m.khin1 – International Reporting

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Photo essay: Myanmar Credentials Campaign. Myanmar community in New York hosted a… | by May Khin | Oct, 2022 | Medium

The Myanmar community in New York held a “Credentials Campaign for Kyaw Moe Tun” on Sep. 17. in front of the United Nations headquarters.

The campaign’s purpose is to voice the community’s concerns on the U.N. accreditation for Tun as the ambassador for Myanmar.

Tun was elected as the U.N. ambassador in 2018 and held the position since but due to the changes in government representation for Myanmar, the U.N. deferred the decision to accredit Tun as the official ambassador for Myanmar.

The U.N. accreditation committee will not hold a meeting until December and as a direct result of the deferred process, the Myanmar community is protesting and raising awareness to the international communities during the week of the General Assembly.

Myanmar has been fighting for democracy through protests and demonstrations to show opposition to the Myanmar junta since the coup d’etat in February 2021.

The Chairman of New York City Burmese Community (NYCBC) Nay Tin Myint is in charge of holding campaigns, protests and fundraisers in New York City.

“We are voicing for Kyaw Moe Tun to be the ambassador for Myanmar during the 77th U.N. General Assembly, to inform the international communities about our voices,” said Myint. “Tun is a leader the community looks up to, respects and desires as the representative, to fight for democracy for our country.”

“We held three meetings on Aug. 14., Aug. 20., and Aug. 28., to hold a global campaign and community leaders globally took leadership in organizing this campaign,” said Myint. “We want to hold one campaign with the same purpose at the same time in different locations and we called it one campaign, one poster, one global.”

Myint said they chose New York City and specifically the U.N. headquarters as the location to hold the campaign because Tun resides in New York and it is the location of the U.N. General Assembly.

“We marched from the Flatiron plaza to Times Square to the headquarters and the Myanmar community from 15 states attended and showed support,” said Myint. “Some traveled from Texas and California to attend the campaign and this illustrates the dedication of the Myanmar communities across the United States.”

The purpose of holding the campaign during the General Assembly week is to inform the high level officials at the U.N. who are attending the General Assembly.

Myint said Cambodia marched together with the Myanmar community and they also received support from Japan.

“We got support from Cambodia and Japan,” said Myint. “Some progress with the ASEAN leaders is our success of the campaign.”

Myint said the NYCBC sent out an official statement to nine countries participating in the Credentials Campaign and the statement has three initiatives.

“The three goals are to recognize the National Unity Government (NUG) as an official government,” said Myint. “To recognize Tun as the official ambassador and to stop all the violence in Myanmar.”

Myint emphasized how black money in Myanmar from the junta is supplying weapons which are killing Myanmar people.

“We are trying to stop the flow of black money in Myanmar which is used to buy weapons and causes violence in the country,” said Myint. “We have informed the U.S. Congress about the issue and hope to stop the violence in Myanmar. We want to stop the death of innocent citizens from these weapons.”

The Spring Revolution Band leader Min Han was in charge of the audio during the campaign performances.

“Audio is the most important thing during a campaign and I made sure the sound was smooth and perfect throughout the whole campaign,” said Han. “We collaborated with the Myanmar community from Buffalo for the performances.”

In July of this year, two political leaders from the National League for Democracy (NLD) were executed and this is the first hanging in 50 years in Myanmar history.

Phyo Zeya Thaw (41) and Kyaw Min Yu (53) also known as Ko Jimmy were executed in July.

There was a re-enactment on the hanging of political leaders by the Buffalo Myanmar community during the campaign.

The song they requested to be heard as their final wish was performed during the re-enactment.

“We want to send a message through performance, whether it is singing or theater, because language can be a barrier,” said Han. “We want to let the whole world know about the hanging of our political leaders recently.”

Community leader Nay Lin Tun said it is important for the Myanmar community to continue voicing for Tun to be officially acknowledged back to his original position.

“I believe we will win, we will continue to fight until he gets his position back because it was his seat to begin with,” said Tun. “We will not let the Myanmar military fill up the positions as they wish because we do not tolerate military dictatorship.”

“The Spring Revolution has been going on for two years but we will continue fighting until we get democracy,” said Tun. “And until all the violence ends, we will make sure the junta will not rule with dictatorship to our people.”