Qatar temporarily suspends entry for travellers from 14 countries

Qatar’s Government Communications Office said Sunday that in addition to Qatar Airways' announcement regarding flights to and from Italy, entry to Qatar is temporarily suspended for all those intending to travel from certain countries, as of March 9, 2020.

The decision comes as a preventive measure due to the spread of coronavirus, COVID-19, worldwide.

Hamad International Airport (file photo)

The GCO statement said the decision covers the following countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria and Thailand.

The decision affects all individuals intending to enter from these countries, including visas upon arrival, those with a residence or work permit, and temporary visitors.

The statement said the step comes in line with Qatar’s efforts to take all necessary preventive measures to limit the spread.

The State of Qatar urges all citizens and residents to avoid all but essential travel at this time.

The statement said that these precautionary measures may be subject revision on the timely guidance of the national health authorities and international organizations on the spread of coronavirus, in order to ensure safety of all residents.

(Source: The Peninsula)

Taal volcano: Lava spews as 'hazardous eruption' feared

A volcano in the Philippines has begun spewing lava, as authorities warn that a "hazardous eruption" is possible "within hours or days".

In the early hours of Monday weak lava began flowing out of Taal volcano - located some 70km (45 miles) south of the capital Manila.

It comes after it emitted a huge plume of ash, triggering the mass evacuation of 8,000 people from the area.

Weak lava has began flowing out of the Taal volcano

Taal is the Philippines' second most active volcano.

Situated on an island in the middle of a lake, it is one of the world's smallest volcanoes and has recorded at least 34 eruptions in the past 450 years.

Authorities in the surrounding province, Batangas, have declared a "state of calamity", signifying major disruption.

"Taal volcano entered a period of intense unrest... that progressed into magmatic eruption at 02:49 to 04:28... this is characterised by weak lava fountaining accompanied by thunder and flashes of lightning," the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said in a statement.

But Phivolcs director Renato Solidum said that signs of a hazardous eruption, including "flows of ashes, rocks, gas at speeds of more than 60 kph horizontally" had not yet occurred, according to CNN Philippines.

Phivolcs has now raised the alert level from 3 to 4, out of a maximum of 5.

Cars, buildings and roads have been left covered in ash

Authorities have also warned of a possible "volcanic tsunami", which can be trigged by falling debris after an eruption, pushing the water and generating waves.

'Covered in ash'

On Sunday, the volcano emitted a giant plume of ash, with rumbling sounds and tremors also reported.

A total of 75 earthquakes have occurred in the Taal region, with 32 of these earthquakes ranking 2 and higher on the earthquake intensity scale, said Phivolcs.

The Official United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said more than 450,000 people are estimated to live within the 14km danger zone of the Taal volcano.

Over 450,000 people are estimated to be residing within the 14 km danger zone of the Taal Volcano. On 12 January, alert level 4 was raised and surrounding towns were evacuated. As of 6 a.m. today, @NDRRMC_OpCen reports that over 7,700 people are in 38 evacuation centres. pic.twitter.com/td0Yj0S6Cj

— OCHA Philippines (@OCHAPhilippines) 13 January 2020

Ash fell on several areas nearby with residents advised to wear masks. One resident in metro Manila said shops had begun to run out of masks.

"When I went to my car, I saw it was covered in ash. I hurriedly went to buy a mask from a drugstore but they had run out," Angel Bautista, a resident of Paranaque told Reuters.

The government has warned retailers not to hike mask prices amid the surging demand.

'Grey and lifeless'

By Howard Johnson, BBC News, Tagaytay, Philippines

As we approached the Taal volcano area this morning we saw local residents shovelling thick wet ash from the roads. Pineapple groves, normally verdant and luscious, now looked grey and lifeless.

In the distance Taal continued to billow ash and smoke miles into the sky. As the morning went on the ash clouds became darker.

Police manning a 14km exclusion zone stopped people from travelling into the area close to the volcano, but there was a steady flow of cars and trucks moving out.

On the back of one pick-up truck, I saw a large family with their treasured household possessions. They were moving in the direction of the Philippine capital Manila, where many people are choosing to stay with relatives.

The volcanic ash also forced Manila's international airport to suspend all flights on Sunday. Phivolcs had warned that the "airborne ash and ballistic fragments from the eruption... posed hazards to aircrafts".

The Civil Aviation Authority announced later on Monday that it had resumed "partial operations" as of 10:00 local time (02:00 GMT) for flights departing the airport and 12:00 for arrivals.

The Philippine stock exchange also announced it would halt all trading on Monday.

President Rodrigo Duterte's office has also ordered the suspension of government work in Manila and the closure of all schools in the capital.

Ash from the Taal volcano has affected thousands of residents in nearby areas

Earthquakes and volcanic activity are not uncommon in the Philippines, which lies along the Ring of Fire - a zone of major seismic activity, which has one of the world's most active fault lines.

