15 April 2017
The Intercept: Burmese Nobel Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi Has Turned Into an Apologist for Genocide Against Muslims
In February, a report by the United Nations documented how the Burmese army’s attacks on the Rohingya were “widespread as well as systematic” thus “indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.” More than half of the 101 Rohingya women interviewed by UN investigators across the border in Bangladesh said they had suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence at the hands of security forces. “They beat and killed my husband with a knife,” one survivor recalled. “Five of them took off my clothes and raped me. My eight-month old son was crying of hunger when they were in my house because he wanted to breastfeed, so to silence him they killed him too with a knife.”
This is only the latest chapter in the anti-Rohingya saga. The Muslim residents of Rakhine have been subjected to violent attacks by the military since 2012 and were stripped of citizenship, and rendered stateless, as long ago as 1982. The 1-million odd Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions: denied access to employment, education and healthcare, forced to obtain permission to marry and subjected to a discriminatory “two-child” policy. “About 10 percent are held in internment camps,” according to Patrick Winn, Asia correspondent for Public Radio International. “The rest are quarantined in militarized districts and forbidden to travel.” [...]
Yet hers is not merely a crime of omission, a refusal to denounce or condemn. Hers are much worse crimes of commission. She took a deliberate decision to try and discredit the Rohingya victims of rape. She went out of her way to accuse human rights groups and foreign journalists of exaggerations and fabrications. She demanded that the U.S. government stop using the name “Rohingya” — thereby perpetuating the pernicious myth that the Muslims of Rakhine are “Bengali” interlopers (rather than a Burmese community with a centuries-long presence inside Myanmar.) She also appointed a former army general to investigate the recent attacks on the Rohingya and he produced a report in January that, not surprisingly, whitewashed the well-documented crimes of his former colleagues in the Burmese military.
Jacobin Magazine: France Rebels
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign for the French presidency has exploded in recent weeks — reaching third, within touching distance of the second round in some polls. In addition to sending jitters through the financial markets, the success has transformed the French election, offering a left alternative to the battle between the establishment and the far right. [...]
The main theme for this campaign is to change our constitution and to allow the French people to do it themselves through a process called the constituent assembly, which is a direct reference to the French Revolution. The idea is to abolish the current regime, which we call the “presidential monarchy.” We consider it an oligarchy and want instead to have a republic: for the people, by the people. [...]
In 2012, because we were talking about overthrowing the old regime and having a new one, we were considered to be introducing anxiety and instability. Today, French society has changed. The fear is there, the chaos is there. Violence between communities, violence between the police and the youth, terrorism, terror attacks committed by French people against other French people. I think the time is now ripe for what we’re saying — that we need a peaceful solution to these tensions. [...]
There are other big themes of the campaign — wealth redistribution and social justice — which are classic proposals in a situation of great inequality. Then you have climate change and protecting the only ecosystem which allows life for human beings. But before we address those issues, we need to gain the power to actually have an impact. That is the constituent assembly. [...]
So in the Sixth Republic will there be parties? Yes, there will be forms of organization based on political affinity, since there needs to be a confrontation of ideas. If there is no conflictuality, there is no democracy. But not the parties of the Fifth Republic, which are already in decline. They will die together with the Fifth Republic. No party today has a constitutional program, they are not made for that. They are organized to hold power within the Fifth Republic. There will be a new political terrain. The idea is not to recompose or repair the damaged parties of the Fifth Republic, but to allow new instruments to organize.
Al Jazeera: South Korea's first black model
Han is 15 and fast becoming a regular on the catwalk, making his third appearance at the recent Seoul Fashion Week - a biannual event for South Korean designers. For one show, Han sported patched jeans and a plaid shirt partially covered by a puffy, silver vest.
The high school student is lanky. He has what Youn Bum, his agent at SF Models, calls a "distinct look", making him a rare commodity in the domestic market - and a victim of prejudice. [...]
Immigration has brought with it an increase in the number of children who are the offspring of a Korean citizen and foreign national, primarily from Southeast Asia. Close to two million foreigners live in a country of 50 million. The number of multi-ethnic persons is expected to reach 300,000 by 2020, up from 40,000 a decade ago, government statistics show. [...]
Biracial Koreans have come up against an entrenched concept of what it means to be Korean that's based on a supposed "pure bloodline", Gi-wook Shin, director of the Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, tells Al Jazeera.
