The problem as always is the simplest one: whether or not I or Nick or anyone not Burmese thinks ethnicity is a bad way to construct notions of citizenship it is for the Burmese themselves to decide.
All indications are that all across Asia, ethnicity and ethno-cultural identities reign supreme, regardless of the hectoring of white folks who are “above” all that.
It’s almost as if “white supremacist” isn’t just a label for halfwit liberals to toss around in the vicinity of Donald Trump supporters and their fast-food addicted trailer trash kiddies.
The constant drone of neo-colonial “analysis” on this site has become beyond offensive to anti-imperialist sensibilities like my own.
Especially when it comes graced with arpeggios of “democracy democracy democracy” that disguise the deeper basso profundo growling “but only if it suits MY values.”
It is a cliché, but all identities are inventions some simply of longer lineage and durability than others. For example I doubt if the hypenated terms Asian-American or Sino-Thai existed 50 years ago. But of course, the reality of these communities did exist. So what if the Rohingyas called themselves, or rather classified themselves, as Bengali Muslims some time ago, the reality on the ground was that of a distinct community within Burma’s internationally recognized national borders. At what point to does a community become “indigenous”?
As Nick Farrelly argued a few months ago on NM there is a structural problem in Myanmar. In defining the limits of the seven states and seven districts /regions, ethnicity is of the outmost importance. The seven states are those of recognized ethnic ‘nationalities’ (often with distinct religious identities as well) and the seven districts/regions predominately Bamar. Ipso facto Burmese citizenship is linked to a homeland or at least a defined territory. Given these systemic parameters it is therefore totally logically for the Rohingya to demand possession of a territory as a prerequisite for citizenship, for this is structurally the way Myanmar is organized.
As Nick argued in his article – for which he was much reviled by the ‘usual suspects’ (cf supra) – it is the gordian knot between territory-ethnic nationality-citizenship that needs to be, if not broken, at least made more flexible.
Puta = whore, ina = mother and -ng is the ending for words otherwise ending in a vowel. Hence [your] mother [was a] whore. All sorts of excuses are being made -‘it’s just an expression’ for example. But so is ‘f**k off’ which, it appears is exactly what Duterte is saying.Just look at the mounting evidence.
– It wasn’t just that expression – he was referring to the US subjugation of the Philippines 118 years ago (though not to the displacement of indigenous peoples, including Moslems, by Christian resettlement in Mindanao so strenuously pushed by the Commonwealth Government in the 1903s).
– President Diuterte seems to have escaped sitting at dinner between Ban Ki Moon and Barak Obama and chatted to Medvedev instead
– -(as I have noted before) he has very friendly words for the Chinese and with a great deal of logic is prepared to talk bilaterally with them (since he openly admits, correctly, that trying to fight PTC would be a waste of time)
– he has places in his Cabinet for the left
– and yesterday he announced that he would follow an independent foreign policy and that he is ‘no fan of the US’ whilst praising China.
That looks to me very much like finding the answer to 2+2.
However, the question arises, can a country which receives five or six times as much in remittances from its ten million overseas citizens ($25 billion a year) than it does in foreign investments be particularly ‘independent’ in its foreign policy dealings? Certainly it can have a multilateral set of relationships, but independent ones?
I would suggest that the really important events of last two months in the Philippines have not been the anti-drugs campaign, significant though that is, but a potential shift in Filipino foreign relations which is on a par with the Brexit vote.
And like the latter, it will be let us say ‘interesting’ to see whether, and if so how, that potential is realised.
Indeed. I was somewhat put out that on learning of my spouse’s death from cancer, a Thai remarked that they must have done something bad in a past life! Then we have the fact most Thais don’t believe in ‘Survival’ (their being Theravada (no atman/soul rather than Brahman Buddhist (atman). But they’re notoriously hung up on ghosts. Weird race.
