CAS Briefs

Fluid Asia through two blockages: Labor unfreedom and geothermal justice

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 16:56:42 +0000

Fluid Asia through two blockages: Labor unfreedom and geothermal justice Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/03/2024 - 10:56 Shae Frydenlund

The theme of this year’s Center for Asian Studies symposium – Fluid Asia – invites critical engagement with the social and physical fluidities that are shaping life and landscapes in the region. As the symposium approaches, I am thinking about various fluid dynamics of capitalist development in Southeast Asia – the movement of dispossessed rural people into cities where they work, which is commonly described in terms of flooding, the proliferation of hydroelectric dams along the Mekong, agricultural transitions from water-intensive subsistence crops to water-saving commercial crops in the Himalayas, to name a few. Water and its properties are a compelling vantage point for studying changes in capitalism; however, I am especially interested in the generative tension between fluidity and its foil: blockage.

My own research is concerned with two instances of fluidity and blockage in Southeast Asia. First, the quandary of “free-flowing” migrant labor: the movement of workers drives capitalist development all over Asia (and beyond), but they are simultaneously subjected to conditions of labor unfreedom that block their ability to maneuver in labor markets. Second, the fluid properties and politics of geothermal energy development in Indonesia’s Ring of Fire: proposed projects aim to harness steam that is produced as cool water meets molten Earth, but indigenous women in target communities have organized to oppose the construction of well heads that would block social reproduction, erode livelihoods, and defile living space.

The lived experiences of Burmese workers in Southeast Asia and the United States demonstrate that capitalist development – specifically urban development – is predicated on the forced flow of labor and the simultaneous blockage of labor rights. As Stephen Campbell (2022) shows in his recent book, Along the Integral Margin, people dispossessed by disaster and failed promises of rural development in Myanmar are compelled to move to urban centers but are confined to varying types of non-normative work and even enslavement. But why are people who “flow” locked into shitty jobs? Asking this question in the context of the Burmese diaspora, I found that state immigration regimes articulate with racialized labor discipline to direct displaced people into meatpacking and manufacturing work and block their ability to work in other sectors or organize for better working conditions. This blockage is what enables capitalists to dam “flows” of migrant and refugee labor, making migrant labor especially profitable to exploit. In Kuala Lumpur, for example, Malaysian produce and poultry bosses perceive an “inundation” of Rohingya asylum-seekers as an oversupply of dangerous interlopers who have no option but to work for low wages, but this racist narrative of human flooding combines with a lack of legal documentation that actively devalues Rohingya labor and prevents access to jobs in higher-wage sectors[1]. In other words, conditions of labor unfreedom. In Denver, affixing refugee-ness to Burmese workers enables employers to separate people who were resettled as refugees from other minoritized employees and reframe exploitation as justice and a humanitarian gift[2]. The fluidity of migrant labor – like the freedom of wage labor itself – is always so-called.

Second, the fluid properties and politics of green energy development contain contradictions that erode local livelihoods and provoke collective resistance. As the Indonesian government rolls out the “10 New Balis” plan, or the development of mass tourism destinations throughout Indonesia, there is concurrently increased demand for green energy and friction between communities and energy developers. Indonesia has the world’s second largest geothermal energy capacity, making steam-powered geothermal electricity the focus of low-carbon energy development. However, geothermal energy production also involves extensive drilling, risk of gas explosions, and incessant noise. In Flores, Indonesia, scholar-activists Cypri Dale (UW Madison) and Greg Afioma (CSU) have been organizing for years alongside indigenous communities who oppose the placement of geothermal wells in indigenous territory. Indigenous Manggarai women have emerged as leaders in the anti-geothermal movement and have advanced a new form of indigenous politics based on the concept of “living space,” wherein gardens, playgrounds, forests, cemeteries, ritual sites, and water sources are gendered indigenous territories and sites of production and reproduction. In contradistinction to techno-scientific spatial imaginaries that envision the smooth flow of steam energy from subterranean bore holes to newly constructed hotels, the indigenous conception of living space draws attention to the ways in which proposed plans block indigenous livelihoods and lifeways. This tension is the topic of a new collaborative project with Cyrpi Dale, Greg Afioma, and Emily Yeh (CU Boulder). We are studying the political economy and gendered politics of geothermal development at four sites across Flores with the aim of supporting just energy transitions – but is there even a such thing as just geothermal development? What would it look like?

In last year’s CAS briefing, Denise Fernandes interrogated the concept of climate justice, asking what it means and who controls the narrative. Her writing is especially informative for thinking about struggles over material and narrative fluidities – where, when, and for whom flows and blockages are advantageous. What kinds of blockages enable “free” flows of capital, energy, and people? How are narratives of “flow” used, and with what effects? Brought together in the multiplicity of Fluid Asia, we can examine these questions and others related to water, migration, labor, climate change, energy transitions, uneven development, landscape transformation, and protest movements through place-based engagement and by reimagining the significance of fluidity itself as a social, political, babyֱ��app, and material process.

Works Cited

Campbell, Stephen. (2022). Along the integral margin: Uneven development in a Myanmar squatter settlement.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

[1] See Frydenlund, Shae (forthcoming). “Rethinking Refugee Surplus Populations: Exploitation and dialectical disposability in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. New Political Economy.

[2] See Frydenlund, Shae. 2023. “Refugee-ness and Exploitation: A feminist geography of shitty jobs.” Geopolitics, online ahead of print and Frydenlund, Shae and Elizabeth Dunn. 2022. “Refugees and racial capitalism: meatpacking and the primitive accumulation of labor.” Political Geography, 95, 102575.

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(Re)Conceptualizing Climate Justice: The importance of place, scale, and social relations

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 20:13:13 +0000

(Re)Conceptualizing Climate Justice: The importance of place, scale, and social relations Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/07/2023 - 14:13 Denise Fernandes

As CAS prepares for its annual Asia Symposium, we feature here a Brief by roundtable panelist Denise Fernandes, PhD student in Environmental Studies at CU. Denise explores an Indian perspective on climate justice and demonstrates here why an area studies approach remains crucial for understanding the issues that we’ll be engaging with in the symposium: how legacies of empire, movements toward justice, and environmental challenges are shaping contemporary Asian societies.

I write this brief as the oceans have recorded the hottest temperatures till date; tornadoes have ripped through the south and midwest US; the island nation of Vanuatu has secured a UN resolution on climate justice; the IPCC released another dire warning on climate change; climate scientists have faced sanctions for protesting more climate action; and globally states and private companies continue to extract oil, gas, and coal. As these events simultaneously unfold around me, my mind is constantly wrestling with the idea of climate justice. What does it mean? Who has agency over it? Who controls the narratives? How is it theorized at different governance and policy scales? Why is it such a contested concept? Over the past twelve years, with my work in policy and academic circles and along with historically disenfranchised communities who are deeply impacted by extreme weather events, I have come to realize that climate justice is not a very simple concept. It is deeply contested at different scales of governance where international climate negotiators, politicians, economists, scientists etc. articulate climate justice very differently in comparison to tribal communities, subsistence farmers, and/or historically disenfranchised/marginalized groups. This constant struggle with the term is what makes it extremely difficult to operationalize “just climate transition policies”.

