The taming of the NLD… by the NLD | New Mandala

The taming of the NLD… by the NLD | New Mandala

TIMOTHY SIMONSON, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

12 AUGUST 2015

Have Myanmar’s Generals turned Aung San Suu Kyi into a lame duck in wolf’s clothing?

With the omission of several prominent figures from the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) party list for the upcoming general election, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK) appears to have accepted the military’s terms of engagement.

It’s another example of an unsettling trend of moderation often seen among marginalised parties.

After the release of the NLD’s list of 1,090 candidates, Myanmar’s Generals can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that their road map to ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’ is being followed as planned.

In another telling sign, ‘the Lady’ has rejected the nominations of all but one aspiring candidate from the so-called ’88 Generation’ group – activists who took part in 1988’s mass student protests against General Ne Win’s misguided Burmese Path to Socialism.

Of the 88 Generation activists still alive and active – and who weren’t forced into exile, murdered by the army, or had their voices silenced otherwise – over a dozen applied for her patronage. They form a vanguard of opposition against the regime.

Moreover, their visibility continues to serve as a powerful reminder of even darker times of that brutal crackdown, which continues to hang over the moral conscience and integrity of the military, and its search for redemption.

The 88 Generation Group’s bravery in the face of persecution juxtaposes the concessions made by ASSK. The omission of key activists is extremely significant.

Among the rejected hopefuls, perhaps most surprisingly, was the student leader of the 1988 protests, Ko Ko Gyi, who had previously confirmed that he would stand for election in the NLD.  Many other loyal party members, assured of support in their local townships, have also been questionably stripped of patronage by the NLD’s central committee.

However, there is a silver lining; there are still some notable candidates on the party list, including Susanna Hla, a women’s rights activist, and Nay Phone Latt, a champion of free speech.  Yet, the promises of AASK in nominating more ethnic minority and female candidates have also appeared contradictory in practice: only 15 per cent of the candidates are women (with the ethnic minority figure being unavailable).

While many supporters and rank-and-file members of the NLD are said to beoutraged by the selections, some going as far as resigning, including 12 candidates who managed to make the list, the decision represents a predictable pattern of behaviour undertaken by leaders of radical, counter-elite parties when bestowing patronage.

What we see now is the dissociation and isolation of many of the more radical elements of AASK’s party who would potentially otherwise refuse to collude with the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in the National Parliament, thehluttaw.

It is also worth noting that the very design and features of the hluttaw itself, including a lack of private offices for its representatives and the encouragement of cross-party committees, favour coalition-building and consensus decision-making.

Evidently, the last thing AASK wants are trouble-makers who will try and push the Generals too far in her new parliament, which could ultimately lead to a repeated cycle of military action against the NLD.

Earlier this year, acknowledging the existential threat that she might pose to military interests, and subsequently, to her own party as a result of pushing the envelope too far, ASSK went out of her way to pledge that she would not be a ‘bully’ if she won by a landslide.

So what’s to be made of all this? Well, it is clearly an indication of an emerging ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’, as espoused by the military 10 years ago.  But on a deeper level, the most interesting assessment is provided by political thinker Michel Foucault, author of Discipline and Punish.
The power of ‘discipline’, according to Foucault, is an overbearing means of surveillance over populations (he imagines discipline working like the modern ‘panopticon’ prison system).  It establishes subtle forms of control in modern society, and maximises utility; making modern societies more productive without the need of carrying out actual physical torture.

Arguably these processes can be likened to the aesthetic changes that are gradually taking place in modern Myanmar. In turn, everyday political and social life becomes subjugated by mere reminders of punishment.

Later in his life Foucault brought in another mechanism of power into his critique, ‘governmentality’.  This roughly represents a type of power in which ‘a conduct of conduct’ is established – teaching others to govern themselves.

These are the processes by which governments set the bounds of acceptable conduct in society and opposition forces by embedding disciplinary techniques into their subjects’ social psychology (the interaction between individuals and groups and the effect of society on behaviour).

Once established, individual, societal and political processes self-regulate and realign themselves to concepts and reasoning prescribed to them by ruling powers. The ultimate aim is that rulers don’t need to intervene as directly with their subjects as they did before in order to regulate dissent.

The NLD’s recent ‘toning down’ of its candidate list raises serious questions.

Could it be that AASK is demonstrating Foucauldian mechanisms of modern control by realigning her party’s stance?  Could her actions – of excluding potential candidates that may have constituted thorns in the side of the USDP – be attributable to her party’s inclusion in the democratic process? Do these latest actions indeed expose a successful, and seemingly passive, internalisation of the USDP-led agenda into the NLD leadership’s conscious decision-making?

There are still 30 candidates who haven’t been named, mostly from peripheral regions.  ASSK may still pull out a surprise number of radical hardline and minority voices.

This, however, is doubtful; meanwhile, the questions are mounting.

The latest candidacy selection saga overwhelmingly shows the success of the Generals in engineering ASSK into a lame duck in wolf’s clothing.