Shin explains that it's a "myth" that the origin of this understanding of national identity comes from ancient Confucian values, as many South Koreans believe. [...]
Faced with the growing number of multi-ethnic births, as well as criticism from the United Nations, terms like "pure blood" and "mixed blood" are no longer used in official and educational materials, although the latter expression is still widely spoken and many Koreans don't see it as a pejorative.
Al Jazeera: How the BJP has come to dominate lower-caste politics
In 2014, the BJP won a landslide electoral victory, bringing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. In March this year, the party swept to victory again in local elections across India, including in the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP won over three quarters of the seats on offer.
The new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, has attributed the party's success to the prime minister's strongman image and popularity. Supporters of Modi point to his focus on economic development and growth to explain his popularity. India was the fastest-growing major economy last year, posting a GDP growth of 7 percent, compared to 6.8 percent for China. Critics, on the other hand, claim the so-called "Modi-wave" is based on an appeal to divisive Hindu majoritarian politics. [...]
Many leading thinkers primarily view the growing power of Hindu nationalism through its encouragement of Hindu and Muslim intra-communal conflict. Yet, this ignores the much-contested place of lower-caste groups within Hindu nationalism. [...]
Tracing India's difficult and momentous turn towards Hindu nationalist politics allows us to consider an increasingly powerful paradigm at work in the world: one which twists the kaleidoscope to reveal not the messy entanglements of human history and belonging, but instead sharp divisions and monopolised spaces.
Haaretz: The Israeli novel about Jewish-Arab love that had author fearing for her life
Twenty years before “Geder Haya” (“Borderlife”), Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan’s novel about a romance between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian man — which was denounced by the Education Ministry, became a best-seller in Israel and will be released in English on April 25 (as “All the Rivers”) — there was “Inta Omri.” Published in 1994, it is based on a relationship that its author, the Israeli poet and writer Smadar Herzfeld, had with a Palestinian man, and it is immeasurably more powerful and revealing than Rabinyan’s pleasant, adroit, apologetic and overly literary novel. [...]
It’s likely that “Inta Omri”’s attackers didn’t read the book. While it is set in the waning days of the first intifada, the narrative soon pivots from politics to the stormy emotional tie between its two stubborn, lost, educated main characters, both of them outsiders in their respective communities. It is precisely the nonjudgmental quality of the story that makes a possible allegory for life here. In any event, the novel’s sex scenes disqualify it for study in high school, so Education Minister Naftali Bennett is free to ignore it, unlike “Borderlife.”[...]
A superficial glance at the book can be misleading. It begins with some mutual violence between the couple, which externalizes the suspicion and nationalist hostility, for example the following insulting sentences said by the woman at a café: “’What did you do?’ I shouted at the Arab, wiping my lips with my sleeve, wiping his skin from my lips. ... ‘Do you always touch Jewish girls?’ I was right on the mark. I know that I had hit him in the heart.” However, these nationalist sadomasochistic scenes fade away quickly, and the couple’s love for each other turns personal and deep, devoid of any racism and certainly of pornography, too — unless by the word “pornography” one means simply sexual relations (which are in this case very creative). And perhaps the somewhat pessimistic end also arouses objection among those who hoped for a speedy peace in those days at the start of the Oslo Accords era.
Vintage Everyday: Britain in an Innocent Age: 46 Extraordinary Snapshots Document Everyday Life of Post-WWII England
The memories may have faded, but these extraordinary found photos from Martin Snelling of bygone Britain are so clear, they look as though they could have been taken yesterday.
Old-fashioned shops line streets dotted with classic 1950s and 1960s cars, couples wear their finest clothes as they enjoy an al fresco meal on their patio and children flock in their masses to church for Sunday schools...
Deutsche Welle: Russia drops Eurovision after Kyiv bans singer
Ukraine, the last year's Eurovision winner, is set to host the competition next month. However, the Ukrainian security services have decided to deny entry to the contestant from Russia, the 27-year-old, wheelchair-bound Yulia Samoylova. The reason, according to Kyiv, is that Samoylova toured Crimea after it was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reaffirmed the ban, saying his country acted consistently towards all who entered Crimea without asking Ukraine's permission. [...]
The rules of the Eurovision Song Contest ban political gestures, and the organizers said they were "deeply disappointed" by the ban. Ukraine might find itself excluded from future Eurovision events if the ban stays in power, the EBU warned.
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