Climate justice is embedded within larger political babyֱ��app and socio-cultural processes. It is imperative that within academia we start to (re)conceptualize this idea of climate justice and the ways political babyֱ��app processes or socio-cultural hierarchies influence certain interests in climate justice debates globally. Climate justice literature has largely been conceptualized in North America or Europe with a focus on the North-South structuring of the world system, historic emissions and climate finance responsibilities, and the disproportionate harms of climatic events (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014; Sultana, 2021; Newell et al, 2021; Khan et al, 2021). Even within this scholarship there are contestations on the climate justice movement goals and the ways it manifests. Even though states in the Global South argue for climate justice at the international climate negotiations, within their territorial borders certain situations present cases of climate injustices. These contradictory articulations of climate justice are further complicated by colonial histories and power hierarchies like gender norms, religious ideologies, caste discriminations, and ethnic conflict. I have come to understand these contradictions both as an Indian who has to navigate the identity of being a religious minority and a female in a country where religion, caste, and gender shape the political and cultural discourse, and through my work on climate change, energy politics, and social justice movements in India.

At the 2021 World Sustainable Development Summit, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated, “the road to fighting climate change is through climate justice”. Similar statements have been made by the Indian bureaucracy at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with regards to the common but differentiated responsibilities clause on carbon emission responsibilities. While these statements were being made, India was arresting climate activists and adivasi (tribal) environmental leaders. This is not to say that the historical aspects of carbon emission responsibilities should not be addressed at the UNFCCC but it points to a troubling and disturbing notion of who gets to call for climate justice and at what level. I’ve been specifically thinking about these contradictions in climate justice based on my two research projects: (a) my Ph.D. dissertation project that investigates climate mitigation projects like solar parks in India and Morocco that have been adopted as the “best” solution to address carbon emission reduction but have disproportionately impacted adivasi, lower caste, and ethnic minorities communities. India along with France proposed the International Solar Alliance (ISA) treaty as a part of the Paris Agreement. The ISA along with the World Bank have been fundamental in pushing for these solar park projects in the Global South. These solar park projects have led to water and energy insecurities for small farmers, women, and pastoralists. I analyze four crucial instruments- science & technology, finance, cartography, and property law that have been used by states, multilateral agencies, and the private sector to produce solar landscapes for profit. (2) my second project investigates climate justice counterstories from adivasi women and dalit activists on social media to understand how oppressed groups contest the Indian state’s idea of climate justice while bringing on the ground environmental activism to the digital space. Both my projects wrestle with the state’s idea of “climate justice” and the ways grassroot environmental movements challenge these dominant state narratives to reimagine climate justice. Personally, I have been reflecting on ways we as academicians or policy influencers need to avoid climate justice being co-opted into empire building strategies by state, multilateral agencies, and private companies while dispossessing vulnerable communities during the climate crisis.

This complex understanding of climate justice requires us to broaden our understanding of who is impacted in this discourse and how we need to work around climate policies at different governance scales. This might also require us to rethink about the North/South binary at the UNFCCC and broaden our discussions on aligning with climate action movements and social justice movements that address class, race, religious, caste, or gender inequalities globally. Climate justice is going to be a constant struggle and from the Indian perspective we need to bring in a more dalit-adivasi critique to the state notions of climate justice. I am particularly drawn to the anti-caste social reformer Jyotirao Phule’s reflections in his 1873 “Gulamgiri” (Slavery) text where states, “This single instance speaks volumes for the indifference of these Brahmin officers in the Education Department to the welfare of the depressed classes here. (You will be shocked to know that) when one such patriotic 'enlightened' Brahmin was working as the Chief Executive Officer in the (Poona) Municipality, when the position of water supply was pretty serious during the summer last year, he did not have the courtesy to allow these depressed people to draw drinking water from the common Government troughs.”[1] Droughts are common in the Poona region of Maharashtra and have gotten worse in the last few years. But the caste, religious, gender, and adivasi dynamics have also gotten worse in the region/country and this 1873 anecdote by Phule is only reflective of the present-day reality in India where only certain privileged groups can access critical resources thus requiring an urgent (re)conceptualization of the very idea of climate justice. An Asian/South Asian studies perspective along with a more critical understanding of place, scales of governance, and social relations is important for any scholarship on the politics of climate justice.

[1] Translated from Marathi to English by Prof P.G. Patil

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Looking Back Fifty Years, America in Vietnam

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:30:56 +0000

Looking Back Fifty Years, America in Vietnam Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/31/2023 - 09:30 Steven Dike

CAS Event Series Commemorates 50 Year Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords that Ended American Combat in Vietnam

American combat in Vietnam ended 50 years ago with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in early 1973. 50 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that the United States would have close and peaceful relations with Vietnam—specifically a Vietnam united under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), a communist government that we had fought a war against for over two decades. Vietnam itself was in the midst of nearly continuous conflict and upheaval from 1940 to 1975, facing decades-old French colonial domination, Japanese occupation and a massive famine during World War II, an 8-year war against France, and then a prolonged conflict of varied intensity lasting from when the nation was temporarily divided in 1954, until 1975, when the DRV defeated the southern, American-backed Republic of Vietnam, marking as well the first time that the United States had lost a major war. The subsequent communist babyֱ��app program failed badly, and Vietnam began to abandon it in the mid-1980s under a liberalization program known as doi moi. Ever since, Vietnam has achieved high, though unevenly distributed, rates of babyֱ��app growth. In the mid-1990s the United States and Vietnam normalized relations and have since become significant trading partners and remarkably friendly nations.

The median Vietnamese citizen is about 32. Most people there have no personal memory of these wars; they learn about them in school and from older people. More than once older Vietnamese people have complained to me that the youth don’t know and don’t seem to particularly care about this history. Maybe in some ways that isn’t so bad. At least a few generations of Vietnamese people might live without ever experiencing significant war in their nation. But moving on from war is something I’m bad at myself. I’ve spent about a month in Vietnam in total, visiting battlefields, bases, cemeteries, temples, memorials, museums, prisons, tunnels, galleries—just about every kind of place you can imagine. It is not difficult to find echoes of the war here. They are everywhere. Guide Tam Le calls this “The Syndrome.” I think he suffers from it too. It’s the thing that sucks people like me, born six months before the Fall of Saigon, and him, born several years later, back in time, back into the War, decades after it ended. There is always another book to read, one more place to visit, another thing about the American War in Vietnam that you knew nothing about and now have to chase down. After I first toured Vietnam a student interviewed me and I said whenever I went back to Vietnam I was going to be fully on vacation, no war stuff. I knew it was a lie. Le took me this past month to the A Shau Valley, through the DMZ, and to My Lai, taking in more and more of the war.