 Taal: 'A very dangerous volcano'

• The active volcano is at the centre of the 230 sq km Lake Taal, formed by prehistoric eruptions
• Taal is a "complex volcano", which means it doesn't have one vent or cone but several eruption points that have changed over time
• The head of Phivolcs calls Taal "a volcano within a volcano" and says as such it is "very dangerous"
• Taal has erupted in different ways more than 30 times in the past 500 years - most recently in 1977
• A 1911 eruption killed about 1,500 people. A 1974 eruption lasted several months

(Source: BBC)

How the US has hidden its empire

The United States likes to think of itself as a republic, but it holds territories all over the world – the map you always see doesn’t tell the whole story.

There aren’t many historical episodes more firmly lodged in the United States’s national memory than the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is one of only a few events that many people in the country can put a date to: 7 December 1941, the “date which will live in infamy,” as Franklin D Roosevelt put it. 

Hundreds of books have been written about it – the Library of Congress holds more than 350. And Hollywood has made movies, from the critically acclaimed From Here to Eternity, starring Burt Lancaster, to the critically derided Pearl Harbor, starring Ben Affleck.

But what those films don’t show is what happened next. Nine hours after Japan attacked the territory of Hawaii, another set of Japanese planes came into view over another US territory, the Philippines. As at Pearl Harbor, they dropped their bombs, hitting several air bases, to devastating effect.

The Greater United States as it was in 1941

The attack on Pearl Harbor was just that – an attack. Japan’s bombers struck, retreated and never returned. Not so in the Philippines. There, the initial air raids were followed by more raids, then by invasion and conquest. Sixteen million Filipinos – US nationals who saluted the stars and stripes and looked to FDR as their commander in chief – fell under a foreign power.

Contrary to popular memory, the event familiarly known as “Pearl Harbor” was in fact an all-out lightning strike on US and British holdings throughout the Pacific. On a single day, the Japanese attacked the US territories of Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island and Wake Island. They also attacked the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, and they invaded Thailand.

At first, “Pearl Harbor” was not the way most people referred to the bombings. “Japs bomb Manila, Hawaii” was the headline in one New Mexico paper; “Japanese Planes Bomb Honolulu, Island of Guam” in another in South Carolina. Sumner Welles, FDR’s undersecretary of state, described the event as “an attack upon Hawaii and upon the Philippines”. Eleanor Roosevelt used a similar formulation in her radio address on the night of 7 December, when she spoke of Japan “bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines”.

That was how the first draft of FDR’s speech went, too: it presented the event as a “bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines”. Yet Roosevelt toyed with that draft all day, adding things in pencil, crossing other bits out. At some point he deleted the prominent references to the Philippines.

Why did Roosevelt demote the Philippines? We don’t know, but it’s not hard to guess. Roosevelt was trying to tell a clear story: Japan had attacked the US. But he faced a problem. Were Japan’s targets considered “the United States”? Legally, they were indisputably US territory. But would the public see them that way? What if Roosevelt’s audience didn’t care that Japan had attacked the Philippines or Guam? Polls taken slightly before the attack show that few in the continental US supported a military defense of those remote territories.

Roosevelt no doubt noted that the Philippines and Guam, although technically part of the US, seemed foreign to many. Hawaii, by contrast, was more plausibly “American”. Although it was a territory rather than a state, it was closer to North America and significantly whiter than the others.

Yet even when it came to Hawaii, Roosevelt felt a need to massage the point. So, on the morning of his speech, he made another edit. He changed it so that the Japanese squadrons had bombed not the “island of Oahu”, but the “American island of Oahu”. Damage there, Roosevelt continued, had been done to “American naval and military forces”, and “very many American lives” had been lost.

An American island, where American lives were lost – that was the point he was trying to make. If the Philippines was being rounded down to foreign, Hawaii was being rounded up to “American”.

One reporter in the Philippines described the scene in Manila as the crowds listened to Roosevelt’s speech on the radio. The president spoke of Hawaii and the many lives lost there. Yet he only mentioned the Philippines, the reporter noted, “very much in passing”. Roosevelt made the war “seem to be something close to Washington and far from Manila”.

This was not how it looked from the Philippines, where air-raid sirens continued to wail. “To Manilans the war was here, now, happening to us,” the reporter wrote. “And we have no air-raid shelters.”

Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam – it wasn’t easy to know how to think about such places, or even what to call them. At the turn of the 20th century, when many were acquired (Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Hawaii, Wake), their status was clear. They were, as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson unabashedly called them, colonies.

The US ‘logo map’

That spirit of forthright imperialism didn’t last. Within a decade or two, after passions had cooled, the c-word became taboo. “The word colony must not be used to express the relationship which exists between our government and its dependent peoples,” an official admonished in 1914. Better to stick with a gentler term, used for them all: territories.

