This Indian epic unites seven different Southeast Asian countries. Sort of.

Considered one of the world's most important literary works, the Ramayana has captured the imagination of many who read or listen to the Indian epic.

The poem, believed to have been written by Valmiki in the 5th century BCE is one of India's two great literary works after the Mahabharata.

With all of its 24,000 verses composed in Sanskrit, the story of Rama and Sita has been told and retold for countless generations in the Southeast Asian region.

More than just a love story.

Rama on horseback. Painting by BK Mitra.

The Ramayana tells the story of Prince Rama who goes in exile into the forest for 14 years upon the orders of his father together with his wife, Sita, and brother, Lakshamana.

Unfortunately, tragedy strikes when Sita gets kidnapped by the evil demon king, Ravana. Rama begins his quest to rescue his wife through the help of the Vanaras, a clan of monkeys.

While the Ramayana has been popularized as a love story, the saga of Rama deals with many themes that we often encounter in life. Because of this, the story has been told in various forms.

From comics, to films, animated features, television series, painting, dance, theater and exhibitions, the Ramayana is now a part of a larger narrative of the world.

Courtesy of Hindu influence over the Southeast Asian region, each country, save for Vietnam, have their own unique versions of the legend.

Reamker - Cambodia.

The Ramayana is believed to have arrived at Cambodia sometime during the 7th century in the form of a poem. This is according to the Veal Kantel inscriptions.

Titled Reamker, which means "Glory to Rama" in the Cambodian language, famous scenes of the epic can be seen on the walls of the Royal Palace and Angkor Wat. The Reamker gives more emphasis to Hanuman, one of Rama's staunches allies through additional scenes.

Cambodians fused Hindu ideas and Buddhism themes together to perform the poem through their dance theatre, L'khaon. The dance is part of the royal ballet's reportoire and is commonly performed during festive seasons in Cambodia.

Kakawin Ramayana - Indonesia.

In the Javanese version of the legend titled Kakawin Ramayana, the second half of the Ramayana diverges from its original Sanskrit version. The modifications include the indigenous Javanase deity, Semar, and his three sons, Gareng, Petruk, and Bagong.

Apparently the Indonesian version was based on the Ravanavadha, a sixth century retelling of the Ramayana by Indian poet Bhattikavya. Written in 870 CE, the focus is more on the antagonist, Ravana.

Indonesians perform the saga through two dance forms: The Balinese kecak dance, Ramakavaca, and Yogyakarta's Wayang Wong Javanese dance.

With Indonesia too, heavily influenced by India, the characters from the Ramayana can be seen in the 9th century Prambanan temple in Yogyakarta.

Phra Lak Phra Lam - Laos.

Interestingly, the Laos version of the story, Phra Lak Phra Lam, focuses more on the heroism of Rama's brother, Lakshamana.

Since Laos has its roots in Buddhism, Rama is believed to be the previous reincarnation of the Buddha, according to the locals.

Considered a national epic, the Ramayana arrived in the Southeast Asian much later than Cambodia and Thailand. By the time it arrived, the legend had lost much of its Hindu influence and became a much more localized.

The title of the retelling is named after the two brothers, Lakshamana (Phra Lak) and Rama (Phra Lam).

Hikayat Seri Rama - Malaysia.

The Malaysian retelling of the epic, Hikayat Seri Rama (Chronicle of the Great Rama), is a little more special because it incorporates shadow puppetry.

This Malay adaptation of the Hindu retelling maintains its originality but with slight modifications to certain scenes where the minor characters are upgraded to become major players.

For example, Lakshamana plays a much more important role than the legend's protagonist, Rama, which the story is based on. In the Malaysian adaptation, Rama, though virtuous, is often seen as weak while his brother courageous and much more focused.

The tale of Rama and Sita is also told through the traditional dance-drama Mak Yung.

Yama Zatdaw - Myanmar.

Yama Zatdaw or Yamayana is heavily influenced by Thailand's version of the Ramayana due to the invasion of Burma by the Siamese kings of the Konbaung Dynasty during the 15th century.

Just like Laos, the Yama Zatdaw borrows elements from the Theravada Buddhist culture as well. The story, Rama sā-khyan, was believed to have been told orally during King Anawratha's reign before it was composed by U Aung Phyo in 1775.

Meanwhile, Loik Samoing Ram is the Mon version of the epic which incorporates elements found in Thailand, Java, and Malaysia but with its own unique episodes. It was written by a Buddhist monk named Uttama in 1834.

Maharadia Lawana - The Philippines.

According to indologist Juan R. Francisco, the Ramayana arrived at Filipino shores sometime between the 17th to 19th century thanks to Javanese and Malayan traders who themselves were influenced by India.
The Maharadia Lawana, written as an epic poem by the Maranao people, became indigenized and has contrasting differences from the original Sanskrit version. Character names and locations were changed to perhaps suit the cultural perspectives and orientations of the locals.

Ramakien - Thailand.

Just like Laos, Thailand's version of the legend, Ramakien, is considered a national epic.

However, unlike the original Sanskrit version, Sita is the daughter of the antagonist Thotsakan (Ravana). Phiphek, the astrologer brother of Thotsakan predicts that Ravana would die because of Sita. Furious, he throws his daughter into a river and she is rescued by Chanok.

The earliest records of the poem dates back to the 13th century, during the reign of the Sukhothai kingdom. By the 18th century, during the Ayutthaya kingdom, the Ramakien was written. Sadly when the Burmese invaded, much of the editions were lost.

Under the supervision of King Rama I of the Chakri dynasty which still maintains the royal throne today, the story was reconstructed. King Rama II further adapted the retelling for the khon drama. This version has an added role for Hanuman who is often portrayed lasciviously.

Today, the Ramakien forms an integral part of Thai culture and is taught in schools nationwide.

Uniting cultures.

A painting at the Wat Phra Kaew depicting the battle between Rama and Ravana. IMAGE: Aiden McRae Thomson

In India alone, the birthplace of the Ramayana, there are various versions of the epic told and retold.

Yet, it amazes me how the legend travelled throughout the ages to seven different countries, with each nation making it their own.

Would the tale of Rama and Sita continue to capture people's imaginations and thrive? It will for generations to come so long as the beautiful arts and cultural works above are preserved.

Cover image sourced from YouTube and Daily Travel Photo.

(Source: Mashable)

Changing places: Why countries decide to move their capitals

Indonesia is pressing ahead with plans to move its capital from the traffic-choked city of Jakarta to the island of Borneo. The precise location has not yet been revealed - nor has a timeline - but President Joko Widodo formally launched the scheme in parliament on 16 August.

Reasons for moving the capital are not hard to find. Jakarta is sinking by an average of 1-15cm a year. Almost half the city is now below sea level. It sits on swampy land, the Java Sea lapping against it, and 13 rivers running through it.

Its traffic jams are notorious: in 2016, a survey found that the mega-city had the world's worst traffic congestion. Government ministers have to be escorted by police convoys to get to meetings on time.

Jakarta is traffic-clogged - and sinking

The greater urban area has a population of 30 million. Only about 2-4% of its waste water is treated.

The new capital would be in Kalimantan, the name for the Indonesian part of Borneo. The move would cost up to $33bn (£27bn). It would require an area of 30,000 to 40,000 hectares to house between 900,000 and 1.5 million people.

The frontrunner city is Palangkaraya, in central Kalimantan. It is geographically close to the centre of the Indonesian archipelago, and the country's founding father, Sukarno, also proposed to make it the capital.

