Singapore’s ‘Battle for Merger’ revisited | New Mandala

Singapore’s ‘Battle for Merger’ revisited | New Mandala

 

POH SOO KAI, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

3 DECEMBER 2014

The merger issue

2015 is the fiftieth anniversary of Singapore’s separation after almost two years of being part of the Federation of Malaysia (16 September 1963 – 9 August 1965). The event is marked as the day when the island gained independence. The British colonial rulers formally relinquished its residual power over Singapore’s defence, foreign affairs and internal security to the newly-formed Federation of Malaysia when merger came into effect. Reunification was the aspiration of its people as the island was severed in 1946 by the British after being part of the Straits Settlements for 120 years, save for the Japanese Occupation (1942-45).

However the merger scheme which Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP government concluded with the Federation of Malaya government’s Tunku Abdul Rahman was an outright failure. It is thus curious that for the official celebration of SG 50, the PAP government should choose to highlight the 12 radio broadcasts that Lee Kuan Yew as prime minister made between 13 September and 9 October 1961 which was published as The Battle for Merger (1962). The book was reprinted in 2014, with much official hype but no new insights. The deputy prime minister and concurrently coordinating minister for national security and minister for home affairs who launched the reprint, stressed the importance of the PAP’s push for the 1963 merger thus:

It was a time when momentous decisions had to be made for Singapore. A wrong decision then would have been calamitous and Singapore might still be trying to shake off the dire effects today.

[Ministry of Home Affairs, Speech by Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs, at the launch of the reprint of “The Battle for Merger”.]

The 1963 merger was a wrong decision. The disastrous outcome was foreseen by the opposition Barisan Sosialis.  We wanted reunification with Malaya, but NOT on the terms that Lee obtained. Those simply could not work. They did not address the fundamental ethnic issue which was handled differently in Malaya and Singapore. The Alliance, the ruling party which dominated Malaysian politics, was an alliance of ethnic-based political parties. It had control of Singapore’s internal security through the internal Security Act (ISA) which provided for detention without trial. The PAP had accepted that Singapore would have fewer seats than its population size warranted, weakening its representation in the Federal government.

Lee insisted that we ‘opposed merger’ fearing that we would be arrested and detained without trial by the Tunku as Malaysia’s prime minister. We countered with the declaration that Barisan leaders were willing to be arrested and imprisoned before merger took place. Contrary to the PAP’s proposals, we insisted that the people of Singapore should have the same rights and responsibilities as any other Malaysian citizen. The ‘autonomy’ in labour and education for Singapore which the PAP obtained was meaningless if the ISA was not abolished.

After Malaysia was formed on these faulty terms, the PAP found itself in the margins of Federal politics when the Tunku rejected its attempts to replace the MCA as his Chinese coalition partner.  The PAP then, in a volte-face, resorted to so-called championing of equal political rights for the Chinese.  Ethnic tensions were stoked in response by UMNO extremists championing Malay rights. Riots broke out in Singapore in 1964, and Separation came to be seen as the only way to avoid further outbreaks of ethnic-based violence.

The merger of Singapore into the larger Federation of Malaya with an entrenched rightwing government was introduced by the British, and rushed through to save Lee Kuan Yew’s political skin. The British were not prepared to give Singapore independence outside of merger with the Federation, fearing that its military bases on the island would be jeopardised if our genuine leftwing party won the 1963 election. Lee was keen on such a merger, expecting that the Tunku would act against the leftwing of his party. There was no vision of democracy or equality for the new society that was enunciated.

Lee had made clear to the British that should there be no role for him, he would not go into Malaysia. As prime minister since 1959, he threw everything he had to push for merger and to discredit his opposition as communists. Based on this charge, the PAP expelled its leftwing members, who then formed the Barisan Sosialis party led by Lim Chin Siong. The Internal Security Council, comprising of the Singapore, British and Federation of Malay governments, duly carried out Operation Coldstore on 2 February 1963 and subsequent weeks, with a total of 133 arrested.

Building up a reading list

Among those imprisoned in 1963, were individuals who refused to sign statements ‘renouncing’ or condemning communism – the only way to gain release. Dr Lim Hock Siew, imprisoned for almost twenty years, refused to sign a statement renouncing violence in 1975. He retorted that it was like asking him to announce that he would stop beating his wife, giving the impression that he was imprisoned for wife-beating. He would never lift a finger to justify his detention.

For more than twenty years following the release in 1982 of the last of the political prisoners then (save for Chia Thye Poh) we maintained silence about our wrongful imprisonment.  The political climate was stifling; we were warned of re-arrest should we ‘cause trouble’, which included maintaining contact with one another. There was also the need to focus on making a living. Only gradually were attempts made among ex-political prisoners to meet up socially.

Following The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998) , Said Zahari, who certainly did not have any communist links but was imprisoned for 17 years, published his autobiographical account Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir, and Tan Jing Quee co-edited (with Jomo KS) Comet in our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History;both accounts came out in 2001. They were spurred on by Lee’s narrative of his heroic deeds and flawless judgment, and demonising of his leftwing opponents as subversive communists at every turn.

 

The momentum grew with Tan Jing Quee and Michael Fernandez speaking about their imprisonment at an arts forum on Detention-Healing- Writing in 2006. Tan then come up with The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore, (2010) and The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s. The two books, available in both English and Chinese, challenge the state bifurcation of English-speaking students as apolitical and Chinese-speaking as manipulated by the Malayan Communist Party. The book launches drew a capacity audience. The latter in particular was attended by about 300 elderly Chinese-speaking former political activists who for decades had hidden their past, even from their children and grandchildren, who accompanied them to the event.

