Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Fellowships for Innovative Researchers 2018/2019 – Canada

Application Deadline: 4th December 2017 11:59 p.m. (PST)

Offered annually? Yes 

Eligible Countries: Candidates for a fellowship must be Canadian citizen or foreign citizens legally allowed to reside in Canada for the period that they would benefit from the funding.

To be taken at (country): Canada

Fields of Study: Humanities and social sciences, and specifically one or more of the following themes:

• Human Rights and Dignity
• Responsible Citizenship
• Canada in the World
• People and their Natural Environment

About the Award: Each year, up to five fellows are appointed by the Foundation, namely Canadian researchers in the “General” category and researchers who are not affiliated to an university in the “Visiting” category. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation encourages research, reflection and action in four areas important to Canadians: human rights and dignity, responsible citizenship, Canada’s role in the world, and people and their natural environment. The Foundation works through four programs: it grants doctoral scholarships, it awards fellowships to distinguished academics, it appoints mentors and it holds public conferences.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Researchers active in a field of the humanities and social sciences related to one or more of the Foundation’s four themes; and
• Canadian citizens or permanent residents, or citizens of foreign countries legally allowed to reside in Canada for the funding period.

Selection Criteria: Nominations will be evaluated based on the following:

• Trudeau project (required for the regular fellowship and optional for the visiting fellowship)
• Commitment to engage the Foundation community of scholars, mentors and fellows
• Communication and engagement
• Leadership and innovation
• Productivity

Selection Process: When nominations close, the Trudeau fellows are selected through a rigorous selection process that involves the following steps:

1. The file review and selection process takes place from December to April and may include an interview stage.
2. The Application and Nomination Review Committee approves the recommended applications.
3. The Foundation Board of Directors gives final approval.

Number of Awardees: 5

Value of Fellowship: 

• A $150,000 allowance over three years for research, travel and networking;
• A $50,000 award;
• A $25,000 allowance to cover the cost of participation in Foundation events.
• Support from an outstanding community of scholars, fellows and mentors, and opportunities for interaction with 350 leaders and personalities in every sector of the humanities and social sciences;
• Involvement in lively exchanges with other researchers and policy makers;
• The opportunity to contribute to public dialogue and share innovative ideas at events organized by or in conjunction with the Foundation;

How to Apply: 

• Become a fellow
• Nominate a fellow

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation

Afghanistan’s Dismal Health Situation

Cesar Chelala

As the war in Afghanistan shows no signs of abating, the health of the people in the country continues to be cause for concern. Afghanistan’s health care system is considered one of the worst in the world, and decades of war and international neglect have contributed to its deterioration. An estimated 6 million people, out of a population of 35 million, have no access or adequate access to health care.

Most doctors, nurses and other medical professionals have left the country, causing a shortage of personnel and medical training programs, thus failing to solve people’s most pressing needs. War has caused not only deaths and injuries; it has also led to increased poverty among many households. At the same time, the physical and psychological effects of war have increased the need for medical care.

The British Red Cross reports that 770 hospitals have been closed because of damage. Health services cover only limited regions and even in the areas where they are available they don’t totally cover people’s needs. In addition, there are inadequate supplies of medicines, vaccines, equipment and fuel. As a result, almost 6 million people have no access or adequate access to health care.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO,) diseases controlled in most countries in the world continue to cause deaths and disabilities in Afghanistan. For example, it has been estimated that approximately 60 percent of all childhood deaths and disabilities in Afghanistan are due to respiratory and intestinal infections and vaccine-preventable deaths, particularly measles, of which there are approximately 35,000 cases every year.

The WHO reports that infant and under-five mortality rates are estimated at 165 and 257 per 1,000 live births per year, respectively, which are among the highest in the world. These rates are only surpassed by Sierra Leone, Niger and Angola. With regard to immunization coverage, less than 40 percent of Afghan children receive life-saving vaccinations.

It is estimated that about half of children less than five years of age are stunted due to chronic malnutrition, and up to 10 percent have acute malnutrition. More than half of Afghan children suffer mental and physical damage because they are poorly nourished in the first two years of life.

In addition, although billions of dollars have been spent on poppy eradication and the control of the drug problem, it continues to be unsolved. According to a 2015 U.S. funded study, one in every nine Afghans (including women and children) use illegal drugs.

A study conducted by researchers hired by the U.S. State Department found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children. Some of them were only 14 months old, and had been passively exposed to opium by adult drug users in their homes. In 25 percent of homes where adult addicts were living, tested children showed significant signs of drug exposure. Those adults who inject drugs face the additional risk of HIV infection through sharing of contaminated syringes.

Statistics on women’s health are difficult to obtain, due to societal restrictions and gender relations and behavior. Women’s access to health care is limited, due to a large extent to lack of female medical facilities. Seventeen mothers die during delivery for every 1,000 live births, again one of the highest rates in the world. One of the reasons is that 90 percent of deliveries take place at home, without the help of skilled midwives.

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined nations in the world. Mines were planted extensively throughout the country, particularly during the period of Soviet occupation (1979-1989). Almost every family in the country has been affected by unexploded ordnance and the remaining land mines, which daily add new victims both through physical injuries and mental stress. It is estimated that over 800,000 Afghans are disabled, many of them children.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn aptly summed up the situation in Afghanistan today. He recently told the Mirror, “After 16 years of bloodshed and destruction, the Taliban are undefeated and terrorism is no less of a threat at home. In fact it has spread. The British Government should make clear to Donald Trump that his strategy of more bombing and a new troop surge will continue this failure.” To continue sending troops to try to win an unwinnable war will only increase the suffering of the Afghan people.

Do Americans Have a Right to Sexual Pleasure?

David Rosen

Do Americans have a “right” to sexual pleasure, something different, more erotically fulfilling than the sexual intercourse required for procreation?  Such a right would be neither formal nor implied, but more an aspirational desire, a sensuous reminder of what could be.

The concept of a personal “right” suggests two, often conflicting, notions.  One is formal, a legal right, a specific freedom enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.  Such rights include free speech and assembly.  A second notion is informal, an implied right that is established by precedent; a practice contested over time that becomes an accepted right. Among such rights are the use of a contractive, interracial marriage, having an abortion, engaging in consensual sodomy and gay marriage as well as bearing arms.  Unfortunately, these are rights, like slavery, that can be redefined over time.