But Indonesia is by no means the first country to consider moving its capital. Here are some other notable examples:

1. Kazakhstan
In 1997, President Nursultan Nazarbayev decided to move the capital from the main city, Almaty, He chose a dusty provincial town, some 1,200km (750 miles) north. One of the first things he did was to change the name, from Aqmola - which means "white grave" - to Astana.

He then brought in architects from around the world to build his capital from the ground up. One of its most striking landmarks is Khan Shatyr - the world's largest tent. Designed by Norman Foster, it houses an indoor shopping mall and entertainment complex.

The Baytarek Tower, which resembles an egg perched on top of a tree, houses an observation deck with a view of other newly built landmarks. These include the presidential palace, a riff on the White House topped with a pale-blue dome. Next to that is the Central Concert Hall, a turquoise structure mimicking an unfolding spaceship.

All this was made possible by Kazakhstan's booming oil sector: the economy grew by 4.8% in 2018. As a mark of gratitude, after President Nazarbayev stepped down in March, parliament voted to name the city in his honour.

So now the Kazakh capital - the second-coldest in the world, after Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia - is known as Nur Sultan City. Not bad for a settlement perhaps best known in Soviet times for its proximity to a gulag.

2. Myanmar
The city of Nay Pyi Taw covers at least four times the area of London, but with only a fraction of the people. Its history is short: it has only existed since 2005, raised out of the flatlands by the then military rulers of Myanmar (previously known as Burma).

The name means "seat of the king". The reasons for moving the capital some 370km inland from the largest city, Yangon (Rangoon), have never been entirely clear.

The information minister told the BBC at the time that it was a more strategic location, but analysts were sceptical. They said it was possible the military feared a foreign invasion, or wanted more control over ethnic minorities in the border regions.

Others suggested Myanmar's notoriously secretive leaders were simply repeating the habits of Burmese kings in pre-colonial times, who built new towns and palaces on the advice of fortune-tellers.

The city bears all the hallmarks of a planned capital: the road leading from parliament to the presidential palace is 20 lanes wide, but carries hardly any traffic. Shiny shopping malls and empty luxury hotels line the boulevards. There's a safari park, a zoo, and at least three stadiums. Unlike other parts of Myanmar, it has electricity around the clock.

3. Bolivia
Bolivia has two capital cities: Sucre and La Paz. Sucre was the sole capital until 1899, when it lost a brief civil war to La Paz. After that, parliament and the civil service moved to Bolivia's largest city, La Paz, while the judiciary remained in Sucre.

Sucre, in the centre of the country, was where Bolivia was founded, in 1825. It has a population of just 250,000, compared to 1.7 million in La Paz.

In 2007, a proposal was put forward to move parliament and government back to Sucre, only for what was described as the biggest ever protest in La Paz to break out.

The idea arose out of a regional rivalry between President Evo Morales' supporters in Bolivia's poor western highlands and his opponents in the more prosperous east.

The scheme was eventually abandoned, and Bolivia has two capitals to this day.

4. Nigeria
Until 1991 Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, was also its capital. There were a number of reasons for moving the capital to Abuja: first of all, its central location, away from the coast.

It used to take about two days to travel the 1,600km to Lagos by road from the city of Maiduguri, in the north-east, Abuja was far closer.

Lagos was very congested (it's the most populous city in sub-Saharan Africa), and that was among the reasons for the move.

Abuja was also more politically and ethnically neutral. The Yoruba ethnic group dominates Lagos, while the Igbos are largely in the southeast and the Hausas in the northwest. This was no small matter: between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria was wracked by the Biafran war, when the Igbos sought to secede from Nigeria.

While Lagos grew up organically, Abuja is a planned city - the first in Nigeria. The traffic congestion in Lagos is notorious; in Abuja, the roads were designed to be wide from the start.

The national cultural institutes are there, along with the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the presidential palace. However, many federal agencies are unofficially still based in Lagos.

5. Portugal
For 13 years, the capital of Portugal was not in Lisbon but Rio de Janeiro. The reason? Napoleon. During the Peninsular War (1807-14), the French invaded Portugal no fewer than three times. Days before the invasion in December 1807, the Braganza royal family and the court left for Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. They arrived in Rio in March 1808.

Rio in the early 19th Century was a booming city: there was gold, there were diamonds, there was sugar. There were also slaves: up to a million of them, about a third of the population.

Dom João VI, the prince regent, created the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. This elevated Brazil from a mere colony to the same level as Portugal. Brazil was also granted more administrative independence. When the queen died in 1816, he became king.

In 1821, the Portuguese court returned to Lisbon where it remained until the end of the monarchy, in 1910. Its sojourn in Rio, however, left a lasting mark on Brazil, boosting its economy and hastening its push for independence.

(Source: BBC)

Myanmar frees Reuters journalists jailed for reporting on Rohingya crisis

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spent more than a year in jail after being accused of breaching Official Secrets Act

Two Reuters journalists imprisoned in Myanmar for their reporting of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims have been pardoned and released after spending more than 500 days in jail.

Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, were arrested in December 2017 and accused of breaking the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and have been imprisoned in Yangon’s Insein jail ever since.

The pair were released on Tuesday as part of an amnesty of 6,520 prisoners by President Win Myint. The chief of Insein prison, Zaw Zaw, confirmed Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been freed.

Speaking moments after his release, Wa Lone said: “I’m really happy and excited to see my family and my colleagues. I can’t wait to go to my newsroom. I am a journalist and I am going to continue to be.”

Images showed Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo’s emotional reunion with their wives and children hours after being released. Wa Lone’s first child, Thet Htar Angel, was born while he was behind bars so this was the first time he was able embrace his daughter as a free man.

Kyaw Soe Oo was pictured holding his daughter, three-year-old Moe Thin Wai Zan, tightly. During the trial she would steal brief embraces with her father outside the courtroom before he was bundled back to jail and would cry “Papa, Papa!” as the van drove off. “Now the three of us can hug each other and we are so happy for that,” said his wife Chit Su Win.

Stephen J Adler, the editor-in-chief of Reuters, said he was “enormously pleased that Myanmar has released our courageous reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo”.

“Since their arrests 511 days ago, they have become symbols of the importance of press freedom around the world. We welcome their return,” Adler said.

Amal Clooney, who joined the legal team working on their case a year ago, paid tribute to the “incredible determination” of Reuters “in their pursuit of justice for their brave reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo”.

“It is inspiring to see a news organisation so committed to the protection of innocent men and the profession of journalism,” said Clooney. “I hope that their release signals a renewed commitment to press freedom in Myanmar.”

From left, Kyaw Soe Oo with his daughter and wife Chit Su Win. Wa Lone with wife Pan Ei Mon and their daughter. 

Responding to the news, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt emphasised that he had personally raised Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo’s case with Myanmar’s State Counsellor, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, back in September.

“I am extremely grateful she has listened to me and many others and responded to a clear miscarriage of justice. In a world where media freedom is under attack this is a rare glimmer of hope,” tweeted Hunt.

He later said he hoped the release marked the first step in a bigger re-evaluation of the Myanmar government’s approach on the need for accountability for the alleged genocide of the Rohingya Muslim community in Rakhine province.

“Obviously we hope that is can be a the start of a new chapter of our relations with Myanmar and that same openness can be applied to what is happened to the Rohingya in Rakhine province,” he told the BBC.

Dan Chugg, the British ambassador to Myanmar, highlighted the judicial failings that had led to the pair being jailed. “These journalists were convicted in a case which did not follow due process and ignored the concept of innocent until proven guilty,” said Chugg. “In taking the decision to free Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo just a few days after the supreme court’s final decision, the Myanmar government has recognised the shortcomings of the earlier judicial procedures and demonstrated its commitment to upholding the rule of law.”