The detainees of the 1950s and 1960s were not the only ones who began to find a voice.  A younger group of  lawyers, dramatists, political activists, and social and church workers arrested in Operation Spectrum in 1987 as ‘marxist conspirators’ had also started to stir. They connected with the 1963 and 1970s detainees to produceOur Thoughts Are Free: Poems and Prose on Imprisonment and Exile (2009). The next year, Teo Soh Lung (imprisoned without trial 21 May 1987-26 Sept 1987; 19 April 1988-1 June 1990) published Beyond the Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner. At the book launch, Teo stated, ‘I call for the ISA to be abolished. The ISA and its predecessors have destroyed many lives from the time of the British to today.’

Since then, her comrades have put out collections of essays by Catholic church workers who were Operation Spectrum survivors,[i] and on Singapore’s political exiles from the 1970s[ii].

The growth of the social media, resulting in the proliferation of publishing outlets, made its impact during the campaign for the hotly-contested election of the president in August 2011. Citizen journalists,  invited to the debates, asked the candidates to state their position on the ISA. Former cabinet minister Tony Tan justified the legislation on grounds that terrorism is a real threat, which led Dr Lim Hock Siew to challenge him to repeat his statement so that they could meet in a court of law, and to call for an independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations against all ISA prisoners. His challenge is still on YouTube.

Operation Coldstore documents: Demanding accountability

Except for the 1990s, the ISA has been used in every decade in postwar Singapore. Operation Coldstore remains the most controversial, as it paved the way for the PAP’s unbroken rule and constitutes its founding myth of ‘riding the communist tiger’. What it did, in effect, was to eliminate Lim Chin Siong and the Barisan Sosialis from the 1963 general election. Lim had won the confidence not only of the Chinese-speaking labour unionists, but also the English-speaking left, mostly coming out from the University Socialist Club. I was one of them.

Documentary evidence from the colonial archives, analysed by historians such as TN Harper, Geoff Wade[iii] and PJ Thum[iv],  has shown that the British and the Federation governments were not going to accept a leftwing government in Singapore; they came to Lee’s rescue by abetting in Operation Coldstore. I too made a trip to the Kew Archives in the early 1990s.  There is insufficient evidence that Lim Chin Siong, the key target to be destroyed politically, was a member of the MCP—which did not stop the demonising of him as such in the 2014 Battle for Merger. Choice quotations from the Colonial Office include:

While we accept that Lim Chin Siong is a Communist, there is no evidence he is receiving orders from the CPM, Peking or Moscow. Our impression is that Lim is working very much on his own and that his primary objective is not the Communist millennium but to obtain control of the constitutional government of Singapore. It is far from certain that having obtained this objective Lim would necessarily prove a compliant tool of Peking or Moscow.[v]

Also, Lee was,

quite clearly attracted by the prospect of wiping out his main political opposition before the next Singapore elections…advocating a policy of provocation of Lim Chin Siong and his associates with a view to forcing them into unconstitutional action justifying their arrest. [vi]

The specific reason given for our arrests was that the Barisan was supplying arms and logistical support for the popular uprising led by Azahari in Brunei on 8 December 1962. The British had minuted how this charge was formulated:

Lee had in mind a statement calling for the crushing of the revolt pointing out that organisation, training and arms could not have been provided within the Borneo territories and drawing the conclusion that there must have been foreign intervention. As to arrests, Lee said that information about the recent contacts between Azahari and Lim Chin Siong coupled with Barisan Socialis’ statement giving open support for the revolutionaries provided a heaven-sent opportunity of justifying action against them.[vii]

Lim Chin Siong as Barisan leader had a meal in a restaurant with Azahari, leader of the socialist Partai Rakyat Brunei, who was stopping by Singapore, in full view of the head of Special Branch. Our statement of moral support for the Brunei popular uprising was no different from those that the Barisan had issued for other anti-colonial uprisings. Strangely for the danger we were alleged to pose in our fraternal relations with Azahari, our arrests were postponed for two months after the Brunei uprising as the Tunku and Lee could not agree on the list of detainees!

The authorities had indicated that they would produce evidence of our clandestine involvement in the Brunei uprising, but never did. I am still waiting.

Operation Coldstore was a set-up against Lee’s political opponents. On its fiftieth anniversary, I declared in the blurb of The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years:

I maintain that I was imprisoned for being part of a slate of left-wing anti-colonialists who were going to pose a challenge to Lee Kuan Yew in the election of 1963. The charges of communism and subversion, used to frame people like me, have simply been chanted repeatedly to this day. Our rejection of the charge has been ignored outright, without any attempt to supply evidence or specific details which we could answer.

To date, we have received only a non-reply, in the form of the re-printing of the Battle for Merger, the Cold War diatribe of the day. The government has to content itself with targeting school children and blitzing the mainstream media, using the same language and materials from half a century ago, and resurrecting the failed ‘merger’, implicitly to justify Coldstore, though the event itself is not ever mentioned. The impression given is that with the radio talks the PAP won the hearts and minds of the people. If that had been the case, Coldstore would have been unnecessary.

Even more impossible to justify than our arrests is the length of the imprisonments. Detention orders were renewed every two years, without any limit at the minister’s pleasure. Lim Hock Siew would have received at least 8 extensions of such orders under section 8A of the ISA, 1960, a printed form with the name of the detainee and date typed in. How many such orders would Chia Thye Poh, – imprisoned on 29 October 1996, restricted to Sentosa island from 17 May 1989, then to Singapore from 28 November 1992 and freed of restrictions on 27 November 1998, – have received?

The present PAP leaders have chosen to identify themselves with the gross injustices using the ISA inflicted by their party elders, and to cling to a narrative of history that has been seriously questioned.

Dr Poh Soo Kai was Assistant Secretary-General of Barisan Sosialis. He was imprisoned twice under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) which allows for detention without trial for a total of 17 years by Singapore’s PAP government.