I write this as I wait in the Con Dao airport to return to Ho Chi Minh City—aka Saigon. I think this is the place that symbolizes more than any other place I’ve been the tension between history and the future in Vietnam. It is a rapidly developing archipelago about 100 miles SE of the coast of southern Vietnam, the kind of place tour books tell you to visit now before it gets spoiled by a dozen mega resorts and blocks of luxury timeshares. I stayed three nights in a simple room in a nice hotel within easy walking distance to an amazing and practically deserted beach for about $100/night in the offseason. I rented a motorbike for six bucks and covered most of the roads on the only populated island, Con Son, in an afternoon.

But for a long time, Con Dao was probably the most notorious place in Vietnam--not a tropical paradise, but rather a prison island. Here, in 1970, Tom Harkin, later a longtime US Representative and Senator from Iowa, acting on a tip from a South Vietnamese dissident, somehow slipped away from the government handlers giving an American delegation a tour of the “official” prison and got through a door he was not supposed to. He shot a roll of film documenting the “Tiger Cages” that our South Vietnamese ally was running, subjecting its numerous prisoners to unbelievably torturous conditions. Life Magazine published the photos. It was a big scandal that almost no Americans remembered once the war was over.

This wouldn’t have been news to most Vietnamese, however. The South Vietnamese prison on Con Son was a successor to prisons French colonizers had built on the island they called Poulo Condore. France invented the Tiger Cages—cramped cells with a raised walkway above from where jailers hurled abuse upon the prisoners below. Tour the several prisons of the island and the museum and you will see a who’s who of major figures of the Vietnamese Revolution having spent time as political prisoners here during French rule.

This place is gorgeous, and most of the archipelago is a national park, protecting undeveloped tropical forest and seas. Most of the tourists are Vietnamese, and they are enjoying the natural beauty. But they also come here to tour the prisons and to visit the Hang Duong cemetery, where thousands of tombstones, many unmarked, document the toll of the French conquest. They pay tribute at the tomb of Vo Thi Sau, a teenage girl executed by firing squad in 1952 after she carried out a successful grenade attack on French soldiers. Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the subsequent American war was that all this history wouldn’t matter that much. Even the best of American reflections on our war often treat French colonialism, which met its demise in the First Indochina War (1946-1954), as a prologue to our conflict, rather than what it was—the much longer and more definitive story that would inevitably shape and condemn our own Vietnam war to failure.

My favorite conception of history is simply the defense against forgetting. So maybe the role of historians is just that simple—to insist that we had better not forget a lot of things that are very painful, even as the future maybe doesn’t look so bad.

The Center for Asian Studies is running a series commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords that ended American combat in Vietnam. The theme of the events is moving from war to peace. Ambassador Ted Osius was on the ground in the 1990s as the United States normalized relations with Vietnam and began to leave the war behind. During the Obama Administration, he served as ambassador. Our other speakers have all been involved with humanitarian and cultural exchange work between Vietnam and the US in the decades after the war.

We began with a November showing of a rough cut of a forthcoming PBS documentary, The Movement and the Madman about the confrontation between the antiwar movement and the Nixon Administration. In early February we have three more events:

February 2, 5:30 PM, CASE E422: Vietnam and the USA: Looking Forward and Back, a panel discussion with Sister Sen Nguyen, Dr. Ted Ning, and Dr. Pete Steinhauer.

February 3, 5:00 PM, Chancellor’s Auditorium, 4^th Floor, CASE: “Nothing is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam” with Former US Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius, followed by a reception

February 4, 7:30 PM, Muenzinger Auditorium: A showing of the film Hearts and Minds, in conjunction with CU’s International Film Series. Featuring a personal video introduction by director Peter Davis.

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Cumulative Reflection on What the Killing of Mahsa Jina Amini Sparked In Iran

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:42:00 +0000

Cumulative Reflection on What the Killing of Mahsa Jina Amini Sparked In Iran Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/26/2022 - 08:42 Anonymous

This Brief offers an Iranian student’s perspective on the ongoing protests and women’s movement in Iran. CAS commissioned the Brief in order to help make more visible to our community the events in Iran as well as share the perspectives of a member of our Iranian student community. The views expressed in the Brief are not necessarily those of CAS or the University of babyֱ��app.

WEEK 1: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN IRAN AND WHY IT MATTERS

Today marks the 40^th day after the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini on Sep 16, 2022. She was a 22-year-old woman taken into custody and killed by “morality” police for her “unsatisfactory” hejab*. This unofficial police force has been oppressing and assaulting the women of Iran for years and it has only grown more violent and absurd with time. Oppression of women in Iran is not limited to how they are required to dress (failure to comply has led to them being arrested, lashed, and even killed,) it dictates their eligibility for jobs (illegal to be a singer or a pilot,) legal age of marriage (9 years,) traveling abroad and divorce (both only permitted by the husband/male guardian.) Over 40 years of such gender apartheid under the Islamic Republic fueled unprecedented uprisings across Iran that are led by women – and now by female students. Since the day of Mahsa Amini’s death, daily large-scale protests with the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ (‘Zan, Zendegi, Azadi’,) have evolved into revolution-seeking rallies and strikes; people of Iran are demanding freedom, a once and for all end to the current regime which is the cause of years of growing injustice, corruption, abuse of human rights and dictatorship. However, unfortunately but as expected, this regime is implementing every possible oppressive method to silence the freedom movements:

Extreme slowdown/shutdown of internet across the country
Suppressing voices of Iranians and allies on social media (especially Instagram)
Beating, arresting, assaulting, and shooting unarmed civilians (including teenagers and children!)
Home arrests, torture and execution of activists, athletes, artists, and intellectuals
Raiding universities and schools (even elementary) followed by killings, beatings, and assault of female students
Intentionally set fire and gunshots in the notorious prison, Evin, where the majority of detainees are held as “political prisoners” and under very harsh conditions (e.g., no medical attention even for severe injuries)

Genocide in regions with ethnic minorities

And the list continues. Throughout all this, the government completely denies everything (for example, claims absurd excuses for the rapes and killings of young women, such as suicide and overdose,) continues to violate basic human rights every hour of the day, and somehow prevents a wider global span of media and action regarding the outrageous injustice and the ongoing revolution in Iran.

Nonetheless, Iranians inside and outside Iran are doing their best to draw attention to the bravery and resilience of people of Iran who are chanting the powerful slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ wanting their freedom back and the Islamic Republic gone. As a result of their efforts, several news streams have had articles and reports on this historic revolution by the women of Iran. Furthermore, there have been two Global Days of Action for Iran, on Oct 1^st and 22^nd, where nearly 100,000 people rallied for the freedom of Iran and showed support and solidarity with Iranian women who are putting their lives on the line for an end to the systematic oppression of women (and gender/ethnic minorities) in Iran.

Although we are grateful for the authorities’ statements and public attention so far, it is not enough. This women-led revolution is facing unimaginably tyrannical subjugation and needs the support of not just all women, but all humanity. The western governments, above all the ones standing for human rights, must immediately condemn the brutal Iranian regime with strong actions, and hold it accountable for the numerous crimes against humanity that are not to be tolerated in the 21^st century. In order to do so, there are simple and quick actions you can take:

Sign the petitions that are addressing these concerns:
- Demand the G7 leaders to expel the Iranian regime’s diplomats and demand that political prisoners be freed
- Call on states to set up an independent UN mechanism now to investigate and ensure Iran’s accountability for the most serious crimes under international law
Sign the open letter from global women leaders and advocates urging the UN Member States to head the call of Iranian women and remove the Islamic Republic from the UN commission on the Status of Women
Continue to learn** and talk about Iran’s women’s revolution in the making, tweet and post tagging UN associates and political figures to demand effective action
Call your senators and representatives and have them:
- Address the petitions
- Work to modify the sanctions on Iran to be imposed on the members of Islamic Republic government and its security apparatus (instead of targeting the Iranian people)

At last and again, I would like to encourage you to stay informed and active about Iranian women making history, to help be their voice, and to stand with them and all the women around the world – in words and actions – to own their agency and freedom.

*Hejab is used here to better describe the “Islamic” dress code in Iran. Conventionally, hijab is used when globally talking about Muslim women veiling their hair, neck, and chest; headscarves are a frequently used form of hijab. Hejab, on the other hand, is a “modesty” rule prescribed in Iran to a woman’s body from head to toe. Thus, policing the Iranian women’s hejab is not only controlling how they cover their head, neck, and chest, but also the attire over their torso, arms, legs and even ankles.

**Note that some sources are unofficial due to internet shutdown and journalists arrests in Iran.

https://www.instagram.com/centerforhumanrights/

https://www.instagram.com/amnesty/

https://www.instagram.com/amnestyiran/

https://www.instagram.com/golfarahani/

https://www.instagram.com/middleeastmatters/

https://www.instagram.com/1500tasvir/

https://www.instagram.com/chelseahartisme/

https://www.instagram.com/iamnazaninnour/

https://www.instagram.com/collectiveforblackiranians/

WEEK #2: SINCE MAHSA’S “CHEHELOM”…

“Chehelom”… is Persian for fortieth, it also refers to the 40^th day after a person’s death in Iran. It is a particularly respected day to gather with family, friends, and even strangers to mourn for the deceased as if they passed away yesterday. Chehelom is the last time before the death anniversary that people join the grief of and support the family of the lost one, and pay tribute to the beloved of a family, and the contributing member of a town or city. Mahsa Amini’s Chehelom, 26^th of October, was also to pay tribute to the Kurdish daughter of the entire Iranian nation, to celebrate the young life of an innocent soul taken by barbarism of the Islamic Republic (of Iran.) As her death marked the beginning of the ongoing revolution in Iran, an unprecedented mass of mourners was expected. Hundreds of Iranians marched to Mahsa’s grave amid all the roads blocked by the regime’s security forces, and demonstrations and protests were widely held in her memory throughout Iran. Mahsa’s Chehelom was clearly additional fuel to the unbeatable spirit and bravery of the Iranian freedom-seekers every day and night since September 16^th, in each city of Iran.

As a result of the significance of this day, and in addition to the constant armed repression of the protesters, the government caused two disasters on October 26^th to distress and distract the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. A mass shooting in Shah Cheragh, an Islamic sacred site in Shiraz, led to the killing of more than 10 pilgrims. Metropol, a ten-story tower in Abadan, was brought to collapse – for the second time in the history of this regime – and left dozens killed, injured, or missing. The Islamic republic publicized the Shah Cheragh massacre as an ISIS terrorist attack even though evidence like videos and eyewitness statements has sufficiently questioned the ISIS claim and pointed all the accusations back at the regime. No entity announced responsibility for the collapse of Metropol. While the brutal security forces were cracking down on the protesters across the country and the state media was busy spreading the ISIS sham about the shooting in Shah Cheragh, a second massacre took more lives in Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchestan, following a complete internet disruption in the region. Due to this internet disruption and very limited access to media and communication technologies in Sistan-Baluchestan, we will sadly never grasp the true gruesomeness of the two massacres that occurred in Zahedan.

The gravity of the violent crimes by the Islamic Republic during the past 47 days is unfathomable, and their frequency is impossible to keep up with. The inhuman brutality expands beyond the unarmed protesters and reaches civilians in their daily activities, even children. Mona Naghib was only eight years old when she was fatally shot by the regime forces on her way to school in Sistan-Baluchestan. Eyewitnesses in the Evin prison have only now relayed horrors on some details of the building fire and shootings of October 15^th; a firefighter allegedly found 140 killed on the prison ground, and two detainees informed their family that the detainees from different wards were batoned and shot, or in the best case, medically untreated and left in critical condition. Raiding of the schools, which started with Sharif University, has spread so vastly that it now includes dorms as well – despite this life-threatening danger, students’ protests and anti-regime slogans have grown to create a country-wide wave of school-youth wanting an end to the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, the Islamic Republic has allegedly flown in 150 Iraqi forces to strengthen their protest suppression ability.

The number of killings, including kids beaten to death at school simply for chanting “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”, and of civilian arrests are alarmingly increasing, more than 280 killed and thousands arrested only in 45 days. Considering the lack of reliable internal media, the internet shutdown, and numerous threats to the families of the victims, those numbers can only count as an extreme underestimation. Although that reduces the observable scale of the regime’s crackdowns, there are ongoing efforts to unofficially collect a list of known victims of Iran’s women’s revolution reported by civilians from different cities. On top of all that, the regime is in the process of holding public trials for some detainees for which the Iranians are deeply concerned about the resultant sentences. Several have already received a death sentence through a single trial session and in the absence of their attorneys.

With all the traumas and tragedies so far into the women’s revolution in Iran, Iranians are more motivated and hopeful than ever. Unlike the clerics’ theocratic ideologies of the past 43 years, this revolution, led by women and the young, is based on an exclusive but unanimous idea, freedom in the form of secular democracy. Decades of injustice and corruption in the totality of the Islamic Republic regime has left no hope for any reform of the existing system, and when accompanied with the current violent burst of oppression, massacre, and genocide, it has magnified the revolutionary force of “Woman, Life, Freedom” among the Iranians. We are witnessing daily evolution of this movement among ages, ethnicities, occupations, and major industries. For instance, the nationwide strikes that gained momentum by the strike of the workers in oil and petroleum plants in southwest Iran have now extended to other oil and gas sites, steel and sugar production companies, mining sites, various bazaars, and more.