At the time of their arrest, the pair were working on an in-depth investigation into the brutal violence carried out against the Rohingya in Rahkine state by Myanmar’s military in August 2017 which forced more than 700,000 people to flee to Bangladesh and led to accusations of genocide. This year, the pair were given the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the massacre of Rohingya civilians.

 This outcome shows that dialogue works, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Lord Ara Darzi

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Myanmar nationals who work for the international news agency, have continuously maintained their innocence and stated they were set up by the police who planted official papers on them at a meeting.

After a drawn-out trial which was widely regarded as a sham, with flimsy evidence and contradictory witnesses, including a policeman who told the court he had been instructed to set up the sting operation, the pair were sentenced to seven years in prison in September.

The pardon of the pair, by the Myanmar president, comes after 16 months of mounting pressure from international governments, diplomats, human rights organisations and even religious figures, which up to this point had appeared to fall on deaf ears. Aung San Suu Kyi has also repeatedly rebuffed calls by figures such as British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and US vice president Mike Pence for her to pardon the pair, and within Myanmar there has been little sympathy for them.

Their long-awaited release came one month after the highest court in Myanmar, the supreme court, rejected the final judicial appeal to overturn their sentence. The Myanmar government also did not chose to pardon Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in the annual New Year amnesty this year, which saw 9,000 prisoners released.

It is unclear why the decision to pardon the pair was made now. However, this week senior diplomats and international officials are in Myanmar to discuss the situation in Rahkine with the Myanmar government, in a meeting of the International Advisory Commission. The commission was set up in 2017 to help Myanmar implement recommendations made by late former UN head Kofi Anan on resolving the ongoing conflict in Rahkine state.

While the Myanmar government insists it has implemented most of Anan’s recommendations, the situation in Rahkine, and the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, has not improved.

Present at their release from prison on Tuesday was Lord Ara Darzi, a member of Britain’s House of Lords who is on the International Advisory Commission. He said he had been involved in “months of dialogue” with the Myanmar government, Reuters and the UN as well as various governments and international organisations, which he did not name, to negotiate the pardoning of the journalists.

“I am delighted that the Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, have been granted a pardon, released from custody, and are with their loved ones once more,” said Darzi. “This outcome shows that dialogue works, even in the most difficult of circumstances.”

News of the release was greeted with a relief by organisations around the world.

“We congratulate Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo on walking free from unjust imprisonment and applaud they have now been reunited with their families,” said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for Asia. “These courageous investigative journalists should have never been arrested, much less imprisoned, in the first place and their release was long overdue.”

A statement from the office of the UN humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar said: “The UN in Myanmar welcomes the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from prison. The UN in Myanmar considers the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo a step toward improving the freedom of the press and a sign of government’s commitment to Myanmar’s transition to democracy.”

Timeline

• Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were working on an investigation into the killings of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine state, following an army crackdown in the region in August 2017
• December 2017: The journalists were arrested by Myanmar police
• May 2018: The men were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their work on the Rohingya
• July 2018: They were charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act
• September 2018: They were sentenced to seven years’ jail
• January 2019: The Yangon High Court dismissed their appeal
• April 2019: The Myanmar Supreme Court dismissed their appeal
• May 2019: They were released as a result of a presidential pardon

(Source: The Guardian)

Kachin women from Myanmar 'raped until they get pregnant' in China

Women from Kachin minority are allowed to go home only if they leave baby behind, says HRW report

Burmese and Chinese authorities are turning a blind eye to a growing trade in women from Myanmar’s Kachin minority, who are taken across the border, sold as wives to Chinese men and raped until they become pregnant, a report claims.

Some of the women are allowed to return home after they have given birth, but are forced to leave their children, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch, titled Give Us a Baby and We’ll Let You Go.

One survivor said: “I gave birth, and after one year the Chinese man gave me a choice of what to do. I got permission to go back home, but not with the baby.”

China is grappling with a severe gender imbalance; the percentage of the population who are women has fallen every year since 1987. Researchers estimate that factors including sex-selective abortion, infanticide and neglect of female babies mean that there are 30 to 40 million “missing women” in China, who should be alive today but aren’t.

That means millions of men are now unable to find a wife, and there has been a rise in trafficking across the borders of neighbouring, poorer nations.

 Refugees in Myitkyina, Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Photograph: Khin Maung Win/AP

Many of the Kachin women are trafficked out of Myanmar by their relatives, friends or people they trust; in one case a woman was betrayed by someone from her bible study class. They are often promised jobs across the border in China, and discover only after they cross over that they have been sold into sexual slavery.

“My broker was my auntie, she persuaded me,” a woman who was trafficked aged 17 or 18 told Human Rights Watch. Over three years, HRW spoke to nearly 40 victims who had escaped, or been allowed to leave but without their children, many still struggling to deal with the emotional impact.

All came from, and had returned to, Myanmar’s northern Kachin state or neighbouring Shan state, where the ethnic Kachin have been fighting the government for decades. A 17-year ceasefire ended in 2011, and the renewed conflict has displaced more than 100,000 people and left many struggling to survive.

With men taking part in the fighting, women often become the only breadwinners for the families, and with jobs badly paid and hard to find, many feel that they have no choice but to pursue work in China where wages are higher even for illegal migrants.

“Myanmar and Chinese authorities are looking away while unscrupulous traffickers are selling Kachin women and girls into captivity and unspeakable abuse,” said Heather Barr, women’s rights co-director at Human Rights Watch.

“The dearth [of work or legal] protections have made these women easy prey for traffickers, who have little reason to fear law enforcement on either side of the border.”

Myanmar’s government reported 226 cases of trafficking in 2017, but experts told Human Rights Watch they believe that the real number is much higher.

There are few incentives for trafficked women or their relatives to seek official help. Families seeking police aid to track missing daughters, sisters and wives were turned away in Myanmar, or were asked for money, HRW found.

Many of the areas where the women are trafficked from are controlled not by authorities in the capital, Yangon, but by the opposition Kachin Independence Organisation, so the government has no record of what is happening there.

In China, when some survivors tried to seek help from security forces, they were jailed for immigration violations not supported as crime victims.

Those who were repatriated were often simply dumped at the border, stranded far from their community, the report found. And if they do make it back, they face social stigma, and little chance of getting justice, even if they tried to seek it.

“When Myanmar authorities did make arrests, they usually targeted only the initial brokers in Myanmar and not the rest of the networks in China,” the report found. “Police in China almost never to our knowledge arrested people that knowingly bought trafficked ‘brides’ and abused them.”

(Source: The Guardian)

After six decades, Manipur’s Burmese Tamils get a glimpse of their ancestral places in Myanmar

Opening of the land border last year has enabled Moreh’s Tamils, who were forced to flee Burma in the early 1960s, to connect with their roots.

Since he was a little boy, M Mohan had “only two aims” in life: to go to London and to visit his “father and mother’s houses in Burma”. On December 23, he fulfilled one of those dreams. He finally tracked down the house where his mother grew up, in Bago, a town around 100 km to the northeast of Yangon. “It was the most sentimental day of my life,” recalled Mohan, now 40. “I took a selfie with the house in the background and updated my Facebook status.”

Mohan, a Tamil who can speak five languages fluently, was born and brought up in Moreh, a dusty, one-street town in Manipur on the Indo-Myanmar border where idli dosa shops jostle for space with Manipuri rice hotels, and local brews share the shelf with Chinese lagers in paan shops owned by Biharis.

Moreh's Tamils celebrate the Pongal festival in January.

