Civil Society

Many philosophers, politicians and writers have defined civil society according to their own
perspective and thinking. In fact, civil society is a distinct public sphere of organization,
communication and reflective discourse and governance among individuals and groups that take
collective action deploying civil means to influence the state and its policies but not capture state
power and whose activities are not motivated by profit.

The civil society mainly deals with public action and public affairs. It comprises of all voluntary
and associations and commercial groups. The people feel connected through these associations
and basically they do not wait for government action. They can act as pressure groups and
influence government policies. Some civil society organizations have registration with the
government and have a strong relation with the government.

The government can monitor the registration of civil society and also give assistant to complete
certain task which could be accomplished by them. Chin Community in Norway (CCN) is one
among those thousands and thousands of registered civil society. The main purpose of CCN is to
have unity in paving way to find solution for different issues related to Chin community and to
have mutual understanding with Norwegian community. The organization is mean to serve in
protecting the identity of Chin in this very multicultural society in Norway.

The civil societal organizations are regarded as one of the pillars of democracy and they are very
much useful for the people as their main concern is for the welfare of the people. The civil
society and democratic administration are closely related to each other. The democratic
government protects the civil society and in turn some civil society organizations strengthen the
functioning of the state.

In Burma/Myanmar, the civil society organizations are completely control by dictatorial regime
and thereby violated the political rights of all the individual groups. The common people are not
entitled to enjoy the political, cultural and social rights. These undermine the very basic human
rights in having freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religions which are the
fundamental ingredient of civil society. Burmese regimes used to unmorally act swiftly against
civil society that can grip the power of the military!