Yet a striking feature of the overseas territories was how rarely they were even discussed. The maps of the country that most people had in their heads didn’t include places such as the Philippines. Those mental maps imagined the US to be contiguous: a union of states bounded by the Atlantic, the Pacific, Mexico and Canada.

That is how most people envision the US today, possibly with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii. The political scientist Benedict Anderson called it the “logo map”, meaning that if the country had a logo, this shape would be it:

The problem with the logo map, however, is that it isn’t right. Its shape does not match the country’s legal borders. Most obviously, the logo map excludes Hawaii and Alaska, which became states in 1959 and now appear on virtually all published maps of the country. But it is also missing Puerto Rico, which, although not a state, has been part of the country since 1899. When have you ever seen a map of the US that had Puerto Rico on it? Or American Samoa, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas or any of the other smaller islands that the US has annexed over the years?

In 1941, the year Japan attacked, a more accurate picture would have been this:

What this map shows is the country’s full territorial extent: the “Greater United States”, as some at the turn of the 20th century called it. In this view, the place normally referred to as the US – the logo map – forms only a part of the country. A large and privileged part, to be sure, yet still only a part. Residents of the territories often call it the “mainland”.

On this to-scale map, Alaska isn’t shrunken down to fit into a small inset, as it is on most maps. It is the right size – ie, huge. The Philippines, too, looms large, and the Hawaiian island chain – the whole chain, not just the eight main islands shown on most maps – if superimposed on the mainland would stretch almost from Florida to California.

This map also shows territory at the other end of the size scale. In the century before 1940, the US claimed nearly 100 uninhabited islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Some claims were forgotten in time – Washington could be surprisingly lax about keeping tabs. The 22 islands included here are the ones that appeared in official tallies (the census or other governmental reports) in the 1940s. I have represented them as clusters of dots in the bottom left and right corners, although they are so small that they would be invisible if they were drawn to scale.

A map of the ‘Greater United States’ as it was in 1941

The logo map is not only misleading because it excludes large colonies and pinprick islands alike. It also suggests that the US is a politically uniform space: a union, voluntarily entered into, of states standing on equal footing with one another. But that is not true, and it has never been true. From its founding until the present day, the US has contained a union of American states, as its name suggests. But it has also contained another part: not a union, not states and (for most of its history) not wholly in the Americas – its territories.

What is more, a lot of people have lived in that other part. According to the census count for the inhabited territories in 1940, the year before Pearl Harbor, nearly 19 million people lived in the colonies, the great bulk of them in the Philippines. That meant slightly more than one in eight of the people in the US lived outside of the states. For perspective, consider that only about one in 12 was African American. If you lived in the US on the eve of the second world war, in other words, you were more likely to be colonised than black.

My point here is not to weigh forms of oppression against one another. In fact, the histories of African Americans and colonised peoples are tightly connected (and sometimes overlapping, as for the African-Caribbeans in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands). The racism that had pervaded the country since slavery also engulfed the territories. Like African Americans, colonial subjects were denied the vote, deprived of the rights of full citizens, called racial epithets, subjected to dangerous medical experiments and used as sacrificial pawns in war. They, too, had to make their way in a country where some lives mattered and others did not.

What getting the Greater United States in view reveals is that race has been even more central to US history than is usually supposed. It hasn’t just been about black and white, but about Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan and Chamoru (from Guam), too, among other identities. Race has not only shaped lives, but also the country itself – where the borders went, who has counted as “American”. Once you look beyond the logo map, you see a whole new set of struggles over what it means to inhabit the US.

Looking beyond the logo map, however, could be hard for mainlanders. The national maps they used rarely showed the territories. Even the world atlases were confusing. During the second world war, Rand McNally’s Ready Reference Atlas of the World – like many other atlases at the time – listed Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as “foreign”.

A class of seventh-grade girls at the Western Michigan College Training School in Kalamazoo scratched their heads over this. They had been trying to follow the war on their maps. How, they wondered, could the attack on Pearl Harbor have been an attack on the US if Hawaii was foreign? They wrote to Rand McNally to inquire.

“Although Hawaii belongs to the United States, it is not an integral part of this country,” the publisher replied. “It is foreign to our continental shores, and therefore cannot logically be shown in the United States proper.”

The girls were not satisfied. Hawaii is not an integral part of this country? “We believe this statement is not true,” they wrote. It is “an alibi instead of an explanation”. Further, they continued, “we feel that the Rand McNally atlas is misleading and a good cause for the people of outlying possessions to be embarrassed and disturbed”. The girls forwarded the correspondence to the Department of the Interior and asked for adjudication. Of course, the seventh-graders were right. As an official clarified, Hawaii was, indeed, part of the US.