“Accept” not “except”. Dementia again. In addition, were I to suggest Mr Smith’s reasonable column, all manner of charges of racism and anti-Islam would pound me, as had happened already, and I find interesting only in my instance, when I echo Mr Smith and Mr Camroux, to some extent, I seem to be the chosen scapegoat for Western neo-Colonists of Myanmar. I am sure the name COHEN has nothing to do with it at NM.
It is truly amazing in a rush to condemn the obvious gun happy killing president, people hardly ever mention the West’s very one Thaksin or Mindanao changes of 30 years ago.
Excellent Iwan Sugiarto. I hope New Mandala publishes a major post by you. I’m perplexed by the sheer arrogant stupidity of many – though certainly not all – Australian attitudes towards Indonesia. Can ‘t we develop a wider, more sophisticated attitude than Ocker blind Bali binge ?
Was the article about Indonesia. No it wasn’t. Its unlikely that Jokowi will follow. Why? Deep down the Indonesians know that the West has a bias against Indonesia, and it can’t get away with things others can get away with whether Vietnam or the Philippines., especially after 1998 ironically.
The unrest in East Timor after the UN vote. 2000 East Timorese were killed as Indonesia withdrew. Duterte has killed more people in the last couple of months. What has happened? For that Indonesia had military aid suspended and more seriously faced an arms embargo. Philippines received both military and police aid from the US? When is that going to be suspended? The East Timor incident happened in a period when Indonesia was undergoing a messy period of transition to democracy.
Here is an article website about the difference in the way Australia reacts toward the treatment of cattle titled “beef and prejudice”
That is an authoritarian government who is prone to using Hind Gunships against protesting villagers.
The Thai government killed 100 protestors in Central Bangkok in 2010, many of them sniped from a far, including one foreign journalist. What happened? Nothing
This is how the world works. Indonesians are Muslims, brown and live next to Australia and Singapore, two developed countries. As I shown with East Timor, it doesn’t matter if the victims are white or not, what really matters is who is doing it. If Australians start seeing dead bodies of local drug dealers in Kuta (a magnate for drug dealers) would the Australians sit by and not complain? No there will be diplomatic protest.
Of course people are going to argue that West isn’t biased, even New Mandala is biased. Jokowi Cabinet reshuffle is picked apart, mole hills were turned into mountains. What is the difference between Wiranto and the current Philippines police chief, Del Rosa. Wiranto still gets a lot of flak for his rather sketchy and unclear role in East Timor. And here in this day and age, we have a police advocating for people to burn the homes of drug dealers. Interviews with death squads indicate the police are behind it.
And unlike Wiranto, what has Del Rosa done to further democracy in the Philippines? (again the previous article about Wiranto)
Do you really think Jokowi can get away with 1980s Petrus style killings let alone a 1965 style genocide? And second is crime/drugs a big issue in Indonesia. In 2014 campaign, drugs wasn’t a big issue, hardly mentioned at all.
ASSK has created this commission solely on account of Western pressure. The Burmese are fully capable of sorting out their own problems. I fail to see the value of ‘international scrutiny’. The West is hardly in a position to lecture others on refugees and human rights.
‘At the core of the Rohingya’s lack of rights is a dispute about the legitimacy of their claim to citizenship.’ Since the ‘Rohingya’ identity is an invention so is their claim for citizenship. Their struggle for an independent Islamic state in Arakan is completely illegitimate.
In my opinion, Myanmar should dismantle and remove all religious sites and infrastructure from Northern Rakhine state, deport all Bangladeshis into this region and cede it to Bangladesh. In exchange, Bangladesh can facilitate a population transfer of the Jumma people. Finally, Myanmar should follow India’s example and build a vast security fence along the Eastern bank of the Lay Mro river, complete with minefields.