Myanmar’s various post-independence regimes have frequently looked for new and innovative ways to establish a united front and crush dissent.

Perhaps their foray into parliamentary democracy may prove to be the most efficient and overtly bloodless way to neutralise, normalise, and regulate society.

Timothy Simonson is a master’s student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Crime and punishment under the Thai junta | New Mandala

Crime and punishment under the Thai junta | New Mandala

WAD RAWEE, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

13 AUGUST 2015

Photo by Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom.

Thailand’s latest coup was meant to end conflict and build reconciliation. With no chance of justice for one side of politics, nothing could be further from the truth. 

According to a report by Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw), a NGO that has been recording lawsuits relating to freedom and human rights in Thailand since the coup of 22 May 2014, at least 751 people have been called to report to the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).  In addition, some 428 people have been arrested, 163 people have been prosecuted for political reasons, and 124 people have been prosecuted by the military court.

There are at least 68 people currently detained by the NCPO, among them 34 charged with offending the Thai monarchy (Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, or the Lèse-majesté law). Another 34 have been charged for committing crimes involving weapons and violence.

None of these figures include the number of lawsuits relating to Article 112 leveled against those who are accused of using the name of monarchy for their own benefit.

Among those who were prosecuted by the NCPO, the case of Tiensutham, against whom the military court issued a verdict on 31 March, represents one of most severe penalties we have recently seen. Tiensutham has been sentenced to 50 years in jail for posting five Facebook statuses deemed by the Military Court as insulting the monarchy. He pleaded guilty, so the sentence was reduced by half, to 25 years in jail.

However, the draconian penalty on Tiensutham is not the highest on record. The Military Court’s verdicts on Sasiwimon and Sam Parr on 7 August were in response to Facebook posts as well. Sasiwimon got 56 years in jail, 28 years after pleading guilty, because she posted seven messages on Facebook. Sam Parr got 60 years, 30 years after pleading guilty, for six posts.

A female journalist from Prachatai who is following the cases said:

The penalty imposed was twice as harsh as by before the [22 May 2014] coup. The military court gave 10 years per act, while the civil court gave six years per act at a maximum.

After the case of Amphon Tangnophakhun, who was jailed under Article 112 in 2011 because he was accused of sending SMS messages deemed to defame the Thai royal family and who later died in jail, the maximum penalty regarding Article 112 was reduced to five years per act.

The journalist went on to note that under the Military Court, currently if a suspect is a political activist [ie a Red Shirt supporter] the penalty could be 10 years per act. But if the suspect is not a political activist, the penalty might me less harsh. Unlike the Civil Court, the Military Court also has a very ambiguous range of consideration for what a penalty should be, without any general guidelines.

Yaowaluck Anuphan, chief of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, established after last year’s coup to help those who were affected by human rights violations, has also given critical comment on the current situation. She said:

The junta gave a threatening message that the penalty for cases relating to Article 112 would be harsh. So we can see that the penalty could be as high as 10 years per act, even though the defendant has pleaded guilty.

According to the Thai Criminal Code, the penalty for cases relating to Article 112 are between three and 15 years. For the Civil Court, the penalty varies, but the more common punishment is five years per act, and could be reduced by half if the defendant pleads guilty. But the military’s conviction is 10 years in jail per act, and five years if the defendant pleads guilty. Anyone who insists on fighting the case, the military has threatened, will get 15 years. They claimed that they have to protect the monarchy.

Beside harsher punishments, there have been a number of political prisoners who have died in prison under suspicious circumstances, leading to allegations that they were beaten to death. Such was the case of Mr Surakrit Chaimongkol, 36, who died on 28 August 2014.

Surakrit was accused of killing a vocal member of the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), which led mobs to disrupt the 2 February 2014 general election. He was arrested on 8 July and jailed not long after the coup.

Surakrit died shortly after being moved to Section Four of the prison. His mother met him for the last time during a visit on 21 August. Surakrit told his mother that he was beaten up in a secret prison, and he feared that he would not survive. Every time he was beaten, he heard that all the Red Shirt supporters would be killed.

“My son didn’t do it. How could he confess? We only have to wait until the truth is revealed,” Surakrit’s mother told Prachatai.

Torture to obtain confession was revealed to the public for the first time in the case of Sansern Sriunruean, 63, on 18 March 2015. Prachatai identified images of bruises and scars from electric shocks applied to his body. On the same day, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights issued a statement calling the military to stop using martial law to arrest people, and the officers responsible for torturing must be punished.

The organisation has also revealed that it received four complaints from those accused of detonating bombs in front of the criminal court building on 7 March 2015. The accused claimed that they were punched and hit in the head, chest, and back in order to obtain information. All of this happened when the accused were detained during a period of martial law between 9 and 15 March 2015.

Sansern was forced to confess that he was involved in the bombing plan, because he used to give lectures about politics. He was a taxi driver, and when he was studying at Chiang Mai University he joined democracy movements. Prachatai stated that Sansern called himself a socialist. In 2010, he was one of the founders of The Social Democratic Front Party [พรรคแนวร่วมสังคมประชาธิปไตย], which was aborted because it did not have enough members required by law to form a political party.