We continue to look forward to your support, solidarity, and most of all, your helpful actions. Please, keep talking and sharing content about Iran. The list of helpful actions from last week still holds and is encouraged. The global conversation on Iranian women’s revolution needs to stay alive and progress to definitive actions to prevent further enabling the Islamic Republic in destroying the Iranian nation. Canada has already begun to legislate against the regime’s dependents and violent security forces and has voted for removal of the Islamic Republic from the UN commission on the Status of Women. The open letter concerning the latter (#2 mentioned also in last week’s brief) has been signed by more female leaders, including Michele Obama and Hillary Clinton. November 3^rd is planned by some revolution supporters to be an International Call Day for Freedom in Iran to call political figures and news agencies to demand a firm stance and address action #4 on the list published in last week’s brief.

Thank you for your awareness and advocacy. I hope to come back next week with less bad news and more good ones.

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Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power from its Woes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 16:16:39 +0000

Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power from its Woes Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/12/2022 - 10:16 MV Ramana

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? This well-known Irresistible Force paradox comes to mind when considering the role that China could play in shaping the future of nuclear energy. Over the last quarter century or more, China has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to build infrastructure within budget and on schedule. But can it do the same for nuclear power plants, thereby rescuing that technology from declining gently into oblivion?

Before answering that question, I should first explain why I say nuclear power is declining, and explain why that is happening. The impression the news media offers is one of sunny optimism, with glowing accounts of innovative and sophisticated new nuclear reactor designs, often offered up as our only hope for solving the climate crisis. This is misleading.

Nuclear power is a technology whose golden age is long over. Commissioning of new nuclear power plants peaked in 1984-85, and new nuclear power additions in subsequent years have been a mere fraction of that peak. In the first two decades of this century, 95 reactors were started up around the world while 98 reactors were closed down.

All of these have resulted in a decline in nuclear energy’s role in providing power. Measured in terms of the share of global electricity generation, nuclear power has come down from a maximum of 17.5 percent in 1996 to barely above 10 percent in 2020. In contrast, the fraction of global electricity generated by what are called modern renewables, namely solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass-based energy, has consistently risen, from 1.2 percent in 1997 to 10.7 percent in 2020.

This decline is a result of nuclear power’s inability to compete babyֱ��appally, in turn because of the high and rising cost of building nuclear reactors. Nuclear plants also take a long time to build—at least a decade from the start of planning to actually being connected to the electric grid—and they cost a lot to operate. These factors limit how fast nuclear power can grow even if some reactors were to be built.

China’s experience testifies to the stubborn problems of nuclear energy. The country started relatively late on building nuclear power plants, but as with many other elements of infrastructure, the country has emerged as the leader in building nuclear plants. Despite its breakneck pace of construction, nuclear energy contributed just under 5 percent of electricity generated in 2021. But China is also building just about every other source of power too, including the technologies that will be critical to climate mitigation: wind and solar energy. Together, these two sources contributed roughly 250 percent as much electricity as nuclear plants in 2021.

Of missed targets

Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021.

Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported.

Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13^th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well.

The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.

In addition to high costs, there are other barriers to the expansion of nuclear power within China. Thus far, all nuclear power plants in China are located on the coast. But only a limited number of reactors can be built on existing sites and there are few coastal sites available for new nuclear construction. At the same time, there is real and justified resistance to building nuclear power plants in inland sites, next to rivers and large lakes. There are accident risks and concerns about the high requirements for water to cool nuclear plants. Water from these sources is already in great demand for drinking, agriculture, and other higher priority uses. In the long run, then, geography will limit how much China can expand nuclear energy.

What about China’s role in nuclear power elsewhere?

Nuclear power features prominently in China’s plans for exports of energy technologies under the Belt and Road Initiative. In February 2022, China National Nuclear Corporation signed an agreement to build a nuclear plant in Argentina. This marks China’s first export of a nuclear reactor to a country other than Pakistan (with whom China shares a special relationship that also extends to sharing nuclear weapons and related military technology).

But a swallow does not a summer make. Many other nuclear reactor vendors have won one or two contracts but have not managed to translate that into future orders. South Korea, which beat out France in 2009 for the contract to build the UAE’s first nuclear power plant, is perhaps the best example. Since that “victory”, South Korea has not won a single reactor export contract.

A different example is that of Russia, which has dominated the nuclear export market since 2009. Following its attack on Ukraine and resultant sanctions, many of Russia’s contracts, including in Finland and in Hungary, are likely to be cancelled if they have not already been. Russia’s ability to even complete the remaining contracts is also being questioned.

The future of the Argentina project is also uncertain. Historically, Argentina’s commitment to new nuclear construction has an on-off character. In 2007, for example, the country signed an agreement with Canada and China to construct a CANDU reactor—which never happened. In 2015, Argentina signed an agreement with China to build two nuclear plants. That, too, never happened. The current agreement might not come to fruition because the Argentinian government is dealing with high debt levels and is pushing China to fully finance construction of this plant. Notwithstanding China’s deep pockets, there is a limit to how many multi-billion dollar nuclear plants it can finance—on top of all the other Belt and Road construction projects it is involved in.

At a more basic level, all countries have to contend with the unbabyֱ��appal nature of nuclear power plants, whether it is Argentina or it is any of the countries that had planned to import reactors from Russia (for example, Bangladesh). If countries with decades of experience with nuclear power cannot make that technology competitive, the odds that newcomers will be able to do so are slim at best.

Putting it all together

Nuclear power in China has grown dramatically in the last decade or more, in large part because of high level political decisions to promote the technology even if it was not really technically or babyֱ��appally justified. This rapid expansion and the ambitious targets announced by the Chinese nuclear establishment, both for domestic and foreign construction, have led to the expectation that China might give the nuclear industry a new lease on life.

These expectations are at odds with how the energy sector is changing, especially due to rapid reductions in the costs of renewable energy technologies. Photovoltaic panels, in particular, have become dramatically cheaper, partly because of China’s role in manufacturing these. This is why the International Energy Agency dubbed solar energy the “new king of electricity” in 2020. In contrast, nuclear power costs have been increasing. These trends essentially ensure that nuclear capacity will continue to decline. China’s unstoppable capacity for construction might shake the nuclear world, but it is unlikely to move. However, each new reactor that is built will result in additional risks and burdens, especially that of accidents leading to widespread radioactive contamination, and dealing with radioactive nuclear waste streams that remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and the author of The Power Of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy In India.