His parents trace their roots to Myanmar, where the family had lived and worked for decades before fleeing in 1962 after a military junta took over. In spite of living a few hundred metres from Myanmar all his life, Mohan’s expedition took many years because land travel to the country through Moreh was strictly regulated. Indians required a special permit from the Myanmar government, in addition to a visa.

This meant flying to Yangon was, for all practical purposes, the only way to enter the country for Indian passport holders. “I have to go to Kolkata, and then from there to Yangon. How can a simple man like me afford all that?” asked Mohan, who exports utensils manufactured in Tamil Nadu to Myanmar.

In August 2018, though, things changed. Myanmar opened its land boundary with India in August and made Moreh a legitimate “port of entry”. Most major towns in Myanmar were now only an affordable bus ride away. “It was a momentous occasion for all of us Tamils in Moreh,” exclaimed Mohan. “All of us had harboured this dream of going to Burma at least once in our lifetime to see how our ancestors lived, and it was finally going to come true.”

For the Tamils of Moreh, the opening of the new road meant a chance to connect with a past they could never quite let go of. Almost all of them, like Mohan’s family, had lived in Burma for decades before abruptly leaving in the 1960s.

M Mohan fulfilled his childhood dream of going to Myanmar
in December. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

Tracing their roots
Indians started flooding into Myanmar after it fell to the British Raj in the 19th century, filling government posts, manning its ports. By 1931, there were over a million Indians in the country. Then, in December 1941, at the height of the Second World War, the Japanese bombed Rangoon. As British troops retreated from the country, thousands of scared Indians trekked down from Myanmar to India via Manipur. The Long March, as it is called, was the first wave of forced migration of Indians from Burma.

The war ended and Myanmar gained freedom in 1948, but the Indian community remained in a perilous position. Burmese administrators systemically persecuted Indians, denying them citizenship on racial grounds and forcing thousands to return to their country of origin.

When the dictator Ne Win grabbed power in the early 1960s, he actively pursued an anti-minority agenda, nationalising all their businesses and properties. It triggered a mass expulsion of Indians, till then a significant population group. Between 1962 and 1964, more than three lakh Indians were forced out of Myanmar.

The Indo-Myanmar Friendship Gate separates Moreh and the market township
of Namphalong in Burma. Movement is free between 7 am and
4 pm. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

Khwaja Moinuddin’s family fled in a ship sent by the Indian government to retrieve Indians expelled by the Burmese military. The ship took them to Tamil Nadu, where they stayed for a few years in a refugee camp in Tiruchirappalli. “But my grandfather and others could not adjust – the food, the way of life, it was all very different from Burma,” Moinuddin said. “So, they decided to try and go back, this time via road, but were stopped at Moreh by the Burmese Army.” The family has lived in Moreh ever since.

When Moinuddin’s aging parents heard the border where they were stopped 50 years ago had finally been opened, they implored their son to take them to the place they were born. “They are old, they want to see their home, their land one last time,” he said.

To Moreh via Madras
By local estimates, there are around 3,000 Tamils, Hindu and Muslim, in Moreh, a town of less than 20,000 people belonging to at least a dozen distinct communities, including the Kukis and the Manipuri Meiteis. While Meitei is the lingua franca, the town’s pluralistic character means most people speak at least three languages – it is common for people in Moreh to switch languages mid-conversation.

The Namphalong market is awash with Chinese goods and alcohol.
Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

The Tamils are in a minority now but they were the largest group until as recently as the mid-1990s, said the residents. Almost of them share a similar backstory: expelled from Myanmar, ill at ease in their new homes in Tamil Nadu, and marooned in Moreh since. “Our people came to Moreh because they wanted to go back to Burma,” explained Mohan. “They couldn’t, yet they stayed back. But people started to leave in the 90s as Moreh has few opportunities for higher education and employment.” Most left for Tamil Nadu, he said.

‘The king of Moreh’
In spite of their dwindling numbers, Moreh’s Tamils continue to be influential in the town. They dominate the trade, which is entirely informal but amounts to over Rs 50 crore annually, as per estimates of the town’s chamber of commerce. The community also controls the big-ticket furniture business, which thrives on the popular Burmese teak brought in from across the border.

It is not surprising then that the town’s most powerful trade body, the Border Trade and Chamber of Commerce, is populated almost entirely by the Tamils. Heading the association is V Shekhar, who enjoys a singular position in Moreh’s power structure. Shekhar, who is also president of the local branch of the Tamil Sangam, no longer lives in Moreh and visits only occasionally. Yet, his legend endures. As Abdul Gaffar, who deals in Burmese teak furniture, put it: “In Moreh, there’s no one above Shekhar anna.”

A hoarding in Moreh depicts the leaders of the town's four major
communities. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

The testament to Shekhar’s authority in Moreh lies in his steadfast control over the local businesses even while ethnic militias warred over the years to take control of the border town, and the lucrative contraband trade route it sits on. His patronage, local community leaders claimed, is required for all significant cross-border trade. “Without the support and approval of Shekhar, you cannot do any big business in Moreh,” said a Kuki community leader who asked not to be identified.

In the 1990s, Tangkhul Nagas, organised under the banner of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muviah), tried to wrest control of the town from the Kukis and the Meiteis. A long bloody fight ensued, at the end of which the Kukis prevailed. Leading the Kuki charge was the Kuki National Organisation and its armed wing, the Kuki National Army. Ever since, the town of Moreh has been under the control of the Kukis, although Meitei nationalist groups continue to exert influence from their camps across the border. Yet, Shekhar never lost his control on the town’s trade.

Members of the Tamil community in Moreh. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

A leader of the United Naga Council, which was at the forefront of the Kuki-Naga clashes of the 1990s and is now the apex body of Nagas in Manipur, described Shekhar as “the king of Moreh town”. “He can manage all kinds of armed groups as well as the security forces,” said the Naga leader.

Underneath the apparent chaos of Moreh, a symbiotic system coordinated by Shekhar keeps the town together, said an executive member of the chamber of commerce. “All of us, depending on the size of our businesses, pay a survival tax to the armed groups annually,” he claimed.

The office of the Tamil Sangam in Moreh.
Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

A second home
This year, Shekhar was the chief guest at the Pongal celebrations held by the Tamil community. Many of Moreh’s Tamils still long for Myanmar, a place they call home. But over the years, they have fashioned a home out of Moreh.

Its youth club is one of the most active in the area, regularly organising sports and cultural programmes. A fire-walking festival organised by the community is one of the biggest events in Moreh’s cultural calendar, with people from all communities thronging it in large numbers.

Sri Angalaparameshwari temple in Moreh. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

In the late 2000s, the Tamil Sangam flew in workers from Chennai to build the Sri Angalaparameshwari temple, among the grandest religious structures in the North East. The temple sees devotees not only from elsewhere in India but also Myanmar.

Today, with the border opening up, the Tamils can finally get a glimpse of Burma, a place close to their hearts. As SM Ganeshan, the Tamil Sangam’s education secretary, who recently took the land route to Yangon to see his birthplace, said, “I went there as a tourist only, but it felt really good to meet my relatives there for the first time after I left as a child. Everything is so nice there, surrounded by nature.”

(Source: Scroll)

Saudi Arabia deporting scores of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh

Days after India deported a Rohingya Muslim family of five lodged at an Assam prison to Myanmar, Saudi Arabia on Sunday prepared to send scores of Rohingya to Bangladesh.

Rohingya immigrants, some of whom have already spent five to six years in Saudi detention, were being are lined up for deportation at the Shumaisi detention centre in Jeddah on Sunday, reported the Middle East Eye.

