An activist group referred to as Justice for Myanmar that has been protesting the army takeover of the Myanmar authorities is urging worldwide audit establishments to finish all their engagement with the federal government’s auditor normal.
The army overthrew the democratically elected authorities final February and jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The brutal crackdown on protests has continued into this yr with mass arrests of demonstrators and atypical residents, and studies of indiscriminate torture and killing, with complete villages being burned down and decimated. The U.S. authorities has leveled sanctions towards Myanmar officers.
By way of auditing, Justice for Myanmar identified that regardless of the coup, the ASEAN Supreme Audit Establishments (ASEANSAI) and the Worldwide Group of Supreme Audit Establishments (INTOSAI) have acknowledged and engaged with the Myanmar authorities’s auditor normal all through 2021. In November, the pinnacle of Myanmar’s Workplace of the Auditor Normal grew to become chair of ASEANSAI for a two-year time period. The Myanmar army additionally deposed Myanmar’s earlier auditor normal and appointed Dr Kan Zaw, a former deputy minister throughout the army’s earlier proxy authorities led by the Union Solidarity and Growth Celebration. The group stated the army’s appointment of Dr. Kan Zaw breaches the Lima Declaration of Tips on Auditing Precepts and the Mexico Declaration on SAI Independence.
Docs be a part of a protest towards the army coup in entrance of the Chinese language Embassy on February 12, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar.
Getty Photographs
The group additionally desires Norway and Sweden to sever their ties. It stated ASEANSAI’s growth companions, the Workplace of the Auditor Normal of Norway and the Swedish Nationwide Audit Workplace, have continued to have interaction with the Myanmar army’s auditor normal by way of ASEANSAI, by offering coaching and technical assist. The Swedish Nationwide Audit Workplace and a consultant of a Norway-based INTOSAI program attended the ASEANSAI Summit that was convened by the army on November 2, in keeping with the group.
“The Myanmar army junta is a terrorist group that’s finishing up mass killings, rape and torture with whole impunity,” stated Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung in an announcement Wednesday. “Engagement and assist for the junta’s auditor normal has emboldened the junta’s terror marketing campaign and offered legitimacy that the junta is desperately looking for. ASEANSAI and its member states have did not uphold human rights and respect the need of Myanmar individuals by recognizing the junta’s auditor normal and permitting him to imagine management. INTOSAI has additionally deplorably did not respect human rights and the precept of independence of supreme audit establishments by formally recognising the junta. We name on ASEANSAI and INTOSAI to right away stop recognition of the Myanmar army junta and bar its representatives from participation in all occasions. We welcome the EU’s place to not take part in, or assist, ASEANSAI whereas it’s below the management of the Myanmar army junta. Norway and Sweden should comply with the EU’s lead and finish all contact with the unlawful junta, together with its auditor normal.”
Final November, the group efficiently pressured a number of accounting organizations, together with the Institute of Administration Accountants, CPA Australia, the Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand, and the Japanese Institute of CPAs to withdraw from a regional accounting convention they had been scheduled to attend in Singapore the place Kan Zaw was the visitor of honor (see story).