Brazilian military police in front of Congress fired tear gas and rubber bullets at indigenous protesters, who responded with arrows and spears to end what started as a peaceful protest by indigenous peoples on Tuesday. Police said protesters were too close to a large fountain in front of the Congressional building. "The Indians did not comply with the agreement they made with police" on the accepted boundaries of the protest, read a police statement. "They were threatening to invade Congress." Protesters have denied the claim, saying they were allowed to be in front of the fountain. Some argued the police were looking for a reason to remove the protesters. "Unfortunately, the brute force of the police caused this," Kleber Karipuna, a protester from the northern state of Amapa, told the Associated Press. Thousands took part The protest involved thousands of members of indigenous tribes in traditional clothing across Brazil during what is known as Indigenous Week. The events during the week in the capital, Brasilia, show the problems the indigenous tribes face in the modern world, as well as their attempts to keep their land from farmers and the agricultural industry. "The agricultural and evangelical lobby want to destroy our rights and turn Brazil into the world's breadbasket, ending biodiversity," Marize de Oliveira, a historian of the Guarani people, told the Agence France-Presse. Sonia Guajajara, one of the protest's coordinators, said there were about 4,000 participants in Tuesday's demonstration. Few protesters were injured in the chaos, and it is not known if any police officers were injured. Protesters said at least four people were arrested, though police could not confirm the number of arrests. The indigenous protesters have said they plan to camp out all week in front of Congress, claiming the government of President Michel Temer is working to roll back protections in various parts of the Amazon. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Deutsche Welle

The recent violence in southern Thailand began on 4 January 2004, when Malay Muslim insurgents invaded a Thai Army depot in the southernmost province of Narathiwat. The next day, after the burning of 20 schools and several bomb attacks in a neighbouring province, the Thai government declared martial law over the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. Shortly after, two Buddhist monks were killed during their morning alms, and a third injured. In these provinces, the majority population is Muslim, and Buddhists are a minority. By the summer, journalists and scholars had written articles about the insurgents and the role of Islam in the violence. But since Buddhism was associated with peace, no one thought to investigate the role of Buddhism. How could a Buddhist monk participate in the violence? Yet clearly, Buddhism was involved in the conflict. In Pattani’s capital district, the My Gardens Hotel is popular with tourists. I had gone there to collect people’s opinions on the killing of Buddhist monks. On this day, the hotel was nearly vacant, the lobby empty, save for two police officers, who were devout Thai Buddhists. As I wanted to get their perspective on the ongoing violence, the three of us sat down together. They explained that they were periodically stationed at the My Gardens Hotel because insurgents had begun to bomb local businesses. Economics, they said, was an important factor behind the current violence. Poverty was creating a desperation that deepened the crisis. But when I asked them about the attacks on Buddhist monks, their cool analysis changed to passionate outrage. They said that murdering a Buddhist monk was the very worst thing a person could do – and if they caught the perpetrators, they would kill them. The expression of such rage, and their justification for violence in response to an attack on Buddhist monks, was shocking. I, like many, had thought that Buddhists were peaceful and that their religion abhorred violence. Such an association of Buddhism with peace is neither accidental nor unusual. The vast majority of introductory books on Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy do not mention Buddhist violence. Instead, they associate Buddhism with pacifism and non-violence. Think of the many books on Buddhist meditation, the 14th Dalai Lama and his advocacy of non-violence, and the peace work of Buddhist activists such as the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (whom Martin Luther King Jr nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967). It’s no surprise that many Westerners think of Buddhism as a non-violent religion, dedicated to inner peace and harmony, not violent politics. As a result, when travelling into the Thai conflict zone, one is prepared to encounter Buddhists working to quell the violence. Surely monks would be engaged in interfaith dialogue while Buddhist volunteers applied the principles of loving-kindness (metta-karuna) and compassion to heal their community’s fears and anger? But the police officers’ retaliatory rhetoric clashed with any such assumptions. And their view is not unique. On 16 October 2015, a head monk at the prestigious Marble Temple in Bangkok posted on his Facebook page his outrage over the latest attacks on Buddhist monks in southern Thailand. Phra Apichart Punnajanto argued that the situation required a violent response: for each Buddhist monk who is attacked, Buddhists should burn down a mosque. Punnajanto was not the first monk, nor the last, to justify violence for Buddhism. Thailand is over 93 per cent Buddhist, the second most Buddhist country in the world, behind Cambodia. Yet this religious demographic is inverted within the three southernmost provinces (formerly the Islamic kingdom of Pattani), which are over 80 per cent Malay Muslim. The violence since 2004 marks the most recent chapter in a centuries-old conflict between the Thai government and the southern region. Over the centuries, Malay Muslims have fought for political independence. This recent episode was mired in political motives, corporate corruption with the local fisheries, and a decades-long drug trafficking problem in the area. Although the bombings, beheadings and killings have reduced over the past year, they have not stopped. More than 6,500 people have been killed in the conflict. The majority of the victims are moderate Muslims, though these numbers do not capture the impact the violence has had on the minority Buddhist population. Many Buddhist families have faced violence or have been intimidated into leaving the region altogether. The declining number of Buddhists in southern Thailand has led to a decline in the number of Buddhists who will ordain as monks. This dwindling number, coupled with the violence against Buddhist monks and laity, has led many Thais to believe that Buddhism is under threat. Buddhists equate an attack on monks with an attack on their religion’s vitality. It seems to many that Buddhism must be protected – with violence, if necessary. Such a position is not only held by the Buddhist laity, but also by Buddhist monks. Buddhism holds a dominant role in Thai society, yet some monks have wanted a more robust form of Buddhist nationalism inserted into the Thai constitution. Others want Thailand to become more actively engaged in a battle against the perceived ‘global jihad’. These monks have adopted the discourse that Buddhism is under attack – and that they need to defend it in Thailand. Early in the conflict, fear caused many Buddhist monks to revise their daily religious practices. Insurgents continued to periodically target and kill monks on their morning alms. Because of this, the majority of monks no longer carried out these morning rituals; it was too dangerous, even with armed guards. Some monks even began to sleep with handguns, ready to fire into the air to scare off would-be attackers. The most dramatic change was with Buddhist soldiers who accepted covert duties to protect Buddhism from the southern ‘Islamic’ invasion. Rumours had circulated about a secret group of Buddhist monks who were covertly retaining their status as soldiers. These special monks were supposedly armed and receiving a military salary, but the rumour did not seem credible. According to Buddhist doctrine, monks are prohibited from serving in the military. Knowing that soldiers might want to ordain, the Thai military had made several provisions to allow soldiers a brief respite, to spend time as monks before disrobing and returning to military service. With these governmental provisions and the Buddhist injunctions against soldiers ordaining as monks, the rumours seemed improbable. In December 2006, I met with a monk in a southern Thai Buddhist monastery. I had finished teaching an English class to some novices, and the monk had asked me about my research. During our conversation, the monk pulled back his saffron robes to reveal his Smith & Wesson handgun. Here in front of me was a military monk – part of a covert group of soldiers who had been trained to protect Buddhist monasteries by serving as fully ordained Buddhist monks. The rumours were true after all. The military monk explained how the conflict justified his presence: ‘Because we are here, the monks and the people stay. Instead of running away, they stay together with us and fight. We southern Thai Buddhists are like small ants uniting against an elephant. Though small in number, we can collectively combat the Muslim terrorists.’ He saw the insurgency as not merely political, but religious in nature. Buddhism itself was under attack, and such a threat justified special steps to protect Buddhists and Buddhist monks. Today, more and more Buddhists echo a similar view: Buddhism is under threat of a transnational Islamic expansion, and Buddhists need to respond with violence. Punnajanto’s call to burn down mosques fits into this mosaic of justifications that has been brewing in Thailand for more than a decade. The recent Buddhist-inspired violence in places such as southern Thailand shocked many. When I lecture on these events, people often ask if these are ‘truly’ Buddhists. After all, violence does not fit into the popular narrative of Buddhism being wholly peaceful. But they are indeed ‘true’ Buddhists, and many are monks. The problem is that the ‘peaceful Buddhist’ narrative is erroneous. It prevents us from understanding the causes of violence. Buddhists, after all, have an agency that goes beyond Hollywood stereotypes of mystical monks, Himalayan mountaintops and Shangri-La. These popular narratives of passivity and victimhood in Western culture are blind to the diversity in Buddhism and its long history of violence. The stories that seem to take root are ones that provide space for Westerners to become the heroes – rescuers of those from the besieged ‘East’. They centre on intrepid voyagers who travel to the East and come back with the exotic mystic arts, as recently portrayed in the Marvel film Doctor Strange (2016). In these accounts, Buddhism is not so much a full-bodied religion than (merely) a philosophy. Within the United States, the origins of this view can be found in the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, in