India deported a family of five Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar on January 3. (Representational photo | Reuters

According to video footage sent to Middle East Eye, a detainee, speaking in Rohingya, could be heard saying, that he has been in Saudi Arabia for the past six years and is now being sent to Bangladesh, where he, like other Rohingya, will become refugees.

"I've been here for the last five to six years, now they are sending me to Bangladesh. Please pray for me," he said.

#BREAKING The Saudi government is deporting hundreds of #Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh.

Here's a video sent to me by an inmate in Shumaisi showing Rohingya being lined up, handcuffed, and prepared for deportation. pic.twitter.com/6gGWTVey5d

— Areeb Ullah (@are_eb) January 6, 2019

Some of them were also put in handcuffs after they reportedly attempted to resist their deportation to Bangladesh, according to the voice notes sent to the Middle East Eye.

Another voice note said: "They came to our cells in the middle of the night, telling us to pack our bags, and get ready for Bangladesh. They put handcuffs on me and now making us wait."

According to Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin, if these Rohingya detainees are released in Saudi Arabia, they can support their families held in refugee camps in Bangladesh, instead of being deported to Bangladesh.

"They are not criminals to be held in handcuffs, and I am very sad to see them being treated like criminals by the Saudi authorities... Now they will be sent to refugee camps and will increase the number of refugees in Bangladesh," Lwin was quoted as saying.

Many Rohingya locked up in the Shumaisi detention centre reportedly went to Saudi Arabia on Bangladeshi passports, obtained via fake documents. Some of them have also reportedly entered the country on passports from Bhutan, India, Pakistan and Nepal.

On January 3, India deported a family of five Rohingya Muslims lodged at an Assam prison to Myanmar. A day before that a Rohingya Muslim migrant from Myanmar's Rakhine state who was kept at Ambala jail in Haryana, was sent back.

They were reportedly handed over to Myanmarese authorities at the border check point in Manipur's Moreh town.

This was the second batch of Rohingya immigrants sent to Myanmar. A batch of seven Myanmar nationals, believed to be Rohingya Muslims, were handed over to their country in October last year through the Manipur border after the Supreme Court refused to stop the first such deportation from India.

As many as 10 others still await deportation at Tezpur jail in Assam.

Rohingya Muslims escaping persecution in Myanmar and entering India has become a bone of contention between the Indian government and human rights activists. While the government dubs them as a "security threat", law-enforcement agencies in various states have been instructed to to arrest them upon identification.

In December last year, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in the Rajya Sabha about some of these illegal immigrants living in the country illegally after fraudulently obtaining Indian identity documents such as Aadhaar card, pan card and even passports.

In 2017, the Centre had informed Parliament that over 14,000 Rohingya people, registered with the UN refugee agency UNHCR stay in India.

According to government sources, most Rohingya immigrants have been staying in Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka and Kerala.

(Source: India Today) 

Amnesty strips Aung San Suu Kyi of human rights award for ‘shameful betrayal of values’ in Myanmar

'We are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights,' group tells Myanmar's civilian leader

Amnesty International has announced it is stripping Aung San Suu Kyi of a prestigious human rights award over her “shameful betrayal of the values she once stood for”.

The Ambassador of Conscience Award is the latest in a series of accolades to be withdrawn from Myanmar’s de facto leader, who has been criticised for failing to intervene to stop a campaign of violence against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

Amnesty said it was withdrawing the award “with great sadness” because of Ms Suu Kyi’s “apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military and increasing intolerance of freedom of expression”.

While living under house arrest in 2009, Ms Suu Kyi was named as Amnesty’s Ambassador of Conscience ”in recognition of her peaceful and non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”.

Aung San Suu Kyi was named as Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience in 2009 'in recognition of her peaceful and non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights' ( EPA/KIM HAUGHTON )

But now, half way through her term in office and eight years after being released from custody, Amnesty said it was disappointed she had not safeguarded human rights, justice or equality in Myanmar.

The secretary general of the human rights group Kumi Naidoo said in a letter to Ms Suu Kyi: “Our expectation was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out against injustice wherever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself.

“Today, we are profoundly dismayed that you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights.”

He continued: “Amnesty International cannot justify your continued status as a recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience award and so with great sadness we are hereby withdrawing it from you.”

Amnesty has been a vocal critic of Ms Suu Kyi, and has previously accused her of failing to speak out about military atrocities committed against the Rohingya population in the country’s Rakhine state.

The Rohingya have been persecuted in the former British colony for decades, with the government denying them citizenship and excluding them from the 2014 census.

Since a fresh wave of violence began last year, the security forces are accused of having killed thousands, raping women and girls, detaining and torturing men and boys, and razing hundreds of homes to the ground in what a UN fact-finding mission has called it a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

More than 720,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh, but the government there have since struck a deal with Myanmar to send them back.

Mr Naidoo wrote: “Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to speak out for the Rohingya is one reason why we can no longer justify her status as an Ambassador of Conscience.

“Her denial of the gravity and scale of the atrocities means there is little prospect of the situation improving for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya living in limbo in Bangladesh or for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who remain in Rakhine State.

“Without acknowledgement of the horrific crimes against the community, it is hard to see how the government can take steps to protect them from future atrocities.”

Ms Suu Kyi has also been stripped of the US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Weisel award and Freedom of the City awards, which were withdrawn by Dublin, Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle.

(Source: The Independent)

Rohingya crisis: Myanmar leader Suu Kyi 'should have resigned'

The outgoing UN human rights chief says Myanmar's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi should have resigned over the military's violent campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority last year.

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein told the BBC the Nobel Peace prize winner should have considered returning to house arrest rather than excusing the military.

A new UN report says Myanmar's military should be investigated for genocide.

Myanmar has rejected the report as one-sided.

The army of the Buddhist-majority nation - which has been accused of systematic ethnic cleansing - has previously cleared itself of wrongdoing.

The Rohingya are one of many ethnic minorities in Myanmar

The UN report, published on Monday, blamed Ms Suu Kyi, a long-term leader of the pro-democracy movement, for failing to prevent the violence.

"She was in a position to do something," Mr Hussein said in an interview with the BBC's Imogen Foulkes. "She could have stayed quiet - or even better, she could have resigned."

"There was no need for her to be the spokesperson of the Burmese military. She didn't have to say this was an iceberg of misinformation. These were fabrications," he said.

"She could have said look, you know, I am prepared to be the nominal leader of the country but not under these conditions.

"Thank you very much, I will resign, I will go back into house arrest - I cannot be an adjunct accessory that others may think I am when it comes to these violations."

Between 1989 and 2010, Ms Suu Kyi, 73, spent about 16 years under house arrest by the military government.

On Wednesday, the Nobel committee said Ms Suu Kyi could not be stripped of the Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991.

What has Aung Sun Suu Kyi said?
While it is acknowledged that Ms Suu Kyi does not control the military, she has faced international pressure to condemn the army's alleged brutality.

For decades, she was hailed as the heroine of the human rights community - most notably for enduring house arrest for her pro-democracy activism during a brutal military dictatorship.

When communal violence broke out in 2012 and displaced more than 100,000 Rohingya people, Ms Suu Kyi sought to reassure the international community and pledged to "abide by our commitment to human rights and democratic values".

"Muslims have been targeted but Buddhists have also been subjected to violence," she told the BBC at the time. "This fear is what is leading all the trouble."

She said that it was down to the government to bring an end to the violence, explaining: "This is the result of our suffering under a dictatorial regime."

Ms Suu Ky, seen here in 2015, with Myanmar's commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing

In 2015, her National League for Democracy party won a landslide election victory and she became Myanmar's de-facto leader.