Sansern’s protest movements were based on peaceful means. He did not hide his political views and overtly disagreed with the coup. He declared that he was not the type that instigates terrorist attacks or bombings.

“I can only say what I think and can only talk about what I have done [to oppose the coup], but I cannot say that I did things that I didn’t do. They tortured me, but I won,” Sansern has said.

Eventually the soldiers stopped torturing him and turned to persuasion, by giving him water and food. It’s “for the sake of our friendship,” Sansern was told, before he was brought to a press announcement.

The Thai judicial system became a political tool for the anti-Thaksin conservative royalists long before the country’s most recent coup. Inconsistencies in the Constitutional Court and the Criminal Court caused grievances among the people.

Two verdicts that came out in July 2014 were obvious examples of legal inconsistency. The first verdict was on whether the PDRC thwarted the 2014 election by surrounding the Dindaeng voting station in Bangkok. On 9 July, the Criminal Court dismissed the case, stating that “the assembly of the PDRC members was legal action according to the ruling of the constitution court.”

The second verdict was issued on 22 July. It was regarding a case in which three people were arrested and accused of hanging a poster calling for autonomy for Lanna Thai from Bangkok on a crossing bridge in Chiangrai.

The court ruled the defendants be jailed for four years, reduced to three, but suspended the punishment as the court saw that the defendants gave useful testimonies.

The verdict stated that “hanging a poster with a message that stirs unrest may stir unrest. The message expresses rebellious views. When the defendants claimed that they did so to protest against injustice from the dismissal of the case against PDRC, the defendants’ accusation was baseless, thus does not make their action legal”.

The above two verdicts perfectly reflect the current Thai political conflict—the case for thwarting a general election was dismissed, but hanging a poster was penalised.

This contradiction has repeatedly occurred in the past decade. Another inconsistency is judicial issues between the military and the Red Shirt. Especially in 2010, when the military shot at the people, thar incident brought about great wrath among Red Shirt supporters. After the 22 May 2015 coup, the NCPO changed the investigation team whose task was to bring those who were responsible for the 2010 crack down on the Red Shirts.

One common thing between the political and the Lèse-majesté cases is forcing the accused to succumb, not just to authority, but to the idea and values that the elite want. This is not the usual legal interpretation of the law, but a brainwashing process.

Parallel to using force is the use of double standards. Red Shirt supporters and Thaksin supporters are severely penalised, especially in Lèse-majesté cases, as are those who are accused of armed struggle against the state. The anti-Thaksin activists, however, get mild penalties, if at all.

This condition has been going on since the beginning of the Thailand’s political conflict many years back. It has become worse since the May 2014 coup.

The claim by the NCPO that the coup was necessary to stop conflict and build reconciliation is not true and can never be true.

Wad Rawee is a Thai journalist, writer and editor.

War in ASEAN’s troubled waters | New Mandala

War in ASEAN’s troubled waters | New Mandala

 

HUNTER MARSTON, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

10 AUGUST 2015

Chinese ships have been constructing artificial islands and sea walls in the South China Sea. Image: CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and Digitalglobe/TNS.

China’s claims and assertive moves in the South China Sea are putting ASEAN states on edge. But it need not be a case of history repeating and lead to major conflict.

Mounting antagonism in the South China Sea has provoked crisscrossing air and naval jousting on the high waters as well as legal battles in international courts.

China’s increasing assertiveness in territorial waters claimed by ASEAN states have not only cause increased “tensions” in the region, but led observers to wonder if China’s peaceful rise has given way to a new era of great power conflict.

Many scholars have pointed to past precedent and wondered if China’s reemergence as a major power threatens the security architecture and global norms put in place by the United States that has preserved peace in Asia since the end of World War II.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, the rise of Athens led to war with Sparta in the Aegean Sea.

Sparta, leader of the Peloponnesian League, felt a rising Athens threatened stability on the Aegean and launched a war to prevent Athenian dominance. By the end of the nearly three decade conflict, Sparta had subdued Athens, laying waste to the Athenian Empire and ushering in the end of the Greek golden age. Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War outlines the risks posed when a rising power challenges a ruling power.

The South China Sea dispute serves as a litmus test for what Harvard political scientist Graham Allison has called the “Thucydides trap.” Whether China’s rise will inevitably lead to war between major powers is an open question, but Beijing has definitely ratcheted up the tension with deliberate expansion policies.

In May 2014 China deployed an oil rig within 200 nautical miles of Vietnam’s coast and reportedly rammed Vietnamese coast guard vessels. In February this year, the Philippines Foreign Ministry accused Chinese ships of ramming Philippines fishing boats. The government in Manila has since filed its case with the International Court of Justice at The Hague, where arbitration is pending.

Enhanced satellite imagery has revealed massive dredging and reconstruction of underwater rocks and tiny islands by China across the South China Sea – what some have labeled the Great Wall of Sand.

