McLean Rotary Club President Robert Jansen presented Myanmar Ambassador to the U.S. Aung Lynn with a small token of appreciation for speaking at his club’s meeting: A “Rotary Flavors of the World Cookbook” that contained a collection of more than 400 recipes from Rotary clubs from more than 150 countries. Photo by Fallon Forbush.
An ambassador is someone who talks about bread to a baker, meat to a butcher and — in the presence of both baker and butcher — he talks about sandwiches.
This was how McLean Rotarian Tin Tin Nu Raschid introduced her keynote speaker, Aung Lynn.
She invited the Myanmar Ambassador to the United States to speak to the Rotary Club of McLean in the fellowship hall of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer on Chain Bridge Road during the club’s monthly luncheon meeting on Tuesday, July 25.
“We come from the same country and same university, only 23 years apart,” Raschid joked as she welcomed her guest to the microphone.
This was Lynn’s first time at a Rotary Club meeting.
“There was a time where Rotary Club was established and developed and flourished in our country, but one period of the country was isolated from the rest of the world, so the activities of Rotary Club were suspended,” he said during his speech.
“Now the country has changed and we are now building a democratic country, I think that Rotary Club can thrive in our country,” he said. “This is what I see the future of our country.”
Lynn was appointed to his official title, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar to the U.S., on July 18, 2016.
He became ambassador after Myanmar made great strides in improving living conditions for its citizens.
Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi met with former President Obama at the White House for the first time in her official capacity on Sept. 14, 2016 — after more than a decade of house arrest.
The country had experienced change over the previous five years, during which time it moved from a military government to a new, democratically-elected government through free and fair elections in November 2015, when Kyi was elected. The new officials were inaugurated in March 2016.
Citing progress the county has achieved over recent years, Kyi asked Obama to lift sanctions that the U.S. placed on her country.
Obama responded by revoking the country’s sanctions program and restoring trade benefits to Myanmar. “Now we are working to promote more trade and economic relations between the two countries,” Lynn said.
Now that the country is independent, its struggle for peace continues.
The 21st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference process, which began on Aug. 31, 2016, and had its second six-day conference in May 2017, invited all of the country’s ethnic armed organizations to work towards a nationwide peace pact with the government.
“Our government has reached agreement with eight armed groups to sign a ceasefire agreement,” Lynn said. “We are still working with the remaining armed groups to sign the ceasefire agreement.”
This is not Lynn’s first trek outside of his home country.
He was a consul from 1987 to 1992, where he worked to protect and promote the citizens and interests of Myanmar in Hong Kong.
Lynn’s early work wasn’t in foreign affairs or diplomacy, but geology.
After he earned his bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Yangon in Myanmar, he joined the country’s government in 1982 as an assistant engineering geologist in the country’s Ministry of Irrigation. He then moved to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs the following year.
“I am a child of a foreign service officer,” Lynn said. “I spent my childhood years in China and Japan. I had the chance to come back to the foreign service again when I grew up.”