[i] Fong Hoe Fang, ed. That We May Dream Again (2009)

[ii] Teo Soh Lung and Low Yit Keng, eds. Escape from the lion’s paw : reflections of Singapore’s political exiles (2009)

[iii] Geoff Wade, ‘Operation Coldstore: A Key Event in the Creation of Modern Singapore’, in The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating Fifty years, eds. Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang, Hong Lysa (2013).

[iv] Thum Pingtjin, “‘The Fundamental Issue is Anti-colonialism, not Merger’: Singapore’s ‘Progressive Left’ , Operation Coldstore and the Creation of Malaysia”, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Working Paper series no. 211, November 2013.

[v] High Commissioner, Singapore to Secretary of State, 8 September 1962, CO 1030/1159 in TN Harper, ‘ Lim Chin Siong and the “Singapore Story”’ in Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History, eds. Tan Jing Quee and Jomo KS (2001), p. 41.

[vi]  High Commissioner Singapore to Secretary of State, CO 1030/998, 28 April 1962, cited in Tan Jing Quee, ‘Merger and the Decimation of the Left-Wing in Singapore,’ inFajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore, eds. Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee and Koh Kay Yew (2010)  p. 283.

[vii] High Commissioner to Secretary of State CO 1030/1160, no 572, 10 December 1962.

The Look of Silence review: Oppenheimer revisits Indonesia's genocide | Asian Correspondent

The Look of Silence review: Oppenheimer revisits Indonesia's genocide | Asian Correspondent
 Patrick Tibke Dec 02, 2014

In 2012 Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The Act of Killing’ broke new ground in the field of documentary film-making, collecting a multitude of international awards and helping to shed light on one of history’s most forgotten genocides.

This year, Oppenheimer returns to our screens with yet another powerful rumination on Indonesia’s mass killings of 1965-1966, seen this time through the lens of both perpetrator and victim.

Oppenheimer’s new film, ‘The Look of Silence’, is an exquisite companion piece to ‘The Act of Killing’, and an urgent call for Indonesia to atone for its dark past through truthful dialogue and reconciliation.

Indonesia’s demons

In ‘The Act of Killing’ we watched Oppenheimer track down a motley crew of wizened, former death squad members, who each took part and pride in the anti-communist bloodbaths of the early Suharto dictatorship.

Guided by the film’s inimitable protagonist, Anwar Congo – a frenetic, 70-year-old Elvis lover and self-proclaimed torturer – we were a granted a rare insight into the gleeful and grotesque memory vaults of some of Indonesia’s most prolific genocidal maniacs. Congo and his accomplices still professed complete unrepentance for their crimes, claiming that the slaughter of Indonesia’s suspected ‘communists’ was a just and necessary chapter in the country’s history.

An estimated 1 million people were put to death by state-sponsored paramilitaries following Suharto’s seizure of power in October 1965, bringing the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) to its bloody extinction by the end of 1966.

A scene from The Act of Killing movie.

Oppenheimer captured the sadism of the killers disturbingly well by persuading them to re-enact their repulsive crimes in the style of their favourite movie stars, thus resulting in an utterly surreal pantomime of real-life murder theatrically yet faithfully reproduced by its actual perpetrators.

Watching the killers’ eagerness to regale their crimes on camera, the savagery of Indonesia’s genocide seemed to crystallise before our eyes, and the remorselessness of its perpetrators shone through with vivid and terrifying clarity.

Breaking the taboo

In contrast to ‘The Act of Killing’, ‘The Look of Silence’ is a much more sober and less sensational film. A new set of killers is on-hand to provide much of the same swaggering anecdote and graphic detail as featured in Oppenheimer’s previous film, only this the time our proud executioners are finally made to grapple with the idea that mass murder is, perhaps, unethical.

Here we interact with the killers not merely to hear about their industrious methods and listen to their insufferable boasting, but to beg for some form of explanation or moral justification for their misdeeds.

For this task we assume the perspective of one incredibly brave victim: 40-year-old Adi Rukun, a mild-mannered optometrist from a village in North Sumatra, whose older brother Ramli was brutally murdered by a local death squad in 1965.

We watch as Adi embarks on an intrepid truth-seeking mission in his local village, going head-to-head with known former death squad members in search of answers and reconciliation. What he finds, however – much to our shock and disappointment – is an unflinching lack of remorse among the killers, who each have their own way of rationalising the genocide as something that just had to be done.

All manner of self-deception and ethical conjuring is used to justify the killings, but none more so – and none more strikingly – than the justification from religious faith; or in other words, the invocation that communists did not believe in god and therefore deserved to die.

Adi Rukun, left, and Joshua Oppenheimer at the Venice Film Festival in Italy earlier this year. Pic: AP.

An early confrontation between Adi and a 74-year-old former executioner named Inong, who claims to have routinely drunk the blood of his victims, gives us our first taste of this abhorrent religious bigotry.

“I know from experience [that] if you cut off a woman’s breast, it looks like a coconut milk filter. . . Full of holes,” Inong begins after divulging his former blood-drinking habit.

“[But] why did you cut off the woman’s breast,” Adi enquires.

“[The] Communist Party members had no religion. [And] they had sex with each other’s wives. So people say . . .

“If they’re bad people, you can hack them up. . . ”

The contention that Indonesia’s communists had uniformly rejected the word of god is, of course, a complete fabrication. But the mere charge of atheism, levelled with enough excitement and consistency, proved to be a profoundly effective incitation of violence nonetheless. Many of Indonesia’s purportedly faithful Muslims were thereby compelled to slaughter their neighbours, and then have the audacity to claim the moral high ground thereafter.