Over the last half-century, changes in popular culture and key Supreme Court (and other court) decisions have transformed the meaning of sex in the lives of ordinary Americans.  A 2016 report in the Journal of Sexual Medicine notes, “… sexual health was a highly important aspect of quality of life for many participants, including participants in poor health.  Moreover, participants in poorer health reported lower sexual satisfaction.”

The Trump administration is moving to turn back the clock on sexual freedom by aggressively relaunching the culture wars.  The political and religious right seeks to contain the on-going transformation of America’s sexual culture.   Since the post-WW-II consumer revolution, sex has been, simultaneously, emancipated and commodified, the definition of the sexually acceptable expanded as it was increasing integrated into the marketplace.

Commercial sex business is estimate to be a $50 billion enterprise.  Trump’s sex-related policies seek to restrict the scope of human sexual experience, of moving the line where personal pleasure and the market economy cross paths. Trump’s campaign to block transgender people from the military is but the latest salvo in the renewed culture wars.

***

The Constitution was adopted in 1791 and does not directly address the question of sexual pleasure, a most personal — and often private — experience.  It does, however, directly consider the issue of personal privacy, alluding to it in four Amendments – the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth.  They be summarized as follows: the Fourth protects against unwarranted searches and seizures; the Fifth protects against self-incrimination; the Ninth identifies that other rights may exist not enumerated; and the Fourteenth has been applied to a wide range of personal privacy matters including procreation, marriage, child rearing and termination of medical treatment.

The issue of sex has divided the nation since its founding, the boundaries of pleasure fought over by each new generation. Over the last four centuries of American legal and social history, four broad issues have framed consideration of sexual pleasure.:

(i) was the sex with another of the opposite gender for reproduction?;

(ii) was the sex with another of the opposite gender for pleasure, not procreation?;

(iii) was the sex with another of the same sex, for pleasure?; and

(iv) was the sex voluntary and consensual, not rape, trafficking or pedophilia?

Each issue can involve one of a variety of forms of sexual pleasure, whether experienced physically (e.g., intercourse, orgasm) or emotionally (e.g., fulfillment, psychotic abuse).  Each issue has been addressed, in one form or another, since the nation’s founding. The battle over what was “acceptable” sexual pleasure shaped the nation’s legal and social standards as well as actual physical sexual practices Americans have engaged in over the last four centuries.  These issues raise a deeper question about America society: is it a religious or a secular nation?

Challenges to the then-dominant moral order have, for centuries, played-out on numerous battlegrounds.  They having involved sex across the race and gender lines; non-marital and non-procreative sex; using birth-control devices and abortion procedures to prevent procreation and to insure the health (physically and psychologically) of the mother and the viability of the fetus; using ever-newer forms of speech to push the boundaries of sexual expression; expanding sexual identity to more than only two genders; regulating prostitution and commercial sex for the good of the sex worker and client, thus cutting-out the middlemen, traffickers; and bringing notions of restorative justice to the treatment of people convicted of sexual crimes, 21^st century witches.

Compounding the specific issue of struggle, the emergence of a mass consumer market during the 20^th century — first in the post-WW-I era, then in post-WW-II-era – enormously expanded American sexual culture.  In the postwar era, the advertising, fashion and entertainment industries — along with the adoption of the birth-control pill and teen sex-education — eroticized American life, especially the life of women (and, increasingly, younger girls).  Cumulatively over the last century or so, Americans seem to have come to accept the legitimacy of their right to sexual pleasure.

***

Sexual pleasure can be experienced individually or with another(s), be it involving one’s same or another sexuality.  Each sphere of sexual pleasure needs to be considered on its own terms; together, they fashion sexual culture.

Since the 1960s, key Supreme Court decisions significantly expanded the acceptable spheres of adult sexual practice with another, shifting the legal framework of privacy and pleasure.  Among the decisions are: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), granted married couples the right to purchase and possess contraception materials; Loving v. Virginia (1967), giving interracial couples the right to marry; Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), extended to unmarried people the right to acquire and use contraceptives; Roe v. Wade (1973), guaranteeing a woman the right to terminate her pregnancy; and Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), that criminalizing consensual same-sex sodomy.

More recently Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) upheld Roe, but permitted states to regulate abortions to ostensibly protect the health of the mother and the life of the embryo/fetus; Lawrence and Garner v. Texas (2003) overturned Bowers, extending constitutional privacy protections to adults who engage in private, consensual sodomy; U.S. v. Windsor (2013) ruled the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional; Obergefell v Hodges (2015) legalized gay marriage; and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016) overturned a Texas law restricting the delivery of abortion services.

In these and other decisions, the nature of sexual pleasure appears never have been defined.  Rather sexuality was indirectly approached from two very different perspectives.  First, in terms of a heterosexual’s right to acquire and use contraceptives to control procreation by, initially, married couples (Griswold) and, then, by unmarried adults (Eisenstadt).  Second, in terms of a homosexual’s right to engage in consensual sodomy (Bowers and Lawrence) and to marry (Obergefell).

The right to the outcome of heterosexual sexual engagement was hinted at in Griswold and more formally articulated in Eisenstadt.  As Justice Arthur Goldberg noted in Griswold, “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

The right to sexual pleasure was directly addressed in the Lawrence decision overturning Bowers.  In Bowers, the Court earlier ruled, “Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original thirteen States when they ratified the Bill of Rights.”  It added, “In fact, until 1961… all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults.”  Sodomy among consent adults was considered a crime.

In the 2003 Lawrence decision, the Court split, with the majority — led by Justice Kennedy, supported by Breyer, Ginsburg, O’Conner, Souter and Stevens — looking forward; those looking backward included Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas.  In Kennedy’s words, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.”  Sadly, people are still not sexual creatures.

***

Conservative Americans have long feared what was consider “obscene” forms of sexual expression, be it in word, image or other forms of representation.  They represent the single greatest source of auto-erotic pleasure, masturbation, more so in the Internet age.  The U.S.’s first obscenity case was in 1821, when a Massachusetts court outlawed Fanny Hill; the publisher, Peter Holmes, was convicted for printing a “lewd and obscene” novel.

In 1873, Congress passaged what were known as “Comstock laws,” the “Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use” promoted by the hyper-moralist, Anthony Comstock, and would remain in place for nearly half-a-century.  It criminalized the sending of erotica, contraceptives, abortifacient and sex toys through the postal system.  In 1881, with Comstock’s backing, the Boston District Attorney forced the suppression of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, one of America’s greatest literary works.