While awareness of the conflicting claims and recent clashes has grown among the international public, most casual observers give the South China Sea short shrift given its looming great game competition for resources and influence.

The South China Sea is believed to hold over 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 28 billion barrels of oil. The region possesses strategic passageways vital to international trade, such as the Strait of Malacca, through which 14 million barrels of crude oil pass every day. Control of sea lanes grants economic clout, security, and lasting prosperity.

China’s rise, which Beijing’s leaders have previously struggled to assert is peaceful and nonthreatening, has not led to outright conflict between major powers. Now, its increasingly provocative actions are worrying international observers and leading outside powers (Japan and the United States) to reassess the need for stabilising forces in the region, while minor powers seek to build stronger relations with the US, which maintains a hegemonic presence in the Pacific.

Patrick Cronin of the Center for New American Security explains that “the primary competition in the South China Sea is rooted in a reemerging China’s capacity and desire for expanding influence over its neighbours and adjacent waters.”

Just as Athens sought to wage minor skirmishes to gain a foothold in the Aegean more than 2000 years ago, China aims to enlarge its sphere of influence and control in the South China Sea, commensurate (in its view) with its status as a great power.

Beijing’s desire to retake hegemony over regional waters is understandable, and not without precedent. In 1823, President James Monroe declared that the United States would unilaterally regard any incursion in North or South American waters by outside (European) nations as a deliberate act of aggression, and that the US would be forced to respond in kind. The Monroe Doctrine served as a de facto declaration of US hegemony over regional waters.

Yet China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea is different for several reasons.

For one, the Americas of the early 19th century comprised a far smaller portion of the global economy. The South China Sea today accounts for one third of global trade, with about 7.2 million barrels of crude oil imported to China per day (slightly more than the US at 7.08 million barrels a day).

Secondly, a huge geographic distance separated America from its rivals across the ocean, colonial Great Britain and Spain. The South China Sea and East China Sea are home to US and Japanese forces as well as the modern navies of the Philippines, Vietnam, and other fledgling states.

Thirdly, as Cronin argues, geopolitics today operate on international rules and legal norms far more than spheres of influence that were more prevalent in the 19th century.

The Thucydides paradigm still holds many valuable lessons for today’s quagmire.

Just as the rising power Athens threatened the security architecture of the ruling power Sparta and its Peloponnesian League, today the rise of China manifests a real threat to the stability enshrined by the rules-based international order led by the US and its alliances with Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.

Any escalation of armed conflict on the South China Sea would have grave negative repercussions for international trade and likely see a spike in oil prices. Such instability could trigger another global recession, or worse, war between the two superpowers.

While realists may cite the Thucydides Trap as evidence of unavoidable conflict between China, the US, and ASEAN states, optimists and pragmatists are working hard to increase dialogue and understanding through confidence building measures and advocating for peaceful dispute settlement mechanisms.

The US could ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to signal a genuine interest in submitting to international law and rules-based solutions to resolve the dispute. Such a move might relieve apprehensions across the Pacific of a U.S. policy to contain China.

Finally, history may repeat itself, but it need not preordain disaster, as modern readers of Thucydides may warn. We can learn from the mistakes of our past, and China and the US may be able to work together to find a “new model of great power relations,” which Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for.

The balance of power isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game. The future may hold room for competition amid cooperation between major powers, without ruling out minor confrontations and adjustments to existing alliances.

Hunter Marston is a freelance Asia analyst based in Washington, DC. He holds a MA in International Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Law and conflict in Myanmar | New Mandala

Law and conflict in Myanmar | New Mandala

 

MELISSA CROUCH, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

11 AUGUST 2015

Police clash with student protestors in Myanmar. While new laws give the right to protest, people are still arrested for doing so. Photo by Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun.

Anxiety about law reform in Myanmar is highlighting problems in the country’s political transition.

Legal and constitutional reform often occurs at moments of political conflict, crisis and change. This is the case in Myanmar today.

The general assumption is that law has not played a significant role in Myanmar in the past, but that in the post-2011 transition from military to semi-civilian rule, law can and will take on a more important role in its contribution to the reform process. This assumes law will help, and not hinder.

However, in Myanmar, while law has at times been used to manage and avoid conflict, it can also exacerbate it.

This is evident when looking at three areas of legal reform between 2010 and 2015: structural, economic and social reforms.

Structural reforms established the country’s new constitutional and legal system. Many of these laws were intended to avoid conflict between institutions, primarily by giving the President and the executive significant control, including over the courts.

And while many offices and institutions may sound new, they are rather old institutions or positions that have been rebranded, such as references to the former chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) being replaced with the President.

Further, the new laws passed since 2010 continue to subordinate the courts to executive and parliamentary control. In fact, the courts are the branch of the government that has been least affected by the transition process.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s economic reforms have been geared towards greater foreign investment and the market economy, including the banking sector, the establishment of special economic zones, and potential reform of the Company Law.