The term “Rohingya” did not exist 20 years ago, though these Bengali Muslims have been migrating into Myanmar for 100 years or more (and are not indigenous. What matters is that they are NOT indigenous. Myanmar has NO INDO-ARYAN ethnic group that is indigenous. Now, mercantile Indians in Yangon came in with the British, but do not call themselves, GUJARATIS, SIKHS, PUNJABIS, TAMILS, but except the Burmese polity without whining. The “Rohingya” want special treatment egged on by bored Palestinian whiners who have found DASSK is a true Burmese patriot and not a Western toady. NAMES matter and so do demographics and origins. Bangladeshi Muslims should be deported from Myanmar, even it takes ten years. Bengali Muslim male sexual habits and Sheikh Hasina Wajed are NOT Myanmar’s problem.
i gather that Duterte used the Tagalog expression, ‘putang ina’, which can be translated ‘son of a bitch’. Unless I am mistaken, he didn’t say this in English, either in that hallowed form or as ‘son of a whore’.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi first visited Washington, Obama greeted him with the Gujarati expression that he had taken the trouble to learn, ‘kem cho?’, which means ‘how are you?’ So Obama had no grounds for objecting if Duterte insulted him in the vernacular, and not in English. I hasten to add that I don’t know Tagalog and stand to be corrected by those who do.
The significance of the creation of the Commission is the willingness of ASSK’s government to allow for international scrutiny. (Full transparency, my esteemed former colleague and former dean, Ghassan Salame, is, I gather, a member of the Annan Commission. )
Perhaps in neighboring Thailand the proud Siamese (who have always treated the Burmese with disdain) could learn something to be applied to southern Thailand? Certainly Thai-only attempts to end the ethno-islamic insurgency there have not born much fruit.
To return to the substance of the article, I do agree with the previous comment that this is a useful summary of the current situation, unlike heated polemics on the term Rohingya. Whether it is a recent term or not is, beside the point. Benedict Anderson, amongst others made the point long ago that identities are constructed and then take on legal/moral forms. For example there were no “Italians” before the reunification of Italy but a progressive movement of taking on that sense of being amongst Venetians, Milanese, etc…. Actually it is often the outsider (e.g. the British in what became Australia) who impose a category which then becomes integrated by the concerned population and ultimately a basis for their own identity. Ditto the Moros in the Philippines.
The dictatorship owes Suthep everything for their present position of power. They conspired with him to throw Thailand’s governance into chaos, and then peddled the lie that they rescued it. Like all criminals, they will be sorely tempted to knock off their big creditor. He has already squealed that he wasn’t getting his due, but went very quiet after that.
The article says that “the current national parliament is Myanmar’s first since independence without a single Muslim lawmaker.” This assertion has been repeated often by the media, but it’s not exactly true. During the Ne Win era, after the 1974 Constitution had been approved, there was a People’s Parliament, admittedly a completely toothless body whose election was not very democratic either, but a national parliament nonetheless. The People’s Parliament convened in four terms; the third didn’t have a single Muslim member, and the second one had just one (for Arakan/Rakhine State). Apparently, there’s no information on its members’ religion for the first and the fourth terms. (See the book by Yoshihiro Nakanishi, “Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution”, p. 187).
Anyway, small consolation that the only precedent of a Muslim-free parliament in post-independence Burma’s history is to be found during the Ne Win dictatorship…
The following statements are patently false because of the claimed basis of “ancient Buddhist doctrine of ‘merit’ (bun):
“The prominent place of the kha ratchakan in Thai society receives a subtle religious justification through the ancient Buddhist doctrine of ‘merit’ (bun). The poor are poor because of their lesser merit — that is accumulation of good deeds in past and present lives. Morally they are inferior to the wealthy, who are wealthy because of their superior merit (good deeds).”
“Indeed, majoritarian democracy—rule by ‘the people’—is problematic in Buddhist terms, since it means rule by people of low merit.”
While it is difficult to say what exactly ancient Buddhists believed about karma, taking the Pali Canon and historical evidence as guides, the karma of kha ratchakan is rather far more Hindu than Buddhist.
Early Buddhist karma and that of the Pali Canon can justify just about anything: poor man becomes rich, rich man becomes poor because karmic fruits depend on both past and present actions and one never knows when good or bad karmic fruits will ripen. Thus if a poor man becomes rich he is fully deserving according to this Buddhist system of karma and the same for the rich man becoming poor.