In Roth v. U.S. (1957), the Court convicted Samuel Roth and Marvin Miller of distributing obscene material, i.e., speech not protect by the First Amendment.  However, in its judgement, it redefined obscenity as material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” to the “average person, applying contemporary community standards.”  In 1962, the Court ruled in Manual v. Day that the Post Office could not refuse mail services for male physique magazines; Justice John Marshall Harlan distinguished between a “prurient” appeal and an obscene image and wrote that the images in Manual were not “patently offensive” based on community standards.

This sentiment was reiterated in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) that found that Louis Malle’s film, The Lovers (Les Amants), was not obscene; Justice Potter Steward famously lamented: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

In Miller v. California (1973) the Court made a major shift in the definition of obscenity.  It revised the old standing — a work “utterly without socially redeeming value” — to that lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”  However, in the 1978, it ruled that George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” — shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits — aired over Pacific Radio station WBAI were obscene, thus prohibiting them from being uttered over broadcast radio or television.

Most noteworthy of recent obscenity cases, in 2004, the Court refused to reinstate an FCC fine against CBS-TV broadcast of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in which a “costume malfunction” exposed Janet Jackson bare breast and nipple shield for about 9/16^th of a second to an audience of nearly 150 million viewers.

***

In a 2004 article in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, “A Bedroom of One’s Own: Morality and Sexual Privacy,” Marybeth Herald argues that “the Lawrence decision disengaged sex from reproduction by protecting sexual relationships where procreation was not possible.”  She adds, “Lawrence gives power to the value of sexual intimacy alone, unrelated to procreative issues.”  It legitimized adult non-reproductive acts like anal intercourse, but also private masturbation, oral sex (i.e., fellatio and cunnilingus), viewing pornography and the use of sex toys (e.g., dildos, vibrators).

Lawrence was decided in 2003, nearly a decade-and-a-half ago.  This was the period when sexual pleasure shifted from a private consensual practice to a public commercial business or erotic performances.  During this period, the Court has allowing localities great latitude determining what is acceptable.  Domains of “public” sex include:

(i) adult sex-toy retail outlets,

(ii) sex-performance venues and

(iii) commercial sex engagements.

Under the Trump administration, each can be expected to face increased repression.

Both sex-toy stores (including adult video outlets) and sex-performance venues (including strip clubs) are considered sexually oriented businesses (SOBs).  They are subject to varying state and local licensing requirements and and zoning regulations.  In June 2017, New York State’s Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a local New York City regulation that bans adult businesses from most residential and commercial districts.  As of 2016, it was illegal to purchase of sex toy in Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia in apparent violation of the Lawrence decision.

Strip or “gentlemen’s” clubs appear to operate in every state and (formally) adhere to what is known as the “6-foot rule” requiring dancers while performing to maintain a 6-foot distance from patrons.  Clubs permitting female entertainers to performing fully nude are subject to further requirements, including no-touch rules between customers and dancers as well as restrictions on alcohol sales.

In the early-21^st century, many Americans seem to assume a personal “right” to sexual pleasure.  Consensual, adult sexual fulfillment (however defined) is an expected aspect of people’s lives.  It’s been integrated into the mainstream of the marketplace, estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.  The Trump administration can be expected to undertake efforts to contain, if not suppress, popular sexual culture.  Whether it succeeds or not will be determined to what extent the Supreme Court, and popular society, accepts the personal right to sexual pleasure.

El Salvador’s Durable Disorder: Low Intensity Postwar Democracy

Norbert Ross & Antonia Ross Sanchez

During the first FMLN government in El Salvador (2009-2014) the military invited the appointed governor of the Department of Morazán to participate in a memorial for a former colonel, at the site dedicated to his death. At first sight this may not warrant special attention, as it is not unusual for government officials to honor the fallen heroes of their country,  but in this case it pushed the bounds of normalcy. The FMLN, the political party that emerged in postwar El Salvador after the demobilization of the guerilla armed forces, had just been elected for the first time into power and the appointed governor of Morazán was no other than Miguel Ventura, a former left leaning priest activist, proponent of liberation theology and active supporter of the guerilla. During the war he was captured and tortured by military forces, because of his activism in organizing peasants to demand social justice. The memorial that he was invited to on the other hand, was held for Col. Domingo Monterossa, a former trainee of the school of the Americas (Gill 2004). As head of the Atlacatl special forces he was directly responsible for several civilian massacres, including the most infamous one at el El Mozote, where on Dec. 11^th, 1981 his soldiers killed over 1000 civilians, including elderly and infants as part of scorched earth tactic against the guerilla forces (Danner 1993; Binford, 2016; Gould 2006). Monterossa died in 1984 when the guerilla force planted a bomb in a radio transmitter in the town center of Joateca (Dept. Morazán). Having profiled Monterossa, who had an addicted to war trophies, the rebels left the transmitter, in what looked like a skirmish, behind for him to pick it up. He did, and as his helicopter departed for the military quarters in San Miguel the bomb exploded taking his life and that of other high ranking military officers (Henriquez Consalvi, 2012). This incident became memorialized, and it is this very memorial that the governor of Morazán, Miguel Ventura had been invited to.

Despite ample proof against Monterossa, and the forced dismantling of the Atlacatl special forces, as part of the peace accords, the military headquarters in San Miguel (the biggest city in Eastern El Salvador) still carries his name and the aviation museum in San Salvador dedicates an entire room to him. Yet nowhere is a mentioning of the massacres to be found. Instead, following his death, the mayor of Joateca (Dept. Morazan) had a memorial dedicated to him, with high ranking military, visiting the memorial to pay tribute to this “fallen war hero.”

Obviously, commemorating Monterossa as a war hero, cannot be simply regarded as an insensitive act for the families of the people killed in places like el Mozote. Instead, as made clear by the invitation extended to Miguel Ventura -himself a former torture victim of the military- the annual commemorations constitute conscious acts of demonstrating the military’s the power, in the face of an FMLN government. They go to show the contemporary power of the military in El Salvador, and how little the self-awareness of the military, its attitude toward the civil populations, and its role in the civil war have changed. As such, it represents a conscious effort of rewriting the history of the civil war, attempting to influence present (and future) interpretations of the military, as well as creating a specific vision of the current political situation of El Salvador. Visiting Joateca in 2017 we were handed a “memory document,” a leaflet produced by the military (although not presented as such), identifying the former guerilla force as “terrorists,” “delinquents,” referring to them as “savages.” The document even questions whether the guerilla, in fact, were behind the killing of Monterossa -after all, how could “savages” outsmart the best trained Salvadorian soldier, “the true sacrifice of national heroe”?