Yet the government could be just as misleading as Rand McNally on this score. Consider the census: according to the constitution, census takers were required to count only the states, but they had always counted the territories, too. Or, at least, they had counted the continental territories. The overseas territories were handled differently. Their populations were noted, but they were otherwise excluded from demographic calculations. Basic facts about how long people lived, how many children they had, what races they were – these were given for the mainland alone.

The maps and census reports that mainlanders saw presented them with a selectively cropped portrait of their country. The result was profound confusion. “Most people in this country, including educated people, know little or nothing about our overseas possessions,” concluded a governmental report written during the second world war. “As a matter of fact, a lot of people do not know that we have overseas possessions. They are convinced that only ‘foreigners’, such as the British, have an ‘empire’. Americans are sometimes amazed to hear that we, too, have an ‘empire’.”

The proposition that the US is an empire is less controversial today. The case can be made in a number of ways. The dispossession of Native Americans and relegation of many to reservations was pretty transparently imperialist. Then, in the 1840s, the US fought a war with Mexico and seized a third of it. Fifty years later, it fought a war with Spain and claimed the bulk of Spain’s overseas territories.

Empire isn’t just landgrabs, though. What do you call the subordination of African Americans? Starting in the interwar period, the celebrated US intellectual WEB Du Bois argued that black people in the US looked more like colonised subjects than like citizens. Many other black thinkers, including Malcolm X and the leaders of the Black Panthers, have agreed.

Or what about the spread of US economic power abroad? The US might not have physically conquered western Europe after the second world war, but that didn’t stop the French from complaining of “coca-colonisation”. Critics there felt swamped by US commerce. Today, with the world’s business denominated in dollars, and McDonald’s in more than 100 countries, you can see they might have had a point.

Then there are the military interventions. The years since the second world war have brought the US military to country after country. The big wars are well-known: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. But there has also been a constant stream of smaller engagements. Since 1945, US armed forces have been deployed abroad for conflicts or potential conflicts 211 times in 67 countries. Call it peacekeeping if you want, or call it imperialism. But clearly this is not a country that has kept its hands to itself.

Yet among all the talk of empire, one thing that often slips from view is actual territory. Yes, many would agree that the US is or has been an empire, for all the reasons above. But how much can most people say about the colonies themselves? Not, I would wager, very much.

It is not as if the information isn’t out there. Scholars, many working from the sites of empire themselves, have assiduously researched this topic for decades. The problem is that their works have been sidelined – filed, so to speak, on the wrong shelves. They are there, but as long as we have the logo map in our heads, they will seem irrelevant. They will seem like books about foreign countries. The confusion and shoulder-shrugging indifference that mainlanders displayed at the time of Pearl Harbor hasn’t changed much at all.

I will confess to having made this conceptual filing error myself. Although I studied US foreign relations as a doctoral student and read countless books about “American empire” – the wars, the coups, the meddling in foreign affairs – nobody ever expected me to know even the most elementary facts about the territories. They just didn’t feel important.

It wasn’t until I travelled to Manila, researching something else entirely, that it clicked. To get to the archives, I would travel by “jeepney”, a transit system originally based on repurposed US army jeeps. I boarded in a section of Metro Manila where the streets are named after US colleges (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Notre Dame), states and cities (Chicago, Detroit, New York, Brooklyn, Denver), and presidents (Jefferson, Van Buren, Roosevelt, Eisenhower). When I would arrive at my destination, the Ateneo de Manila University, one of the country’s most prestigious schools, I would hear students speaking what sounded to my Pennsylvanian ears to be virtually unaccented English. Empire might be hard to make out from the mainland, but from the sites of colonial rule themselves, it is impossible to miss.

The Philippines is not a US territory any more; it got its independence after the second world war. Other territories, although they were not granted independence, received new statuses. Puerto Rico became a “commonwealth”, which ostensibly replaced a coercive relationship with a consenting one. Hawaii and Alaska, after some delay, became states, overcoming decades of racist determination to keep them out of the union.

Flags on top of the fortress in Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. Photograph: Anton Gorbov/Alamy

Yet today, the US continues to hold overseas territory. Besides Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and a handful of minor outlying islands, the US maintains roughly 800 overseas military bases around the world.

None of this, however – not the large colonies, small islands, or military bases – has made much of a dent on the mainland mind. One of the truly distinctive features of the US’s empire is how persistently ignored it has been. This is, it is worth emphasising, unique. The British weren’t confused as to whether there was a British empire. They had a holiday, Empire Day, to celebrate it. France didn’t forget that Algeria was French. It is only the US that has suffered from chronic confusion about its own borders.

The reason is not hard to guess. The country perceives itself to be a republic, not an empire. It was born in an anti-imperialist revolt and has fought empires ever since, from Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich and the Japanese empire to the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. It even fights empires in its dreams. Star Wars, a saga that started with a rebellion against the Galactic Empire, is one of the highest-grossing film franchises of all time.