Early Buddhism is known to have been anti-class/caste system and the system of karma underlying it. The Buddha famously said that one is not born a Brahmin but rather earns the title with one’s meritorious actions in this life. The Buddha had redefined Brahmin to be a virtuous person according to his ethical system. Thus while one may be born into a privileged position/class because of past good karma, one’s new karma in this life will determine whether that person is actually “good people” or not. There are also cases of born good people in the Pali Canon not acting so good, most notably Prince Ajatasattu who killed his father King Bimbisara in order to take the crown. Indeed, Ajatasttu gained a kingdom, but in Buddhist terms he was morally corrupt and karmically doomed. Hardly an example for kha ratchakan to maintain good people are born and remain morally and karmically superior to lower classes.
Thai “good people” hold to a system of karma, almost certainly inherited from the predominately Hindu Khmer Empire royal court, in which one is born into a class and remains there for life with the duty to fulfill the dharma of that class. Kha ratchakan then are born good people and remain so for life regardless of what they might do because they are in essence superior to lower classes. This more Hindu karma serves as a much better ideology for a ruling class than Buddhist karma which undermines the essentialist and absolutist position of kha ratchakan. However, this Hindu based kha ratchakan karma has for centuries flowed into the general Buddhist beliefs of the Thai and so it would not be mistaken to say that this karmic system is present in Thai Buddhism. Like so many beliefs and practices of the Thai royal court and network monarchy (including the heavy Sanskritization of the Thai language) to find the roots of Thai karma one must look equally, or even more so, to Hinduism rather than to Buddhism for the source.
Whatever Philippine human rights groups may aspire to do, President Duterte seems to have found a new friend in his Indonesian counterpart. Jokowi has not been deterred from embracing his neighbour by the latter’s calling Obama ‘a son of a bitch’.
The use of this mild term, which would scarcely have served as a punctuation marker in any conversation in Nixon’s White House, almost prevented the Duterte-Obama bilateral meeting.
Yet how one would have appreciated it if Hillary Clinton had simply called Gaddafi a son of a bitch rather than urging Libyans to capture him or kill him, before going on to gloat over his disgusting murder! Similarly, if Bush had denounced Saddam Hussein as a son of a bitch and let the matter end there, the world would have been much better off. More frequent resort to expletives might bring about a more peaceful planet.
In his conversation with his big American brother, Duterte could have pointed out that, while Obama uses drones to exterminate assorted undesirables, the much poorer country that he himself has been elected to lead must get by with low-tech bullets to achieve the same goal. Besides, Duterte could have added, he only targets domestic ne’er-do-wells, and even the US has so far refrained from deploying drones to wipe out domestic targets.
Duterte is now reported to have recommended to Jokowi that Indonesian military pursuers of Philippine pirates ‘blow them up’ or ‘blow them off’, according to the Jakarta Post. This raises the question whether Jokowi will mimic Duterte’s extra-judicial methods of tackling drug trafficking. He may have noticed that, as far as I know, no foreign ambassadors have been withdrawn from Manila in protest at Duterte’s actions, in contrast to the reaction to Jokowi’s ‘legal’ executions of drug traffickers.
If Duterte succeeds in dragging Jokowi down to his level, it will seem like a replay of the ‘mysterious shootings’ of criminals that the Soeharto regime carried out thirty or so years ago. No foreign ambassadors had to pack their bags in those days either.
This is an excellent summary of the current situation and makes an important point – this is ultimately about protecting the basic human rights of a highly vulnerable population.
(New Mandala’s resident rascist Peter Cohen can be relied on to chip in with his bigoted anti-Muslim comments. He’s best ignored.)
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Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
The problem as always is the simplest one: whether or not I or Nick or anyone not Burmese thinks ethnicity is a bad way to construct notions of citizenship it is for the Burmese themselves to decide.
All indications are that all across Asia, ethnicity and ethno-cultural identities reign supreme, regardless of the hectoring of white folks who are “above” all that.