Chicago. On the shores of Lake Michigan, wealthy white US citizens were introduced to the science of Buddhism by Zen Japanese Buddhist priests and Western-educated Sri Lankan monks. Many, like the German-born author Paul Carus, left that conference with a vision of a ‘philosophy’ that was spiritual and in harmony with scientific progress. After the Second World War, the Buddhist movement found its home in the Beatnik generation through romanticised works such as Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958), the writings of the poet Allen Ginsberg, and those of the ex-Episcopal priest Alan Watts. Later, Robert Pirsig’s philosophical reflections in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) gained an enthusiastic following among readers dissatisfied with modern life and who wanted more. In 1987, US interest in Buddhism began to assume political implications with the founding of the Free Tibet movement. In the West, Buddhism is more an accoutrement to one’s way of life than a full-bodied religion. In the late-20th century, it became commodified within the fast-paced market of US consumerism. You can now buy a Yogi Relaxed Mind tea during your work break, pay for special meditation classes in air-conditioned studios after a full day at the office, and escape from the Western work culture for a periodic meditation retreat. All entreats that promote a calm, serene, non-violent association with Buddhism. This historical version ignores the long legacy of Asian Americans who had been Buddhists for generations before their white counterparts ‘discovered’ Buddhism; it fails to include the Chinese-American Sze Yap Company, which founded the oldest Buddhist monastery in San Francisco in 1853. Forgotten is the powerful impact of non-white Buddhists on US Buddhist lineages, meditation practices, and philosophies (one notable exception is the work of the feminist author bell hooks). In this treatment of Buddhism, there is no space for any Asian or other non-white Buddhists to serve as primary heroes, other than through the caricature of martial-art experts. Nor is there any inclusion of admired Buddhists in their opposition to Western interests. Instead, Asians became the supporters or sidekicks of Western heroes. There was no room in this depiction for Buddhist monks who rallied against the West. One of the more pervasive narratives that displays this contradiction is the popular Western portrayal of Vietnamese Buddhist self-immolations. On 11 June 1963, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated outside the Cambodian embassy in the city of Saigon in Vietnam. Journalists were notified in advance to show up, but had not been told what would happen. The US journalist Malcolm Browne photographed the scene. His photograph became an enduring worldwide image of Buddhist protest. Many in the US assume that the self-immolation was a protest against the war in Vietnam, paralleling anti-war protestors at home. This idea fits nicely into the popular association of Buddhism with peace. It is, however, wrong. Quang Duc’s self-immolation and the others that followed were a protest against the South Vietnamese Ngo Dinh Diem administration and its allies in the West. Vietnamese Buddhists felt persecuted by the Vietnamese administration’s pro-Catholic stance. Their self-immolations were acts to defend Buddhism. Buddhists have always been involved in civil disobedience movements and peace-making agendas, such as the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka. Further, Buddhist meditations have proven incredibly helpful in the rehabilitation of criminals. In short, Buddhism, to its practitioners, is not an ‘accoutrement’ to life or ‘just’ a philosophy – it is a full-bodied religion whose adherents are eager to protect. The myth of Buddhism as a wholly peaceful religion ignores Buddhists’ agency and diversity – and the fact that they will go to great lengths to defend their religion, whether by way of pistol-bearing monks or self-immolating protesters. Recently, Buddhists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka have also called for violence. In 2013, Time magazine placed the Burmese Buddhist monk U Wirathu on their cover with the headline ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’. U Wirathu has been a fiery critic of Burmese Muslims, particularly those who identify as Rohingya. The 2014 Myanmar census found that Buddhists make up 89 per cent of the population, compared with Muslims at 4.3 per cent. Nevertheless, U Wirathu and his counterparts argue that both Burmese Buddhism and Myanmar itself are threatened by the ‘Islamification of Asia’. In well-attended sermons, U Wirathu has repeatedly derided Muslims and Islam, accusing them of seeking to destroy Burmese culture and the future of Buddhism. In one sermon, he likened Muslims to the African carp, explaining that they are inherently violent, prone to breed quickly, and want to eat their own kind. U Wirathu is a member of the 969 movement. This movement and the Ma Ba Tha (the Patriotic Association of Myanmar) retain significant influence over the Buddhists of Myanmar. They distribute pamphlets and taped sermons that warn about the threat of Islam. Their work to foment fear of Muslims helps to propel Burmese Buddhists toward violence, as in the murderous anti-Muslim riots in the central city of Meiktila in 2013, where at least 40 people died. Before these, there were powerful precursors from the western Rakhine state. Since 2012, nearly 140,000 Rohingya have been displaced from their homes in Rakhine. Most of these Rohingya have been deported from homes into special internment camps. Due to the terrible conditions in these camps, journalists such as Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times argue that the Buddhist treatment of the Rohingya constitutes genocide. In 2015, the two Burmese Buddhist organisations successfully lobbied for the passage of pro-Buddhist legislation. Many international human-rights groups argue that these new laws are discriminatory against minority groups, particularly Muslims. U Wirathu continues to develop connections not only with Thailand’s Buddhist monks, but also with Sri Lankan Buddhist monks. From 1983, Sri Lanka was engaged in a civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fought to separate and form their own independent state of Tamil Eelam. The Sri Lankan government opposed this, both through secular language and Buddhist rhetoric. Buddhist monks fiercely argued against negotiations, and for fighting to keep Sri Lanka ‘whole’. For these monks, Sri Lanka is the true land of Buddhism and it was under attack. Monks were straightforward political players, delivering incendiary speeches, joining political parties (such as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna), and taking part in violent clashes. The civil war ended in 2009, but Sri Lankan Buddhist monks have continued to push their political agendas. Since 2011, there have been further escalations in violent rhetoric by Sri Lankan Buddhist nationalist organisations such as the Sinhala Ravaya (The Roar of the Sinhalese), the Ravana Balaya (Ravana’s Force) and the Bodu Bala Sena (The Army of Buddhist Power). Often, the rhetoric is directed at businesses, for example against halal provision for Muslims. In early 2013, the Bodu Bala Sena ran an incendiary campaign, calling for a boycott against stores that provided halal-certified meat. The Buddhist organisation falsely alleged that Muslims were slaughtering young calves (an illegal practice), and accused the governing body for halal-certification, the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, of taking steps to bring about Sharia law in Sri Lanka. Similar to their counterparts in Myanmar, these Sri Lankan Buddhist groups have incited anti-Muslim riots, as in Aluthgama in 2014. Buddhist groups have been implicated in the assassination of politicians and peace activists. The growing influence of these hyper-nationalist Buddhist organisations, together with the Sri Lankan government’s tacit support (through a lack of response) has spurred NGOs and local communities to protest. In November 2016, 367 Sri Lankan citizens submitted a collective complaint about the inaction of the police to protect minorities from the persistence of Buddhist monk-led attacks. No religion has a monopoly on ‘violent people’, nor does any one religion have a greater propensity for violence. Rather, social conditions such as poverty and societal upheavals generate violent behaviour, regardless of religion. It is no coincidence that poorer regions and neighbourhoods suffer higher crime rates. When people find the world changing around them, they turn to their religion to make sense of things. Some look to religion as a means to preserve what they have, and religion provides a way of understanding one’s place in the world and, more importantly, one’s duty. In order to comprehend such people’s justifications for violence, it is important to explore their worldview, namely, the way in which Buddhists understand and protect what is sacred to them. Although Buddhism is incredibly diverse, all Buddhists venerate the Triple Jewels: Buddha, Dharma (doctrine) and Sangha (monastic community). As long as these jewels remain in the world, humanity still has a way of escaping the vicious cycle of rebirth. Buddhists, along with Hindus, Jains and Sikhs, believe that time is cyclical, and that there is a decline before the end of each great cycle. According to Buddhists, their doctrine provides rulers with justice, societies with equilibrium, and individuals with a path to salvation. Its attenuation, therefore, is one sign of the decline. Another is the absence, or dwindling numbers, of the sangha. When there are no more monks, Buddhist End Times will begin. Buddhist scriptures measure internal time by how many breaths you take, and external (cosmic) time through the rotation of four kalpas, or aeons. Unlike in Abrahamic religions, time in Buddhism has no beginning. It is a constant cycle. There is no definitive amount of time given for each kalpa, but Buddhist scriptures provide suggestive analogies. In the Prajnaparamita Sutra, one kalpa lasts longer than the time required to wear away an 18,000-square-metre rock by brushing it with a piece of cloth once every 100 years. The first kalpa is a formative and chaotic period. In the second kalpa, the chaos continues to unfold. It is only in the third kalpa in which the chaos declines, and the world enters into a rapid stage of evolution. The fourth and final kalpa is called the Age of Destruction. It ends with an apocalyptic rainfall that destroys all life and sparks the beginning of the first kalpa. Buddhists believe that we are living in the fourth and final section of the last kalpa. The end of the kalpa will inevitably come and, when it does, a new Buddha will emerge: Maitreya, the Buddha-to-be. But Buddhists can forestall the end. The longer the Buddhist monks and their doctrine remain strong, then the slower the pace toward the end of the kalpa. Buddhist traditions have different ways of identifying the signs of deterioration. According to legend, on the