Canada MPs vote to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of honorary citizenship | Hacker News Reader

Canada MPs vote to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of honorary citizenship

bbc.com

40 pointsforkLding16 comments

I'm curious what people think a solution to a seemingly recurring trend throughout the world ought be. Let's create a scenario. It may not entirely precisely describe this exact case, but it's not terribly far off and generalizes well in any case. You have a midsized population of uniquely homogeneous people - let's say in the low millions. Of these people a small percent are actively radicalized and will indiscriminately murder and engage in other violent activity to pursue their agenda. A moderate percent will not engage in the criminal behavior directly, but will actively aid or assist the radicalized individuals. And a large percent may not be willing to participate in the radical element or directly assist them, but remain, at minimum, complicit in their behavior and will certainly do nothing to aid in any law enforcement effort. They've never seen anything, or heard anything - even when they have. And a secondary effect of this system is that there tends to be a trend towards radicalization rather than away from it, and you even have incidents of the radicalized murdering members within the population that are found to be too cooperative with law enforcement.

What is the proper way to handle the problem? The numbers and lack of cooperativeness make it practically impossible to remove the radical element. How do you solve the issue while also ensuring respect for human rights? Makes the Kobayashi Maru look like a cakewalk, and this is real.

Except you are completely wrong with your hypothesis or understanding of the situation. This is an issue with Hacker News, so called armchair experts providing their analysis.

The majority are not complicit in anything. Fundamentalists have killed more muslims in a year in some of these countries than in total in the west or any other non Muslim country.

This rhetoric that somehow muslim populations don't cooperate with law enforcement when in fact they have been the greatest victims is frankly dishonest.

I think a lot of people would benefit from looking at the facts rather than trying to push their pseudoscientific theories on the internet.

The issue here is actually pretty clear cut. You have a stateless people systematically killed and eradicated by Buddhist extremists. I suggest people do a deep dive on the actual crisis.

> I think a lot of people would benefit from looking at the facts rather than trying to push their pseudoscientific theories on the internet.

These pseudoscientific theories are slowly becoming salonfähig (again) in public discourse. Populist politicians worldwide are becoming bolder and less restrained in uttering unprovable or downright hateful claims about 'race' and religion.

The facts don't seem to matter all that much any more in this post-truth landscape.

> The issue here is actually pretty clear cut.

I would have expected anyone on HN to be able to grasp that — with just a bare minimum of reading or watching reputable newspapers or televised news — but apparently not.

Don't you think it would be useful to provide impartial evidence that clearly supports your statements? I can. But to clarify something - this issue is not only restricted to Islamic extremism. For instance in times past the Irish Republican Army fit the exact same pattern. It's a typical issue that society runs into, and it's rarely overcome in a desirable fashion. Anyhow, back to data. Pew in 2013 did a rather extensive study on Islamic views [1] around the world.

They did not survey in Myanmar, but they did survey in Bangladesh which is where many are choosing to migrate towards. They unfortunately chose to obfuscate their questioning on terrorism by mixing 'often/sometimes' and 'rarely/never' so you can't actually see the percent that answer never. In any case, even with this padding it's not pretty. In Bangladesh 26% of people responded that suicide bombing is justified 'often/sometimes'. Other data including 82% believing that Sharia Law should be the national law (82% in Bangladesh) further emphasizing the problem, and the zeitgeist. The Muslim population in Bangladesh is 146 million. That means, in that one country, you have some 38 million people that thinking killing other people by suicide bombing is acceptable 'sometimes' or 'often'. That's a major problem.

Anyhow, if you have any impartial data to share, I'd be happy to read and consider it. I'm always open to considering that my biases may be incorrect. Something that can not be said for many people...

[1] - http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...

This survey makes it seem like more Muslims are radicalized than you seem to think based on what you wrote

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-surv...

First of all that is looking at British Muslims who are a tiny minority of the 1.6-2 billion Muslims in the world.

Maybe take a look at the number of muslim civilians killed in Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh by the number of Muslim extremists. It's a lot more than you seem to think.

British Muslims would seem to be one of the least radical Muslims. After all, they don't kill gays like Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen etc.

I never claimed that radical Muslims don't want to kill other Muslims. In fact the Sunni and Shiite conflict probably killed more Muslims than non-Muslims.

"The majority are not complicit in anything."

I disagree. I have heard a mother who was complaining that the police had not arrested her son earlier before he became a gangster. I think she was complicit by not giving a proper education to her son.

I am sorry I don't follow. You think most Muslims grow up to gangsters? There's about 1.6bn Muslims in the world, and the majority of them do not engage in criminal activities. Have you ever been to a Muslim country? Crime rates in some of those places is ridiculously low compared to some western countries (i.e. UAE etc)

I'm pretty sure you just described run-of-the-mill organized crime.

Anti-gang policing is not trivial, but there are plenty of effective tactics that don't involve becoming a police state: pay informants if you have to, flip small players on the big ones, charge accomplices and dis-incentivize association with gang activities, offer good, legal alternatives for disaffected young men to improve their lives.

In Scotland we've had some success at reducing gang-related violent crime in areas like Glasgow, largely by going after the root causes of the issues. It was a mix of lobbying the communities these violent groups existed in to reduce support for them, trying to create alternatives for the actual gang members, and increasing sentences for carrying knives and other weapons used in violent offences. Glasgow's no longer the "murder capital of Europe" that it's been branded in the past, and violent crime is at a forty year low across Scotland.

Look into the Violence Reduction Unit if you're interested, there's been a bunch of interesting reports on it lately.

There are plenty of examples where these situations have been ameliorated over time. A great example to draw from in the west is the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. In the end the solution was in large part to give the minority political representation, a real stake in the process and some necessary compromises to make peace.

NI in particular was not so much "solve the problem while respecting human rights" as "solve the problem by respecting human rights". Embedding equal justice in law and ending the freedom of the security services to engage in practices ranging from arbitrary search to shooting unarmed demonstrators and blowing up a band in an attempt to frame them as terrorists was a key part of the process.

Sectarianism existed in ireland by design. Irish men on both sides of the religious divide wanted greater autonomy from London and this was not to the British government's liking and so they backed the most hardline group and fostered disunity through fear. When it came to partitioning ireland they left out counties from northern ireland that would have meant a catholic majority and so ensured there would not easily be a unification. These were common tactics of the British empire, which was probably one of the greatest empire building groups around. I think it would be naive to think these tactics are uncommon and isolated and not still in use they are after all very effective, the people are not attacking you if they are attacking each other

Stop the centuries long control you've tried to hold over their homes, end the regular use of bombs and invasions, stop supporting the authoritarian regimes in their nations, and give the lm the sovereignty they crave.

Like in this scenario. There isn't really a radical element involved, and we are "supporting Human Rights" by backing a regime that many think is committing genocide.

Assuming that there's actually a problem rather than crime reports being fabricated or exaggerated by those that want to promote genocide, and that there's actually a desire to deal with it by means other than gratuitous state violence:

It turns out that you're not the first to ask this question and there is a small but determined body of both academic and military research into how to do de-radicalisation. e.g. https://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu/sites/vlaamsvredesinsti...

Note that this study often puts material conditions at the root; so long as a group really is disadvantaged and marginalised to their detriment, there's always going to be some politics which can lead to radicalisation.

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