We see this total lack of contrition in all of Adi’s encounters with pious former death squad cadres who are clearly complicit in Ramli’s murder, yet cannot find it within themselves to issue an apology to an innocent victim whose own brother was hacked to death.

A firewall of entrenched religious doctrine seems to separate the killers from the astonishing savagery of their crimes. Time and again we are told that the communists were an affront to the one true religion and an embodiment of all things profane, but at no point do we get hear an actual critique of communism as a political philosophy, or a coherent rebuttal of its teachings. Faith seems to supersede all other lines of reasoning.

Perhaps the most tragic casualty of this all-consuming religious brainwashing is Adi’s uncle – a former prison guard who presided over the detention of Ramli and many others prior to their slaughter, but still finds it appropriate to invoke petty religious prejudices as a way of exonerating his indelible contribution to the genocide.

In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, the benighted uncle sits in his living room clutching a string of Islamic prayer beads, with a framed photo of Mecca diligently hung in the background, and then proceeds to argue that the slaughter of Indonesia’s communists – including his own nephew – can somehow be justified as a defence of the faith.

“They were bad people,” he explains. “[And] what’s more, they never prayed! In 1965, communists rushed to the mosques [for sanctuary] because they were afraid of being slaughtered. Later, they stopped going . . . They pretended to be religious. And [now] you blame me [a man of faith]! How dare you!”

Perhaps it would have been a redeeming feature of the film if this sort of excruciating hubris seemed likely to die out with the passing of Indonesia’s older generations, but we soon learn that the very same set of prejudices and propaganda is still being force-fed to Indonesia’s children, as a compulsory part of the state’s national ‘history’ curriculum.

As is chillingly depicted in ‘The Look of Silence’, the subjection of Indonesia’s youth to this toxic blend of pseudo-ethics and fabricated history is nothing more than an institutionalised form of child abuse. From a very young age kids are mercilessly saddled with terrifying images of bloodthirsty and godless communists, whilst simultaneously being taught that the real wellspring of morality begins with submission to the one true god.

“Communists are cruel,” proclaims the teacher to a baffled audience of primary school pupils (one of whom is Adi’s own son). “Communists don’t believe in God. . .

“To change the political system the communists kidnapped six army generals. They sliced the generals’ faces with razor blades . . .

“[How] would you like that? Imagine how painful it would be if your eyes were gouged out. Their eyes were ripped out!”

Collective memory

‘The Act of Killing’ was never submitted to Indonesia’s censor board for general release, mainly due to fear of reprisal attacks being carried out on audiences by paramilitary organizations such as Pemuda Pancaslia. But with Indonesia’s new president Joko ‘Jokowi ‘Widodo now talking tough on the issue of bringing human rights offenders to trial, Adi and Oppenheimer are hopeful that ‘The Look of Silence’ can safely be shown to audiences throughout Indonesia without risk of retaliation, and it indeed it needs to be shown.

Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission has therefore agreed to take the movie on an informal tour of Indonesia, with the aim of finally persuading the national government to issue an acknowledgement and an apology for the slaughter, and to open up an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute the surviving culprits.

The symbiosis of mass murder and mass impunity now has a long and uninterrupted history in Indonesia, but one hopes that Oppenheimer’s masterful new film, at least to some extent, can help to achieve the transformation in Indonesia’s collective memory that the victims and their families truly deserve.

Southeast Asian borders and research | New Mandala

Southeast Asian borders and research | New Mandala

NICHOLAS FARRELLY,

 27 NOVEMBER 2014

Hindsight is a wondrous thing. Back in the day, once upon a time, right at the beginning, I didn’t quite realise that my own academic interests were taking root in soil that had, for many years, been cultivated by others. It is a peculiar, but common, aspect of most immature scholarly ambitions: we only have a vague inkling of where things began, or who came before, or what started things off. In my case I came to realise, over time, that for my own academic formation it was the Thai-Yunnan project, and Ajarn Gehan Wijeyewardene, and Ajarn Ted Chapman, that came before. Sadly, I never met either of them.

For today’s discussion, I think it worth considering our anthropological ancestors and their careful stewardship of the ideas, concepts and research strategies that we now, so often, take for granted.

My brief presentation seeks to examine how it is that the study of Southeast Asian borderlands has germinated on this campus, and what that means for those of us who are seeking to find newly fertile fields for their research. This treatment is deliberately integrative. It is partly anecdotal, partly grounded in real research, and also occasionally gripped by my own flights of fancy. That, after all, has been one of the basic orientations that Thai-Yunnan inspired work on this Australian National University campus and beyond.

Let us start, as we often do, with Thailand. The Thai-Yunnan project was forged by scholars who knew Thailand intimately and sought to latch on to the political and social transformations that the end of the Cold War created. From the vantage of northern Thailand, ground zero for Thai-Yunnan, it made sense to look north, and east and west, in the expectation that different research strands could be profitably pursued. Yet in all of those directions the flows and possibilities were interrupted by borders. The notion of a borderless realm, ala the Zomia of Jim Scott’s 2009 “anarchist history”, was nowhere to be found.

Thailand, since then, has rumbled along in its usual fashion: coups have caused new consternation but the Thai society of today is one that earlier generations of Thai-Yunnan academics would recognise well. Indeed, they wrote about “Thailand since the coup“, just as we do. The gadgets and high octane modernity change some of the cosmetic impressions but, behind them, the building blocks of Thai society – hierarchy, obedience, violence, impunity, materialism, loyalty, pride, scheming and so on – are as apparent as ever. For studies of Thai-Yunnan these elements, arguably some of the classic tropes of lowland Southeast Asian civilisation, offer a certain timelessness to our studies of society, culture and politics. I’m not much for the romantic, but I see something in the Thai-Yunnan project’s early output that resonates today, and with what came before.