eve of the Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) becoming awakened, he was tempted by Mara, the embodiment of desire, death and rebirth. Although he conquered his desires and vanquished Mara, many Buddhists have believed that the re-appearance of Mara is a sign that the End Times have arrived. Others think that the erosion of their sacred Three Jewels signals the beginning of the end. In order to forestall the quickening of the End Times, Buddhists have fought against the manifestations of Mara and to preserve the integrity of their practices and doctrine. For instance, in sixth-century China, the Buddhist monk Faqing led a revolt and declared the arrival of a new Buddha. He marshalled 50,000 men to fight, promising them that, with each kill, they would reach a higher stage in the bodhisattva path. In ninth-century Tibet, Emperor Langdarma was assassinated by a Tibetan lama. According to Tibetan sources, Langdarma had become possessed by demonic forces (gdon). He destroyed monasteries and began to attack the Buddhist establishment. Things were changing and not in the right direction. The murder of Langdarma ‘saved’ Buddhism in Tibet. It has become such an important event that the Tibetans commemorate the murder in their Cham dance, which offers moral instructions through performance. During the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese emperor strengthened support for Shintoism, and began to dismantle Buddhist institutions that were not favourable to the state. Buddhist monks had a choice of either complying with the state, or leaving the monkhood. Many remained and supported the onset of Japanese imperialism. During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, Rinzai Buddhist monks spoke out in favour of the military campaign. For them, the war was a fight for the preservation of civilisation and the Buddhist doctrine – a fight for the world. The Buddhist call-to-arms reoccurred throughout the Second World War. Japanese fighter planes carried images of the Buddhist embodiment of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. Zen and Pure Land Buddhist monks argued that the Second World War was justified in order to preserve ‘true’ Buddhism. The Buddhist traditions in places such as China, Korea and Singapore had become corrupt and faulty. It was a sign of decay. As humanity moves closer to the Buddhist End Times, the Buddhist doctrine explains that it will become harder for a person to become enlightened. In recent years, many Buddhists have turned to Pure Land Buddhism. These Buddhists believe that our world is now fraught with a multitude of obstacles to becoming fully awakened. To avoid this, a follower practices uttering Amitabh’s name (nianfo) and visualizing him. In this way, the follower ensures a rebirth in Pure Land, where he can receive the teachings from the Bodhisattva Amitabha to reach enlightenment. Pure Land Buddhism is one of the largest populated traditions in East Asia, and is quickly expanding its numbers globally. While some Buddhists turn to traditions such as Pure Land Buddhism, others fight to preserve what they believe is true Buddhism, such as in southern Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Over the centuries, there have been tremendous changes to Buddhism. Indeed, change is one of the foundational principles in Buddhism: all is impermanent. Some changes are in concert with modernity, others are in reaction. Each Buddhist tradition has transformed with the times – and the times are always changing. But there are persistent patterns that keep pace with these changes. Buddhist monks in the early sixth-century China led revolts to defend Buddhism. Today, monks in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka continue to fight – violently – for their religion and to call their followers to action. The cycle of violence continues in this final stage of the cycle of time: the Kali Yuga, the Age of Destruction. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Aeon

The Turkish government this week deported foreigners working with Syrian refugees at a leading U.S.-based aid organization, part of what appears to be an ongoing crackdown on international humanitarian groups there. The four foreigners — from Britain, Ireland, Indonesia and India — were among 15 employees of the International Medical Corps (IMC) detained since April 20 by Turkish police in Gaziantep, the southern Turkish city where many organizations aiding millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey are based. The other 11 — all Syrians — remain in a detention camp, according to an IMC statement. The actions came as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose narrow victory in an April 16 referendum vastly expanding his powers has been questioned by political opponents and international election monitors, has continued to intensify a battle against perceived enemies at home and abroad. The government on Wednesday detained more than 1,000 people suspected of backing a Turkish cleric blamed for a failed military coup last summer, adding to as many as 100,000 who have been detained or arrested since then. Erdogan has also been engaged in skirmishes with the United States, including a Turkish airstrike Tuesday that killed as many as 20 U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters inside Syria. After the Trump administration accused the Turks of failing to consult on their air activities, Turkey said Wednesday that it had consulted with all relevant U.S. military and diplomatic agencies. In response, the Pentagon said that Turkey’s notification — less than an hour before the strikes — did not amount to consultation under agreements between the NATO allies. Turkey considers Syrian Kurds, who are in the vanguard of U.S. proxy forces on the ground against the Islamic State, to be terrorists. The reason behind the crackdown on humanitarian groups was not clear. Since late last year, pro-government media in Turkey have published allegations against international organizations, saying that some are involved in abusing refugees, including turning children against their parents and stealing body parts. Turkey also objects to humanitarian assistance going to Kurds in Syria. In early March, the government ordered Oregon-based Mercy Corps to shut down its operations there, ending a program that provided regular assistance both to hundreds of thousands of refugees and to civilians besieged inside Syria. Other, smaller aid groups have also been shut down, and many received indications their required annual registration may not be renewed. The 15 IMC staff members have valid Turkish work permits, and the organization is registered with the Turkish government. Asked to appear to present their paperwork to Gaziantep police, they were then taken to a detention center there. Rebecca Gustafson, senior communications adviser for the organization, said in a statement that IMC is “working with the Turkish government to secure the release of those staff still detained as soon as possible, and we continue to support our team members and their families during this very difficult time.” IMC, with approximately 320 employees in Turkey, has been working with Syrian refugees there since 2012, providing primary medical care and mental health support, as well as job training and business workshops, among other forms of assistance. Separately, Wednesday’s mass arrests, part of a government purge of the state’s institutions, were among the largest in months. The government has accused a Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania, of orchestrating the July coup attempt and has demanded his extradition. Gulen denies any role in the attempt. The latest sweeps targeted “secret imams” suspected of being part of a Gulen network that infiltrated police forces, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said. Later Wednesday, Turkey’s national police agency said in a statement that more than 9,000 police personnel had been suspended from their jobs as part of the investigation into suspected Gulenists. The government’s referendum platform relied in large part on the notion that the new powers would give Erdogan a freer hand to move against the state’s enemies, including Gulenists, the Islamic State and Kurdish militants affiliated with Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. The changes, which transform Turkey’s government from a parliamentary to a presidential system, have been harshly criticized by Erdogan’s opponents, who say it cements his increasingly tight hold on power. Fahim reported from Istanbul. (C) 2017 The Washington Post

Wunsdorf, Germany - It's late afternoon in Wunsdorf, a small town 50km south of Berlin. Winter has left the landscape dry and hazy, so the lights are already on in the local refugee camp. A team of guards, all of them German, has been watching over the facility since it opened last February. It's a sprawling campus, complete with its own kindergarten, infirmary and school. Families sleep in the main building - a former government administrative office. Young, single men sleep in containers outside - two or three in each room. According to Wolfgang Brandt, spokesman for the regional home affairs office, it currently houses 630 people from several countries, including Syria, Iraq and Iran. The occupancy rate, however, is well below the camp's capacity of 959 people. One of the residents, Mohammed Al-Khayeri*, is currently working out at the camp's gym located inside the main building. Since arriving in Germany last September, the 23-year-old Iraqi has tried to spend as much time exercising as he can. "I'm a little fat. I want to lose my belly," Al-Khayeri says as he cracks a smile that belies his otherwise sombre demeanor. Dressed in a black T-shirt, grey sweat pants and white Puma trainers, he recounts how he had to leave his family behind in 2014, as he fled the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Exodus of refugees Traveling via Turkey and along the Balkan route, he spent a total of $3,200 getting to Finland. But when his asylum application was rejected after a year and 10 months of waiting there, he was forced to take refuge in Germany. Al-Khayeri had known very little about Germany before he came, only that Chancellor Angela Merkel was welcoming refugees at a time when other countries were not. That was enough. Germany hosts nearly a million refugees, most of them came last year as part of the exodus of refugees to Europe fleeing war in Syria and Iraq. He and his 100 or so travelling companions - all single men - sometimes had to sleep in the forest or contend with thieves. "Maybe I'll die today, or tomorrow," he says he often thought to himself in his darkest moments. He struggles to contain his emotions as he recounts his journey. Al-Khayeri's family is still in Iraq. Al-Khayeri makes sure to pray five times a day in the camp's prayer room. There is no mosque here though - an observation which would be unremarkable in any other location. Here that fact is noteworthy because this is the exact site on which Germany's first mosque was built back in 1915 as part of a plan to encourage young Muslim men to fight for