It’s almost as if “white supremacist” isn’t just a label for halfwit liberals to toss around in the vicinity of Donald Trump supporters and their fast-food addicted trailer trash kiddies.
The constant drone of neo-colonial “analysis” on this site has become beyond offensive to anti-imperialist sensibilities like my own.
Especially when it comes graced with arpeggios of “democracy democracy democracy” that disguise the deeper basso profundo growling “but only if it suits MY values.”
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
It is a cliché, but all identities are inventions some simply of longer lineage and durability than others. For example I doubt if the hypenated terms Asian-American or Sino-Thai existed 50 years ago. But of course, the reality of these communities did exist. So what if the Rohingyas called themselves, or rather classified themselves, as Bengali Muslims some time ago, the reality on the ground was that of a distinct community within Burma’s internationally recognized national borders. At what point to does a community become “indigenous”?
As Nick Farrelly argued a few months ago on NM there is a structural problem in Myanmar. In defining the limits of the seven states and seven districts /regions, ethnicity is of the outmost importance. The seven states are those of recognized ethnic ‘nationalities’ (often with distinct religious identities as well) and the seven districts/regions predominately Bamar. Ipso facto Burmese citizenship is linked to a homeland or at least a defined territory. Given these systemic parameters it is therefore totally logically for the Rohingya to demand possession of a territory as a prerequisite for citizenship, for this is structurally the way Myanmar is organized.
As Nick argued in his article – for which he was much reviled by the ‘usual suspects’ (cf supra) – it is the gordian knot between territory-ethnic nationality-citizenship that needs to be, if not broken, at least made more flexible.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
….sorry – for 1903s read 1930s
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
Puta = whore, ina = mother and -ng is the ending for words otherwise ending in a vowel. Hence [your] mother [was a] whore. All sorts of excuses are being made -‘it’s just an expression’ for example. But so is ‘f**k off’ which, it appears is exactly what Duterte is saying.Just look at the mounting evidence.
– It wasn’t just that expression – he was referring to the US subjugation of the Philippines 118 years ago (though not to the displacement of indigenous peoples, including Moslems, by Christian resettlement in Mindanao so strenuously pushed by the Commonwealth Government in the 1903s).
– President Diuterte seems to have escaped sitting at dinner between Ban Ki Moon and Barak Obama and chatted to Medvedev instead
– -(as I have noted before) he has very friendly words for the Chinese and with a great deal of logic is prepared to talk bilaterally with them (since he openly admits, correctly, that trying to fight PTC would be a waste of time)
– he has places in his Cabinet for the left
– and yesterday he announced that he would follow an independent foreign policy and that he is ‘no fan of the US’ whilst praising China.
That looks to me very much like finding the answer to 2+2.
However, the question arises, can a country which receives five or six times as much in remittances from its ten million overseas citizens ($25 billion a year) than it does in foreign investments be particularly ‘independent’ in its foreign policy dealings? Certainly it can have a multilateral set of relationships, but independent ones?
I would suggest that the really important events of last two months in the Philippines have not been the anti-drugs campaign, significant though that is, but a potential shift in Filipino foreign relations which is on a par with the Brexit vote.
And like the latter, it will be let us say ‘interesting’ to see whether, and if so how, that potential is realised.
The real meaning of Thailand’s referendum
Indeed. I was somewhat put out that on learning of my spouse’s death from cancer, a Thai remarked that they must have done something bad in a past life! Then we have the fact most Thais don’t believe in ‘Survival’ (their being Theravada (no atman/soul rather than Brahman Buddhist (atman). But they’re notoriously hung up on ghosts. Weird race.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
“Accept” not “except”. Dementia again. In addition, were I to suggest Mr Smith’s reasonable column, all manner of charges of racism and anti-Islam would pound me, as had happened already, and I find interesting only in my instance, when I echo Mr Smith and Mr Camroux, to some extent, I seem to be the chosen scapegoat for Western neo-Colonists of Myanmar. I am sure the name COHEN has nothing to do with it at NM.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
It is truly amazing in a rush to condemn the obvious gun happy killing president, people hardly ever mention the West’s very one Thaksin or Mindanao changes of 30 years ago.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
Excellent Iwan Sugiarto. I hope New Mandala publishes a major post by you. I’m perplexed by the sheer arrogant stupidity of many – though certainly not all – Australian attitudes towards Indonesia. Can ‘t we develop a wider, more sophisticated attitude than Ocker blind Bali binge ?
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
Was the article about Indonesia. No it wasn’t. Its unlikely that Jokowi will follow. Why? Deep down the Indonesians know that the West has a bias against Indonesia, and it can’t get away with things others can get away with whether Vietnam or the Philippines., especially after 1998 ironically.
The unrest in East Timor after the UN vote. 2000 East Timorese were killed as Indonesia withdrew. Duterte has killed more people in the last couple of months. What has happened? For that Indonesia had military aid suspended and more seriously faced an arms embargo. Philippines received both military and police aid from the US? When is that going to be suspended? The East Timor incident happened in a period when Indonesia was undergoing a messy period of transition to democracy.
Here is an article website about the difference in the way Australia reacts toward the treatment of cattle titled “beef and prejudice”
http://www.newmandala.org/beef-and-prejudice/
That is an authoritarian government who is prone to using Hind Gunships against protesting villagers.
The Thai government killed 100 protestors in Central Bangkok in 2010, many of them sniped from a far, including one foreign journalist. What happened? Nothing
This is how the world works. Indonesians are Muslims, brown and live next to Australia and Singapore, two developed countries. As I shown with East Timor, it doesn’t matter if the victims are white or not, what really matters is who is doing it. If Australians start seeing dead bodies of local drug dealers in Kuta (a magnate for drug dealers) would the Australians sit by and not complain? No there will be diplomatic protest.
Of course people are going to argue that West isn’t biased, even New Mandala is biased. Jokowi Cabinet reshuffle is picked apart, mole hills were turned into mountains. What is the difference between Wiranto and the current Philippines police chief, Del Rosa. Wiranto still gets a lot of flak for his rather sketchy and unclear role in East Timor. And here in this day and age, we have a police advocating for people to burn the homes of drug dealers. Interviews with death squads indicate the police are behind it.
And unlike Wiranto, what has Del Rosa done to further democracy in the Philippines? (again the previous article about Wiranto)
Do you really think Jokowi can get away with 1980s Petrus style killings let alone a 1965 style genocide? And second is crime/drugs a big issue in Indonesia. In 2014 campaign, drugs wasn’t a big issue, hardly mentioned at all.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
ASSK has created this commission solely on account of Western pressure. The Burmese are fully capable of sorting out their own problems. I fail to see the value of ‘international scrutiny’. The West is hardly in a position to lecture others on refugees and human rights.
‘At the core of the Rohingya’s lack of rights is a dispute about the legitimacy of their claim to citizenship.’ Since the ‘Rohingya’ identity is an invention so is their claim for citizenship. Their struggle for an independent Islamic state in Arakan is completely illegitimate.
In my opinion, Myanmar should dismantle and remove all religious sites and infrastructure from Northern Rakhine state, deport all Bangladeshis into this region and cede it to Bangladesh. In exchange, Bangladesh can facilitate a population transfer of the Jumma people. Finally, Myanmar should follow India’s example and build a vast security fence along the Eastern bank of the Lay Mro river, complete with minefields.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
David,
The term “Rohingya” did not exist 20 years ago, though these Bengali Muslims have been migrating into Myanmar for 100 years or more (and are not indigenous. What matters is that they are NOT indigenous. Myanmar has NO INDO-ARYAN ethnic group that is indigenous. Now, mercantile Indians in Yangon came in with the British, but do not call themselves, GUJARATIS, SIKHS, PUNJABIS, TAMILS, but except the Burmese polity without whining. The “Rohingya” want special treatment egged on by bored Palestinian whiners who have found DASSK is a true Burmese patriot and not a Western toady. NAMES matter and so do demographics and origins. Bangladeshi Muslims should be deported from Myanmar, even it takes ten years. Bengali Muslim male sexual habits and Sheikh Hasina Wajed are NOT Myanmar’s problem.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
i gather that Duterte used the Tagalog expression, ‘putang ina’, which can be translated ‘son of a bitch’. Unless I am mistaken, he didn’t say this in English, either in that hallowed form or as ‘son of a whore’.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi first visited Washington, Obama greeted him with the Gujarati expression that he had taken the trouble to learn, ‘kem cho?’, which means ‘how are you?’ So Obama had no grounds for objecting if Duterte insulted him in the vernacular, and not in English. I hasten to add that I don’t know Tagalog and stand to be corrected by those who do.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
The significance of the creation of the Commission is the willingness of ASSK’s government to allow for international scrutiny. (Full transparency, my esteemed former colleague and former dean, Ghassan Salame, is, I gather, a member of the Annan Commission. )
Perhaps in neighboring Thailand the proud Siamese (who have always treated the Burmese with disdain) could learn something to be applied to southern Thailand? Certainly Thai-only attempts to end the ethno-islamic insurgency there have not born much fruit.
To return to the substance of the article, I do agree with the previous comment that this is a useful summary of the current situation, unlike heated polemics on the term Rohingya. Whether it is a recent term or not is, beside the point. Benedict Anderson, amongst others made the point long ago that identities are constructed and then take on legal/moral forms. For example there were no “Italians” before the reunification of Italy but a progressive movement of taking on that sense of being amongst Venetians, Milanese, etc…. Actually it is often the outsider (e.g. the British in what became Australia) who impose a category which then becomes integrated by the concerned population and ultimately a basis for their own identity. Ditto the Moros in the Philippines.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
Very valid points Ken Ward, though did n’t Duterte use the stronger “W” word, rather than the milder “B” one ?
A new breed of terror in Thailand
The dictatorship owes Suthep everything for their present position of power. They conspired with him to throw Thailand’s governance into chaos, and then peddled the lie that they rescued it. Like all criminals, they will be sorely tempted to knock off their big creditor. He has already squealed that he wasn’t getting his due, but went very quiet after that.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
A small correction:
The article says that “the current national parliament is Myanmar’s first since independence without a single Muslim lawmaker.” This assertion has been repeated often by the media, but it’s not exactly true. During the Ne Win era, after the 1974 Constitution had been approved, there was a People’s Parliament, admittedly a completely toothless body whose election was not very democratic either, but a national parliament nonetheless. The People’s Parliament convened in four terms; the third didn’t have a single Muslim member, and the second one had just one (for Arakan/Rakhine State). Apparently, there’s no information on its members’ religion for the first and the fourth terms. (See the book by Yoshihiro Nakanishi, “Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution”, p. 187).
Anyway, small consolation that the only precedent of a Muslim-free parliament in post-independence Burma’s history is to be found during the Ne Win dictatorship…
The real meaning of Thailand’s referendum
The following statements are patently false because of the claimed basis of “ancient Buddhist doctrine of ‘merit’ (bun):
“The prominent place of the kha ratchakan in Thai society receives a subtle religious justification through the ancient Buddhist doctrine of ‘merit’ (bun). The poor are poor because of their lesser merit — that is accumulation of good deeds in past and present lives. Morally they are inferior to the wealthy, who are wealthy because of their superior merit (good deeds).”
“Indeed, majoritarian democracy—rule by ‘the people’—is problematic in Buddhist terms, since it means rule by people of low merit.”
While it is difficult to say what exactly ancient Buddhists believed about karma, taking the Pali Canon and historical evidence as guides, the karma of kha ratchakan is rather far more Hindu than Buddhist.
Early Buddhist karma and that of the Pali Canon can justify just about anything: poor man becomes rich, rich man becomes poor because karmic fruits depend on both past and present actions and one never knows when good or bad karmic fruits will ripen. Thus if a poor man becomes rich he is fully deserving according to this Buddhist system of karma and the same for the rich man becoming poor.
Early Buddhism is known to have been anti-class/caste system and the system of karma underlying it. The Buddha famously said that one is not born a Brahmin but rather earns the title with one’s meritorious actions in this life. The Buddha had redefined Brahmin to be a virtuous person according to his ethical system. Thus while one may be born into a privileged position/class because of past good karma, one’s new karma in this life will determine whether that person is actually “good people” or not. There are also cases of born good people in the Pali Canon not acting so good, most notably Prince Ajatasattu who killed his father King Bimbisara in order to take the crown. Indeed, Ajatasttu gained a kingdom, but in Buddhist terms he was morally corrupt and karmically doomed. Hardly an example for kha ratchakan to maintain good people are born and remain morally and karmically superior to lower classes.
Thai “good people” hold to a system of karma, almost certainly inherited from the predominately Hindu Khmer Empire royal court, in which one is born into a class and remains there for life with the duty to fulfill the dharma of that class. Kha ratchakan then are born good people and remain so for life regardless of what they might do because they are in essence superior to lower classes. This more Hindu karma serves as a much better ideology for a ruling class than Buddhist karma which undermines the essentialist and absolutist position of kha ratchakan. However, this Hindu based kha ratchakan karma has for centuries flowed into the general Buddhist beliefs of the Thai and so it would not be mistaken to say that this karmic system is present in Thai Buddhism. Like so many beliefs and practices of the Thai royal court and network monarchy (including the heavy Sanskritization of the Thai language) to find the roots of Thai karma one must look equally, or even more so, to Hinduism rather than to Buddhism for the source.
How human rights can win Duterte’s war
Whatever Philippine human rights groups may aspire to do, President Duterte seems to have found a new friend in his Indonesian counterpart. Jokowi has not been deterred from embracing his neighbour by the latter’s calling Obama ‘a son of a bitch’.
The use of this mild term, which would scarcely have served as a punctuation marker in any conversation in Nixon’s White House, almost prevented the Duterte-Obama bilateral meeting.
Yet how one would have appreciated it if Hillary Clinton had simply called Gaddafi a son of a bitch rather than urging Libyans to capture him or kill him, before going on to gloat over his disgusting murder! Similarly, if Bush had denounced Saddam Hussein as a son of a bitch and let the matter end there, the world would have been much better off. More frequent resort to expletives might bring about a more peaceful planet.
In his conversation with his big American brother, Duterte could have pointed out that, while Obama uses drones to exterminate assorted undesirables, the much poorer country that he himself has been elected to lead must get by with low-tech bullets to achieve the same goal. Besides, Duterte could have added, he only targets domestic ne’er-do-wells, and even the US has so far refrained from deploying drones to wipe out domestic targets.
Duterte is now reported to have recommended to Jokowi that Indonesian military pursuers of Philippine pirates ‘blow them up’ or ‘blow them off’, according to the Jakarta Post. This raises the question whether Jokowi will mimic Duterte’s extra-judicial methods of tackling drug trafficking. He may have noticed that, as far as I know, no foreign ambassadors have been withdrawn from Manila in protest at Duterte’s actions, in contrast to the reaction to Jokowi’s ‘legal’ executions of drug traffickers.
If Duterte succeeds in dragging Jokowi down to his level, it will seem like a replay of the ‘mysterious shootings’ of criminals that the Soeharto regime carried out thirty or so years ago. No foreign ambassadors had to pack their bags in those days either.
A new breed of terror in Thailand
Indeed Suthep does not sleep easy these days. But he has all the over-confidence of Sondhi.
Myanmar’s Rohingya need tomorrow’s fairer world today
This is an excellent summary of the current situation and makes an important point – this is ultimately about protecting the basic human rights of a highly vulnerable population.
(New Mandala’s resident rascist Peter Cohen can be relied on to chip in with his bigoted anti-Muslim comments. He’s best ignored.)