To put such history in its appropriate frame, let us turn to Myanmar, or Burma as the earlier generations consistently knew it. During the phases of research most commonly associated with the Thai-Yunnan project, Myanmar remained an enigma: research permission was almost impossible to come by and there were few of the institutional hooks that made Thailand, by comparison, hospitable ground. This has changed during recent decades, and those of you who follow conditions closely will appreciate that academic freedom in Thailand is nowadays much constrained. Even foreign researchers, so long able to come-and-go from Thailand as they pleased, are faced with stark choices about their work’s public presentation. There are those who hold academic appointments, and specialize in the study of that country, but can no longer get past Suvarnabhumi International Airport. It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but one that shows no immediate signs of revision. Many Thai academic colleagues have fewer options, and in the past years some have judged it necessary to leavetheir country behind in the hope of pursuing scholarly enquiry in environments where restrictions on commentary about important social and political issues are not so significant.

The irony, perhaps, is that research in Myanmar today is arguably easier, in terms of official research access, liberty of interaction with informants, and all the rest, than ever before. I judge that today’s conditions are temporary. Yet even in sensitive borderland environments researchers are able to carve out sufficient space to adequately, and critically, engage with Myanmar societies and cultures, at this time of great flux. The other presentations here this morning have amply demonstrated the potential of such studies.

When research in Myanmar falls, as it probably will, into a period of constraint and caution we will look to those who managed to build new understandings, and harness fresh data, for guidance. They will be the benchmark for years to come. It is also worth mentioning that as the number of scholars focused on other parts of mainland Southeast Asia has remained steady, or fallen, a mini-boom has emerged for Myanmar. This isn’t just an Australian National University phenomenon but it’s clear that our University is well-positioned to forge new paths through what remains often difficult academic terrain.

And yet what is most apparent is that our grounded perspectives, based in the fluency of culture and language that prolonged periods of field research can bring, now need modification for the new spaces that are more explicitly at the margins of knowing. It is these cyber-spaces, online spheres, pixilised universes, that are increasingly re-shaping how all borderlands can be conceived.

It is a little known fact that the inspiration for New Mandala, founded by ProfessorAndrew Walker and I back in June 2006, is firmly rooted in the Thai-Yunnan Project. Andrew, alongside Professor Nick Tapp, inherited much of the responsibility for mainland Southeast Asia research during the rebuilding phase that followed Gehan and Ted’s untimely deaths. Those of you who know Andrew will appreciate that he has often sought to push the boundaries: he is the classic borderlands scholar in that sense. New Mandala was the response to the constriction that was occurring in academic debates as moribund publishing models failed to keep pace with the requirements of an enmeshed, entangled, electronic world.

The borders that New Mandala has hopped have been many. In eight-and-a-half years the website has garnered a reputation that challenges some of our expectations of academic work and the people who produce it. Fair to say, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. And yet, from my vantage, it fits quite neatly into the evolution of publishing, researching and interacting that informed the genesis of the Thai-Yunnan Project, and sustained it through so many successful years.

With this cursory treatment of research practice across the borderlands of Thailand, Myanmar and more out of the way, let me make some final reflections. They could just as easily be thought as provocations.

First, it is clear that when we stop experimenting and fail to learn what we can from other ways of being and doing, the entire academic experience, for those of us who accept the vocation, begins to unravel. The grumbling about the state of modern Universities is, for mine, not a crisis of political economy, or ideology, or society. It is, more squarely, a crisis of imagination.

Second, border crossing and borderland research made sense in the context of the Thai-Yunnan project because the frontiers had for too long been thought impregnable. To do research from China, to Vietnam, to Burma, to northern Thailand, to even perhaps dream of venturing to northeast India, was to break down all of the basic expectations that came with academic research. It would never again be neat, bounded and predictable. For that we owe the grandfathers or great-grandfathers of Thai-Yunnan research our many thanks.

Third, there is the fundamental challenge of building meaningful collaborations, nurturing institutions, and making some impact at the conceptual level while still keeping a weather eye on the logistical foundations of what we do. The Thai-Yunnan Project was famous for the style in which it could communicate research across borders, to multiple audiences, to feed the basic human instinct of curiosity about other people. None of this was easy. Indeed the force multiplier technologies at our disposal today mean that we have no excuse for failing to get our messages out, particularly compared to those who laboriously edited the hard-copy Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletters, and then sealed those hundreds of envelopes.

By concluding with these points of provocation I would suggest that the Australian National University has not seen the end of the creative and imaginative work that led to the Thai-Yunnan heyday. It is a credit to Roger Casas and Dr Phillip Taylor, and so many others, that the effort continues. Indeed as the research on borderlands presented here today suggests, we have new concepts and intriguing new fields where our ideas can be tested.

It is a splendid thing to be part of a long line, an anthropological lineage, where the genesis of the next big idea is still out there, somewhere across the border.

Dr Nicholas Farrelly is the co-founder of New Mandala and is based in the Australian National University’s School of International, Political and Strategic Studies. He holds an Australian Research Council fellowship for a study of Myanmar’s political cultures “in transition” This text was prepared for a workshopheld at the ANU on 27 November 2014, titled “At Risk, Under Care: Nurturing culture, the environment and the human in the Thai-Yunnan region”.

Jokowi: hope for Papua? | New Mandala

Jokowi: hope for Papua? | New Mandala

 

HIPOLITUS YOLISANDRY RINGGI WANGGE, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

24 NOVEMBER 2014

One of Jokowi’s ‘trademarks’, dialogue, offers the best chance of giving disaffected Papua what it needs and wants, writes Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge.

During his presidential campaign, Joko Widodo, widely known as “Jokowi,” visited the Indonesia’s most eastern province, Papua, three times.

He made one key promise to Papuans—giving it more attention.