Germany during World War I. It all goes back to a time when war was starting to smoulder across Europe. The German aristocrat, adventurer and diplomat Max von Oppenheim presented Kaiser Wilhelm II with a grand plan. To boost Germany's chances of winning the war, he reasoned that the country should re-engage Muslim soldiers captured from Russian, British and French forces by convincing them to wage a religious war against the allies - the British, French, and Russian alliance. In 1914, Oppenheim wrote: "In the battle against England ... Islam will become one of our most important weapons." The German-Ottoman alliance The plan, a convenient corollary of the German-Ottoman alliance, was formally launched by Turkish Sultan Mehmed V shortly after the start of the war. From a mosque in Constantinople, the Sultan declared Britain, France and Russia the enemies of Islam, calling upon the Muslim subjects of those countries and their colonies to resist their oppressors. According to the fatwa that was subsequently issued, any Muslim that engaged in war against the Ottomans would have to pay the highest penalty. In the same year, two prisoner of war camps were built in Wunsdorf and Zossen - 7km away. Wunsdorf's Halbmondlager (Half Moon Camp) - so called because of the high concentration of Muslims - held about 5,000 prisoners at its peak, while Zossen had more than 12,000. The prisoners, captured from auxiliary Allied troops from India and African colonies, as well as from the Crimea, Kazan and Caucasus, received special treatment in Wunsdorf. The camp had a relatively small number of occupants per square metre, friendly prison staff and the free exercise of religion. Complete with a cupola, minaret and prayer room, the wooden mosque's inauguration coincided with the beginning of Ramadan in 1915. Islam was seen as a tool to achieve Germany's political and military objectives. "It was actually the Germans who were observing whether all the rituals that belong to [the] Islamic faith were [being] carried out or not," says Reinhard Bernbeck, a professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Free University of Berlin. It was the Germans who strongly encouraged the Muslims to pray five times a day, for example, Bernbeck adds. Friday sermons were used to politicise the prisoners, and a propaganda newspaper called "al-Jihad" was circulated within the camps. The mosque, stylised to remind the prisoners of different Islamic civilisations, included calligraphic inscriptions urging them to join the religious war. Germany's relationship with Islam Despite the calculated efforts, only a small proportion of the Muslim prisoners of war ended up fighting for the German side. At least 1,100 people from Tatarstan - now part of Russia - 1,084 Arabs and 49 Indians defected. But some of those soldiers requested to be sent back to the PoW camp because the preferential treatment they had enjoyed there was so much better than life at the front. Ultimately the project was considered a failure. Only 15 years after its inauguration, the mosque was demolished. The camp stood beside the Moscheestrasse (Mosque Street), which exists as a relic in the town, which has a current population of 2,485. The town keeps no record of the number of immigrants. It is the only street with that name in the entire nation. As if to serve as commentary on Germany's relationship with Islam, the street is very short - about 100m long - and it leads to a cul de sac. The Wunsdorf's PoW camp was also used to pursue scientific ends. Linguists, ethnographers and biological anthropologists were invited to capitalise on the "good fortune" of having had the world brought to them. The researchers thought of "cultures in terms of standardised units, where basically everybody was an object that stood for a lot of people", says Bernbeck. Researchers measured everything; from the circumference of prisoners' skulls to their body mass. They were made to dance and sing and generally put their culture on display. A Lautarchiv, or sound archive, was set up in 1915 by Wilhelm Doegen to catalogue words and sounds as well. Using a phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, prisoners were called upon to record idioms, fairy tales or even the story of the Prodigal Son into the device. As Bernbeck puts it: "This was part of the trajectory of German academic culture that went straight into the Nazi period." Muslim immigrants By 1917, most of the prisoners were sent to labour camps in Romania. Since then the Muslim community in the region has remained small, although it has never entirely disappeared. Out of Germany's population of 82 million, nearly five million are Muslims, according to the most recent census data released in 2015. World of Doner - a Turkish-run shop - is one of the only shops open on Zossen's main square on a Saturday afternoon. Berdan Cacan, 17, is there most weekends to help out in the family business. His brother first came to Germany from Turkey, and many of his relatives have settled here too, including brothers, uncles and cousins. He hopes to continue living in the area after doing an apprenticeship at an insurance company. And although he says he has not experienced much discrimination, he recalls one incident that caused him concern. "Two or three guys came in here demanding my father go back to his country," he says. Cacan says the men did not get violent, adding that "the event was an outlier". He regrets that there is still no mosque in the area. "If there were one, we would go," he says. Across the street, a woman in a bright blue headscarf pushes a baby stroller as her small son skips along beside her. The child, recognising Cacan, runs across the otherwise vacant square towards him and they chat in German. Wunsdorf has played a strategic role in many of Germany's key historic moments. Between 1939 and 1945, the Wehrmacht High Command was located nearby and from the end of World War II until 1994, Wunsdorf served as the headquarters of the High Command of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. With 35,000 Soviet troops stationed there, along with their families, the area came to be known as "Little Moscow" by local residents. Refugee camps attacked Today, the area is in the news again because of the refugee camp lying on exactly the same patch of land where the mosque stood decades before. Like a number of other refugee centres across Germany, the Wunsdorf camp suffered an arson attack. On May 16, 2015, shortly before its planned opening, two young locals with alleged links to the far-right set fire to two waste containers. According to the Frankfurt Allgemeine newspaper, the suspects drove into a heap of sand while fleeing from the police. Fireworks and 20 banners with xenophobic slogans were found in the car. Opinions about the camp among other residents are mixed. "Do you think it's fair that they get money from the government whereas we have to work?" says one Wunsdorf local, a native German, who declined to be named. His car is parked outside a kebab shop called Neco's Grillhaus, down the road from the camp. The shop is run by a Turkish man named Ali Ilker, who commutes between Berlin and Wunsdorf each day to take care of the business his uncle set up in 1996. Ilker says he knows everyone in the town by name, "From the youngest of children to the oldest residents," he adds proudly, lifting his hand from his knee to above his head. "Sure, some people were against the refugee camp before it opened. This place has a long history with foreigners, you know? But since the refugees arrived at the camp, there have been no problems," Ilker says. His burly German customer, however, disagrees. He recalls a scenario in which refugees were caught shoplifting, a situation which, to his dismay, did not lead to the police being called. "You can be sure the police would have been called if it had been a German," he says. A group of similarly disgruntled residents have come together to start a facebook group called Wunsdorf Wehrt Sich (Wunsdorf fights back). It has 2,039 followers and features posts that, among other things, have celebrated Donald Trump's election as US president. Al-Khayeri, the Iraqi refugee, recalls an afternoon last October when he and some friends took a walk around town. They came across a former bunker with a sign in front of it. It contained a warning written in several languages, including Arabic, telling people not to walk in the area. Undetonated bombs still lay in the ground. "That made me think of Iraq," he says. A Syrian refugee who now works for the Red Cross explained to him that the bunker is from World War II. The Syrian also told Al-Khayeri about the Muslim prisoners kept here during the war that preceded it. When asked about how it makes him feel to live in a place with that kind of history, Al-Khayeri just shrugs his shoulders. Right now he just wants to focus on getting his papers and moving on with his life. He smiles politely and goes back to the gym. * Name changed to protect his identity. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 AlJazeera

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

OSWIECIM, Poland — To visit Auschwitz is to find an unfathomable but strangely familiar place. After so many photographs and movies, books and personal testimonies, it is tempting to think of it as a movie-set death camp, the product of a gruesome cinematic imagination, and not the real thing. Alas, it is the real thing. That is why, since its creation in 2009, the foundation that raises money to maintain the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau has had a guiding philosophy: “To preserve authenticity.” The idea is to keep the place intact, exactly as it was when the Nazis retreated before the Soviet Army arrived in January 1945 to liberate the camp, an event that resonates on Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Thursday. It is a moral stance with specific curatorial challenges. It means restoring the crumbling brick barracks where Jews and some others were interned without rebuilding those barracks, lest they take on the appearance of a historical replica. It means reinforcing the moss-covered pile of rubble that is the gas chamber at Birkenau, the extermination camp a few miles away, a structure that the Nazis blew up in their retreat. It means protecting that rubble from water seeping in from the adjacent ponds where the ashes of the dead were dumped. And it means deploying conservators to preserve an inventory that includes more than a ton of human hair; 110,000 shoes; 3,800 suitcases; 470 prostheses and orthopedic braces; more than 88 pounds of eyeglasses; hundreds of empty canisters of Zyklon B poison pellets; patented metal piping and showerheads for the gas chambers; hundreds of hairbrushes and toothbrushes; 379 striped uniforms; 246 prayer shawls; more than 12,000 pots and pans carried by Jews who believed that they were simply bound for resettlement; and some 750 feet of SS documents — hygiene records, telegrams, architectural blueprints and other evidence of the bureaucracy of genocide — as well as thousands of memoirs by survivors. The job can be harrowing and heartbreaking, but it is often