As the Rohingya crisis continued, Ms Suu Kyi's comments on the situation tended to play it down or suggest that people were exaggerating the severity of the violence.

The last time she spoke to the BBC in April 2017, she said: "I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening."

Since an outbreak of violence started in August 2017, Ms Suu Kyi has missed several opportunities to speak publicly about the issue, including the UN General Assembly in New York last September.

She later claimed the crisis was being distorted by a "huge iceberg of misinformation" - but then also said she felt "deeply" for the suffering of "all people" in the conflict.

Myanmar, she said, was "committed to a sustainable solution... for all communities in this state."

Harsh words and bitter criticism
Imogen Foulkes, BBC Geneva correspondent

Mr Zeid has been an outspoken critic of Ms Suu Kyi

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein is known for his bluntness and his comments on Aung San Suu Kyi were no exception.

He bitterly criticised her attempts to excuse Myanmar's military. This week, UN investigators published evidence linking senior commanders to act of genocide.

His harsh words are another indication that Aung San Suu Kyi may now go down in history not as a Nobel Peace prize winner and pro-democracy leader, but as a woman who failed to act in the face of unspeakable human rights violations.

What is the Rohingya crisis?
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and considered illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh despite calling the Rakhine state home for generations.

The military launched a crackdown in Rakhine last year after Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on police posts.

Thousands of people have died and more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017.

There have also been widespread allegations of human rights abuses against the Rohingya, including arbitrary killing, rape and burning of land over many years.

(Source: BBC)

15 times Northeast India redefined cool for the rest of India

Relatively unchartered, the Northeast India is a land of natural beauty, scenic views, and really sweet people. There are cultures to be experienced, amazing food to be had, and amazing sights to be seen. It is well known that the term 'The Seven Sisters' is used for the contiguous states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura in Northeastern India. Oh, and Sikkim is known as their "brother".

And together, there are things about them that are are way cooler than we care to find out.

So here are 15 facts that make the left hand of our nation so awesome.

1.  Northeast has the only floating park in the world

The Keibul Lamjao National Park is a national park in the Bishnupur district in Manipur. An integral part of Loktak Lake, it has floating decomposed plant materials called phumdis.

2. There are nearly 220 languages spoken in the states of the Northeast. 
The languages and culture in the Northeast are a mix of Tibetan, South-East Asian and East Indian culture.

3. Northeast is the only part of India that the Mughals could not occupy during their reign.
Two centuries. Not one defeat. Many brave kings from the Northeast were responsible for this win. In fact, Assam survived 17 bids of invasion by the Mughals.

4. The Northeast is home to 14 national parks of India

...five of which are in Assam, including Orang National Park, and Kaziranga National Park.

5. The wettest place on the whole planet is in the Northeast
Mawsynram is a village in the East Khasi Hills district in Meghalaya, and it receives an annual average rainfall of 11,873 mm. It actually holds the Guinness World Record for the same. Pretty legit, right?

6. And it is also where the cleanest village of Asia is nestled. 

Mawlynnong in Meghalaya is the cleanest village in the whole of Asia. Notwithstanding that, the whole region is pretty spick and span.

7. The entire region is 'dowry-free'
A cultural practice that we all can learn from no matter how much we deny it. Look, the rest of India! Learn, maybe?

8. World’s smallest inhabited river island in the world is in Guwahati. 
It goes by the name of Umananda Island in the River Brahmaputra, and has a temple by the same name.

9. Tea lovers already know that Assam is the largest tea-growing region in the world.
A small state and the largest tea growing region in the whole world!

10. And not just tea, Assam also produces three different types of silks. 
White Pat, golden Muga, and warm Eri silk are three indigenous silks with distinct beauty not to be found in other silks.

11. Aizawl, India's first 'No-Honking' city is here as well
Aizawl is the capital of the state of Mizoram in India, and this is where you have to move if you are tired of hearing traffic horns in your city all the damn time.

12. And if all of this wasn't enough, this is where the nation's morning begins

Arunachal Pradesh is the eastern most state of the country, therefore witnessing the first sunrise. This state also has three international borders: Bhutan, China, and Myanmar.

13. Northeast India holds the 7th rank in terms of the most enriched biodiversities of the world
Apart from great flora, the region also boasts of a vivid avian biodiversity of the country. NE's geographical location (the transitional area of Indian, Indo-Chinese and Indo-Malayan bio-geographic zones) makes it a hotspot of various native and rare species of fauna and flora.

14. Two of the most literate states of India are in the Northeast
In 2011, Mizoram had a literacy rate of 91.58% , and Tripura had a literacy rate of 87.75%. In fact, in 2013, the State Government of Tripura claimed that the state surpassed Kerala as the most literate state in India, with a literacy rate of 94.65%.

15. India's oldest and largest paramilitary force is from NE India
The 'Friends of the Hill People & Sentinels of the Northeast', Assam Rifles had been the country’s oldest and largest paramilitary force, founded in the year 1835.

Incredible Northeast indeed!

(Source: Scoop Whoop)

The town that breeds resistance to Malaria drugs

As new waves of the disease threaten the globe, worried scientists want to conduct a mass inoculation in a Cambodian region where new vaccines always seem to stop being effective

Pailin is a small settlement nestling in tropical rainforest near Cambodia’s border with Thailand. It is an unassuming town that lies at the centre of one of the country’s main logging areas. Pailin harbours secrets, however. It was in this town, in the late 1970s, that the Khmer Rouge set up one of its main strongholds and ruled Cambodia with a ferocity that caused at least two million deaths. It is a grim legacy, by any standards.

But Pailin has another unwanted claim to fame, one that is also associated with widespread death. The town, it transpires, lies at the heart of a region that has seen successive waves of resistance to malaria drugs arise in local people and then spread across the globe. The resulting death tolls can be measured in millions of lives, say scientists.

Just why malarial drug resistance has arisen here is not clear. Nevertheless scientists are emphatic: the region has seen the creation of several mutations in malaria parasites that have allowed them to shrug off medicines that once protected humans. Even worse, they have discovered that a new wave of malarial drug resistance has recently appeared in this tiny area and has already spread into Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and begun to move into Myanmar and travel towards India and Bangladesh.

The prospect has so alarmed scientists and politicians that the issue is to be raised as an emergency topic to be debated at the heads of Commonwealth meeting in London next week (16-20 April). There are 19 Commonwealth member states in Africa, the continent that is the most vulnerable to malaria. According to World Health Organisation statistics, about 90% of all malaria deaths occur in Africa. Hence the concern of many Commonwealth heads of state who believe their homelands are most at risk of a spreading malarial resistance.

“The problem is that we are pussyfooting around,” said Professor Sir Nicholas White, of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit. “The World Health Organisation has not provided the necessary leadership. We need very firm direct action and at present we are not getting that.”

Resistance to major malaria drugs first appeared in the late 1950s when chloroquine -– then a highly effective successful treatment for the disease -– began to lose its efficacy. Crucially, this resistance first appeared in Pailin on the Cambodian-Thai border and then spread to Africa by the early 1980s. Several million deaths were added to the already grim toll of lives lost to the disease as a result.

A new set of drugs, known as sulfadoxine-pyrimethamines, was then developed and used to treat malaria. But once more resistance to the drugs appeared and again it first manifested itself around Pailin before spreading westwards. Again the disease’s death toll soared.