Joateca is only a few kilometers away from el Mozote, yet their stories are quite distinct. Inhabitants of el Mozote stayed largely neutral during the conflict; they were sympathetic to the guerilla yet very few joined their ranks. By and large they didn’t join nor organized against the guerilla. Joateca, on the other hand, had an active paramilitary force. In fact, during our visit we met a man whose entire family was killed during the war by a locally acting paramilitary group, some of whom still alive and in town. In 2000, he exhumed his family members from their roadside grave to give them a proper burial, yet for fear of reprisal he refuses to identify or address the killers.

These stories are not unique in El Salvador, and can even be found in the countries capital. The right-wing ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista; “National Republican Alliance”) party, founded in 1981 by Roberto D’Aubisson, the mastermind behind the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero and the founder of death squads in El Salvador, won the general elections immediately after the war. It was not until 2009 that the FMLN won for the first time the residency of El Salvador. However, since then ARENA has re-taken several important municipal governments during the past several years. It’s hymn still expresses violence against communists “El Salvador will be the grave where the reds will die, saving that way America” and its political campaigns are always started in Izalco, where in 1932 a massacre took place, which in the eyes of Arenistas stopped the first communist movement[1]. Still, it might come as a surprise that in a country where many people regard Oscar Romero as a saint (and the Vatican moving slowly in that direction, too), a small park is named after Roberto D’Aubisson, and that, in 2014 San Salvador’s ARENA mayor Norman Quijano decided (during the FMLN presidency) to rename San Antonio Abad, a major throughway of the city, into “Mayor Roberto D’Aubisson,” describing him as having “more than sufficient merits to deserve this kind of homage.” This move of rewriting history was publicly rejected, including by El Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsman, David Morales, who contended that this may violate recommendations made by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. However, while street signs were never changed, GoogleMaps has the street as Roberto D’Aubisson.

All this goes to show that memory in El Salvador is as much about the present than the past. And the current messages are clear. First, as of now no coherent agreed upon history of the civil war has emerged and as such no unified nation has arisen after the peace accords of 1992. Second, even after over 12 years of left leaning governments, right-wing politics are still common in El Salvador, and the left has been unable to muster up massive popular support to rewrite important memory sites or force important changes -such as posthumously prosecuting Monterossa as a war criminal.

Having been dedicated to (left leaning) neoliberal policies ever since the end of the war, the FMLN government has increasingly distanced itself from their social base through coopting some of its leaders and delegitimizing major movements. Leaving the economic policies untouched in the peace accord, El Salvador’s left worked on compensating some of the inequalities left by the economic system with pension programs and giving land to former combatants. However, neither the economic powers nor the role of the military have been significantly altered. Neoliberal policies put in place during the war were largely maintained by the postwar governments, that bet on remittances and the export of cheap labor (call centers and maquillas, cheap manufacturing plants, emigration) as stimulating a healthy growth of the country.

Similarly, while decreased in size, the military has never been purged after the war, nor has its role decreased in the postwar era. To the contrary, as seen above, military leaders are aware of their power and make no secret of it either. With the different waves of tough on crime policies [mano dura (2003) and super mano dura (2004)] the military plays an increasing role in policing and administrating of the country. Not only is the head of police a high-ranking military, but the military accompanies the police on their rounds through El Salvador. While officially not allowed to detain or search people, they still very often do, implicating the police after the fact (if at all). Naturally, people are still scared of the military and few complaints emerge. Similarly, the military is in charge of overseeing the registration of privately owned guns in El Salvador. Clearly, then the Salvadorian army is more than a military force for the defense of the country against outside enemies.

However, in El Salvador violence has also become a big industry. For 2015 and 2016, The Economist featured El Salvador as the most violent country (not at war), with its capital, San Salvador, holding in both years the dubious title of “most murderous city” (March 31, 2017). Of course, homicides are a problematic currency for measuring violence. Not only does it leave out other crimes that affect people’s lives, but murder rates usually also do not include the state-sanctioned police and military killings. This is especially problematic given the increasing evidence of security forces turning the war on gangs into an extrajudicial siege. With about 16,000 active military (globalfirepower.com), 16,000 police officers (Insightcrime, March, 9^th, 2017), and over 30,000 official security guards -contracted by approximately 350 official security firms- there is about one armed security person for every 100 inhabitants of the country. Obviously, the rate is much higher in the capital. In addition, there is an undisclosed number of individuals or businesses with private guards -with one family in San Salvador having reportedly over 500 hired guards (personal information anonymous, 2017).

It is not surprising then, that even with a left leaning government in power prosecution of minors for gang related crimes has increased by 50% in 2015. The right-wing ARENA party even proposed reforms to the Juvenile Penal Law, seeking to try minors linked to gang activity as adult terrorists (Stevens, 2015). Police records show that between January 2015 and August of 2016 police and military killed 693 gang members, injuring 255 in violent confrontations, with 24 killed soldiers and police officers. The imbalances between killed and injured gang members, as well as between killed gang members and law officers indicate an excessive use of force by the latter (Valencia, 2016; Lakhani, 2017) with evidence of extrajudicial killings mentioned by the human rights ombudsman David Morales (Hernández, 2016). News reports of these incidences have not led to investigations but to threads against reporters and news outlets.

These examples fit the wider Latin American context, where recent years have seen a receding of the left and an upsurge or right wing neoliberal politics even under left wing governments. The most iconic changes have probably occurred in Brazil and Argentina, where with Temer and Macri two free market conservatives gained control of the government, pushing for closer alliances with Mexico and ultimately the US. Less dramatic yet important changes can be seen in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, where initially anti-neoliberal, left wing governments show clear signs of distancing themselves from their popular base, often introducing neoliberal policies to overcome their inability to effectively deal with neoliberalism (Sankey 2016). Lacking clear programmatic visions, cohesive and sustainable long term programs, the activation of a large social base became increasingly difficult (if not impossible). Anti-neoliberal rhetoric was initially paired with expanding public services, some reversals of privatization, and an intended increase in the productive sector. No doubt these measures often had positive effects for the poor and working people, who often experienced increased access to education, basic goods and services, as well as housing.

