How the Rohingya Escaped
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
There’s talk about trying to get Aung San Suu Kyi to the ICC. People complained about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, but all objective reports show credible allegations of true modern genocide (shocking for a word meaninglessly bandied about so often) in Kyi’s case, giving the prize a new low with a recipient going from Oslo to The Hague in no time at all.
(EDIT: The link is even more moving in fullscreen on a desktop. Excellent photography.)
(EDIT2: I'm aware of when Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize and for what. The irony of going from oppressed recipient of a NPP to oppressor standing trial in The Hague doesn't change.)
Merely being accessory to genocide and not actually an instigator of it doesn't seem better.
>This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya to be Bengali, rejecting the term Rohingya as a recent invention, created for political reasons. (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/rohingya-m...)
Intellectual Dignity, these feely-discussions lack it.
This piece reminded me a bit of the self-recorded documentary of a Syrian woman trying to escape the turmoil there: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/aug/02/escape-f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...
Nothing at all I say !
There was strong US influence on Latin American and Middle Eastern dictatorships. Absolute power corrupts all as USA domination on the world would mean more countries having to comply to USA interests.
I believe rather the world will become a decentralized world govt under a UN where countries are abolished for regions instead of artifically created nation states that was predefined through conquering and colonization. Where we dont define humanity based on countries but as one single species.
Centuries ago, democracy was looked as mob rule and republics in the Roman sense were favored because they didnt involve the common folk. Its almost amazing that aristocrats and nobles (politicans of the time) agreed to it which they didn't. When a minority gains more than a majority, the majority will try to fight for its powers. Within countries, theres a minority-majority play with national authorities if politicans are a self-serving class separate from that of the general population.
I dont think they will agree but I see it as the future where we start losing notions of countries and people's cultures start blending together through tech, media and economy.
Its the trend for successful products and philosophies to gradually expand and become more global, not the other way around.
I dont pretend to know the future but there have been other theories floating around like the Dark Enlightenment who call for (in my mind wackjob) conservative republics with ideals from past centuries that run as competing corporations instead of countries as the future.
Frequently, that would require it to stand up to itself.
There is so much evil in this world, what the Rohingya face today my own people endured in 2009. At the hands of thr Sri Lankan government, who also happens to be buddhistic, ten thousands of innocent Tamils were massacred. Women and children raped. Babies murdered.
The UN wrote a huge report findng the Sri Lankan government guilty only for China and Russia to veto against any juridicial proceeding.
One of the reason i am so dissapointed in Trump, he doesnt seem to understand when good retreats, evil will triump. Not everything in this world is about fair transaction of money for goods and service. When the oppressed in 3rd world countries look for justice, they look for strong powers of democracy, they look upto US.
Throughout history US would come to aid, today its about bowing down to communist human rights abusers like China for fair trade and access to its market.
To be honest with you, at least in my memory of news coverage from the 90s until the war ended, there was very little if any notice of your civil war or the plight of the people. The most attention Sri Lankans might have gotten from average Americans were either post-tsunami (even then, more focused on Thailand and Indonesia) or when MIA broke onto the music scene (a very small demographic).
I've been to parts of the world where 'USA' was used as graffiti and people loved us because of what we had done for them but the average American would be hard-pressed to identify what we saved them from, if even the where the country is.
There are massive arguments for isolationism once more in the country, and ceding both soft and hard power to other countries. Many people don't understand the good we have done in the world, as well as the bad.
You are definitely barking up the wrong tree if you think the current administration would have any interest but their own at heart.
I'm not sure this is an accurate assessment of US foreign policy in any period. I'm sort of scratching my head to think of any significant US interventions that weren't self-serving. Beyond the original Manifest Destiny expansionism, there's a rich tradition of US fillibusterism[1], gunboat diplomacy, proxy wars, banana dictators, coups, support of the drug trade, the list goes on, and on, and on.
Unfortunately, US role in Bangladesh(East Pakistan)[1], Vietnam and South America shows they do it so only if political/economic reasons align.
[1] http://warisboring.com/in-1971-the-u-s-navy-almost-fought-th...
As well the blatant irony of her Nobel Peace Prize status, I can see a lot of international fans' heartbroken.
Yes. Islam vs Buddhism or Buddhism vs Islam, whichever way you wanna look at it.