This self-image of the US as a republic is consoling, but it is also costly. Most of the cost has been paid by those living in the colonies and around the military bases. The logo map has relegated them to the shadows, which are a dangerous place to live. At various times, the inhabitants of the US empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.

The logo map carries a cost for mainlanders, too. It gives them a truncated view of their own history, one that excludes part of their country. It is an important part. The overseas parts of the US have triggered wars, brought forth inventions, raised up presidents and helped define what it means to be “American”. Only by including them in the picture do we see a full portrait of the country – not as it appears in its fantasies, but as it actually is.

How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr will be published by Bodley Head on 28 February.

(Source: The Guardian)

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)

Philippines passes law requiring students to plant 10 trees if they want to graduate

Legislation formalises existing tradition and could result in 175 million new trees each year if properly adhered to

A new Filipino law requires all graduating high school and college students to plant at least 10 trees each before they can graduate.

The law formalises a tradition of planting trees upon graduation, which is also hoped to simultaneously combat global climate change.

The proponents of the law say the legislation could result in as many as 525 billion trees planted in a generation if it is properly adhered to.

The Philippines’ Magdalo Party representative Gary Alejano, who was the principal author of the legislation, said: "With over 12 million students graduating from elementary and nearly five million students graduating from high school and almost 500,000 graduating from college each year, this initiative, if properly implemented, will ensure that at least 175 million new trees would be planted each year.

“In the course of one generation, no less than 525 billion can be planted under this initiative,” Mr Alejano said in the bill's explanatory note.

“Even with a survival rate of only 10 per cent, this would mean an additional 525 million trees would be available for the youth to enjoy, when they assume the mantle of leadership in the future.”

The trees will apparently be planted in mangroves, existing forests, some protected areas, military ranges, abandoned mining sites and selected urban areas, according to CNN's Philippines news service.

The government said the species selected for planting must be appropriate to each location, climate and topography of the area and there will also be a preference for indigenous species.

In addition to the immediate carbon-absorbing impact of the trees, it is hoped the legislation will help bring environmental understanding to future generations and lead to further ecological initiatives.

The country's Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education will together implement and ensure compliance with the bill.

The Philippines is one of the world’s most severely deforested countries with total forest cover dropping from 70 per cent to just 20 per cent during the 20th century. Illegal logging remains a problem for the country and the lack of trees in some areas has exacerbated the risk and the impacts of floods and landslides.

(Source: Independent)

'Do you ever think about me?': The children sex tourists leave behind

Their fathers visited the Philippines to buy sex: Now a generation of children want to track them down

Brigette Sicat will not be going to school today. She sits, knees to chest, in a faded Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt, on the double mattress that makes up half her home. At night, she curls up here with her grandmother and two cousins, beneath the leaky sheets of corrugated iron that pass for a roof. Today, the monsoon rain is constant and the floor has turned to mud.

Brigette Sicat knows that somewhere, far away, in a barely imaginable place
called England, she has a father. Photograph: Dave Tacon

Brigette, 10, and her 11-year-old cousin, Arianne, aren’t in school because they have a stomach bug. There is no toilet and no running water, and no means of cooking other than over an open fire. Even when she is well, Brigette is often too hungry to tackle the 10-minute walk to school. Brigette’s mother is a sex worker. And Brigette knows that somewhere, far away, in a barely imaginable but often-thought-of place called England, she has a father. She knows only his given name: Matthew.

Asked what she would say to him, were she able to send him a message, Brigette is at first stumped for words. Then she bursts out in Tagalog: “Who are you? Where are you? Do you ever think about me?” Her grandmother, Juana, her fingers swollen with arthritis and suffering from a lack of medication for her diabetes, sits by her side.

Juana, Arianne, Brigette and Arianne’s brother, Aris, survive on 200 pesos (£3) a day, contributed by Arianne and Aris’s father. (He drives a Jeepney – a public transport vehicle originally converted from Jeeps abandoned by the US military.) Juana, 61, tells me she thinks she may not live much longer. But she wants the girls to finish school, to keep them from working in the bars.

Brigette Sicat, 10 (on left), with her cousin Arianne, 11, and her
grandmother Juana. Photograph: Dave Tacon

These are the slums of Angeles City in the Philippines, and the children here represent a United Nations of parentage. Their faces tell that story – fair skin, black skin, Korean features, caucasian. That’s because their fathers, like Brigette’s, are sex tourists.

