on his website<\/a> expressing his \u201cdeep regret\u201d at the situation. He says that last June he participated in a human rights and rule of law panel which was joined by Aung San Suu Kyi during her European trip.<\/p>\nHe alleges UBD punished him by withdrawing financial and institutional support 24 hours before his flight to London and forced him to take personal leave and to pay for the US$3000 flight himself. He says UBD also warned him not to use the university\u2019s name during LSE\u2019s roundtable discussion and panels, and to be \u201cpurely academic\u201d \u2013 \u201c[s]omething which, given the political role of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, is entirely impossible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Upon his return to UBD, he was warned that \u201ceveryone is watching you\u201d, and told to restrict his work to non-Myanmar issues or purely academic papers.<\/p>\n
His resignation attracted some attention around the region, with Steve Lai, a presenter at Channel NewsAsia, tweeting: \u201cThis makes me sad.\u201d Similarly, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim tweeted: \u201cLet the world know about the resignation of Dr Maung Zarni.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Maung Zarni said that he had never made any secret of his political and human rights activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI simply could not countenance allowing my employer to intimidate me into professional silence on unfolding human rights atrocities and war crimes against Myanmar\u2019s Muslims and ethnic minorities in Burma on account of a monthly pay check,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact I am the only Burmese academic who is researching, publishing and speaking out against what the Organisation of the Islamic Conference\/Cooperation (OIC) officially refers to as \u2018genocide against the Muslim Rohingya\u2019 in western Burma committed by the collaborating political and social forces, namely the Rakhine \u2018Buddhists\u2019 and the government of Burma itself,\u201d Dr Maung Zarni added.<\/p>\n
UBD had also shown displeasure at his writing on Myanmar\u2019s transition for the National University of Singapore and being invited by Channel NewsAsia to debate democratisation in Myanmar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel that with Brunei taking over the chair of ASEAN, my ability to function in the immediate future with professional integrity will be compromised beyond the levels which I am prepared to accept,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Mawkun magazine, Dr Zarni criticised Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for not taking a stand over Kachin, where, he said, the Kachin Independence Organisation is fighting not for an independent state but \u201cequal rights\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has accused the Tatmadaw of engaging in conflict in Kachin State so that Chinese projects could proceed, and said Myanmar people should be aware of China\u2019s influence in their country.<\/p>\n
The university did not respond to email requests for comment last week.<\/p>\n
Go to Original \u2013 mmtimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr Maung Zarni, co-founder of the Free Burma Coalition, quit the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), saying it is \u201cimpossible to maintain his professionalism\u201d and blaming \u201cextreme and unprofessional academic censorship\u201d. Zarni, a \u201cstaunch advocate of unconditional human rights, as well as ethnic and gender equality,\u201d is also a visiting fellow with the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics, and the author of Life Under the Boot: 50 years of Military Dictatorship in Burma (Yale University Press).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,56,200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members","category-asia-pacific","category-academia-knowledge-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}