However, reforms rarely ever interrupted existing national and international power structures, leading to their own contradictions. To finance development programs an increase dependency on extraction of cheap labor (as in El Salvador) or natural resources was put into place, yet what was often considered a “stage of development” never opened the way to more advanced economies or a restructuring of society. Leaving previous inequalities in place, allowed for short term solutions at best, while the structural causes of poverty remained intact. This in turn led to increasing violence -including gang activities- pushing left leaning governments into more militaristic efforts to control the poor and disenfranchised.

To defend against activists and an unhappy base, clientlelism often rewarded “loyal” activists at the cost of open dialogue with more critical voices and the broader basis. Incorporating leaders of popular movements into the government, depoliticized and delegitimized these movement, while silencing its social base. In El Salvador, this strategy cost the governing FMLN party several important municipal governments, when the government removed mayors to include them into higher offices. Through these actions, the poor and the working class were deprived of being a social force and became once more relegated to being passive beneficiaries of elite politics. Economic crises made this evident in specifically cruel ways, installing pro market reforms as well as cutting social programs exposed these governments of what they were -left leaning neoliberals. Resulting tensions with the social base made a growing disenchantment evident, opening the doors for the right to regain control of the political landscape once again (Sankey 2016).

To be clear, El Salvador never formed part of this “pink tide,” and no restructuring of the society occurred following the civil war. In fact, by and large the FMLN governments followed the economic and security policies laid out by previous ARENA presidents. This might not be surprising, given the fact that most of the guerilla movement in El Salvador had its origin in Christian base groups rather than socialist / communist circles. Despite constant political formation the guerilla didn’t grow a strong and independent ideological position; consequently, with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 many of the leaders no longer saw a feasible alternative to social democracy and capitalism. In fact, it was this perceived lack of ideological and political alternatives as well as the worries of decreasing international support that led some guerilla commanders to start thinking about ending the war already in 1989. This tendency was further increased in 1990 with the electoral loss of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the strongest international supporter of the Salvadorian guerilla force.

The lack of an alternative political project to neoliberalism was visible during the peace negotiations. While some land, pensions, or positions were given to former soldiers of both sides, the overall distribution of wealth remained largely unaffected and the same families that held most of the wealth before the war do so today. With the prewar economic and military powers largely intact, little change could be expected from the new democratic El Salvador. Said differently, the prewar economic powers were fairly intact after the war, while the left struggled to find its new place in the emerging democracy. Its role, however, was clearly inscribed into the proceedings of the peace negotiation: While the enemy force (from the guerilla perspective) remained largely unaffected (albeit severely downsized), the guerilla forces were completely disarmed as part of the peace process. Furthermore, in 1993 a general amnesty was put in place to supposedly avoid further divisions of the country. However, the reality was quite different: With an estimated 95% of war crimes committed by the military and right wing paramilitary groups (UN truth commission 1993), the law, in essence, protected high ranking military, who remained in office.

In general, these postwar developments left many former guerillas feeling betrayed by their former leadership not only for ending the war, but for not going through with their ideas either during the peace negotiations or once in power. Over 25 years after the peace accord we heard many former combatants complain, suspecting the FMLN politicians and their former commanders of having created for themselves nice nest eggs during the peace process, stealing from the movement. We take these claims not as evidence of stealing or other wrongdoings committed by the leadership, but rather as a way of expressing a feeling of ideological betrayal that many of the poorer sectors of former guerillas experience. Some former commanders, in contrast, explained these differences as based in ideology: “there are those that still think socialism is possible.”

All this goes to show that in El Salvador the right-wing parties never lost their voice or power. In fact, after the supreme court put an end to the above-mentioned amnesty laws in 2016, the first cases brought forward all target the former guerilla leadership for kidnapping. These cases are clearly politically motivated. Accusing the entire commanding structure of the FMLN (including the current president) the cases are built to threaten and discredit the left (whose banner carrier are all former commanders of the guerilla forces) and to “illustrate” that both sides committed crimes during the war. At the same time, the left has not been able or willing to bring their own charges to the courts. We speculate that this in part due to fear (see the above-mentioned example of paramilitaries in Joateca), as well as a lack of popular engagement with the current FMLN government.

Clearly, despite the 8+ years of FMLN governments, the El Salvador’s right has not ceased and their messages can be heard in very different places and on very different topics. Forcing the left government toward a tough on gang crime policy, is as much part of this strategy, as are the seemingly unrelated pro-life, and anti LGBT campaigns. Renaming streets, celebrating former military or bringing cases against the FMLN leadership in the post amnesty times represent efforts to shift the political discourse in El Salvador once more to the right of the spectrum, regardless of the party in power. These efforts are fruitful, particularly, because they exploit the lack of a clear ideological project of the left. Activating fear not only discredits the FMLN governments, forcing them to follow political lines that some years ago few would have thought possible. To be clear, the point of politics is to make policies. It is much less about party affiliations. The right-wing discourse has important economic support, yet while the economic sector very likely would favor a right-wing politician, it is equally happy with a business friendly left wing populist, who in fact might have an easier time selling their policies.

Kashmir: Who Is A Terrorist?

Umar Ahmad 

Kashmir continues to withstand turmoil & turbulence and rein of terror from it’s counter establishment. Enough blood had been spilled in the name of freeing Kashmir from contractors of bloodshed from India, but nothing substantial has happened so far in releasing this state from the scotches of galloping ghost. The bloodshed in Kashmir continues unabated without any regional or international intervention to dispel the non-existent authoritarian approach of India. Sounds pitch from everywhere but no one comes to rescue  Kashmiri’s when it needs to act practically. It is only blood that spills and no one is of the mind to differentiate whose blood is this, whether it be of a rebel who fights for a legal cause or of a guardian who serves to guard the public and protect them from the wrath of any untoward happening. For them, we are the terrorists and for we, they are the terrorists, but no one is firm to the fact who is a real terrorist. We see people butchered from both sides whether it be mujahideen rebel from Kashmir who fights against Indian atrocities or police men who are also the sons of same soil working to guard the communal interest of people living here. What is it that leads to these intra communal disturbances that lead one to kill another and vice versa, nothing is privy to the fact. At the end it is only the blood that is spilled inexpensively and inexhaustively.

