The Definition of Genocide is clear and precise: “The targeting of a group of people, based on culture, ethnicity and religion, with the subsequent intent and act of violence against such a group, leading to large scale killing of such a group, without any recourse for their protection..” This could not be clearer ! In addition, one may commit genocide against members on one’s own race, religion and culture.
Genocide (NOT EXHAUSTIVE);
Jews
Romani
Armenians
Sudanese
Kurds
Yezidi
Khmer Rouge
Tutsis
Native Americans (North and South)
Bengali Muslims
Berbers
China (Cultural Revolution)
Stalin
Tsar Nicholas II
Syrians (Bashar al-Assad)
Japan’s occupation of Korea, China,
Formosa and SE Asia.
Australian Aborigines
Ibo of Nigeria (1971)
African-Americans (slavery and Tuskegee experiments)
East Timor (Timor Leste)
Indonesia (1965)
NON-GENOCIDE (NOT EXHAUSTIVE):
“Rohingya”
“Palestinians”
Bosnians
Orang Asal (Malaysia/Indonesia) [Persecution]
Ami (Taiwan) Forced Acculturation
Ainu Forced Acculturation
Arab Christians (e.g., Copts and Chaldeans) Persecution
Tibetans Persecution
Uighur Persecution
Persecution of Ahmadis by Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Persecution of Papuans by Indonesia.
Malaysia (1969)
Bhuddha got his hair shaved because he had attained renunciation- reached in a state where he neither despised nor craved for worldly affirmations about beauty, outer appearance but stressed on the thing- which is upright beyond the bondage of time- to have righeous unbiased thoughts, to respect others.
He had no reason to look distinct as he himself wanted priotity should be given to thoughts than to a thing/person.He never wanted anyone to follow him blindly but to judge first what he said then only to follow.
There is no ground hating him just because he is not god-by-birth of someone or the one who denies to accept what he said.
@Still, not, somewhat, or a little bit, confused 🙂
The Yale report is not, contrary to what you might expect, written by experts. Its authors are law school students. The main purpose is to give them some training in ‘human rights advocacy’. It’s surprising that Yale has allowed its students who have never been to Myanmar to claim genocide here just to give them some training.
This created a perfect opportunity for Fortify Rights (FR). Big-name institutions attract attention, exactly what FR is seeking. As a nascent NGO (not even tax exempt yet), you need to attract some publicity to establish legitimacy as a human rights organization. Yale name is a good deal. In the future, you will be doing ‘good things’ to create a better world. It’s just a small fabrication, and once only! The end justifies the means, doesn’t it?
You might say, the material, not the authors, is all that matters. But if you take out FR and Al Jazeera, both of which have distorted, twisted and fabricated facts several times in the past, almost nothing is left of the ‘evidence’ in the report. The authors have never been to Myanmar. They wrote everything based on what they called ‘literature review’. Apart from that, many claims in the report are not supported by the cited text. There are over 20 NGOs including famous ones like MSF, NRC and IOM, operating in Rakhine. If you need more, just call election observers and ask them about what is happening.
Arguably, the most difficult aspect of any study about Myanmar is to distinguish facts from fiction. Not to mention a student in a totally unrelated major like me, even experts like Robert Taylor have to struggle on that one. For example, are Letpadan students democracy heroes or zeroes trying to gain some attention? Since those alleged to have been killed were found to be alive, did Du Char Yan Tan incident occur at all? Even after verifying facts, we have to choose which facts are the most representative of the issue. If you had lived in Myanmar in 2012, you would have been fed up with photos of ‘Bengalis’ burning Rakhine homes. These photos are real. But if you’re from outside of Myanmar, you would see photos showing suffering of the ‘Rohingya’. Again, all these photos (at least from reliable media) are real and the Muslims certainly suffered more than Rakhine on aggregate. BUT why are the depictions of the same event radically different?
This is a situation what psychologists might call “what-you-see-is-all-there-is” (WYSIATI) or “availability heuristic”. Both sides rely on the media for facts, creating polarized perspectives since the journalists themselves choose which facts to present based on their own biases. We have to be mindful of what we have not seen. Moreover, we also have to care about our own biases that come from our upbringing. For example, if I’m a Buddhist from Chittagong hill tract, I would side with the Rakhine. If I’m someone from a Western country, I would be too eager to take the side of the Muslims, and lecture Rakhine in the name of “human rights” (some out of sympathy but many out of we-have-better-morals-than-yours!).
My post is not to debunk each and every allegation. Certainly, it took incredibly huge ego for some people in New Haven who have never been to Myanmar to lecture every expert here in a way that sounds “We know it better than you all!” If they need to feed their ego by lecturing Myanmar, let them. My point though is that, their assumption that such extreme allegations ‘do no harm’ is wrong. The authors believe that, by exaggerating the issue to the maximum, they would attract international attention and offer the Muslims maximally possible protection. They assumed that there can be ‘no harm done’ by doing so. And that’s wrong. As I stated above, such allegations encourage siege mentalities and force people to stand on their ground rather than choose to compromise. This risks becoming a deadlock similar to the one all Burmese had suffered from 1990 to 2011.
(Related ‘genocides’ Yale should investigate.
Did black Americans suffer a ