal all member states and the United Nations as follows:

1. Issue public statements to denounce the military coup;

2. Do not recognize by any mean the State Administration Council and its regime;

3. Urge the military regime to respect the result of the free and fair 2020 general elections;

4. Do not cooperate with the military until the return of the state power to the people through the elected government;

5. Take all strongest possible measures to stop the violent and brutal acts committed by the security forces against peaceful demonstrators and end the military coup immediately;

6. To support the CRPH.

In conclusion, Mr. President, we will continue to fight for a government which is of the people, by the people and for the people. The people and the NLD led government will double our efforts to make the country a democratic federal union. I wish to request the international community to extend their continued support in this regard.

Mr. President,

I believe that our fellows Myanmar people inside and outside the country are following this meeting via webcast with high interest. Please allow me to speak few words in Myanmar.

ညီ အစ်ကို မောင်နှမများ နှင့် ညီနောင်သားချင်းများ ခင်မျာ၊ မိမိတို့ ဆောင်ရွက်နေတဲ့၊ စစ်တပ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှု ချက်ချင်းအဆုံးသတ်ရေး၊ မိမိတို့ခေါင်းဆောင် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၊ သမ္မတကြီး ဦးဝင်းမြင့် နဲ့ အခြား မတရားထိန်းသိမ်းခံထားရသူများ ချက်ချက်လွှတ်ပေးရေး၊ နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာ ပြည်သူထံ ပြန်လည်ရရှိရေး၊ ဒီမိုကရေစီ ပြန်လည်ရရှိရေး နဲ့ ဒီမိုကရက်တစ် ဖယ်ဒရယ် ပြည်ထောင်စု တည်ထောင်ရေး ဒီအရေးတော်ပုံ ကြီး အောင်မြင်ရေးကို မိမိတို့ အလွှာအသီးသီးမှ ပြည်သူပြည်သားများအားလုံး စည်းစည်း လုံးလုံး ညီညီ ညွတ်ညွတ် နဲ့ အတူတကွ ဆက်လက်ဆောင်ရွက်သွားကြဖို့ မေတ္တာရပ်ခံ တိုက်တွန်း အပ်ပါတယ်ခင်များ၊ ဒီအရေးတော်ပုံ မုချအောင်မြင်ရမည်ဖြစ်ပါသည်ခင်များ၊

အရေးတော်ပုံ - - - အောင်ရမည်။

I thank you, Mr. President.

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Message of Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Union Parliament) (CRPH) to the Informal Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on 26 Feb 2021