IIRC they took some phones running Serval Mesh back, but not much else happened. They were pretty interested in building communication infrastructure so they could document the (at the time) slow moving atrocity.
http://news.trust.org//slideshow/?id=356b4ab3-7e12-440f-9781...
My patience with Aung San Suu Kyi has run out completely. Too little said, too little done, too late for anything else.
Normally, yes, but there are several violent buddhist groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Karen_Buddhist_Army
There's a slight subtlety to this. Buddhist ethics are very different to Judeo-Christian ethics. The Buddhist equivalent to "thou shalt not kill" is the first of the five precepts, "panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami", which loosely translates to "I undertake the rule of training to refrain from killing living beings". This is not so much an absolute proscription as a broad axiomatic principle.
In western terms, Buddhist ethics are most closely aligned with negative utilitarianism - broadly speaking, Buddhists seek to minimise net suffering. One study found that, when presented with the trolley car problem, Buddist monks were drastically more likely to push the man off the footbridge than Americans.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/how-d...
The main religious support for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya comes from monks affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, a hardline nationalist group. From their perspective, the Rohingya represent an existential threat to the Rakhine people and the republic of Myanmar. If this assessment were true, then the expulsion of Rohingya people could be interpreted as the least-harm option, even if it involves substantial violence. Although the vast majority of Buddhists condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, it is not intrinsically incompatible with Buddhist ethics.
This conflict is not new. Rohingya Islamist groups have been fighting the government of Myanmar/Burma since 1947, with the aim of establishing an Islamic regime in Rakhine state. The current crisis was most likely precipitated by an attack on border guards in 2016, which Islamist militant groups claimed responsibility for. There is clear evidence that Rohingya guerrilla groups are being trained in Bangladesh; there is also substantial evidence of ties between Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists in Myanmar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western...
I strongly disapprove of the oppression of the Rohingya people and the silence from the civilian government, but I do think that the western media has presented a grossly over-simplified narrative that frames the actions of the Myanmar people as senseless and unprovoked. I would ask the reader to consider how their country would react if Islamist guerrillas were active in their own back yard, sponsored by a neighbouring Muslim nation.
For the level of Buddhism practiced in this area (Theravada) it is incompatible, there’s clearly nothing good that can come from it. They were clearly taught not to do this, there’s no ambiguity.
Additionally monks have no authority, they are not saints or have even the slightest clue about anything, anyone can put on a robe and be a monk. This isn’t understood in the West, where a monk is considered to be a title, but it’s really a zero, like saying your child got into pre-school.
The locals did seem to treat it as more deference to the station than the person, I met someone who had been a monk and quit three times and his family treated him as a monk when he was a monk and as a regular guy when he wasn't. Beyond all that there are still obvious cults of personality where different monks gain a following that can be quite fervent.
What you're seeing in Thailand is respect for Buddhism itself, and a way to keep people interested in Buddhism. In Buddhism there are levels of realization, and a monk is a zero on that scale. Not sure how else to clarify. There are other titles, normally translated as Venerable, which should indicate at least some modest level of accomplishment. But to cite a monk as having any idea at all is fantasy, you just put on a robe, and anyone is suddenly a monk, no education or knowledge required, let alone realization.
Anyone in the US can run for a local political position, they are not powerless just because anyone can do it.
To say that it is intrinsically incompatible is just plain wrong, to give an example even the Buddha didn't meddle in political affairs. You just gave a really good example of people bending the rules to make them more aligned with what they believe is right. It's like saying that the Bible is not incompatible with machismo and patriarchy. And on the topic of Buddhism, any "Buddhist" country who promotes violence is like IS to me, they just use a religion for self interest.
If, say, some Burmese Muslims held a large protest march in Yangon, would they run the risk of being targeted as a group? If so, I'd say that their silence is as a result of fear rather than support.
Most of the discussion is around unrelated parties having empathy, because there are suffering people and the political machine is not helping anywhere.
The tricky part is having an objective discussion, for example, I have no idea who these soldiers in the bushes are. This article didn't tell me. Where were they before? Hasn't this crisis been going on since like forever? What changed to accelerate this? What is the majority power doing, thinking, dealing with?
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0928/Is-Rohingya...
Not to mention that Judaism already sets a fine precedent for the massive gray area between ethnicity and religion, just for a familiar example.