performed out of a sense of responsibility. “We are doing something against the initial idea of the Nazis who built this camp,” said Anna Lopuska, 31, who is overseeing a long-term master plan for the site’s conservation. “They didn’t want it to last. We’re making it last.” The strategy, she said, is “minimum intervention.” The point is to preserve the objects and buildings, not beautify them. Every year, as more survivors die, the work becomes more important. “Within 20 years, there will be only these objects speaking for this place,” she said. The conservators are walking a less-trodden path in restoration. “We have more experience preserving a cathedral than the remains of an extermination camp,” said Piotr Cywinski, who turns 43 on Thursday and is the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which runs the site. Auschwitz, he said, “is the last place where you can still effectively take the measure of the spatial organization of the progression of the Shoah.” Last year, a record 1.5 million people visited to take that measure, more than three times the number in 2001, putting even more strain on the aging buildings. Between 1940 and 1945, 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, the largest of the death camps, 90 percent of them Jews. The camp encompasses 500 acres, 155 buildings and 300 ruins. Over the years, there have been dissenting views about the preservationist approach. “I’m not convinced about the current plans for Auschwitz,” said Jonathan Webber, a former member of the International Auschwitz Council of advisers, who teaches in the European Studies program at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. “If you have a very good memorial, you could achieve that without having to have all this effort on conservation and restoration,” he added. The preservation lab, with high-end technology, opened in 2003. One afternoon last week, Nel Jastrzebiowska, 37, a paper conservator, was using a rubber eraser to clean a row of papers in files. They were letters on Auschwitz stationery, written in German in rosy prose intended to slip past the censors. “I’m in good health,” one read, adding, “Send me money.” On a nearby table sat the second horn part to Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien (Op. 45), which had been played by the death camp’s orchestra. Ms. Jastrzebiowska would preserve the page as it was, she said, and keep the smudges showing that the pages had been turned. “The objects must show their own history,” said Jolanta Banas-Maciaszczyk, 36, the leader of the preservation department. “We can’t stop time,” Ms. Jastrzebiowska said. “But we can slow it down.” Ms. Jastrzebiowska’s husband, Andrzej Jastrzebiowski, 38, is a metal conservator. He spent three months cleaning all the eyeglasses in a vitrine, preserving their distressed state but trying to prevent them from corroding further. “When I saw the eyeglasses in the exhibition, I saw it as one big pile,” he said. But in the lab, he began to examine them one by one. One had a screw replaced by a bent needle; another had a repaired temple. “And then this enormous mass of glasses started becoming people,” Mr. Jastrzebiowski said. This “search for the individual,” he said, helps ensure that the work does not become too routine. In 2009, the infamous metal sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Makes You Free,” which hangs over the entrance gate, was stolen. It was found several days later elsewhere in Poland, cut into three parts. (A Swede with neo-Nazi ties and two Poles were later charged with the crime.) Mr. Jastrzebiowski helped weld the sign back into one piece. But the scars from the welding told the story of the sign’s theft more than of its long history, and so the museum decided it would be more authentic to replace the damaged sign with a substitute. The conservators have an easy camaraderie, but sometimes their task can become too much to bear. “Working with shoes probably is one of the most difficult parts of working here,” Ms. Banas-Maciaszczyk said. Everyone here has emotional moments. For her, it was a day when she was cleaning a little girl’s wooden sandal. She could see the small footprint inside. “This is something hard to describe,” she said. From 1940 to 1945, between 150,000 and 200,000 children died here. Ms. Banas-Maciaszczyk said her mother thought she was crazy to come work at Auschwitz. “There are moments when I think, What am I doing here?” she acknowledged. But then she thinks of the bigger picture. “Everyone who works here must feel this importance,” she said. “If we didn’t feel that, no force would make us stay here.” Kamil Bedkowski, 33, worked as an art conservator in Britain for eight years, even restoring ceiling frescoes at Windsor Castle. Now he is on the team shoring up the crumbling brick barracks of Birkenau where thousands slept at a time, crammed into decaying three-level wooden bunks. “This is the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on,” he said. Almost all the conservators here are Polish and studied conservation at Polish universities — this is, after all, a Polish state museum, which employs some 287 people, plus 264 guides who operate in some 18 languages. Most conservators are under 40, young enough not to have known the Second World War — “It’s not our fault that the camp was built here,” Mr. Jastrzebiowski said — but old enough to have heard stories from their parents and grandparents. Few have any regular contact with Jews who aren’t survivors or visitors. Despite the spirit of freezing the site in time, some exhibits have been redesigned in recent years — the Russian Federation’s tells the story of Russian political prisoners here; those of the Netherlands and France and Belgium talk about the fate of their Jews; the exhibit dedicated to the Sinti and Roma present the often-neglected story of those peoples murdered here. The Polish exhibit is colored by the country’s Communist past. The new Jewish pavilion opened in 2013. It was designed by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. It shows black-and-white films of Jewish life in Europe before the war, then of Hitler’s rallies. In one room, the Israeli artist Michal Rovner has copied children’s drawings from the camp onto the wall. In another, names of some of the six million Holocaust dead are printed on a long row of pages, their edges yellowing from human touch. The permanent exhibitions here will be updated over the next decade to include more evidence focusing on the perpetrators, not just their victims. In the collection’s storage is a box with neat rows of red-handled rubber SS stamps conserved in acid-free boxes. These will eventually go on view. This is part of the long-term plan by the museum, aided by the foundation, which has raised nearly 120 million euros, or about $130 million, about half of it donated by Germany, to ensure conservation in perpetuity. The museum has decided not to conserve one thing: the mass of human hair that fills a vast vitrine. Over the years, the hair has lost its individual colors and has begun to gray. Out of respect for the dead, it cannot be photographed. Several years ago, the International Auschwitz Council of advisers had an agonizing debate about the hair. Some suggested burying it. Others wanted to conserve it. But one adviser raised a point: How can we know if its original owners are dead or alive? Who are we to determine its fate? It was decided to let the hair decay, on its own, in the vitrine, until it turns to dust. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2015 The New York Times

Officers suspected of supporting the American-based cleric Fethullah Gulen were escorted to the police headquarters in Kayseri, Turkey, on Tuesday. Credit: Olcay Duzgun/Dogan News Agency ISTANBUL — More than a thousand Turkish police officers, accused of being “secret imams” for an American-based cleric who the authorities have said was responsible for a failed coup in July, were detained on Wednesday in the largest such sweep in months. About 45,000 people have already been taken into custody since the coup attempt, but the raids on Wednesday represented the first widespread roundup of political opponents since a referendum on April 16 to expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some analysts had wondered whether the crackdown might slow as Mr. Erdogan attempted to establish greater national consensus after winning the contentious referendum, but the scale of the raids suggested it was just as likely to accelerate. The sweeping purge of state institutions has led to the firing of about 130,000 people. The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said officers had detained 1,009 people whom he described as high-ranking members of the Islamic group led by the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. The group is accused of infiltrating many Turkish institutions over the past three decades. According to Mr. Soylu, the “secret imams” were part of a parallel leadership structure within the police force that was ultimately answerable to Mr. Gulen, whose extradition has long been sought by the Turkish authorities. The subject of Mr. Gulen is almost certain to be discussed at a coming meeting in Washington between President Trump and Mr. Erdogan, whose government was allied to the cleric’s movement before the two fell out publicly in 2013. The raids were a “most important step toward uncovering a group that leaked into the police force, trying to rule the police force from outside, trying to establish an almost alternative police organization, ignoring the rules of the state,” Mr. Soylu said, in remarks quoted by Anadolu, the state-owned news agency. The crackdown has targeted not just those believed to be “Gulenists,” but also leftist and liberal dissidents, including journalists, soldiers, judges, lawyers, teachers and professors. Some people have been purged simply for placing their children in Gulen-owned schools or for putting their money in Gulen-owned banks. The arrests on Wednesday followed the detention of 38 opposition activists who were questioned last week in connection with their involvement in protests about accusations of voter fraud in the recent referendum. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