You can see these slums on Google Earth – a tumble of rusty corrugated iron and rubbish dumps stretching from the streets down to the river. When you visit, it is the smell, like soured milk, that hits you first. Closer to the dump, it is more pungent. Here you will find the poorest of the poor – including the women too old for the sex trade – earning what they can from combing through the fetid piles, looking for plastic and metals they can sell. There is the noise of motorbikes and rain and cocks crowing. The men hold cock fights nearby, the birds fighting to the death. It is illegal, but so is prostitution.

 With the 'girlfriend experience', you pay a woman to be your 'girlfriend' for a day, a night, a week or a month

The men who live here are construction workers building the hotels that support the sex tourism industry, or drivers, or security guards. The children run at their heels or in the gutters, or play a game involving throwing flip-flops at an old tin can. The mothers are often themselves the children of sex workers and foreigners without a name; these young children are a third generation abandoned by their fathers.

Melanie (left) and Madeline delos Santos, 18-year-old twins who recently
made contact with their English father, Ron. Photograph: Dave Tacon

Angeles City, 85km north-west of Manila, is hardly the only place in Asia with a sex tourism trade, but it is one of its centres. There are perky Facebook groups and dedicated websites that cater to the men who come here: Angeles City, they say, is a place where “you can’t help but get laid”.

The speciality of the town is the “girlfriend experience”, or GFE; you pay a woman to be your “girlfriend” for a day, a night, a week or a month. This can include going on holidays to one of the beautiful resorts out of sight of Filipino poverty, or just staying at a client’s hotel, meeting his every desire.

This is how Brigette’s mother, Aiza, met Matthew, a regular visitor to the city’s sex bars. He visited at least twice a year and often saw Aiza. When, after a few visits during which he had been her “regular”, she told him she was pregnant, he said he had already paid for the sex: it was her fault if she got pregnant.

 The red light strip on Fields Avenue in Angeles City. Photograph: Dave Tacon

When Brigette was two, the family heard that Matthew was in the area again and took her to see him at the bar he favoured, but couldn’t get inside. Two years ago, the bar closed down. Since then they have heard nothing of him. Meanwhile, Brigette’s mother has abandoned her daughter to the care of her grandmother.

The Spanish colonialists named this place Pueblo de los Angeles, or “Town of the Angels”. During the Vietnam war, it was the home of the Clark air base, then the largest American military facility outside the US. The base stayed open until 1991, when an eruption at Mount Pinatubo, the volcano looming 10 miles to the west, precipitated its closure. It is now a commercial airport and business centre, with call centres, hotels and restaurants.

According to the local department of tourism, more than 4.7 million foreigners come to the Philippines each year. Of these, 1.2 million are men who arrive on their own. Most numerous are tourists from Korea, the US, China and Australia. The UK is ninth on the list, closely followed by other European countries. In 2011, the then US ambassador to the Philippines, Harry Thomas, said at a conference that 40% of male tourists visited the country for sex alone. Philippine officials complained; he couldn’t back up the statistic, and went on to apologise to the foreign secretary. But nobody who has been to Angeles City doubts that he was right. It is possible, here, to go for weeks without seeing a western woman. It is all Filipino women and foreign men.

On the blogs and social media sites that cater to them, the men who visit Angeles City discuss their experiences and share tips. On one, a man writes: “I never had problems with the women I brought back to the hotel. No ID check. I could bring in as many women as I wanted… not a word was said when I would walk up with two or even three women at a time.” Another man comments on the number of “working girls” who have children by their clients, or “mongers” as the men call themselves – short for “whoremongers”. “I would say 40% to 50% of the working girls in AC had their first kid from a monger, either European, Australian or American, and these mongers aren’t supporting their kids, just left them. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

The man goes on to wryly acknowledge his own transgressions: “I took an unopened box of 40 condoms with me to AC, I came home with an unopened box of 40 condoms.”

***

It is 22-year-old Judith Icaru’s day off, which means for once she is here, in the tiny two-room house she shares with eight members of her family, including her three-year-old son, Jaden. Jaden’s father is an Englishman in his 50s called Colin. He met Judith in a bar and they had one night together. Judith, then 19, was new to sex work. About 10 weeks later, she realised she was pregnant.

She and her 18-year-old sister, Joy, work in one of Angeles City’s largest bars. They are two of the dozens of dancers who work between 6pm and 3am, hoping to attract a man who will pay to take them away for sex or, even better, the girlfriend experience. Judith gets paid 180 pesos (about £2.70) a night. If a man buys her a drink – known as “lady drinks” – she gets a commission on the sale. “The men like us to drink alcohol. They get angry if you want a soft drink,” she says. She has become adept at pouring drinks on the ground when the men aren’t watching; being drunk would be dangerous.

 Judith Icaru and her son, Jaden, three. Photograph: Dave Tacon

The job is made sustainable by the men who pay a “bar fine” – a price set by the bar for taking her away for the night, or longer. A typical bar fine for one night is 3,000 pesos (£45); of which Judith gets just under half. If the client wants her for longer, she might be away for days. The family looks after Jaden.

But today she is here, chatting while her son takes his siesta. The house is tiny, but has a toilet, running water and a television. Her father is a construction worker, building a new hotel. Jaden, meanwhile, does not resemble anyone in her family. He looks like his father, says Judith.

 DNA-testing businesses advertise in the bars, on drink mats that promise 'results which leave you with no doubts'
What would she say to Jaden’s father, if she could? She smiles and shrugs. He is far away. He touched her life. He is gone. What does she want for Jaden? “Like all mothers. I want my son to be healthy. I want him to finish school.”

***

When Nely Pones, 45, got pregnant with her daughter, Michelle, nine years ago, she hoped for a long-term relationship with the father. David is Scottish, and told her he was working in Bahrain. “At first, he just bought me a drink. And then the next time he came to the bar, he paid for three weeks for me to be his girlfriend. He paid 31,000 pesos (£460).” David talked of marriage. “He treated me well. He was just an average guy, not too demanding.” But by the time she found out she was pregnant, he had started a relationship with another Filipino woman, whom he later married.

David told Nely he would support the child if she would pay for a DNA test to prove paternity, though he also offered her money for an abortion. Angeles City has a number of DNA-testing businesses. They advertise in the bars, including on drink mats that say: “We understand how important it is for you to have results which leave you with no lingering doubts.” But the cost – 14,800 pesos (£220) – was beyond her reach.

Nely Pones with her daughter, Michelle, nine, whose Scottish father
asked for DNA proof of paternity. Photograph: Dave Tacon

Nely never seriously considered an abortion. Michelle – any child – is “a blessing from heaven”, she says. Three years ago, when Michelle turned eight, Nely’s friends told her that David was in Angeles City again. She took Michelle to meet him. “I told my daughter: ‘Give your father a hug,’” she says. Nely cries as she remembers him pushing Michelle away, saying that she was not his daughter.

For years, Michelle and Nely struggled on the edge of starvation. Then, an American stranger, who saw a news report about the lives of women in the area, got in touch through a local fixer and began to support her with a regular payment. It was enough to allow Nely to take out a small loan and buy a fridge. She opened a tiny food shop, built out of waste from building sites, from which she sells rice and fish stew to passersby. She makes about 2,000 pesos (£30) profit a week. On this, she supports Michelle and Michelle’s half-brother.

David would now be in his mid-70s. Using the scraps of documentation Nely has kept, the Guardian tried to track him down. There are a number of people with his name in Britain and Bahrain, none of whom could be contacted. The phone number he gave her is no longer operational.

***

Justin Quintero, 17, would love to connect with his British family. His mother, Shelly, thought she was in a better position than her colleagues at the bars; Justin’s father was her regular. He visited several times a year and would pay to take her away for weeks at a time. Justin’s father told her only his first name – Franz, although she now believes this was a nickname. Shelly was 24; Franz was about 50. He never answered any questions about his home life, but she once saw a photograph of him with his British children on a camping trip. They were all in coats, she remembers, and it looked cold.

 'He knew it was his kid, but he didn’t want to be involved.' He met and held his baby son only once
Their relationship lasted five years. She regarded herself as Franz’s second wife and had two children with him – Justin and his 16-year-old sister, Jasmine, who was adopted at two by relatives in Manila because Shelly could not afford to support them both. When she told Franz she was pregnant with Justin, he had mixed feelings, she says. “He knew it was his kid, but he didn’t want to be involved.” He met and held his baby son only once.

ustin Quintero, 17, and his mother, Shelly, 41, who saw Justin’s
father for five years. Photograph: Dave Tacon

For a while, Franz sent her 5,000 pesos a month (£74) to support his son. But when Shelly became pregnant with Jasmine, the money stopped. Months later, a stranger from Britain sought her out. He said he was Franz’s best friend, and that Franz was dead. On his deathbed, he had asked his friend to find Shelly and give her money. The friend handed over 20,000 pesos (£300).

Now, at 41, Shelly is too old for the bars. She works as a housemaid for a middle-class family and earns 4,000 pesos (£60) a month, of which she must spend almost half on transport. Fortunately, she does not pay rent; the concrete shack she shares with five family members is owned by her mother.

Justin wants to be an engineer, but knows he will more likely have to leave school soon and find work nearby. He often thinks about his siblings halfway across the world. “I realise it is only a tiny chance that I will ever meet them. I realise they don’t know I exist.” He wonders about their lives; not having a father, he says, feels “like a hole inside of me”. Justin is tall and fair-skinned and recently started shaving. Looking at him next to his mother, who is short and dark-skinned, one can only suspect that somewhere in England there is another family with whom he shares his strong jaw, thick eyebrows and penetrating gaze.