This attention includes promoting welfare instead of security , building more infrastructure, and providing more access to education and medical services. All of these seem relatively similar to former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s (SBY) promises when he came to office in 2004.

Whether Jokowi’s government can keep his promises to the Papuan people, rest on three factors; affirmative action, welfare policy, and the military . And all of these have to factor in Jakarta’s decision-making elites. In this regard, it’s useful to look at what previous governments did in Papua.

Since the downfall of Suharto in 1998, Papua has been one of Indonesia’s three trouble spots, haunting every regime. Of the other two East Timor attained its independence in 1999, and Aceh received its special privileges under the 2005 Helsinki Agreement. Even though, the Papuan rebellion movement is categorised as a small-scale armed struggle, there is no comprehensive policy that can suppress its aspiration to detach from Indonesia.

Former presidents BJ Habibie and Abdurahman “Gus Dur” Wahid undertook affirmative action in Papua. They knew that as the Papuan people are a minority group which has been excluded and underrepresented historically, measures had to be taken to raise participation at various level of society. Habibie invited 100 Papuan representatives to hold a discussion in Jakarta in 1999 and promised to initiate an equal dialogue between Jakarta and Papua.

Yet the dialogue never happened. Gus Dur proposed more progressive measures by allowing the Papuans to hold the First Papua National Assembly in June 2000, crafting a space for Papua to reclaim its names as “Papua,” not “Irian,” and permitting the Papuan flag to be raised alongside the Indonesian flag. He also included Freddy Numberi, the first Papuan after the downfall of Suharto, to become a cabinet member. However, both presidents firmly rejected the idea of West Papuan independence.

Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding father Sukarno, amplified the military approach to Pa[ua rather than taking more comprehensive affirmative actions. She launched the Special Autonomy Law (Otsus) in 2001 as a way to uplift Papuans’ lives, yet she also issued a presidential decree (Inpres No.1/2003) to divide Papua into three new provinces, thus contradicting the spirit of the autonomy law. Moreover, Megawati’s feeblest policy allowed the military to tightening its grip over Papua, an action it had long favored. The 2001 killing of charismatic Papuan leader Theis Elluay, by the Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus), occurred under her tenure.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took over government in 2004 and left office in October 2014, combined affirmative action and welfare policies without thoroughly reviewing the military’s presence in Papua. During his 10-year tenure, SBY included three Papuans in his government. In 2010, he initiated the mega investment project, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), at the expense of customary rights over land that belongs to Papuans. In 2012, he proposed an ad-hoc agency, the Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua (UP4PB) which has had no impact whatsoever.

Additionally, SBY failed to review security policies that have been in place since this province was forcefully integrated into Indonesia in 1969. Human rights abuses by the military still frequently occur.. Ironically, the military reform initiated during SBY’s first term has had no impact in Papua.  Antonius Made argues that military reform failed at the domestic level, particularly in conflicted regions. Three indicators of the failure are the military deployment and its relation to the rise of human rights violations, the military involvement in local politics, and its close ties to business in Papua.

When it comes to Jokowi, many Papuans believe that he will overhaul current conditions in the province. And yet it seems his government will continue what has been done so far. Shortly after he was inaugurated, he appointed Yohana Susana Yembise, the first female Papuan minister, in an act of affirmative action. However, there is no policy yet directly addressing the Papuan issue.

There is also the question of how Jokowi will deal with development in Papua. This concern is related to the investment-oriented agenda he presented in front of business leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China a couple of weeks ago. Whether or not there will be another project like MIFEE is still a big question.

In terms of welfare reforms, Jokowi’s government has moved forward by providing three cards; the prosperous family card, the health card, and the smart card. All of these cards are related to the welfare program he promised during the presidential campaign. However, these cards seem unlikely to deal with current conditions in Papua. The basic prerequisite of this program is infrastructure readiness and its stakeholders.  In Papua, as Bobby Anderson argues in Inside Indonesia (Jul-Sep 2013), it is about not only hospitals or schools, but also who will be serving as a doctor, nurse, or teacher. In this regard, the central government has to review all welfare programs in Papua before promoting other programs.

Another crucial policy that will be launching in coming months is the transmigration policy. The new transmigration minister, Marwan Jafar, proposed a transmigration program for people from outside islands, primarily from Java, to go to Papua. Shortly after the announcement, many Papuans raised their concerns and firmly rejected the policy. This concern is highly understandable.

According to the Justice and Peace Secretariat of the Jayapura Bishopic Mission huge numbers of people transmigrating has negatively affected the indigenous population by subordinating Papuans in cultural, political, and economic spheres.  This shift in population leads to never-ending conflicts between the settlers from the outside islands and the indigenous people.

Furthermore, the transmigration policy will exaggerate the current Papuan demographic structure and also the relation between the central government and Papuans.  The decline of the indigenous population is obvious. According to Anderson (quoted in The Jakarta Globe), migrants from other islands now compose almost half the population of Papua province. In addition, while the ratio of indigenous people and non-indigenous people, was 52-48 in 2010, Anderson predicts there may be 60 migrants to every 40 Papuans in 2014.

In the security arena, there will not be any significant change under Jokowi, particularly the huge number of military troops in Papua. This tendency can be seen by the appointment of one of the most controversial and conservative generals, Ryamizard Ryacudu, as the Indonesian defense minister. Papuans still remember him as a general who praised as heroes the Kopassuss soldiers who killed Theys Elluay.

In addition, Jokowi has appointed Andhika Perkasa as commander of the presidential security detail. According to the Jakarta Post, Andhika was allegedly involved in the killing of Theis Elluay when he was a Koppasus officer back in 2002. Other former generals with bad human rights records, such as Hendropriyono, Wiranto, and Sutiyoso also have been in Jokowi’s inner circle. All of these figures will maintain the military conservative value of defending the unity of the country by wiping out all rebellion groups, even at the expense of civilians–as it has over the years.