Then, at beginning of this century, a new set of malarial medicines was developed. Known as artemisinins, they were discovered in 1972 by Tu Youyou, a Chinese scientist who was awarded the 2015 Nobel prize in medicine for her work. Administered with a slower-acting second drug, artemisinins have become the medicine of choice for dealing with malaria across the globe, leading to improvements in malarial statistics with deaths and case numbers declining globally.

But now scientists have recently discovered once more that resistance to key malarial drugs has evolved -– and in exactly the same place as before: the farms and village that surround around Pailin. “That resistance has emerged in exactly the same place that resistance to chloroquine and then pyrimethamines emerged. The same very place. Around Pailin,” said White.

Just why this tiny region of south-east Asia has proved to be such a fertile zone for the emergence of deadly resistance to malarial medicine is not clear, a point stressed by Dominic Kwiatkowski, director of the centre for genomics and global health at Oxford University.

“We would love to know the answer, but it is not obvious,” Kwiatkowski told the Observer.

“One idea is that resistance keeps arising here for historical reasons. Maybe it has something to do with the way that malarial medicines are administered here. But how exactly?” In fact, the This theory is just one of a great many other suggestions that have been put forward to explain why this resistance is appearing here first.

A mosquito takes blood from a human host. Resistance to the latest anti-malarial drugs poses a major problem for scientists. Photograph: James Gathany/AP

The local strain of malaria parasites may have some special properties, or the ecology of the region may have features that boost the rise of resistance. “The crucial point is that we need to do something about it and once we have, we need to monitor the situation very, very carefully,” said Kwiatkowski.

One factor that has recently become clear is that malarial drug resistance appeared very quickly in the region. Writing in Lancet Infectious Diseasescorrect in February, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institut and collaborators reported that resistance to combination therapies that included artemisinins arose almost as soon as the treatment was introduced as a first-line malarial drug. However, that this loss of efficacy was not spotted, for a variety of reasons, until several years had passed.

The implications of this failure were stressed by Ben Rolfe, head of the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance. “On our watch, drug resistant strains have spread almost unnoticed,” he told the BMJ recently (pdf). “As a result, we now risk a global resurgence of the disease.”

Khmer families are screened for malaria in Pailin province in 2010. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

The question facing scientists -– and heads of state and health leaders -– is straightforward: what can be done? White -– who is scheduled to speak at the Commonwealth heads of state meeting -– is emphatic. “We have a window of opportunity but it is closing rapidly,” he told the Observer.

What is needed is a campaign, run with military efficiency, to use current drugs -– while they still have some efficacy -– not only on people who already have malaria but on those individuals who have been infected but who have not succumbed or shown symptoms of the disease.

“These individuals carry small numbers of parasites and although they don’t get ill they are sources of new infections,” said White. “Mosquitos bite them, take their blood and spread it to others. They are the source of new infections.”

The plan, proposed by White and other scientists, is that everyone in a village in a malaria hotspot should be treated with anti-malarial drugs -– regardless of their symptoms. “It is called mass drug administration. It is very controversial but it works -– if it is done as part of a concerted strategy. If you do it badly you will only make the problem of resistance worse. So this has to be done right. But if we don’t do it we won’t be able to eliminate malaria quickly enough, and if resistance worsens it may become untreatable,” says White.

In addition, it is proposed that a third anti-malarial drug be added to the combination therapy currently used to treat those who have actually succumbed to malaria: a triple whammy instead of a double. Next week, Britain’s Department for International Development is expected to announce support for trials using triple combination drugs.

For its part, WHO officials say that the dangers posed by the new malaria superbug are exaggerated and that better prevention efforts, monitoring and treatments will limit its spread from the Mekong region. Others are not so sure, however. The Malaria summit -– organised by the Ready to Beat Malaria campaign is to be held in London on 18 April at next week’s Commonwealth summit and will be attended by scientists and business leaders, including Bill and Melinda Gates. They are pressing for urgent commitments from all world leaders to battle the disease.

“We are currently on a cliff edge,” said a spokesman for Ready to Beat Malaria. “We can continue to battle the disease or risk an acute and deadly resurgence.”

This view is backed by White. “We are running out of time and unless we act rapidly, people will suffer and the people who will suffer most will be the children of Africa.”

(Source: The Guardian)

The Rohingya are facing genocide. We cannot be bystanders

We cannot allow people to be slaughtered and burnt out of their homes, while the world watches, write Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Madhur Jaffrey, Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Riz Ahmed, Freida Pinto and dozens of others in an open letter.

Over the past two months, more than 600,000 Rohingya people have been driven from their homes, had their land destroyed, and endured torture and rape while searching for safety. Remember what happened in Rwanda? Now, pay attention to Myanmar.

The Rohingya are often described as among the most persecuted people on earth. They are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, and despite having lived in Myanmar’s Rakhine state for centuries, they’re refused citizenship. For years, their movement has been restricted, and they have been denied access to education, health care, and other basic services.

Under the guise of fighting insurgency, or terrorism, the Rohingya have suffered what the UN has called a “textbook case” of ethnic cleansing. Since 25 August, almost half the Rohingya population in Myanmar has been driven out – one of the fastest movements of people in recent decades.

Bangladesh has opened its borders and is doing what it can, which is a lot for the most densely populated country on earth, already fighting poverty and the consequences of climate change.

 ‘After every atrocity, we say ‘never again’. We must mean it.’ Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

The international response to the Rohingya crisis has fallen far short of what’s needed. The UN appeal is still underfunded, and world leaders have not put sufficient political pressure on the government.

Myanmar is no longer a pariah state; it has a democratically elected government and has been flooded with foreign direct investment over the past few years.

The corporations who have invested in this region must speak up and divest, unless human rights are respected, or they too will be complicit in these horrendous acts.

This Friday, world leaders will gather at the Asean summit but the Rohingya crisis is nowhere on the agenda. We call on leaders to pressure the Myanmar government to stop these atrocities, grant the Rohingya citizenship, and allow them to return to a place they call home.

Countries must fully fund the UN appeal and close the funding gap that is leaving traumatized children without basic food, water, and shelter. Finally, member states of the United Nations must assess what diplomatic efforts can enable them to fulfill their responsibility to protect the Rohingya.

We must not be bystanders to this genocide. We cannot allow people to be slaughtered and burnt out of their homes, while the world watches.

After every atrocity, we say: “Never again.” We must mean it.

Full list of signatories:
Waris Ahluwalia, Babi Ahluwalia, Sachin Ahluwalia, Riz Ahmed, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aziz Ansari, Dev Benegal, Gotham Chopra, Nandita Das, Rana Dasgupta, Anil Dash, Kiran Desai, Noureen DeWulf, Geeta Gandbhir, Vikram Gandhi, Shruti Ganguly, Janina Gavankar, Neelam Gill, Maneesh Goyal, Arjun Gupta, Mohsin Hamed, Hitha Prabhakar-Herzog, Anadil Hossain, Vijay Iyer, Sakina Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey, Poorna Jagannathan, Riddhika Jesrani, Rega Jha, Mindy KalingRaghu Karnad, Siddhartha Khosla, Hari Kondabolu, Shruti Kumar, Anjali Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Ajay Madiwale, Karan Mahajan, Rekha Malhotra, Aasif Mandvi, Sunita Mani, Nimitt Mankad, Suketu Mehta, Hasan Minhaj, Smriti Mundhra, Ajay Naidu, Aparna Nancherla, Kumail Nanjiani, Karuna Nundy, Maulik Pancholy, Joseph Patel, Shomi Patwary, Freida Pinto, Shaifali Puri, Aniq Rahman, Saira Rao, Zuleikha Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Reema Sampat, Reshma Saujani, Nikil Saval, Sumana Setty, Shiza ShahidKamila Shamsie, Anoushka Shankar, Sheetal Sheth, Sonejuhi Sinha, Madhureeta Goel, Southworth Lakshmi, Sundaram Himanshu Suri, Sonali Thimmaya, Pej Vahdat

(Source: The Guardian)

Did the world get Aung San Suu Kyi wrong?