No party has been liberal enough to safeguard the interests of state subjects. They have always sidelined the common communal ethos of people whom they represent for their vested interests, rather used kashmiriyat in general to blend their own tools, so to extend their monopolistic approach over kashmiri’s. Whether it be separatist patriarch rivals or mainstream politicians, they all have used Kashmiri as a scapegoat to get their both ends meet and later watch as a mute spectator when the state subjects are denied their birth right of freedom time & time over everything. The stands are clear now for all of us to get united and blend as a single unit irrespective of our communal, social, religious and political affiliations and voice as one to get our concerns heard at international forums. We have to put efforts to make international organizations hear our screamings and step forward for a lasting solution. Gun as a divisive and decisive force will not work out the strategy, because it has created internal rifts within our ambit based on affiliations and associations.

Weak force in unity is strength but a mighty but divisive stringent force never qualifies as a qualification to change the situation topsy turvy. Gone are the days when Kashmiri’s unarmed were enough as a social unit to fight for their immediate concerns. But today when we are sophisticated with resources of technology and tech savy persons in place of execution but seperably working out in their own ways, we are defeated at the short run based on our executionable shortcomings. We stand as rebels and we also stand as informers at the same time to cut the throat of our brethren. The recent trend of killing policemen working in state department by unknown yet doubtfully by rebel insurgents speak volumes about our underground works and affiliations. We belong to know one and no one belongs to us. We sell our conscience to any agency for monetary gains. We can never be assigned any authoritarian responsibility as we turn around anytime, at anywhere and at any cost for little personal gains. It remains unresolved here that who works for whom. Everyone is busy in filling his empty bins of greed out of state interests politically or apolitically. Our sisters are widowed, our brothers are orphaned, no matter their associates are mujahideen working as rebel insurgent against Indian imperialistic dominion or as policeman in state home department. The point is that it happens with us and we are always at the receiving end. No force or agency can chalk out strategic strategy for us, it is we and always our true efforts inseperably united that can make change at the grassroot level for better and fruitfull results. Time is it, that we surrender our animosity, greed, and hatred and stand firm to our cause and fight for the ultimate solution of self  determination. Efforts are to be put in place for a change that will unravel & uncover the happiness that is caged way back from 1931. Time has been very hard to us, our co integrity, our national ethos, our cultural superiority, all in all our future has been sacrificed for this cause. We have sustained gross upheavels out of our communal and religious strengths. The same needs to be revised for to take our struggle to a logical conclusion.

General public, separatist factions in unison, students, writers, intellectuals of class and repute can summationate their literary and intellectual strengths to highlight the issue in true prism of it’s existence, so that the international community will put forth steps asap to resolve this issue unilaterally.

So, all are kindly requested to be the change and set the chain in motion, to see the change in place for our particular concern and interests.

The Zionist Exception

Rima Najjar

Today, we hear a lot about White supremacy but very little about Jewish supremacy, as if the former stands for the latter.

It is true there are more similarities than differences between Jewish supremacy and White supremacy. Both are based on ethnic/nationalist bias and racism. They are both

“historically based, institutionally perpetuated system[s] of exploitation and oppression … a web of interlocking, reinforcing institutions: economic, military, legal, educational, religious, and cultural. As a system, racism affects every aspect of life in a country.”

Within Israel and militarily occupied Palestinian lands, Jewish supremacy is sometimes described as White supremacy, as in this headline:

“Israel’s White Supremacy Agenda Targets Other Jews, Arabs, Africans
Palestinians are not the only target for Israel’s animosity and ethno-centric policies.”

This is because, contrary to Zionist myth, Jews don’t all belong to one race. The Jews who created the racist ideology of Zionism (See Zionism = racism) and initially colonized Palestine (Between 1882 and 1903, at least 25,000 Jews arrived in Palestine, financially backed by European Jewish philanthropists, such as Moses Montefiore and Edmond de Rothschild, (see Palestine and the first Zionist Colony) are Ashkenazim, Jews of Eastern European origin.

Ashkenazi Jews are the elite of Israel and they dominate and discriminate against, not only Palestinian Arabs, but also other Jews and ethnicities in Israel.

The situation in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel exposes the deeply complex ethno-religious relations between European Jews and Middle Eastern Jews in Israel. Middle Eastern Jews have for many decades lived as stigmatized citizens of Israel; their traditional Arabic culture and form of Jewish religiosity frequently objects of scorn and prejudice…In spite of the fact that Sephardim comprise a substantial percentage of the Israeli Jewish population, in socio-cultural terms they find themselves in a subservient position vis-à-vis the Ashkenazim.

However, there are two major differences between the two racist ideologies, White supremacy and Jewish supremacy:

1) In so-called “liberal” circles, White supremacy is uniformly reviled, whereas Jewish supremacy, as it manifests itself in Zionism, is not only accepted but fiercely defended even by those Middle Eastern or Arab Jews mentioned above, who have internalized Zionist racism.

2) Jewish supremacy is wrapped up, not only in a secular Zionist ideology, but in a religious one as well, attracting Jews and evangelical Christians from all kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities.

In the wake of Charlottesville, for example, the ADL — Anti-Defamation League reported that it saw 1,000% spike in donations. The ADL is a Jewish supremacist organization, but it can masquerade in the United States as an anti-racist organization. As If Americans Knew reports, ADL “works to maintain the racist status quo in Israel-Palestine, which keeps Palestinians in Israel as third-class citizens and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank & Gaza stateless and without basic civil rights.” It also keeps Palestinian refugees and exiles from returning to their homes and land, an internationally recognized right.

In 1994, while eulogizing Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn born Jew who had emigrated to Israel and killed 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers at Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, New York Rabbi Yaacov Perrin said, “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” He was defining the essence of Jewish supremacy that now reigns supreme in all of historic Arab Palestine.

