ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့အပတ္က စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ဘေလာ့ဂ္တခုကေန (တျခား သြားပုတ္ေလလြင့္ ေျပာေနတဲ့ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ေတြလည္း ပါတာေပါ့) ဧရာဝတီ ေသၿပီ ဆိုၿပီး ဘန္ေကာက္ ဒိန္းမတ္ သံရံုးရဲ႕ စာကို လိုက္ျဖန္႔ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ့ သံရံုးနဲ႔ ဧရာဝတီၾကား အခ်င္းခ်င္း အျပန္အလွန္ ဆက္သြယ္မႈ ဘယ္လိုေပါက္ၾကားသြားတယ္ ဆိုတာ သံရံုး အမႈထမ္းေတြပဲ သိမွာပါ။
စာထဲမွာ ပါတဲ့ အခ်က္အလက္ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား မွားယြင္းေနတာေၾကာင့္ တေၾကာင္း၊ ဧရာဝတီ စာဖတ္ပရိသတ္နဲ႔ မိတ္ေဆြေတြက စိုးရိမ္တာေၾကာင့္ တေၾကာင္း ဧရာဝတီအေနနဲ႔ အခုစာကို ပရိသတ္သိရေအာင္ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္ရပါတယ္။
NEWS
In Response to the Danish Embassy
It has come to our attention that an email was sent by the Danish embassy to participants prior to The Irrawaddy donors' meeting held almost two weeks ago in Bangkok.
The letter was leaked to the Burmese regime's blog post (See link: http://padaukmyay.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_1952.html) and some groups inside Burma.
The letter contained several factual errors.Since then, we have received letters and enquiries from our readers and colleagues expressing concern, sympathy and solidarity with our predicament.
We have decided to respond publicly to the Danish embassy's letter. We sent a copy of this letter to our donors last week. This week, we decided to publish it on our website and our online blog.We also will inform the highest ranking Danish officials in Copenhagen on this matter.
Our response in full:
It has come to our attention that an email was sent by the Danish Embassy to participants prior to The Irrawaddy donors' meeting held last week in Bangkok.We wish to express our disappointment with this email communication—which we feel is entirely unprofessional, and the content and timing is both erroneous and inflammatory.We are aware of the Danish Embassy's disappointment with Irrawaddy’s income generation efforts but are bemused that you are withdrawing support now that we have developed a Business Plan which aims for some success in this area. Whilst we may not have met your expectations for self-generated income within three years, we believe we have made significant progress in this area and aim to work on this in the future.We do however consider that the main measure of success for Burmese exiled media is in fact the reach, quality and impact of our information—not the degree of our self-sufficiency. Indeed we do rely on donor support as we are not a self-funding business entity.The reality of exiled media is that we aim to use scarce donor funds in an efficient way to produce professional, timely information and promote democratic change in Burma. We welcome the chance to be a self-funded independent media agency when we can return to Burma and we continue to work towards this goal.We would like to clarify some misconceptions in the email from the Embassy:
We have employed 62 staff in 2010 due to the increased workload and funding support to cover the elections in this vital year for Burma. In total, 20 people work in Burma, 7 people work as regional correspondents, and 35 work in our office in Chiang Mai.
Travel by all Irrawaddy staff, including senior staff, is undertaken according to specific written travel policies and procedures.
Please note that the print magazine is just one of 10 media products that we publish, including online, radio and multi-media aimed at reaching millions of people worldwide and in Burma.
The insinuation that Irrawaddy mismanages donor funds is offensive and incorrect – we consistently provide comprehensive, transparent, financial reporting on staff travel and all of our organizational activities and expenses.
We would like to acknowledge the support from the Danish Government for The Irrawaddy over many years and note our extreme disappointment at the poor level of communication from the Embassy.
We have been very fortunate to work with many donors who value and understand the nature of exiled media and its important role.
Whenever news matters on Burma, we know that our readers, including donors, come to The Irrawaddy to look for independent analysis and critical reporting on Burma.
Regards,
Aung Zaw
Editor
The Irrawaddy
Dear Ko Aung Zaw,
Please do not mention this kind of link in your Irrawaddy website anymore.People who wrote those kind of comments are disgrace for our Country.Please just ignore them,negelect them.