Joint Statement on the 248th Anniversary of the Fallen Day of Mon Sovereign Kingdom, Hongsawatoi

 

May 31, 2005

Today is the 248th anniversary of the fallen day of our sovereign Mon kingdom, known as Hongsawatoi or Pegu, which covered the whole of today's Lower Burma. The Mon kingdom was invaded and occupied by the alien Burman on the 8th waning day of the second month of the year 1110 of the Mon/Burmese lunar calendar (Christian Era 1757). After the annexation of our Mon kingdom, the blood-thirsty Burman king, Alaung Paya, cold-bloodily exterminated tens of thousands of non-combatant innocent Mon people, including countless women and children, in several stockade-inferno-holocausts. More than 3000 Mon Buddhist monks were also executed in various most cruel methods, including the forced trampling by elephants. The extermination of the Mon people by the Burman king was tantamount to the destruction of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War. The escape the genocidal operations of the Burman king, hundreds of thousands of the then populace fled into neighboring Siam (Thailand) for asylum.

Among the present inhabitants of Burma today, the Mon are the oldest. They arrived in Burma as early as 2500 B.C. The Mon people had established their own sovereign kingdoms and enjoyed freedom and prosperity for so many centuries. Since the fall of our last kingdom, our Mon people have been left without a country through the present time. Naturally, restoration of our lost Mon nation is our highest and ultimate political goal. While we do not forget our lost Mon nation and the atrocities committed by the Burmese king, we do support the establishment of a genuine democratic federal Union of Burma, where the ethnic Burman and non-Burman peoples will all equally enjoy freedom and self-determination.

On this tragic day, we strongly urge the ruling Burmese military regime, State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), to:

  1. Stop immediately the ethnocentric Burman rule and all forms of discrimination against the ethnic non-Burma people;
  2. Stop immediately all its human rights violations in the country, including its large-scale confiscation of land from our Mon farmers;
  3. Withdraw immediately all its troops from the ethnic non-Burman territories,  including our Mon area;
  4. Release all political prisoners, including the Burmese democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi;
  5. Rescind all the undemocratic and unjust laws, decrees and orders;
  6. Announce a nationwide ceasefire immediately;
  7. Negotiate with the democratic and ethnic opposition parties in a genuine Tripartite Dialogue as demanded by the peoples of Burma and recommended by  the United Nations.

 

Mon Unity League (Thailand)

Mon Canadian Society (Canada)

Monland Restoration Council (U.S.A.)

 

Contact:

mrc@mrc-usa.org