Accepting the concept of Jewish supremacy in Palestine, As Sari Nusseibeh wrote,

would be [among other things]to privilege Judaism above the religions of Christianity and Islam, whose adherents together comprise 55 per cent of the world’s population. Regrettably this is a narrative propagated even by renowned Jewish author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who, on April 15, 2010, took out full page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post and claimed that Jerusalem “is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Qur’an”. Now we do not propose to speak for native Palestinian Arab Christians — except to say the that Jerusalem is quite obviously the city of Jesus Christ the Messiah — but as Muslims, we believe that Jerusalem is not the “third holiest city of Islam” as is sometimes claimed, but simply one of Islam’s three holy cities. And, of course, despite what Mr Wiesel seems to believe, Jerusalem is indeed clearly referred to in the Holy Qur’an in Surat al-Isra’ (17:1) …

Zionist Jews in and out of Israel must confront the reality that Jewish supremacy in Israel, as David Lloyd wrote about Americans and White supremacy in the U.S., “is an intrinsic if shameful element in their history and institutions whose consequences have yet to be overcome.”

The question then arises why so many Jewish liberal Zionists are blind to their own racism against Palestinian Arabs while condemning racism by other groups.

In addressing this conundrum related to the Palestine exception (or Zionist exception) — an exception that involves not only censorship of pro-Palestine speech but also bald-faced, legitimized racism against Palestinian Arabs that extends to Muslims generally – Philip Weiss writes:

I make it a point to hear Rabbi Yehuda Kurtzer speak at J Street and other Jewish spaces. He is a very smart guy and very positive. While he’s too Jewish-communitarian for my taste (the touchstones of his political judgments are Jewish values rather than universalist ones), he’s an idealist who addresses Israel’s crisis. So, I was disturbed to discover on his Facebook page from June a promotion of a visit to rightwing “hilltop” settlements in the Occupied West Bank to get to know those folks better, sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute, of which Kurtzer is an executive.

Weiss is justifiably disturbed to hear this from Rabbi Yehuda Kurtzer on three grounds. One is because “those settlements are illegal under international law”. The second is because they are “segregationist” communities, and the third is because of the schizophrenia involved in “condemning and exposing” White nationalism on the one hand, and seeking to understand “the settler movement” (meaning the spread of Jewish Zionist colonization of Palestine to the remaining territory that was partitioned in 1948) on the other.

To me, there is no mystery in the conundrum with which Weiss is concerned.

These liberal American Jews (both religious and secular) don’t know any better because they are committed to Israel as a Jewish state, just as Jews on the right of the political spectrum are.

They see no shame or contradiction in that position because they have swallowed whole the Zionist narrative that defines their identity as Jews, including the inability to see Palestinian Arabs as fellow human beings with fundamental human rights.

So, to me, the problem of Jewish supremacy or nationalism as it manifests itself in Palestine is the fundamental problem of Zionism — its immoral racialist and racist premise.

It makes no difference which brand of Zionism got the upper hand in Palestine, whether it is the nationalism of Theodor Hertzl (i.e., as a response to external pressures that were impossible to avoid — meant for Jews “who do not wish or are unable to assimilate”) or the nationalism of Ahad Ha-Am, to whom the possibility of total assimilation of Jews into their host societies was unacceptable, because the Jewish people was morally superior to all other people.

Today we have a situation in which millions of Jews, whether “assimilated” into their countries of origin or not, believe that Israel has a “right” to exist as a Jewish state and that Palestine belongs to Jews worldwide and not to its indigenous inhabitants regardless of religion or ethnicity.

That, to me, is the disturbing element of all Zionists, including the liberal Zionists Weiss addresses. They want Israel to “exist” as a Jewish state on land forcefully usurped and stolen from under the feet of its true owner, the Palestinian people, who continue to suffer as refugees and in exile as well as in Palestine under military occupation and under Apartheid.

Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is disturbing. Jewish supremacy whether rearing its ugly head in West Bank settlements or embodying the very existence of Israel is the nightmare.

A recent survey has found that nearly half of Israeli Jews believe in ethnic cleansing. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin reportedly called the findings a ‘wake-up call for Israeli society’. But what is it that these people should wake up to? The Jewish state was founded on ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs and defends its “existence” by continuing to ethnic cleanse Palestinians. That’s what they should wake up to — the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

The Jewish supremacist state of Israel must come to an end as such. The goal of exposing Israel’s crimes and the immorality of its supporters is to seek transformative justice in Palestine – to de-Zionize.

Durable Conspiracies: Twenty Years After Princess Diana’s Death

Binoy Kampmark

It has been two decades, and a stocktake of the conspiracy theories over the circumstances of Princess Diana’s death in the Pont de l’Alma road Tunnel will reveal the same inventory as were spawned in the immediate aftermath of her demise.  No response short of fanciful will do; no planned horror, however improbable, can be dismissed. Importantly, there must be some schema, a nefarious design intended to snatch away this figure’s life.

The nature of myth has its own powers, its own resilience.  Making the late princess into a myth served the ambitions of New Labour and the Blairite program, which promoted its own fictions through the dense web of spin and policy.  “Call me Tony” Blair was a perfect accompaniment to the pop assemblage that was the People’s Princess, confections of managed public relations.

The People’s Princess still exerts a profane power from beyond the grave. She is still deemed “extraordinary” (a common mistake), and worthy of floral tributes outside Kensington Palace. An example of this wearisome nonsense is provided by Mara Klemich, visiting from Sydney: “We had never met her and been nowhere near her, but I think she touched so many people because of who she was, the way she conducted herself in the context of where she was living and who she became.”

To be sustainable as a myth, it was necessary to develop, as Roland Barthes put it in his Mythologies, a set of meanings, essentially rendering them as natural, rather than crafted by the foibles of human intent.  This compelling point leads us to conclude that looking at the myth is less significant than the story teller behind it. The show is nothing without its producer.

And my, were there stories to pick from, a vast pantheon teeming with variants as to how Diana died.  One common conspiracy centres on a misunderstanding of causation.  Goldie Lookin Chain, a Welsh rap outfit, would summarise this neat point in Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do. In the case of the princess, those with cameras did it, even if the ultimate responsibility should lie with a drunken driver and the poor choices made on the day on road safety.

The stubborn nexus with power – that the princess was somehow getting too big for her fancy boots – remains a noisy, if astonishingly misplaced theme.  One can’t make bricks without straw, as the expression goes, and straw was supplied at various intervals: in 2008 by former MI6 operative Richard Tomlinson, and then by former SAS sergeant, soldier N, in 2013.