 This is not the happy ending we were led to expect.

When Myanmar elected Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party to power in 2015, she was widely portrayed as a sort of political saint, an icon who had endured great suffering to guide her people from dictatorship to democracy.

President Barack Obama praised her. Hillary Clinton embraced her in public. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, once compared her favorably to Gandhi.

Today Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, is the target of worldwide criticism for standing by as her country’s military wages a campaign of murder, rape and torture against the Rohingya minority group.

Supporters of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, Myanmar, in October at what was billed as an Interreligious Gathering of Prayers for Peace. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Though her fall from grace was exceptionally spectacular, this is a common story. Western leaders champion individuals, often activists who have made heroic sacrifices, as the one-stop-shopping solution to the problems of dictatorship or shaky new democracy.

In their zeal to find a simple solution to the complex problem of political change, they overlook their heroes’ flaws, fail to see the challenges they will face in power, and assume that countries are the products of their leaders, when it is almost always the other way around.

Warning Signs
“We keep ending up in this situation where we either idolize or demonize foreign leaders,” said Danielle Lupton, a Colgate University political scientist who studies how leaders’ behavior affects foreign policy.

Some of that is simply politics. But Ms. Lupton believes that those simplistic judgments are rooted in a quirk of psychology that makes them hard to avoid, and harder still to alter once they take hold.

“In political psychology there’s this notion of confirmation bias: that you have a predetermined belief about either an outcome or in this case whether a person is good or bad,” she said. That bias leads people to subconsciously select information that reinforces those beliefs — and to ignore facts that are inconsistent with it.

That helps explain how Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s champions in the West seemed to overlook signs that she might not be a paragon of liberal democratic values after all.

Ywama Monastery, which supports the Buddhist nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement, in Yangon. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said in 2013 that Buddhists feared “global Muslim power.” Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

In a 2013 interview with the BBC, for instance, she brusquely dismissed questions about rising violence against the Rohingya, saying that Buddhists had also been displaced from their homes and that there was fear “on both sides.” Asked why the violence had overwhelmingly affected Muslims, she deflected, saying that Buddhists lived in fear of “global Muslim power.”

Though such episodes mounted during her rise, they conflicted with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s saintly image, and so went largely unnoticed. Western leaders continued to embrace her, building her legitimacy as they pressured the transitional government to hold elections that were widely expected to elevate her to power.

“Confirmation bias is so powerful that we can ignore information that conflicts, and don’t even notice we’re doing it,” Ms. Lupton said.

That can feed a much more significant political bias, experts say, toward believing that a political system will take on the characteristics of its leader. In fact, the truth is often the opposite.

Together, those biases make it easy to conclude that if heroic individuals could just win power, that would be enough to bring democracy and freedom.

“We’re always in search of the leader that we can rely on to be our partner so that we can just kind of sign off on that person and go back to worrying about other things,” said Elizabeth Saunders, a George Washington University political scientist who studies American foreign policy.

A Long Line of Would-Be Saviors
The simple story of a crusading leader who will transform a nation rarely works out that way.

The United States once championed the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai as the democratic successor to the Taliban’s oppressive regime. But Washington was disappointed to find that Mr. Karzai, rather than rising above the problems of corruption and cronyism that had beset Afghanistan, established an inner circle that embodied them.

“If you hold up a leader as a paragon of virtue, you may aid in consolidating their power, which can have all kinds of unintended consequences,” Ms. Saunders said.

In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame was hailed as his country’s savior when he took office, with Western support, after the 1994 genocide. But despite successes in reducing poverty, he has proved to be an authoritarian leader. Opposition politicians often end up in prison, in exile or dead. Human Rights Watch has documented widespread military detention and torture.

And it was easy to support the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement when it was a rebel group fighting Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader currently under indictment for genocide in Darfur. But after the group’s officers and allies took power in the newly independent South Sudan, they helped plunge the country into civil war.

It is not only Western leaders who make such misjudgments. In the 1960s and ’70s, activists worldwide cheered the rise of African independence leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, many of whom later hardened into dictators.

There are exceptions, such as Nelson Mandela, the first post-apartheid president of South Africa. But the Mandelas are so uncommon, and their successes rely on so many factors clicking into place, that they are still marveled over as wondrous mysteries, including among frustrated activists in Myanmar.

‘Features of a Dictator’
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is not Mr. Kagame or Mr. Mugabe, but after less than 20 months in office she is showing hints of the traits that define such leaders.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi at the White House in 2016. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

Upon winning power, she quickly sidelined many of the activists and civil society groups that had aided her rise. “She is only listening to those close to her,” said U Yan Myo Thein, an activist with the pro-democracy 88 Generation group and a former political prisoner, characterizing her inner circle as a “personality cult.”

“This is one of the features of a dictator,” he said.

As international plaudits for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi continued to mount, some in Myanmar saw growing signs that she was consolidating power and suppressing critics.

“Though they claim themselves as an icon of democracy, they want to centralize and control everything,” Kyaw Thu, who leads the prominent civil society group Paung-Ku, said of the elected government. He added, “Anyone not supporting their agenda is the enemy.”

Dozens have been charged under a law that restricts criticism of the government, an echo of the imprisonment of dissidents under military rule.

Aaron Connelly, an analyst at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, said such measures “have characterized N.L.D. rule in Myanmar,” referring to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party.

Even beyond her stance on the Rohingya, he said, “Aung San Suu Kyi has not been a particularly liberal leader.”

A Lesson to Learn?
Though senior policymakers seem confident in their habits, younger voices are beginning to question whether the international community, after so many such disappointments, might have something to learn.

“This pattern is far too frequent to be ignored,” Tim Hirschel-Burns, a Peace Corps officer in Benin, wrote on his personal blog.

Perhaps the underlying model, of reforming a troubled country by installing a promising leader, might have the problem backward, he argued. Perhaps change needs to come bottom-up, even if this is harder and messier and takes longer.

“People in these countries, just as we are, are largely products of their environments,” he wrote.

Treating Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi as somehow above Myanmar’s problems allowed the world to see only her “moral righteousness and bravery rather than the political force she represented,” he added.

A demonstration this month in Yangon in support of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s handling of the Rohingya crisis. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Even leaders who say all the right things and show good intentions tend to reflect the systems through which they rise. If those systems remain broken, it is fair to blame leaders for their mistakes, but unrealistic to expect a different outcome.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, after all, may be enacting a version of democratic rule that is in line with what many of Myanmar’s citizens demand.

A 2015 survey by Asia Barometer found that most respondents in the country opposed checks on executive power, believed religious authorities should have a role in lawmaking and said citizenship should be tied to religion. Support for a strong-handed ruler was high and support for full rights for minorities was low.

“People want democracy in the sense of being rid of dictatorship and having a leader that’s popularly elected,” said Thant Myint-U, a historian and former United Nations official. “But that’s very different from accepting the whole panoply of liberal values, especially when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity or gender equality.”

It is worth asking how much of the Western anger now directed at Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, including calls to revoke her Nobel Peace Prize, is partly buyers’ remorse from supporters who regret their own role in transforming her into such a powerful symbol.

Andrew Selth, a professor at the Griffith Asia Institute, wrote in a recent article, “If Suu Kyi had so far to fall, it is because the international community raised her so high.”

(Source: NYT)