All the policies and actions proposed so far clearly describe the ‘elitist’, Jakarta-centric way of thinking on the Papuan issue.  For example, Marfan Jafar is a former politician from the National Awakening Party (PKB) that has supported Jokowi. As a politician without sufficient background on the Papuan issue, Jafar clearly has been initiating an ill-constructed policy.  He thinks by sending many migrants to Papua, the problem of poverty in some densely populated islands, will partly be handled without looking at the real condition of the Papuan people.

Accordingly, one can argue that Jokowi lacks ministers who can absorb his vision deeply. Because he has to compromise with those elites, oligarchs, and former generals, he has to sacrifice the people’s hope. This is an irony of democracy. Jokowi has been elected constitutionally, but he cannot fully exercise his right to govern because he has to deal with those shadowy figures, which have no constitution rights whatsoever.

Beyond these challenges, Jokowi has to execute a long-awaited dialogue with the Papuans. This is the prominent solution to deal with all problems in Papua. Consultations are the only way to know deeply and thoroughly what Papuans need. In turn, the central government can form policy that positively affects Papuans. The Papua Peace Network (JDP) formed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has been conducting preliminary consultations that can be used as a gateway to create a more intensive and comprehensive dialogue with the Papuans.

A network of various political actors in Papua has been set up through the consultations.It would be constructive if the central government gradually held discussions with various actors, such as local activists, student activists, religious figures, armed groups, and particularly those who are living and struggling for Papuan independence from abroad.

Dialogue was one of Jokowi’s “trademarks” (beside the impromptu visit), when he was mayor of Solo, and governor of Jakarta. This is a real opportunity for Jokowi to execute the dialogue with the Papuan people. By supporting consultation with the people, the government can send a strong signal about building trust and eliminating suspicions regarding Papua.

Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge, is an Arryman Scholar and a visiting scholar at the Buffet Center for International and Comparative Studies (BCICS), Northwestern University.  

Reality check on Islam, Buddhism in Myanmar | New Mandala

Reality check on Islam, Buddhism in Myanmar | New Mandala

 

MELISSA CROUCH, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

 – 17 NOVEMBER 2014

The West has been wondering what has gone wrong with Buddhism in Myanmar since 2012 and the violence primarily by Buddhists against Muslims. Yet I want to suggest that this is the wrong question, and that the West needs to take a look in the mirror. The West’s skewed view of Buddhism as a ‘peaceful’ religion, combined with the stereotypical view of Islam as inherently ‘violent’, are a core part of the problem.

Over the past month several reports and a barrage of media reports have surfaced in an attempt to explain the violence against Muslims in Myanmar. Yet implicitly such reports often promote the ‘real’ teachings of Buddhism as a ‘peaceful’ religion, and this adds to the Western stereotype of Islam as somehow ‘violent’.

Let me illustrate this by taking a different perspective to some of the issued raised byContesting Buddhist Narratives. This report prioritises understanding Buddhist fears and concerns, represented in the irrational ranting of the monk (and former convicted criminal) U Wirathu, who is mentioned or quoted from at least 25 times in the report. Yes, we need to understand all aspects of the conflict, but we have paid so little attention to Muslim communities in Myanmar, and this lack of information continues to fuel stereotypes about both Buddhism and Islam. This obscures Muslims’ concerns and fails to acknowledge that Muslims have serious fears too.

The basic premise of the report is that one key way forward is to use Buddhist narratives of non-violence. This is one option, but what about other alternatives, such as secularism? There is very clear precedent for this in Myanmar. General Aung San, the revered martyr and national independence hero, was a secularist. For example, in the drafting of the 1947 Constitution, he insisted that Burma should be a secular state. It was only after his assassination (when he died alongside his colleague and Muslim cabinet member, U Razak) that the provision in the draft constitution on religion was revised to give Buddhism a ‘special position’ (this was actually based on the Irish Constitution and its recognition of Catholicism). Things of course turned from bad to worse in 1961 when U Nu passed a constitutional amendment to make Buddhism the state religion, and the coup of 1962 followed soon after. Collective popular memory in Myanmar of General Aung San seems to have conveniently forgotten that he stood for secularism.

The strength of the report is its knowledge of Buddhism, yet it devotes just one paragraph to representing Muslim views. I understand the report does not claim to focus on understanding Muslims, but that’s precisely my point. Why do Buddhists who are promoting violence deserve our understanding, and Muslims who have suffered the consequences do not? This lack of focus on Muslims has led to many misunderstandings, not least the fact that the West equates Muslims in Myanmar with the term ‘Rohingya’. There is little appreciation of the diversity within the Muslim communities in Myanmar, nor is there any acknowledgement that most Muslims in Myanmar are probably not (or do not self-identify as) Rohingya. The concerns of Muslims in Rakhine State are acute and need to be addressed, but we can’t continue to ignore the fact that Muslim communities can be found right across Myanmar and that they have been severely affected by this violence.

The report also hints at the need to reform Islamic education, although it rightly acknowledges that efforts to promote tolerance in religious-based schools should take place in all religions. But let’s interrogate this view that somehow Islamic education institutions in Myanmar are partly blame (which is also what the Rakhine Commission Report indicated). Using Islamic education institutions as a convenient scapegoat indicates both an ignorance about these institutions, and a failure to remember the past. For example, prior to 1962 there were top schools run by Muslims (and there were also Muslim children who attended top Christian schools) and these institutions provided a broad education, alongside an Islamic education. When Ne Win took over in 1962, Islamic schools, like all other religious schools, were at risk of nationalisation. And many of these Islamic schools were nationalised. Some, however, that were able to convince Ne Win’s regime that they would only teach a narrow Islamic studies curriculum were allowed to continue to function as madrasas. So I think we need to keep past government policies in mind, before we go pointing the blame at Islamic education institutions.