Both figures were particularly keen to push the theory that Diana’s driver had been blinded with lethally intended consequences. For Tomlinson, the suggestion of using a strobe light to blind a chauffeur was penned own in an MI6 document from 1992 listing three methods of how best to kill Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević.

The mystery soldier N confided in his spouse about a flashing light deployed by a hit squad that distracted the driver at a crucial moment. Soldier N, we might say, was as pure as driven slush, arrested and detained along with SAS sniper Danny Nightingale in 2011 for having illegal weapons and ammunition. It did not take the Met long to dismiss his plagiarised account.

Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son Dodi also perished with Diana, has been the most vigorous devotee of the conspiracy brand, blaming the Duke of Edinburgh. Here, the royal precedent to murder one’s own returns to form.

For Al-Fayed, the design on the princess was simple: the couple would die at the hands of the security services because they had intended to marry. (Those seeking current grist for the mill suggest that the princess was intending to reject any marriage proposal – the old business goes on.)

The fuss kicked up by the grieving, somewhat unhinged father led to the stripping of Harrods’ four warrants granting the store the right to declare its appointment by the Royal Family to supply goods.  But hate sustains, and Al-Fayed busied himself with sniffing around the Duke of Edinburgh’s alleged Nazi links.  The world was spared witnessing the ex-Harrods owner’s celluloid product claiming the same.  Unfortunately, it has not been spared much else.

Each body of evidence has failed to convince the punters.  The French Magistrates, for one, were never going to satisfy the Diana clan.  (Their scepticism was fuelled by a good deal of anti-Gallic passion: if the Frogs did not do it, they certainly made it easier.)

“The vehicle’s driver,” concluded the 1999 report, “was in a state of drunkenness and under the undue influence of medication incompatible with alcohol, a state that prevented him from keeping control of his vehicle when he was driving at speed.” Chauffeur Henri Paul hardly needed strobe lighting.

On the other side of the Channel, the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Paget revealed, after draining more resources, personnel and time, not to mention  800 pages, that “all the evidence at this time” pointed to “no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants in the car.  This was a tragic accident.” Instead of allaying doubts in December 2006, when it was released, there were those who refused to be convinced.

Nothing in terms of evidence would ever refute or repudiate the myth producing industry behind the princess.  On the contrary, this steadfast refutation of evidence, the fanatical resolve to reject the empirical, provided a foretaste of that modern staple we now know as “fake news”. The conspiracy complex was more Donald Trump than Donald Trump, and troublingly post-modern in turning all matters foundational and solid to dust. And in that dust is the grand sinister design.

Rohingyas: Jihadists?

Chandra Muzaffar

The Rohingyas — or at least some Rohingyas — are now being projected as terrorists, as “Jihadists” out to kill Myanmar soldiers and civilians. Myanmar leaders including Aung San SuuKyi have spoken along these lines.

This view of the Rohingyas is being propagated by the Myanmar government with greater zeal since a small armed group called the ArakanRohingya Salvation Army ( ARSA) attacked security forces on 9 October 2016. These attacks have continued in recent weeks. In this new wave of violence it is alleged that 12 security personnel were killed while the Myanmar military and border police have killed 77 Rohingya Muslims.

The way Aung San SuuKyiand her government colleagues have framed the clashes ignores the brutal massacres committed by the military over a long period of time. The oppression and persecution of the Rohingyas by the State and other forces has been thoroughly documented by the United Nations Human Rights Council and other independent human rights groups. It is well-known that as a community the Rohingyas were stripped of Myanmar citizenship in 1982, deprived of basic human rights, tortured, imprisoned, and forced to flee their home province of Rakhine. This is why there are tens of thousands of Rohingyas living in squalid conditions in Bangladesh or struggling to survive in a number of countries from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. They have been described by the UN itself as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.  Simply put, the Rohingyas are the victims of a slow genocide, to quote Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen.

To condemn the violence of a miniscule fraction of the Rohingyas without taking into account their massive marginalisation and severe oppression is a travesty of truth and justice. It is extreme desperation and hopelessness that has forced some of them to resort to violence. Of course, violence is not the solution. It will not help to restore the rights of the Rohingyas, especially their right to citizenship.

Our concern is that the violence will escalate. The signs are already there. Given the underlying religious connotations of the conflict — though the conflict itself is not rooted in religion per se – it is not inconceivable that the violence will spread beyond Myanmar’s borders and engulf Muslim and Buddhist communities in other parts of Southeast Asia. This would be catastrophic for ASEAN, a regional grouping in which 42% of the population is Muslim and another 40% is Buddhist.

Finding workable solutions to the Myanmar – Rohingya conflict is therefore of utmost importance. It is in this regard that the ‘Final Report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State’ under the chairmanship of former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, deserves the urgent attention of all stakeholders.  The Report announced in August 2017 calls for a review of the 1982 citizenship law and notes that “Myanmar harbours the largest community of stateless people in the world.” It urges the government to abolish distinctions between different types of citizens.

Other recommendations pertain to reduction of the poverty rate in Rakhine state which is 78%, improving the socio-economic condition of the people, enhancing access to health services and education, ensuring freedom of movement and encouragingpeople’s participation and representation. Though the Report is worded with a great deal of caution and diplomacy, it does send an unambiguous message to the powers-that-be in Myanmar that the status quo cannot be allowed to persist and that change has to take place. That message is significant considering that the Commission was actually initiated by the government.

Will the government take heed? So far there is no indication that it will respond positively to the Commission’s recommendations. This is not surprising. It is the harsh authoritarianism of the government embodied in the power of the military that is primarily responsible for the targeting of the Rohingya as the “ethnic other.” This is what has resulted in the genocide that we are witnessing today.

Even if the Myanmar government does not act of its own volition, the Kofi Annan Report can be used to persuade other governments to pressurise Myanmar to act. Apart from ASEAN governments, special efforts should be made by civil society groups and the media to convince Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, Islamabad and Washington and London that they demand that the Myanmar government protects all its citizens without discrimination. If it fails to do so, these capitals should review their economic and/or military ties with Naypyidaw.

It is with the aim of persuading the leadership in Naypyidaw to change its behaviour that the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) is holding its concluding session in Kuala Lumpur on the treatment of the Rohingyas, Kachins and other minorities in Myanmar from the 18th to the 22nd of September 2017. As more and more voices plead for justice and compassion on behalf of the oppressed who knows they may eventually pierce the walls of Naypyidaw.