The Full Text of the Oslo Communique on Myanmar (Burma)

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 1 Jun 2015

Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service

norway-conference burma myanmar rohingya

Today (28 May, 2015) the Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingya ended. The conference was held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen, Oslo, Norway on May 26 & 27, 2015.

After two days of deliberations the conference issue the following urgent appeal to the international community, based on the following conclusions:

  1.  The pattern of systematic human rights abuses against the ethnic Rohingya people entails crimes against humanity including the crime of genocide;
  2.  The Myanmar government’s denial of the existence of the Rohingya as a people violates the right of the Rohingya to self-identify;
  3.  The international community is privileging economic interests in Myanmar and failing to prioritize the need to end its systematic persecution and destruction of the Rohingya as an ethnic group.

The call by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to end Myanmar’s genocide of the Rohingya made during the Oslo conference is supported by six additional Nobel Peace Laureates: Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams, Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

The United Nations and the international community have an urgent responsibility to stop Myanmar’s systematic persecution of the Rohingya.

As the home country of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the conference urges the Government of Norway to immediately prioritize ending Myanmar’s genocide over its economic interests in that country, including sizable investment by Telenor and StatOil.

The conference calls upon the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the United Nations (UN) and other relevant international actors to take all possible measures to pressure the Government of Myanmar to do the following:

– to immediately end its policies and practices of genocide;

– to restore full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingya;

– to institute the right of return for all displaced Rohingya;

– to effectively provide the Rohingya with all necessary protection; and

– to actively promote and support reconciliation between communities in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

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Dr. Maung Zarni, Associate Fellow, the University of Malaya, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press. He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years. Visit his website http://www.maungzarni.net.

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