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Reflections on the Tragedy of Afghanistan

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 21:38:47 +0000

Reflections on the Tragedy of Afghanistan Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/09/2021 - 14:38 Jennifer L. Fluri

Afghanistan garnered a significant share of media attention when the Taliban took control of the capital city, Kabul. This attention continued during the subsequent chaotic and disorganized US-led evacuation of American citizens and some but not all Afghan allies. As someone who has been researching gender, babyֱ��app development, conflict, and security in Afghanistan for two decades, I was also struck by the way the “saving Afghan women” narrative, established by the Bush Administration in 2001, resurfaced. While women suffered physically, babyֱ��appally, and emotionally under the Taliban, the prescriptions for improving women’s lives in Afghanistan through babyֱ��app development and humanitarian aid programs regularly imposed values incongruent with those held by many Afghan communities. The unrelentingly narrow representation of Afghan women as a single category both simplified and curtailed a robust understanding of women’s diverse experiences and articulations of their own needs and desires.

While much of the public criticism of the US evacuation focuses on what women will lose now that the Taliban is back in power, precious little critique has been placed on the failings and falling short associated with US-led interventions over the past 20 years. First, let’s identify the successes. Many Afghan women have benefited from internationally funded projects and programs focused on education, job skills training, and health care. Also, Afghan women’s participation in politics since 2002 was partially due to quotas that included positions for women in both the upper and lower houses of parliament. Women also held political office as provincial governors and district/city mayors, along with being chosen by different presidents as minister or holding cabinet positions. With the fall of the US-backed Afghanistan government, these positions along with those held by Afghan men are gone or radically altered. Therefore, focusing on women and the changes to their lives during the Taliban regime remains an important discussion, but should include extensive criticism of US-led international military, humanitarian aid, and babyֱ��app development assistance.

During the successive waves of increasing women’s participation in politics, education, and babyֱ��app opportunities, along with improving women’s health; the reach and sustainability of these programs and projects remained in question. This was evident from my own research on international aid and development interventions, which included surveys and extensive interviews with individuals (both Afghans and internationals) working within various governmental and non-governmental organizations. Additionally, the US government’s own reports by the office of the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko identified similar failings and criticisms of US government agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Stated Department of State (DOS).

The reach of programs targeting women’s lives has been limited geographically and by existing sociobabyֱ��app hierarchies. Women with English language competency and connections to US and other international donor countries and organizations were undoubtedly more successful in garnering financial and political support from these organizations. While the reach and effectiveness of Afghan women’s organizations was limited by a number of factors. I will review a few here to provide both context and critique of US-led international assistance. It is important to remember that the October 7, 2001 US invasion included a “coalition of the willing”, mostly NATO countries and other US allies. Similarly, while the US was the largest donor country operating projects and programs in Afghanistan, over fifty countries have been involved in Afghanistan in various capacities from military to humanitarian aid and babyֱ��app development assistance. In what follows I highlight five factors that stymied an effective and successful implementation of programs.

Factor 1: Subcontracting:

Most of the babyֱ��app development projects and programs funded by USAID were subcontracted to implementing partners, which are pejoratively known as the “beltway bandits”. These are mostly for-profit companies geographically located in the beltway around Washington D.C., who compete for USAID and DOS contracts to implement projects and programs in various countries including Afghanistan. Once in Afghanistan, these companies used US government allocated funds to pay international staff six figure salaries, rent office and housing space for exorbitant prices, pay private security firms and logistic companies for protection and assistance (also at exorbitant prices). After funds are spent on these expenses, the “implementing partners” use the leftover funds to hire local Afghan run NGOs. These organizations are then tasked with the difficult and dangerous work of fulfilling the project or program mandate, which has generally been conceptualized by individuals living outside Afghanistan with little to know cultural knowledge or understanding of the complexities of daily life for Afghans. The Afghan-run NGOs operate on much less funding than their international counterparts, which led to extensive and rampant turnover within both international and Afghan organizations.

Factor 2: Internal Brain-Drain

Many Afghan run organizations experienced a form of internal brain drain from their organizations. Due to the massive pay disparities between international and local organizations. Many Afghan organizations had difficulty maintaining staff and institutional knowledge within their own organizations. The majority of organizational leaders—my research team and I interviewed—complained about investing time and energy into training young Afghan women to work within their organizations, only to have them leave, once they had enough skills to work for an international organization. While they did not blame these individuals for wanting to increase their salaries and provide for their families, this situation calls attention to income disparities, which made the process of creating sustainable and long lasting programs difficult if not impossible.

Factor 3: Not listening:

Many programs funded by USAID and their implementing partners, were as mentioned, conceptualized by internationals rather than Afghan partners. This donor-driven approach has been critiqued by the vast majority of development scholars as a flawed system due to the lack of community support and therefore inability of the projects to continue over the long-term. For example, when interviewing international workers for the UN and USAID, I asked why they were not designing projects based on Afghan women’s ideas or needs, and the regular response was “because I don’t think they have good ideas.” While these international workers may have not agreed with Afghan women, their criticism was from the perspective of their own social, babyֱ��app and political context, and their experiences from within their home-countries, not Afghanistan. They did not consider the complexities, complications, and at times contradictions that Afghan women endure within the diverse social, cultural, babyֱ��app, and political contexts of Afghanistan.

Factor 4: Diversity of women’s experiences

Afghanistan is a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic country that is predominantly Muslim but with diverse belief systems based on different sects, teaching and interpretations of Islam. It is also stratified based on sociobabyֱ��app class, education levels, along with cultural diversity, and differential access to resources based on a number of factors. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to assistance programs or advocating for women’s rights was a flawed endeavor from the start. Afghan women are not a monolithic group; they have different ideologies and beliefs. This diversity should be celebrated and attended to with all of its complexities rather than attempting to push projects and programs that reflected the values and beliefs of US-based (and other international) organizations. In addition to these issues many international workers had limited access to Afghan communities due to strict security protocols, which prevented them from engaging with Afghans in their homes and with their families and communities.

Factor 5: Security

For women-led and women’s rights organization, security was regularly identified (followed by lack of funding) as the main barrier to starting a project or disrupting the flow or continuation of programs in many communities. Security concerns in Afghanistan over the past twenty years were regularly mitigated by the US and other international forces known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). However, ISAF officially closed its operations in Afghanistan in 2014, and security operations were transferred to Afghan forces, with US special forces and other US military support remaining until the withdrawal in August 2021. The Afghan forces were stymied by corruption and mismanagement including not paying soldiers or providing effective ground support. This was further buttressed by the Trump administration’s legitimization of the Taliban by way of its so-called “peace talks” in Doha, Qatar. These talks sidelined the Afghanistan government and only included women leaders in a performance of women’s participation. Several women we interviewed after their participation in the “peace talks” in 2019 discussed their distrust of the Taliban and the lack of effective listening or engagement with women leaders. Additionally, while the “peace talks” were occurring in Qatar, many places in Afghanistan were besieged by Taliban violence such as suicide bombings and extra-judicial murders.

Interestingly, despite these flaws and failures, many Afghan women, especially in the capital city Kabul, and other major urban areas were able to gain access to education, babyֱ��app opportunities and public and political participation. However, this participation was contingent and often dependent on international assistance. Due to various failures as briefly discussed here, this assistance was neither sustainable nor self-supporting. It would be easy to place the blame on Afghans. Certainty there were entrenched and extensive problems across various branches of government throughout the country, such as corruption and cronyism. Yet, is absolutely necessary to also critique the US’s role in ongoing and unrelenting conflict and uncertainty in Afghanistan. Without a robust and continued critical reflection on the failures and successes of US-led interventions in Afghanistan, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. I say this with confidence because we made these mistakes before. The US did not begin intervening in Afghanistan in 2001; US intervention began in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the US funded and supplied radical religious groups to fight the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden was one of many foreign fighters allied with the US at that time, and later one of the many who turned against the US. In the 1980s it was the Soviets that were “saving” Afghan women. Fighting wars and providing assistance under the banner of “saving women” is a false and flawed narrative that is used to garner political support and far too quickly and easily abandoned for geopolitical expediency. Afghanistan is both a tragedy and a lesson for us all. The US continues to make the same policy and political errors, while expecting a positive result that never truly materializes.

Jennifer L. Fluri is Professor and Chair of Geography at CU Boulder. She is a feminist political geographer concentrating on conflict, security, and aid/development in South and Southwest Asia. She is also particularly interested in understanding the spatial organization and corporeal representations and experiences of individuals and groups working and living within conflict zones.

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Three Kinds of Courage and the Importance of Telling the Xinjiang Story Over and Over

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 16:08:29 +0000

Three Kinds of Courage and the Importance of Telling the Xinjiang Story Over and Over Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/27/2021 - 10:08 Darren Byler

Over the past several years discussions of the “reeducation camp” system that targets hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other peoples in Northwest China in the name of counter-terrorism has slowly gathered mainstream media attention. I remember giving a talk to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China in Beijing almost exactly three years ago and explaining how the unfolding mass internment campaign was attacking Muslim social life. Based on their questions, the dozens of international journalists in the audience appeared to be learning about the situation for the first time. I was surprised, because important stories from Joshua Chin and Megha Rajagopalan had already been published months before, laying out much of the systems that were being implemented. But back then, even in Beijing, the Uyghur region of Xinjiang felt far away.

I remember telling the journalists who had gathered in the extraterritorial space of the embassy where the event was held that it was really up to them to bear witness to what was happening in Xinjiang. If they didn’t tell the story, no one would.

Over the past three years media outlets from the Economist to the New Yorker have done just that. They have done what the journalist Emily Rauhala suggested they do: make Xinjiang central to how China is studied and understood today. This is important not only because it has placed pressure on the Chinese state to close some of the camps, but also because it has created much more awareness of what is happening to the Uyghurs across China.

On February 6, 2021 during a Chinese language discussion on the social media app Clubhouse, I saw some of the effects of how this attention was playing out. In a room called “Is there a concentration camp in Xinjiang?” thousands of Han people in China and around the world participated in a “truth and reconciliation” event discussing what they had learned about the so-called counter-terrorism campaign that was being done in their names.

Many of the stories were deeply moving, with Han speakers from the Uyghur region describing their own feelings of guilt and complicity in what was being done to the Muslims in their communities. They talked with open frankness about the way normal Muslim behavior had been criminalized and how technology was used to control Muslim social life. They talked about their relative privilege as people who were protected by the system. And how it was important not to explain away crimes against humanity by centering discussions of Xinjiang on abstract Han fears of Muslim difference—something that one participant termed “Hansplaining.”

One of the accounts that stood out to me over the hours of heart wrenching stories was the reflections of a Han person who had never been to Xinjiang. “A Jewish friend of mine compared the camps in Xinjiang to the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, sharing pictures of both online,” said the person who lived in a large city in Eastern China. “I immediately felt like this was a personal attack because China is my homeland, after all. He compared my homeland with the land of the Nazis. I really couldn’t stand it at the time. Not only did I not believe it, I thought it was an insult.”

The person thought it just sounded like something a foreigner who knew nothing about China would say, but over the years that followed this moment kept coming back to them. “Like so many people, after listening to many, many, many reports, I gradually believed that I also should start paying attention to this matter” and came to understand that there really were camps in Xinjiang. They said that while listening to the others in the Clubhouse room they thought again about what it took to have their mind changed. They felt that most of the people they knew in Beijing still thought in the same way, that the camps were just an insult concocted by the Western media. Then, as though thinking out loud the person said, “but, just now, I realized that people’s thinking will gradually change. Mine did.”

This account of someone changing their mind and committing to not denying the truth of what is happening in Xinjiang was one of the most hopeful things I’ve witnessed in recent years. Since 2017, I have found that some Han people from Xinjiang who directly witness what is happening in their communities have reached out to me to add their perspective on what is taking place. Sometimes they were reluctant to admit to their role in the system—they felt they had no choice, but if they thought about it long enough they often came to the conclusion that there is also an untruth in denying their complicity as well. I have also found that international students from China are usually willing to think carefully about the way the system of camps and residential schools are similar or different from the camps and schools that dispossessed Native Americans in the history of U.S. settler colonialism. But this moment in the Clubhouse room was one of the first times that I’ve seen someone who had previously made up their mind describe the process of having their mind changed.

Others in the Clubhouse discussion also affirmed this position and called on Chinese people to follow their conscience. They reminded each other that there were different types of courage in standing up to the culture of fear and Islamophobia that has been generated by the political system in China. As one speaker put it:

I often ask myself what we can do. What can we do? Here I want to say that we can take on three different kinds of courage. Not everyone can do the first kind, which is the hardest when facing this kind of power. The first kind of courage is to stand up directly. This kind of resistance is fearless, it is the most remarkable bravery. But in addition, there is a second kind of courage that we can try. When you face this kind of injustice, don’t take the initiative to collaborate. Don’t facilitate the abuse, don’t profit from it; distinguish right from wrong so that you have steel in your heart and you leave a little shame, and leave a little guilt there. Let it motivate you.

In the face of some situations in which we are complicit, we can also choose a third kind of courage. All of us live with fear, that’s what happens when you grow up in a culture of fear, but there is one thing I can do when I am in China: Don’t spread this fear. Don’t bring it to the next generation. I hope not to let our children bear this fear again. That’s all I want to say.

Anthropologist Darren Byler is a post-doctoral research fellow in the China Made Project at the Center for Asian Studies, CU Boulder and an incoming Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of a forthcoming ethnography titled Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City(Duke University Press 2021) and a narrative-driven book titled In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony (Columbia Global Reports 2021). His current research interests are focused on infrastructure development and global China in the context of Xinjiang and Malaysia.

Illustration by Anna Vignet for SupChina

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Coping with the Coup while Poking Some Fun

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 20:19:41 +0000

Coping with the Coup while Poking Some Fun Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/01/2021 - 13:19 Chu May Paing

PDF version of the article.

February 1, 2021 (or 1221, as the day is now being called) marked a new era of political involvement in Myanmar. During the night, the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) decided to disregard the November, 2019 election results, which had given the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, a powerful majority. The Tatmadaw seized power while arresting her and many activists, and calling a national state of emergency.

Everyone I know in Myanmar, including my immediate family, is participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). Civil service employees have refused to go to work as a peaceful way of showing their disagreement with the coup. Citizens in Yangon and other cities have marched and protested, and at 8pm each night, they call for the generals to step down by honking car horns and banging pots and pans. At the moment, the CDM has spread beyond the large cities across the country and has become the most salient formal resistance against the coup.

A palpable sense of worry, frustration, and anger looms over the public. On February 9, the police committed the first killing of a civilian; Ma Myat Thwe Thwe Khine, a young university student, was shot in the head and killed during a protest in Naypyidaw. In the following days, the military has murdered, tortured, and arrested more civilians. On February 11, my friends informed me about a newly drafted Cybersecurity bill that criminalizes “sexually explicit speech” (as in the current protest slogans against the coup) and using pseudonyms on Facebook among other violations of human rights and freedom of expression; the Tatmadaw now shuts down the Internet every night from 1 AM to 9 AM. On February 13, rumors began circulating about prisoners being released from jail to provoke civil unrest in Yangon and increase fear. In the days that followed, there were suspicious arson attacks in Yangon.

In contrast to the formal resistance staged by the CDM, an informal mode of resistance that plays with puns, images, and memes has also emerged as a public strategy for poking fun at figures of authority like the Tatmadaw, if not authoritarianism itself.

Consider the popular protest slogan “ပုကျွန်မခံပြီ.” This slogan builds on an anti-colonial slogan used against the British in the 1940s, “သူ့ကျွန်မခံပြီ,” which meant “I won’t let myself be their slave.” Revived now for 1221, the new phrase means, “I won’t let myself be the short one’s slave!” The words သူ့ (their) and ပု (short) rhyme, making it easy to replace one word with the other in the slogan. The slogan is funny because it equates the army commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing with a colonial oppressor, while also insulting him for being short.

A group of protesters in Sule Pagoda in Yangon holding a slogan, “I won’t let myself be the short one’s slave!”

One of the memes poked fun at the fact that the Tatmadaw generals are older and therefore might not understand how VPNs work when they banned Facebook and Instagram. Aba is a usual addressee term for “uncle” or an older man, colloquially used to refer to the highly-ranked military generals in Myanmar. As this image suggests, young urban Burmese have been finding ways to laugh at this lack of technological savvy while channeling images of other older powerful men.

A meme circulating on Facebook after the news of the social media ban in Myanmar

This feature of humor and satire in current protests has been described by media outlets as a distinct trademark of Generation Z protesters in Myanmar, which distinguishes them from previous generations of activists of the 8888 uprisings of August 8, 1988 and the 2007 Saffron revolution.

The emphasis on generational difference in political engagement is also a meta-message characteristic of movements from the US to Asia. There is no doubt that the political participation of the current generation of protesters in Myanmar and other countries is creative.

However, as I have argued elsewhere, the use of satire as political commentary is not merely a generational characteristic in Myanmar. Satire has long been used as a tactic for evading persecution (although not always), while tickling the senses of those who see it, hear it, or read it. Today, mocking the Tatmadaw is a pleasurable way of at least fleetingly inverting the power of those who claim to possess it.

A meme, circulating on social media during the pandemic, mocks the unpopularity of Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw.

While previous styles of satire commented on the (im)morality of a particular public figure (including Aung San Suu Kyi), more recent satirical messages ridicule both the military’s morality (specifically the commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing) and broader social and cultural issues in Myanmar society.

One slogan that particularly jeers at chauvinist Bama expectations around female body politics exposes the longstanding Bama patriarchy, found parallel in the national crisis like the Tatmadaw and in personal life like menstruation. Signs like these present the current crisis in Myanmar as both a political and an intimate problem.

A protestor in Yangon holding a slogan, “Dear Military I hate you more than my periods.”

Sexual humor is not appealing to everyone, nor is dark humor. Some have argued that this style of poking fun could potentially downplay the severity of the struggle against the Tatmadaw by making it seem amusing rather than serious. An activist friend of mine based in Yangon expressed this concern to me, as she worries that protesters will treat activism as just a trendy thing to do at this moment. Still, we both laughed at the Tatmadaw's absurd attempt to cover up the news of a suspicious flight from China to Myanmar on February 10. While the generals claimed the flight only carried seafood into the country, other evidence suggested it brought arms to equip the military.

A meme mocking the Tatmadaw deployment of war tanks in the streets of Yangon after their attempt to cover up news of a Chinese flight that was rumored to carry weapons that could be used against protesters.

Dismantling what ails contemporary Myanmar will take time. We face not only the Tatmadaw but also burmanization and foreign imperialism in the aftermath of British colonialism in the country. Since independence in 1948, burmanization has taken place in forms of educational policies and armed conflicts with non-Bama states. In some cases like the Rohingya crisis, these conflicts exceed beyond the intention of burmanization, where the Rohingya people are depicted as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh,” therefore ineligible even for the processes of burmanization.

With regard to foregin imperialism, local and indigenous scholars have demanded a reexamination of the status of Myanmar as a post-colonial nation, and the neocolonial and imperial presence of more powerful countries (like the US and China) in the contexts of contemporary Myanmar political economy and of knowledge production about Myanmar. As Burmese historian Tharaphi Than puts it, “Academic colonialism is thinking every coup around the world [as] their intellectual workout. Coups are their case studies. They see coup power challenging their brain power. They can’t see people.” While some protesters demand that the US and other foregin nations “save Myanmar” with military intervention and sanctions, some of us are also critical of potential western imperialism in the aftermath of such interventions.

Those of us who have ties to Myanmar know that 1221 is a turning point. What we do not yet know is what life will be like in the coming days, weeks, or even years. Rather than wait to learn what the future holds, we are acting. And humor can be the powerful strategy of resistance against any figure of authority. No matter how ပလပ်လွတ် (Burmese slang used to refer to “an unhinged and deranged person”) we might present ourselves, laughter for sure helps us cope with the daily news of despair, stress, anger, and hopelessness.

Born and raised in Yangon, Myanmar, Chu May Paing is a PhD student in cultural anthropology at University of babyֱ��app Boulder. Her research interests include gender, political aesthetics, post-coloniality, and modernity in urban Myanmar.

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