THE JOINT STATEMENT OF WORLDWIDE MON COMMUNITES ON THE
56th ANNIVERSARY OF THE MON NATIONAL DAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2003
Mon lunar calendar. Over fourteen
hundred years ago, on this very day, the
Hongsawatoi Mon kingdom was born. As such, our benevolent
Mon leaders
meaningfully organized for the
benefit of all Mon people. The worldwide
celebration of Mon National Day
began in 1947 and it honors the founding of
the peaceful Hongsawatoi,
established in 1116 of the Buddhist Era or 573 AD
Common Era, located in the south-eastern
parts of
commemorate our people’s history,
our cultural lineage and tradition.
Serving as a reminder of our ancient cultural lineage, Mon
National Day
reunites our people, rekindles
their spirits, and preserves their original
traditions of, dress, dance, food,
and conduct. In essence, the celebration
of Mon National Day intends to
reawaken cultural and political awareness,
ceremoniously, in memory of
Hongsawatoi.
oppressive military leaders
occupied and attacked, directly inflicting
horrifying atrocities against
innocent people without any regard for life or
for what the Mon people had given,
in terms of both social and economic
contribution. This great loss of
precious human life and culture was nothing
short of genocide. The shattering
end of the Mon nation signified the end of
a thriving, peaceful, and wonderful
culture, in
remaining Mon people, without any
rights to neither speak their indigenous
language nor acknowledge their own
history and cultural lineage, live in
fear for their lives, and live
under the discrimination of the masses of
people and are under a violent,
racist, merciless military dictatorship.
former secretary general of the
United Nations, said, “the last Mon is
dead.” This event happened in a
United Nations conference on the minority’s
issues in
recognition of Mon people’s
political rights on the premise that there are
“no differences between Mon and the
Burmese people”. Since 1757, oppression
and violence against the Mon people
has not ceased. Mon ancestors, striving
resolutely, vigorously fought, in
self-defense, against the
government from 1948 to the present
time.
the decisions and overriding
policies of its military dictatorship
government. In the face of the fact
that
sector are extremely wealthy, the
public remains under tyrannical toil and
in disease and poverty. In order to
maintain its position of power, and to
control and deteriorate
the government intentionally
prevents the development of democratic
institutions or movements; such
social-progress is a direct threat to the
relevant social and economic
elites. With precise and deliberate calculating
inactions and actions, on the part
of the government, the political reality
of utter oppression and tyranny, in
worsens.
systematically dismantled the
democratic forces and divided ethnic
nationalities with conniving
meticulousness. The SPDC abolished The Mon
National Democratic Front (MNDF), which took part in the
1990 general
election and won a substantial
amount of seats in the area. The SPDC
sentenced our leaders, Nai Ngwe
Thein, Dr. Min Soe Lin, and Dr. Min Kyi Win
to long terms in prison without any
regard to their poor worsening health
condition.
Monland, having merited basic news coverage, certainly are
matters of public
knowledge, regrettably the majority
of the global populace is not aware of
these atrocities. The SPDC
has conducted land confiscation of approximately
five thousand acres of Mon people’s
land for the purpose expanding
ethnic-cleansing military bases and
for other purposes. The
government has plundered entirely
the most fundamental human rights to
freedom and self-determination;
manipulating and stealing by fraud and by
force anything and everything that
they wanted; therefore, ensuring that the
restoration of social, political,
and economical, justice for people in
struggle, anticipating a peaceful
life and the exercise of our rights as
human beings and as Mon. Our
objective is to stop those responsible for the
crimes against humanity in
internationally.
For the purpose of working toward and achieving the goals
stated below, we
request that the international
community come together in support and in
solidarity for:
The release of
Mon leaders and all political prisoners in
and the immediate halting of
military-regime land confiscation in
The holding of a
tripartite dialogue, comprised of democratic
groups, of ethnic nationality
groups, and of the military regime itself,
The withdrawal of the Burmese army from the ethnic
nationality areas and
halting of forced labor and forced
portering and relocation and the granting
of unrestricted access for the
International community to all detention
centers and ethnic areas in
reported,
The institution of global public awareness of the
discrimination of Mon
native people in both
people are subjected to, by racist
people both in
intend to the restrain, insult, and
bring under control the Mon native
tongue, its dialectical features,
accents, and colloquialisms.
The institutions of Mon people’s rights to assemble,
organize, and protest
peacefully and the allowance to
practice Mon literacy, Mon traditional and
cultural activities in
Committees and organizations
1. Association of Finn-Mon
2.
3. Mon Cultural Society,
4. Mon Health Community, Monland
5. Mon National Council,
6. Mon National Day Celebrating
7. Mon National Day Celebrating
8. Mon Unity
9. Mon Workers
10. Mon Workers
11. Mon-Canadian Association,
12. Monland Restoration Council (MRC),
13. Overseas Mon National Students Organization,
14. Overseas Mon Organization,
15. Overseas Mon Organization,
16. The Steering Committee of the Mon National Day,
17. Mon Youth
18. Mon Migrant Women Network
*********************************************
Posted by
KAO WAO NEWS GROUP
Email: kaowao@hotmail.com
Phone + 66 -1 561-0860, + 1- 403- 248 2027
On line archive at
http://www.burmalibrary.org/show.php?cat=1215&lo=d&sl=0
Online
ABOUT US
Kao-Wao Newsgroup is committed to social justice, peace, and
democracy in
help to promote lasting peace and
change within
writers, and overseas volunteers
are dedicated members of the Mon activist
community based in
and change.