This article makes two interrelated arguments. First, most politicians, activists and opinion makers in Myanmar see the political divide between the ruler and the ruled — or between authoritarian ruler and democratic forces — as the main problem sustaining violence, conflict, and oppression. However, a second set of divides— inter-ethnic and intra-Buddhist divides— have significantly widened recently, and racism, sexism, and intolerance have become widespread. Second, the planned “political” dialogue pursued as part of the peace process has yet to attend to these “societal” divides, and rising racism and sexism. This lack of attention is ironic in that the very purpose of the peace process is to address a 70-year-old conflict that is rooted in identity-based oppression. These arguments will be demonstrated by looking at four specific cases: The Myanmar Film Academy Awards, Myanmar Idol Season 2, the “Aung San Bridge” in Mon state, and the case of Myanmar Now’s chief correspondent Swe Win vis-à-vis U Wirathu. These four cases are selected because they are the most recent, but we could easily apply this lens to others. Myanmar Film Academy Awards The Myanmar Motion Picture Organization held its annual Academy Awards ceremony in Yangon on March 18, 2017. The film named “Oak Kyar Myat Pauk” won three awards for the Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Film Director categories. Oak Kyar Myat Pauk literally means the grass grown among bricks, therefore “rootless.” The film is about four youth, three men and one woman. Their childhood troubles caused by financial issues, abandonment, and family separation turned them into troubled kids. The three men met each other in jail, and they met the woman, Pauk Pauk (played by Thet Mon Myint), at Paradise hotel, which serves adult entertainment to foreign clients. Pauk Pauk works at the hotel, where she is also an undercover agent against a human trafficking gang. The film, which at first seems to be highlighting how family troubles negatively affect children, suddenly turns to explicitly-depicted xenophobia. It portrays foreigners (Chinese and Thai) as exploiting Burmese women with the collaboration of Myanmar nationals. The main story is articulated around protecting Burmese women against foreign sexual exploitation. There are two scenes that indirectly support the main storyline. Both scenes stoke racism by using elements that Burmese spectators can more easily internalize, as they correspond with the racist nationalist attitude. One scene is when one of the troubled young men Tha Gyar (played by Tun Tun) comes home from jail and cannot find his mom. A Muslim family has bought his home and is now living there. The explicit message is that supposed foreigners have taken advantage of his misery and made him homeless. That scene reinforces the “house owner and guest” narrative that portrays Rohingyas (and Muslims in general) as not behaving themselves as guests, but instead insulting the owners. Tun Tun won the best male actor award for his role in the film. Another scene shows the leading protagonist, Shwe Oak (played by Nay Toe), speaking angrily to the Paradise’s manager (played by Soe Myat Thuzar) about foreigners exploiting Burmese that: …if the birds live in their own nests and eat their food, there is no reason to have any problems. But if they invade another’s [nest], even small birds must protect themselves as much as they can. If you don’t want any racial issues, like you said, why don’t they stay in their own nests? If they invade other’s [nests], [we] will break their wings and throw them in the sea. Then, politics. I don’t know it either, but I know “maggots in the meat” [quisling] who betray [her/his] home and family and collaborate with thieves…. We are not maggots that open the fence for the thieves. Now I hit the thieves you brought in. I don’t care even if that causes the national problem [implying national political problems involving other countries]. That’s the politics I know. Whoever Shwe Oak’s nationalist anger is directly or indirectly targeting, the film exacerbates intolerance, group-ism, nationalism and racism but not multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance and a progressive understanding of social justice. The film therefore is counter-productive in bridging societal divides and addressing identity-based conflict. The fact that the film won three Academy Awards highlights that the issue of intolerance and racism is not just a personal issue for some individuals in the industry, but the industry itself, which officially endorses such theatrical messaging of hate. Apart from long-term ideological intoxication, the film caused a social media war twice: once in early 2016 when the film was shown in theaters and another in March 2017 when it won the Academy Awards. Many supporters uploaded the entire film on Facebook and Youtube, sharing the specific scene of Shwe Oak’s anger discussed above— both the video file and the text— urging people to watch and read. There were comments using such words as “thief,” “home stealer,” “woman stealer,” “maggots,” and so on. On the other hands, progressive social media users expressed their disappointment, and responding with disapproving comments about both the awards and the nationalist attitudes they represented. There was almost no decent or constructive debate about the issue, but rather just comments thrown back and forth. Myanmar Idol The next social media war of intolerance is about the Myanmar Idol singing contest. The finale of its second season took place in March 2017, a few days after the Academy Awards. The two top contestants were Thar Nge and Billy La Min Aye, one male and female respectively. Billy was known to many as a PaO-Karen-Christian girl from Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. Billy received an enormous amount of hate and criticism from angry viewers who swore at her on Facebook using harsh and sexist language. They said she was uptight and selfish, not friendly and considerate enough to her colleagues who were voted out, and also that she was using her beauty to mobilize votes. On the other hand, Thar Nge, known to be an ethnic Rakhine, received some ethnic identity-related comments, but not as many. One of Billy’s fans wrote that Billy, as a girl from the hills, has not sold natural gas nor seaport to the Chinese – making reference to the Kyaut Phyu seaport project and the natural gas pipeline from Rakhine state going to China. Thar Nge, regardless of his ethnicity, has nothing to do with the seaport or the natural gas; he lives in Pyi Oo Lwin near Mandalay and sells Burmese pea fritters as a low-income earner! Thar Nge won the Myanmar Idol award. Apart from the social media war of insults and indecency that went on for a few months, observing the show, particularly the last two minutes before announcing the winner, makes one wonder seriously what the entire hall chanting Thar Nge’s name in opposition to Billy, the nervous young lady standing on the stage, tells us about the public psyche regarding who they ‘like’ and ‘don’t like’, and the strong and the vulnerable. Should the audience not show decency and maturity by making themselves appear to be comforting both candidates? Or is the same psyche operates in politics–commitment to the ruthless crushing of opponents in operation here? What if the majority is inattentive to the vulnerable? There are lessons to learn from the Myanmar Idol. The imported brand of singing contest not only turns out to be a “nationwide affair”, but also indicates how the society is vulnerable to division and intolerance. It also shows how easily people resort to intolerance, prejudice, and hate. The “Aung San Bridge” At the time people were waging wars of words on two forms of entertainment, another one was being waged in the context of naming a new Union government-funded bridge in Mon state. The NLD government decided to name the bridge after the late General Aung San, as opposed to originally designated name, “Thanlwin Chaung Sone Bridge”. The Mon people feel outraged by the government decision. They want the bridge to be something that signifies Mon-ness, and gives a taste of Mon state. But the government unilaterally went ahead, while failing to consider ethnic grievances, making people see the bridge naming as part of the ongoing Burmanization of ethnic peoples. The issue has divided those who support the name “Aung San Bridge” and those, mostly ethnic Mon and non-Bamar ethnic minorities across the country, who are against the government decision. There have been various public protests as well as anger on social media. According to some civil society leaders in Mon state, the divide between Mons and ethnic Bamars has widened, and those who used to collaborate on various issues do not work together anymore. The language used to oppose the “Aung San Bridge”, articulated through identity politics and minority rights, has made ethnic Bamar see the Mon as increasingly nationalistic and anti-Bamar, while ethnic people see the pro-Aung San Bridge crowd as chauvinists opposed to minority rights. During the bridge campaign came the 2017 by-election campaigns. Locally specific identity-based movement of the bridge campaign entangled with rising nationalism across the country. It is the narrative of “the house owner and the guest”, originally articulated in the context of the anti-Rohingya campaign, traveling to Mon State. A Facebook campaign ad said, “Only the house owner can fix the house. Let’s vote for ethnic parties to protect ethnic rights”. The “house owner and guest” discourse travels not only to Mon state, but also to different parts of the country. For instance, some activists in Shan State speak of “house owners who became tenants” to refer to the way the Shan State government convened the Shan State region-based dialogue in Taunggyi between April 23 and 25. The State government convened the region-based dialogue with the approval of Dr. Tin Myo Win, chairperson of the Union-level Peace Commission. The government did not consult with political parties, ethnic armed groups, and Civil Societies based in Shan State. Instead, it planned the region-based dialogue unilaterally, just four days prior to the dialogue on April 23. Many members of the Shan State dialogue supervisory committee were unaware of the planned dialogue until April 21st. The government also organized prior township-level dialogues and district-level dialogues in one to two days. In some places, participants were invited by phone or Viber. In some places, they were invited just two hours ahead of the dialogues — which were not really ‘dialogues’ or ‘debates’ anyway. For the Shan State-wide region-based dialogue in Taunggyi, political parties were required to submit the names of representatives in less than a day, and position papers on politics, economics and land/environmental issues in less than two days. Stakeholders in Shan State felt that they were not given time for preparation, but instead were forced to follow the rules of the game set by the government. It is even worse for ethnic Shans as they have not been able to convene Shan ethnic-based dialogue due to the government not allowing the dialogue to take place in Taunggyi (or Panglong). Shan communities feel the government’s convening the region-based dialogue in Taunggyi is inattentive to their grievances. Equally disappointing for the Shan State Civil Society Forum Committee— a collection of representatives from various civil society organizations— is that they were not invited to the dialogue. The invited civil society representatives were not allowed to submit papers nor participate in discussion. In short, the questions over representation, decision-making, implementation, and the potential consequence of the dialogue are not only puzzling for many in Shan State but create a sense of loss over the process. The activists speak of the fact that the Shan State region-based dialogue was supposed to be their own affair, but local stakeholders were invited as ‘guests’ and forced to accept the rules of the game set by the