Jasmine and Justin have no proof of their parentage. Even if Franz had been willing to sign their birth certificates, he was not there when they were born. The Home Office states that children born overseas to a British father can become citizens “provided there is satisfactory evidence of paternity”. That means birth certificates, DNA tests or “any other evidence… the home secretary considers to be relevant”. If his siblings were prepared to take a DNA test, Justin could satisfy that test. But he isn’t sure that he wants to – he’d just like to meet his family.

The UK is also party to international agreements that mean child support orders can be enforced by Filipino mothers against fathers in Britain – in theory. In practice, this is a fiction. The mothers would need a court order in Britain or the Philippines; hiring a British lawyer to bring a case would be impossible, and taking action in the Philippines would almost always mean paying a bribe.

***

Today, Ron, a retired civil engineer, is in his late 70s and lives in England. Twenty years ago, he was working in the Philippines. There, he met Esperanza delos Santos – known to her family as Espy – who was 22. She worked in Misty’s bar on Fields Avenue, which has long since closed. “He really wanted me,” Espy remembers. Not only did Ron court her, he also courted her family, meeting Espy’s mother, Myrna. Ron was a good man, the family agreed.

When he was transferred to Indonesia, Espy moved with him. She returned home when she was seven months pregnant and gave birth to twin girls – Madeline and Melanie. The family have a faded picture of the christening, with Ron holding one of the babies.

 Madeline delos Santos is determined to be an architect. Photograph: Dave Tacon

The relationship failed, but Ron sent money each month and gave Myrna a letter confirming that the twins were his children, and consenting to their use of his family name. Then, on retirement, he made one last payment – 1.5m pesos (£22,000), with the instruction that it be used to buy a house.

For a while, the girls lived there with their aunt, but today it is used by other family members. The twins, however, were able to attend a private school and gain a decent education, thanks to a Filipino uncle who sent home remittances from his job as a waiter in Dubai.

Myrna asked for more money from Ron in 2011, when the twins were 11, to help pay their school fees. He wrote back, telling them he had no job and no income. “We cannot avoid a difficult decision to make about the twins,” he said. “With both of us without money and still some years to go before they are independent, the only option I can think of is adoption. I hate to say it, but what else can we do?” That was the last they heard from him.

A few years later, the girls’ uncle tracked Ron down on LinkedIn and sent him messages. They say he did not reply. In May last year, Melanie and Madeline turned 18. The family had no money to send them to university, so they looked for work: Melanie is now a shop assistant and Madeline works in a hotel.

Melanie delos Santos: ‘Does he ever think about us and consider us as his children?’
Photograph: Dave Tacon

I meet Melanie at a McDonald’s just off Fields Avenue, before her hour-long journey to the mall where she works. All she wants, she says, is to know her father and have some contact with him. She doesn’t want his money. She understands he has no job. “Does he ever think about us and consider us as his children?” she says. “Why doesn’t he even try to contact us? We are longing to have a father, to see him and know what’s going on with him.”

Madeline, however, is determined to be an architect. After two years’ work, she thinks, she might be able to save enough to put herself through further education. She, too, insists she does not want money from her father. But she does want his attention. “I am hurting right now, hurting and angry. I say to him, I will try to forgive you but please communicate with us and be a father to us… we want you in our lives.”

At the twins’ request, the Guardian located Ron and rang to tell him about his daughters’ request. After a few days and some emails, he called Madeline. They had a good conversation, she says, and agreed to keep in touch.

Meanwhile, in a series of emails, Ron indicated that he did not want to go into details with the Guardian. Asked about the email in which he had suggested the twins be adopted, he said: “After I had supported the twins, purchased a house and provided at least some means of continuous income, I then continued to get further requests for money. I had nothing to give and knew that if I somehow managed a small amount that the requests would continue… Adoption had been mentioned to me as a solution from the Philippines – it was not my original idea.”

Ron gave what he thought was fair, more than many fathers do. But it is much less than he would have had to give, by law, had his daughters been born in Britain.

***

In a packed schoolroom, Brigette sits with her 45 classmates and chants her way through a spelling lesson in English. It is the day after we first met and she is happy to feel well enough to come to school. Her teacher says she is one of the brightest students, but has been held back a year because of non-attendance. The school principal says the children need raincoats and the school needs more classrooms. What would she say to the absent fathers of her pupils, those who have abandoned their children? She smiles. “No judgment. Perhaps people fall in love.” But, she adds, “fathers should support their children”.

Brigette has not yet decided what she wants to do when she grows up. She might like to be a teacher, as long as she could stay with her grandmother, Juana. She has never been to the strip of bars on Fields Avenue, except for the time she was carried there in her aunt’s arms as a two-year-old, in an attempt to meet her father. Juana hopes she will never need to go again.

Some names have been changed for legal reasons.

(Source: The Guardian)