These economic reforms generally prevent individuals from challenging government decisions in court, and have also generated conflict between local stakeholders and foreign investors. One of the first and most significant laws passed in terms of economic reforms was the Foreign Investment Law. This raised tension between local and foreign interests include rights to land use, tax concessions, and standards in terms of labour requirements for skilled positions.

Another major area of economic reform has been legislation passed to regulate the establishment of Special Economic Zones, although the concept itself is not new in Myanmar. The law grants slightly more advantageous conditions to investors, in relation to tax exemptions and land lease, although labour requirements for skilled labour are more stringent.

Overall, these economic reforms build on the legislative foundation initially laid after 1988. While they attempt to manage local and foreign interests, they inevitably remain a source of tension and conflict.

Finally, social reforms have had an impact on the role and position of civil society, and the position of individuals in relation to the state, including labor law, media, religion, education and the right to peaceful assembly. These laws have also given rise to new forms of conflict between the state and individuals, and between social groups.

Central to these reforms have been the right to organise and freedom of speech. This has included important reforms in the area of labour organisations and dispute settlement that have allowed for greater protection of the rights of workers compared to the past. A new law on freedom to demonstrate and protest has been enacted, although many people are still jailed under this law.

Strong anti-Muslim sentiment and conflict since 2012 has also led to law reform. Specifically, this has seen the proposal of four bills that address inter-religious relations and allegedly seek to ‘protect’ race and religion, that is, Burmans and Buddhists. Yet many of these bills have antecedents in previous debates and long-held prejudices. For example, the Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Bill is not new and would simply revise and update an existing law

What these bills may potentially do is to further entrench discrimination and the marginalisation of certain groups, particularly Muslims. This is a particularly overt example of the way law engenders and exacerbates conflict.

Across these areas of reform – structural, economic and social – three patterns have emerged in the way laws have been designed to avoid and manage conflict, while also at times exacerbating conflict between different institutions or between individuals and the state.

First, these laws evince a common pattern of providing for the formation of a committee to oversee certain administrative processes, such as the consideration of an application for an investment permit or licence to use land. These committees usually have no independence and are given extremely broad discretion under these laws to manage disputes without accountability.

Second, there is a tendency to exclude courts from reviewing executive decisions to keep complaints against government bodies out of court. Many decisions are said to be ‘final and conclusive’ – as an attempt to remove the jurisdiction of the court to hear these cases. Legislative reform has limited the potential role of the courts because few executive decisions are able to be challenged.

Third, there have been greater levels of participation and transparency in law-making than in the past. This has facilitated a strategy of managing conflict, in terms of taking into account different perspectives and at times revising draft laws on the recommendations of various civil society groups.

Yet it has also led to local concerns of unwarranted foreign influence in the drafting process, resulting in new forms of conflict and tension.

As such Myanmar’s law reform process is more a reflection of past patterns in law-making, and therefore maintains continuity in how law is used to manage and avoid conflict. Law reform has also exacerbated conflict between individuals, or between individuals and the state.

Constitutional and legal reform is an inherently uncertain process, and law reform in any country is never easy. Law reform during times of political transition is even more fraught. The legislative agenda over the past few years in Myanmar is one indication of deep uncertainty in society and a pervasive sense of insecurity about the future.

Melissa Crouch is a Lecturer at the Law Faculty, the University of New South Wales.

This article is based on a talk presented at the 2015 Myanmar/Burma Update held at the Australian National University. Listen to podcasts from the conference onSoundcloud.

Code REDD+ in Cambodia | New Mandala

Code REDD+ in Cambodia | New Mandala

JAMES GIGGACHER, 

11 AUGUST 2015

Deforestation in Cambodia.

Neoliberal logic on climate change and deforestation is severely hurting Cambodia’s rural poor.

“What is REDD+?” asks a donor-funded state television commercial in Cambodia.

“It’s about saving the forests, while getting people out of poverty, while stopping climate change, as part of the global effort to combat rising carbon dioxide emissions,” replies one of the actors in the advert.

On national radio, a dedicated weekly half-hour program explains the benefits of the national REDD+ program in similar terms: reducing deforestation, improving livelihoods and, of course, avoiding carbon emissions.

In Phnom Penh, NGOs and government departments are busy preparing documents and posters explaining REDD+ and its supposed benefits. Shiny green posters line the halls of the Forestry Administration and Ministry of Environment, adorned with arrows, flow charts, pictures of smiling farmers, all proclaiming the benefits of the program.

Dozens of workshops and meetings are held in the capital in exclusive hotels featuring endless presentations on carbon forestry, social benefits, mechanisms to ensure ‘full and effective participation’ and safeguards. But none of these things tell us anything about the controversial idea that is REDD+.

And here’s the rub; REDD+ is primarily an idea – something that exists in the virtual – a supposed silver bullet to two problems.

The first is the loss of biodiversity from forested places, primarily in the tropics which have been labelled ‘critical ecosystems’ (an obvious throwback to the old Cold War obsession with protecting ‘critical infrastructure’).

The second is rising carbon emissions from forest clearance, which at first was thought to account for as much as 20 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, but has now been scaled back down to a more humble 10 per cent.

The lofty aspiration behind REDD+ is that wealthy companies or states in Annex One countries (net carbon emitters) could, via a trade in carbon credits, pay for those in forested, developing countries, to protect standing forests (or at least slow down the rate of deforestation); hence the name Reduction in Emissions form Deforestation and Degradation.

At some stage someone thought it fitting to tag on the “+” which would come to represent all those other things that have come to the attention of the international development industry in recent years (like conservation, gender, indigenous people, livelihoods and so on).

In a sense, REDD+ as a policy solution is nothing less than the triumph of neoliberal thought within the field of international climate politics. After a decade of the US’s aggressive promotion of ‘carbon markets’ in international climate conferences, the rest of the world, and especially the Global South, has been forced, bribed and coerced into playing the carbon market game.

The allure of millions of dollars of start-up funds provided by the World Bank and others, and the supposed future bonanza of carbon credits, have often been great for smaller countries (especially aid dependent ones like Cambodia).

The result is that, rather than demanding climate justice or what is owed to the poor who are the lowest carbon emitters and most likely to be effected by a changed climate (for example climate debt), countries like Cambodia are instead accepting a pittance of what they are owed for a scheme that has no evidence of actually working, and which is orientated more towards protecting Annex One country investors than the poor in forested countries.

If anything, the history of pollution markets over the last 30 years has shown them to be a largely ineffective policy mechanism.

And there is good reason to question the central tenets of REDD+, which place an enormous amount of faith in the creation of these new carbon markets as the ‘only option’ whether they are ‘voluntary’ or an example of ‘compliance’. Meanwhile these markets have very little grounding in the daily struggles of the poor who will be adversely affected by climate change.

Yet, the REDD+ program with all its talk of ‘full and effective participation’, ‘community rights’ and ‘safeguards for indigenous people’ has slowly rolled forward, absorbing all criticism into its ever expanding network of experts.

REDD+ in rural Cambodia“But who cares what REDD+ is”, as a farmer in Cambodia’s northern province of Oddar Meanchey who was involved in the countries first scheme told me when I asked him if he understood the logic behind it.

“If I wanted to sell gas, I’d start a gas company. What I want is enough land to get by, and that’s it”.

He’s right. Who cares about the abstract idea of REDD; of what experts proclaim it is about and what it can achieve. Isn’t the most important thing its real world impacts on people struggling to make a living out of agriculture?

In Oddar Meanchey, where the project has been running for seven years, where promises of money and jobs never materialised, where people have slowly lost their land to the pressures of economic land concessions, land speculation, militarisation and the very ‘Community Forests’ which they supposedly gain benefit from, REDD+ has achieved very little.

It has made money for a small carbon venture firm in the US. It has helped the careers of experts writing technical papers on gender and safeguards. It has given Cambodia’s Forestry Administration slightly more legitimisation. But it has done very little for the people who are supposedly at the centre of the project.

A faded sign lists the details of the REDD+ scheme in rural Cambodia. Photo by Tim Frewer.

For all the shiny brochures and TV commercials, when it comes down to it, all that is really left of REDD+ is; a faded sign on a rural road that most passers-by will entirely ignore. The grand abstract idea of REDD+ leaves very little material trace in rural Cambodia.

People in villagers are angry at the NGOs who brought REDD+ to them. They risked their lives to patrol the community forests the scheme is based on – to apprehend soldiers and armed hunters. They took time off farming to attend workshops and community meetings. But in the end it was all for nothing.

Once one of the major NGOs in Phnom Penh ran out of start-up funds, with the voluntary carbon market doing a major backflip when the price of carbon fell from $12 in 2004 to $4 in 2012, all activities ground to a halt. People in Phnom Penh proclaimed the project a success (with ‘lessons learnt’) and the National REDD+ program slowly plodded forward promising to be even more participatory and with even better safeguards.

Yet farmers in Oddar Meanchey feel they have been abandoned.

Climate justice? Climate debt?What all this reveals is the perverse logic of REDD+ which has absolutely nothing to do with climate justice. Not only are the people in Oddar Meanchey who are participating in the program some of the poorest people in the region, they are also the lowest carbon emitters.

What REDD+ essentially does is exploit the poor to protect ‘critical ecosystems’ that are of global value. Instead of helping the most climate dependent people deal with a changed climate, it utilises their labour to generate profit for foreign companies and brokers.

It uses them at arms-length to deal with the complexities and dangers of local conflicts and poverty. ‘Non-carbon benefits’ are only an afterthought, which if Oddar Meanchey is anything to go by, rarely actually materialise.

Most of the funding for REDD+ is instead consumed by the complex process of giving carbon a commercial value that involves an exorbitant amount of expensive, expert labour to establish accounting methods and monitoring and evaluation systems.

But worst of all, instead of getting to the most crucial task of restructuring carbon intensive economies, and keeping fossil fuels in the ground, offset programs like REDD+ essentially prolong urgently needed changes by giving polluters the option of deferring reductions by purchasing discounted carbon credits from poor farmers.

With the ‘creative accounting’ of REDD+, an imagined ‘avoided’ emission of carbon dioxide from not cutting down a section of forest (compared to an imagined baseline scenario) becomes commensurate to a very real emission in an Annex One country.

This is not to say that the avoided emission is fake, just that it is not an actual material thing, but rather a potential; something that does not happen, and which is traded for a very real material thing that has already happened (emissions of carbon dioxide from Annex One countries which will remain in the atmosphere for up to 100 years causing dangerous climate change).

Forests hence become imagined not as sinks, but as sources of emissions, on par with factories. People surrounding forests are not protectors of forest sinks but become thought of as carbon emitters due to their constant expansion into forests which release stored carbon dioxide. Under this flawed approach, the survival emissions of desperately poor agriculturalists become commensurate to the luxury emissions of those in Annex One countries.

Now that it has been realised that public funds are unable to provide sufficient capital to sustain a global market in avoided emissions, there has been a major push to put private capital at the centre of REDD+ (especially institutional investors who can potentially channel billons in pensions and investment funds).

Rural Cambodians from Oddar Meanchey. Photo by Tim Frewer.

What this means is that the logic of REDD+ is now shifting towards efforts to make investments more attractive to investors. This pushes REDD+ even further away from issues of climate justice and the livelihood struggles of those who will be most affected by a changed climate.

Yet REDD+ stumbles along in Cambodia, stubbornly refusing to let go of the simplifications that make the logic behind it so alluring. People in forested areas are continually referred to as ‘forest dependent’ even when they are heavily dependent on cash crops. Land tenure is overly focused on communal forests at the neglect of individual tenure for agricultural land which is typically what people most desperately want.

It is assumed that people are happy to spend large amounts of unpaid labour tending to forests that they get little benefit from. And participation becomes the mere practice of telling randomly assembled groups of people about principles and theories that have little to do with their lives.

In other words, REDD+ is typical of development programming – becoming overly fixated on the production of success and the employment of donor driven buzzwords at the expense of any meaningful assistance to the desperately poor who are going to be most adversely impacted by dangerous climate change.

Climate change justice is too important to leave up to experts and neoliberal rationality.  There is too much at stake – both in terms of the opportunity costs involved with postponing a restructuring of Annex One carbon intensive economies and lifestyles, and the urgent and desperate need to redistribute resources to the poor.

REDD+ is rapidly expanding to other countries across Southeast Asia that also have significant populations of climate dependent agriculturalists, like Laos and Myanmar. However, it needs bold and radical change to address these people’s needs.

Otherwise it should be rejected and other options to meet livelihood challenges should be taken up.

Tim Frewer is a PhD candidate at the School of Geosciences the University of Sydney.

Malaysia’s refugee shame | New Mandala

Malaysia’s refugee shame | New Mandala

 

ASLAM ABD JALIL, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

3 AUGUST 2015

An Afghan family of refugees residing in Malaysia. Photo by UNHCR.

Aslam Abd Jalil – in the first of a three-part series – examines the issues faced by refugees in Malaysia and calls for the respect of human dignity. 

The report by Al-Jazeera, Malaysia’s Unwanted, in November 2014 documenting the abuse and exploitation of refugees, has once again put the spotlight on Malaysia’s appalling treatment of this vulnerable group.

The United States’ World Refugee Survey for 2009 found that Malaysia was among the worst violators of refugee rights. Malaysia received an F grade in three aspects: refoulement/physical protection; detention/access to courts; and the right to earn a livelihood. It didn’t do much better on freedom of movement and residence, scoring a ‘must try harder’ D grade.

Malaysia’s role in regional and global governance is now sharply in focus as both ASEAN Chair for 2015, and as a serving member on the United Nations Security Council for 2015-2016. This provides even greater impetus for Malaysia to act responsibly as a member of the international community in relation to refugee issues.

This begins by fulfilling its own obligations to uphold the principles of human rights, congruent with the present administration’s wasatiyyah or “moderation” philosophy and its priorities to ensure the realisation of the ASEAN Community by 2015.

Simply put, Malaysia has an obligation to provide protection to every individual when they are on Malaysian soil.

However, this is something which the country is still failing to do.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 150,000 refugees registered with the UN Refugee Agency in Malaysia. Out of these refugees, around 69 per cent are men, while 31 per cent are women. The registered include some 33,000 children.

Of those registered, more than 90 per cent come from Myanmar. The next largest group, some 2.6 per cent, come from Sri Lanka, with the rest coming from countries like Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Palestine.

But there’s more. The UNHCR also notes that as of December 2014, there were over 270,000 refugees, asylum seekers, stateless and other people of concern residing in Malaysia.

Currently, Malaysian authorities do not distinguish between refugees or asylum-seekers, and illegal migrants. Without the recognition of refugee status by the Malaysian government, asylum-seekers in Malaysia are constantly harassed, ill-treated and denied their fundamental rights.

There is a difference between asylum-seekers and migrants (legal or illegal). The conventional definition of refugees or asylum-seekers is people who flee from their home countries because of persecution. Those who seek refuge are considered asylum-seekers and they should be granted refugee status once their asylum claims are proven to be genuine.

A migrant chooses to leave their country to seek a better life and can return to their home countries should they choose too. Also, unlike internally displaced persons who seek refuge in safe areas within their own countries, refugees cross international borders to seek safety.

But as refugees are often from poor or developing countries, and seek refuge in more wealthy and stable nations, they are frequently viewed as illegal migrants seeking better employment opportunities.

Such is the case in Malaysia.

The fate of asylum-seekers and refugees in Malaysia is made more precarious because of their unofficial status. Under the Malaysian Immigration Act, severe punishment will be taken against any person who enters the country without valid documentation.

As a consequence, once in Malaysia these individuals are not only denied their rights but are also abused and exploited.

A 2010 report by Amnesty International found that 6,000 refugees in Malaysia are caned annually for immigration-related offences, including working, which is not legal for refugees. In addition to months of imprisonment, more than 47,000 individuals, including asylum-seekers and refugees, were whipped for immigration offences in Malaysia between 2002 and 2008.

Further abuse comes at the hands of various Malaysian government agencies, especially the Ikatan Relawan Rakyat (RELA or People’s Volunteer Corps). Crackdowns by RELA on “undocumented migrants” mean that asylum-seekers and refugees are vulnerable to arbitrary arrests, detention and persecution.

Men in an immigration detention centre, Malaysia. Photo by AP.

There are also incidents where refugees who hold UNHCR cards or Persons of Concern letters are also arrested. These individuals (including infants, children and unaccompanied minors), are placed either at immigration detention centres (IDCs) or temporary holding cells and lock-ups in police stations.

Conditions at IDCs are deplorable. Often 200 people live in a room with one toilet, which is also the only source of water. Hygiene and sanitation is poor and there is little food.

Those who are placed in the cells and lock-ups in police stations, are also often denied access to justice and their treatment is clearly unequal before the law in Malaysia. The Immigration Act permits law enforcement agencies to hold non-citizens for up to 14 days (Malaysians can only be held for up to 24 hours), after which they have to be brought before a magistrate.

They cannot seek assistance because they are not permitted to make any phone calls during their 14 days in remand. If they are lucky, they will get assistance in terms of legal counsel or representation in court from UNHCR or NGOs – but only if these agencies intervene.

Most of the time however, asylum seekers do not understand the charges that they face and if they do understand, they do not have an adequate defence. This is because under the Immigration Act, irregular entry is an offence regardless of whether people are asylum-seekers or not. Abuse of the asylum-seekers and refugees is exacerbated with the incident of human trafficking perpetrated by Malaysian immigration officials.  

As reported by the Migration Working Group and Northern Network for Migrants and Refugees, asylum-seekers and refugees are often handed over to human traffickers who set a ransom between 1,400 and 2,500 ringgit for their release and entry to Malaysia. If they are unable to pay, the men are sold as forced labour and the women are forced into a life as prostitutes in the brothels in Thailand.

This is clearly against the principle of non-refoulement where asylum-seekers and refugees are not to be returned to the place where they are at risk of being persecuted. Although Malaysia is not a signatory to the international refugee convention, it is bound to respect this principle as it is embedded in international law.

Then there are the mental health issues.

Asylum-seekers and refugees live in fear, which often leads to post-traumatic stress disorder and sometimes originates from the psychological trauma of experiencing and/or fleeing violence.

When Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) surveyed 100 refugees in Malaysia, 77 reported they felt constant fear and worry, 82 suffered sleepless nights and 69 had feelings of isolation. Meanwhile 56 people had experienced depression and 20had suicidal thoughts.

These problems stem from the difficulties associated with obtaining documents, the ongoing lack of security and very poor living conditions. In addition, 11 also claimed to be beaten by the police while 31 had had their belongings stolen.

It is also disappointing that 26 per cent of 248 incidents of violence against refugees reported in the MSF survey were committed by ordinary Malaysians. Asylum-seekers and refugees who are victims of such crimes are reluctant to lodge police reports because they fear being arrested.

It is time for Malaysia to start respecting human dignity.

It is completely inhumane to harass vulnerable asylum-seekers and refugees who have fled persecution. Their unofficial status makes them vulnerable to further abuse and exploitation. They are often arrested and locked into detention centres with deplorable conditions.

Their “illegal entry” prevents them from being able to defend themselves, and they are at risk of being sold off to human traffickers by corrupt officials. The constant abuses and human rights violations lead to serious mental health issues.

Malaysia has its own obligation to give protection to the refugees. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, Article 22 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) all require Malaysia to give protection to this group of people.

Denying their existence and refusing to address the issues faced by them will never solve the problem. After all the danger that they have been through, they should be protected and their worth as human beings upheld.

Aslam Abd Jalil, is a graduate of the Australian National University, and a refugee rights campaigner. 

This article is the first in a three-part series, with the second and third articles to be published in coming days.