government, which is seen as the Bamar government — an outsider. In short, people felt that outsiders are dictating the house affairs, and the house owners have instead become powerless tenants. Intra-Buddhist Divides The major religious divide in Myanmar has traditionally been between the majority Buddhist and minority Muslim communities. Religious cracks within Buddhist communities were rare[1] until the 2015 general election campaign, when the political cracks between supporters of the NLD and the junta/USDP (Union Solidarity and Development Party) were partly articulated around religion. Buddhist nationalists, banding together as Ma Ba Tha, supported the USDP in the name of protecting race/religion, while the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi supporters, still nationalists, rejected Ma Ba Tha’s religiously-loaded political campaign. By that time, many people came to realize that Ma Ba Tha was using Buddhism to mobilize supporters for the USDP against the NLD. The crack was amplified in February this year when Myanmar Now’s chief correspondent Swe Win raised a question regarding Ma Ba Tha’s possible link to NLD lawyer U Ko Ni’s assassination. Also, when the leading Ma Ba Tha monk U Wirathu publicly thanked the assassins of U Ko Ni, Swe Win criticized him, which led U Wirathu’s followers in Mandalay and Yangon to sue him on charges of defaming Buddhism and U Wirathu. U Wirathu’s supporters warned him to apologize, but Swe Win criticized U Wirathu in a press conference instead. Swe Win requested the Ministry of Religion and Culture to comment on whether what he said about U Wirathu amounted to defamation. The ministry issued a statement on the 5th of April saying that it did not. The USDP and 8 other political parties accused the Ministry of interfering in the judiciary, and that such interference can result in unnecessary consequences. Ma Ba Tha also issued a similar statement, indicating that the ministry is responsible for any unnecessary consequences. Earlier, on February 9, U Wirathu delivered a sermon in former President Thein Sein’s home village Kyon Ku, in the Irrawaddy Division, that Buddhist women should marry dogs (or alcoholics or drug addicts) instead of ‘Kalar’. He said dogs are as capable as ‘Kalar’, and that he would send monks to fulfil the women’s desires. The sermon took place in defiance of the regional government’s ban on him preaching in the region. This outraged Buddhist communities, including women, some of who have spoken out against his preaching. U Min Hlaing filed a case against U Wirathu at Dawpong court in Yangon Region (which the court rejected on the basis that the sermon took place elsewhere). On March 10, the Sangha Maha Nayaka (Ma Ha Na), the official supreme clerical body to oversee the Buddhist religious life, banned U Wirathu from preaching for a year. Though the Ma Ha Na warned that legal action would be taken if he failed to comply, he has continued to disobey the ruling. His latest preaching has triggered public responses, including signature campaigns to urge the government to prosecute Wirathu, as well as social media campaigns. It should be noted that it is not only U Wirathu who is under scrutiny, but also other hate-preaching monks. Meanwhile, nationalist monks are collecting signatures urging the prosecution of Swe Win. In short, intra-Buddhist divides have been seen recently, which was rarely the case before. For the time being, and generally speaking, the intra-Buddhist divides look like the Ministry of Religion and Culture, Ma Ha Na, relatively more progressive portions of the NLD, the media and activist communities, and anti-Ma Ba Tha civilians on the one hand, and Ma Ba Tha, the USPD and its nationalist political party alliance on the other. Is the Peace Process Lagging Behind Societal Divides? The four cases discussed above raise an important question: to what extent does the peace process, particularly the planned 21st century Panglong Conference and National Dialogues, respond to emerging societal situations? It is uncertain how accessible the peace process is to the public, let alone whether people have a deep understanding of, interest in, or confidence in the process, itself. But the film Oak Kyar Myat Pauk is as popular among the people, as is Myanmar Idol. Racism, hate and intolerance in theatrical dialogue have been officially endorsed by the Myanmar Film industry. Many more films insensitive to conflict and diversity can be expected. Myanmar Idol shows that society is vulnerable to division. It also shows a public psyche obsessed with crushing the opposition, and that respect, decency and comforting the weak do not seem to be part of the public culture. The “Aung San Bridge” and the Ma Ha Na/Ma Ba Tha cases show that inter-ethnic and intra-communal divides, involving the government and politicized communities, accelerate quickly. All these cases collectively demonstrate that racism, sexism, intolerance and societal division are fundamental and common to all issues in Myanmar today. Addressing these issues requires serious inter-communal and intra-communal dialogues with deep political, ideological and intellectual commitments to anti-racism, multiculturalism and social justice. It is questionable whether the planned political dialogues can address these issues at all. The process has been complicated. It is doubtful whether every key person involved in the process even understands the framework for political dialogues and emerging Terms of Reference (ToR). Progress has been slow. The first political dialogue was expected in 2013. Four years have passed, but substantive negotiations on the thematic issues agreed upon by the government and ethnic armed groups have not taken place. The relevance of the substance of political dialogues is questionable as well. While the agreed topics such as politics (federalism), security reform, economics, social, and land/environment may be important, the issues of racism, sexism, and intolerance are key to all of them. Yet, it appears that the political dialogues, designed to talk about traditional ‘political’ topics are detached from everyday human relations and experiences in the social world. Areas such as entertainment, racism, and religion shape society yet often do not make it to the venue of traditional or high-level political talks. In other words, political dialogue for national reconciliation, designed on the track of ‘doing politics’, does not seem to reflect the societal divides. It is neither sufficient nor substantive enough to address such divides. Moreover, it is not fast enough to catch up with the societal cracks, which ironically could further slow down the political talks. Perhaps, the slow pace of the political dialogue can be an opportunity for the leaders of the peace process to be ‘sociologically’ savvy and reflect on the ‘social world’. As racism, intolerance, inter- and intra-ethnic/religious divides can be the litters for the political dialogue for peace and reconciliation, it is important for peace leaders to commit to anti-racism, multiculturalism, inter- and intra-communal harmony, and social justice. Conflict sensitivity measures must be sensitive to racism, sexism, intolerance and social justice. Otherwise, political justice will continue to be eclipsed by the forces of social injustice. Dr Sai Latt received PhD from Simon Fraser University in Canada. He researches violence, securitization, displacement, development and regionalization. Source for film ad: www.irrawaddy.org Source for Myanmar idol: http://www.apannpyay.com [1] A rare doctrinal divide perhaps has been the case of Moe Pyar or (Pyint Saut Pan Kamma) sect led by U Nyanna that the state has criminalized. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Tea Circle Oxford

President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia, addresses the General Assembly high-level event to mark the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UN Photo/Manuel Elias Endorsement of the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples does not equal implementation, speakers told the UN General Assembly today at a special meeting to celebrate the Declaration’s tenth anniversary and renew commitment to its tenets as a vital solution towards attaining a just and sustainable world. Since the Declaration’s adoption, global awareness of indigenous peoples had grown. However, progress had been inconsistent within countries and uneven around the world, Durga Prasad Bhattarai, Vice-President of the General Assembly told the High-level event to mark the 10th anniversary of the landmark UN Declaration. “To fulfill the commitments made under the Declaration,” he said, “stronger partnerships – built on a foundation of trust – must be forged between among Governments, indigenous peoples, the United Nations, civil society, the private sector and other key stakeholders.” He invited the international community to renew its commitment to indigenous peoples, work collaboratively to achieve the Declaration’s aims and secure a world in which the rights of all indigenous peoples were promoted and protected. Indigenous peoples ‘can make their own future,’ Bolivian President says Delivering the keynote address, Evo Morales Ayma, the President of Bolivia, described how the indigenous movement in his country had brought together other sectors of society, including transport workers and the middle class, to build a new Bolivia. “There are no issues in which indigenous peoples could not or should not be involved,” he said, explaining that for centuries, they had resisted 'invaders' who sought to extinguish their identity. Indeed, indigenous people around the world shared the same history. Describing war as the direct product of capitalism, he pointed out that, for the rich, there is no crisis as they continued to accumulate wealth on the backs of the poor. “Humanity is in danger,” but that is a challenge, not destiny. “Indigenous peoples have shown that we can resist. Brothers and sisters, we can and we must.” And indeed, indigenous peoples can make their own future. What had been achieved in Bolivia – a country that had gone from a colonial State to a sovereign and plurinational one – demonstrates what could be done at a global level. “Indigenous peoples are the moral compass of humanity, with their own ways of organization and production,” he stressed, adding that their responsibility is to organize a global fight “to save humanity and the world.” Kyung-wha Kang, the UN Secretary-General’s Senior Adviser on Policy, said to ameliorate progress on the rights of Indigenous peoples, several tools should be used, including the three relevant United Nations mechanisms — the Permanent Forum, the Special Rapporteur and the Expert Mechanism. In addition, the UN system-wide action plan and ongoing consultations could also be used to help to amplify indigenous voices in the Organization’s processes. While hailing the progress made this far, Andrew Gilmour, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights said: “The struggle is far from over. Although the Declaration was approved 10 years ago, many of the obstacles that led to its enactment are still present today. Endorsement of its fine principles, alas, does not equal implementation.” So once again, the indigenous movement – with its diverse voices, including those of indigenous women, youth, and persons with disabilities – is “rising to meet the challenge of making the Declaration a reality,” he said pointing, to the ‘water protectors’ in Standing Rock, South Dakota, in the United States, as well as those speaking up for their rights, from Nepal to Mexico, who are insisting that their informed consent must be sought. Yet, extractive industries continued to destroy their land, seeing the indigenous populations on them not as a vital element, but as an obstacle. Human rights defenders were being killed. The Office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has called for follow up on enforcing indigenous peoples’ rights. The private sector must be aware of the Declaration’s principles, he stressed, adding that information about the rights of indigenous peoples should be part of the business schools’ curriculums. To foster progress at the country level, his Office is working towards building national action plans. Also addressing the meeting, Mariam Wallet Aboubakrine, Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said the Declaration reflects a global consensus, with some countries such as Canada taking leadership positions after having had initially voted against the instrument in the General Assembly. “The Declaration outlines a range of rights,” including with regard to land, education, health and to freely determine political status, she said, adding that the principles of free, prior and informed consent are a critical factor in the Declaration. However, while implementation progress continued, the situation on the ground is “grim,” with indigenous peoples living shorter lives and having limited political participation. Advocating for the Declaration’s principles to be realized on the ground, she said political will is needed. More than 200 frontline defenders, half of whom had been defending land, had been killed in 2016. Those and other situations must be addressed and remedied. For her part, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said her first report had pointed to two challenges to implementing the Declaration: a lack of awareness and understanding about the human rights instruments; and States’ difficulties for States to translating them into practical steps. On promoting awareness and understanding, the results of her predecessor’s work had seen the reversal of position by the four countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States –that which had originally voted against the Declaration in the Assembly. “The Declaration is an essential tool for reconciliation, a much much-needed process in countries where indigenous peoples continue to suffer gross human rights violations,” she stated, but stressed: “The most fitting way to mark the Declaration’s anniversary is to honestly identify and confront the obstacles it faces for effective implementation at all levels.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 UN News Centre

In the languages of the former Yugoslavia “suza” means “tear.” And in the more than 20 years that have passed since the end of the wars that dismantled the country in the 1990s, it seems that there is one, very last tear that many mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters cannot shed until the mortal remains of their closest kin are found, identified, and properly buried. Despite the decades that have passed, there are some 10,700 individuals still unaccounted for, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. “There is a fate worse than death itself: that of not knowing the final resting place of your loved one,” said Dragana Djukic, president of an organization called Suza, which assists families of missing and deceased people from Serbia. Some of the most affected and underreported victims of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia (1991-1995 and again in 1999) are, by the nature of war, mostly women whose loved ones are still missing. Remains are likely to be found in mass graves, based on earlier findings. However, until a death is confirmed, many women spend their days in waiting, alternating between a slim hope that their missing relative will return home and the hope that there will be a positive identification of their mortal remains. For many years, these women have not been able to go on with their lives. They have not been able to marry again, move to a new place. Even planning a future has felt like betraying their missing relatives. Volunteers assist the Bosnian Institute for Missing Persons’ search for remains at Lake Perucac, on the Bosnia/Serbia border, in 2010. (Velija Hasanbegovic) Dragana Djukic knows this firsthand. She was in the seventh grade when, in 1991, her family had to leave their home in the town of Gradiska, present-day Croatia, and take refuge in the village of Okucani, which was then under Serbian control. In 1995, they fled again when the Croatian army reclaimed the town. Her father was taken to a detention camp and her older brother, Dragan Vujancevic, who was at that time 17, went missing. Her father returned home after 28 days as part of a prisoner exchange. He had been severely beaten and had broken limbs, but at least, said Dragana, he was alive. At the time, the family heard rumors about the death of Dragan, but they were not able to confirm the story, let alone find his body. “My father passed away very soon after my brother went missing, and since the day my brother went missing, my mother started wearing black clothes—a sign that she is in deep mourning,” said Dragana. “It remained so until the day she died.” She added that her mother, until the very end, held on to the hope that maybe her son was still alive, perhaps in captivity somewhere. Immediately after the wars, the names and general information of the missing people were printed by the ICRC in what are known as the “Books of Missing Persons.” At the same time, associations of relatives of missing people throughout the region started publishing bulletins and posters with names of unaccounted-for family members and their photographs. These books and the bulletins were a primary way of looking for relatives. Over the years, as various editions of the original books were published, they became thinner with each edition; today some 30 percent of the original number of people is still unaccounted for. According to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a global organization based in The Netherlands established specifically to aid in the identification process after the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, an estimated 40,000 persons went missing as a consequence of those wars. Currently, there are roughly 18 associations similar to Suza that provide assistance to the families of missing people from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia. The associations of missing people would like all missing cases to be resolved as quickly as possible. It has been more than 20 years since the end of the wars, and it is widely believed that authorities from all sides know the location of burial areas—but are not revealing them for political reasons. Paralleling the “Books of Missing Persons,” in an attempt to assist in identifying remains that were often discovered in mass graves or unmarked cemetery plots, or were taken out of rivers into which they were thrown, the ICRC has published several “Books of Belongings.” These books feature photographs of personal items such as sneakers, T-shirts, or rings that were found near the bodies. The hope has been that by identifying the objects, which are also available for the further inspection, family members could get one step closer toward finding the truth. “It is very painful to look through the ‘Book of Belongings,’” said Dragana, adding that the same goes for looking though photographs of unidentified remains. In order to minimize the possibility of error, the photos were carefully examined by her sister and her brother’s fiancée. They saw what they believed to be her brother’s T-shirt, socks, and a watch. Still, they were not able to say that with certainty. According to Dragana, this identification technique worked well for some family members, especially immediately after the war, but many needed the ultimate proof—matching DNA. Since the wars, family members may have moved to different countries while continuing to look for their family members’ mortal remains, thus DNA identification depends on political cooperation between sides that were formerly at war. Through Suza, Serbia-based families are looking for their missing relatives in Croatia, and they are far from happy with the process. Some believe the Croatians have been delaying the identification process on purpose. “It all depends on political will,” Dragana said. Her personal experience confirms something she’s heard from many family members, regardless of their ethnicity or which side they were on during the wars: “This tragedy is so deep,” she said, “that we cannot possibly talk about winners and losers.” It took 16 years for Dragana’s family to get a positive DNA match from the Croatian Institute for Forensic Medicine and Criminology, in Zagreb. This led to the identification of Dragan’s remains and, finally, to a much-needed service and funeral. Very soon after that, Dragana’s mother died. She was 61, and some people believed that what had kept her alive was a mother’s need to find her son. In the macabre absurdity of the Balkan wars, Dragana considers herself to be, in a way, lucky. There are still mothers, sisters, wives, and children who are anxiously waiting for the results of identification. At least now, Dragana said, she can starting looking toward the future and help others with her full strength. (C) 2017 Women Under Siege

The Refugee Law Project (RLP), School of Law, Makerere University, in collaboration with the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN), is now accepting applications to its 7th Institute for African Transitional Justice (IATJ) to be held from 19-23 June 2017, in Soroti, Eastern Uganda. Under the theme: "Local Memories and National Truth: Active Remembering or Acts of Forgetting?", the 7th IATJ will confront and explore global experiences in relation to formal and informal truth-seeking processes after widespread atrocities and wartime abuses. Central is the juxtaposition of active remembering and acts of forgetting, with a particular interest to truth recovery in the absence of truth commissions. The IATJ is an annual week-long residential programme designed to convene practitioners, activists, academics and policy makers in a multi- and cross-disciplinary space in which to discuss some of the most pressing transitional justice issues of our time; with a deliberate focus on situating discussions in a range of African contexts, it seeks to expand the global transitional justice discourse to accommodate a range of culturally and historically informed conceptions of justice, and to catalyze the development of African Transitional Justice systems and mechanisms.