The report does provide some interesting examples of how Buddhists are participating in inter-religious dialogue. But it fails to mention that some Muslims have been doing this for decades in Myanmar. There has been a very distinct movement in Myanmar for a very long time of Muslims who have bent over backwards to fit in, to tolerate Buddhism and its traditions, and to show that they belong to Myanmar too. These ‘Burmese Muslims’ have insisted on using Burmese language (rather than Arabic or Urdu) as the language of instruction in Islamic schools. These Burmese Muslims have insisted that their women should be free to wear Burmese dress if they choose (which is more revealing than traditional Islamic teachings allow). I am not saying Muslims should have to identify as ‘Burmese’ or compromise their religion in this way; of course if they chose to retain their Indian or Chinese or Shan identity alongside their Muslim identity, they should be allowed to too.

We need to put aside this preoccupation with proving that Buddhism is an inherently peaceful religion while remaining ambiguously silent on Islam. Western media and scholarship needs to intentionally work to dispel the assumptions that Islam is bad and Buddhism is good, that Islam is violent and Buddhism is non-violent, that a monk in a saffron robe is peaceful, but that a man with a beard and wearing a skull cap is violent. These dichotomies are false and contribute to the tensions.

It is time that the West takes a serious reality check on how it views Islam and Buddhism. While the violence and discrimination against Muslims is a reflection on Myanmar, the response of the West is a reflection of persistent stereotypes in the West about Islam and Buddhism.

Melissa Crouch is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore

Myanmar: The calm before the storm? | New Mandala

Myanmar: The calm before the storm? | New Mandala

 

MATTHEW J. WALTON, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

16 NOVEMBER 2014

How should we interpret the current state of anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar that has emerged as one of the greatest threats to the country’s still-uncertain political transition? Compared with previous moments, the last few months have been relatively quiet, with no riots or bloodshed. U Wirathu’s summit meetingwith Bodu Bala Sena leaders in Sri Lanka was cause for concern, but it is still unclear what cooperation might actually materialize between Buddhist partisans in the two countries. Large demonstrations in several cities in favor of four pieces of religious legislation proposed by monks that unfavorably target Muslims have kept the issue in the headlines, but given other pressing constitutional and legislative concerns, there seems to be no rush in Parliament to pass them.

Is this merely a lull, staged possibly in connection with the visits of so many world leaders this month? Can we expect—as many do—to see a renewal of religious violence, possibly even intensifying as we move closer to the 2015 presidential elections?

My colleague Susan Hayward and I have recently published a paper through the East-West Center’s Policy Studies series, analyzing the current religious conflict in Myanmar, including the historical dimensions of Buddhist nationalism, the contemporary anxieties that fuel it, and alternate interpretations that could counter its current anti-Muslim orientation. We outline the many factors that have contributed to the present situation, all of which are likely to persist for at least the near future. While the piece is a relatively comprehensive overview up to the moment, the situation on the ground continues to change.

Between the first draft as a conference paper in November 2013 and revisions in mid-2014, the 969 Movement was eclipsed by MaBaTha (The Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion) while the strategy of “buy Buddhist” boycotts of Muslim businesses shifted to a legislative agenda, with large public rallies and cooperation between nationalist groups and political parties. As the tactics of nationalist organizations shift in response to changing political opportunity structures, anyone seeking to effectively respond to religious violence and discrimination must take this into account.

While the first year or so of religious conflict in Myanmar saw little organized opposition, eventually civil society was galvanized in important ways. In March 2014, many groups came together to create the Pan Zagar campaign, which has sought to promote “flower speech” on- and offline, and to discourage people from dangerous or incendiary speech. Civil society groups also spoke out strongly against the proposed law that would restrict inter-religious marriage. Women and women’s organizationstook the lead in this case, debunking the nationalists’ argument that the bill was designed to protect women and instead demonstrating how it was a further restriction of women’s freedoms.  The price for taking these public stands in opposition to the legislation was high. Some activists faced death threats for speaking out. While human rights activists in Myanmar are no strangers to these kinds of threats, having faced persecution from the paramilitary thugs of previous regimes, the shadowy source of the threats in today’s more complex political environment heightens their chilling effect.

Although the current moment may appear to be a lull, it is critical that those who oppose religious violence and discrimination use these moments of relative calm to counter misguided and bigoted views and to renew social and economic ties between religious communities that have been strained or severed by recent tensions. Effectively responding to religious intolerance in Myanmar will take coordinated efforts on several fronts. Long-term efforts to redesign monastic and school curricula to promote peace and inclusion should be complemented by outreach programs in the short-term that counter misinformed rumors about Muslims that have circulated in Burmese society for decades.

Campaigns that seek to gradually change social norms can also bear fruit now as networks like Pan Zagar create safe spaces for people to stand up to their friends, neighbors and co-workers by challenging religious stereotypes or hurtful language. And of course, the Myanmar government will have to be a part of the solution, ensuring that law enforcement is ultimately empowered as a tool of justice, while being monitored and guided in the interim, as security forces and government officials navigate their roles in a new system that requires them to be compassionate and fair rather than patron-bound and fearful.

We know both the opportunities and the motivation to use religious identity for political gain will increase as the 2015 elections draw closer. Now is the time to ensure that we are doing our best to understand this rapidly changing political landscape and to put in place programs that will strengthen community resilience to withstand these inter-religious tensions and limit the possibility of violence in the short term while building a more tolerant and just Myanmar in which all communities feel secure and included.

Matthew J. Walton is the Aung San Suu Kyi Senior Research Fellow in Modern Burmese Studies, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford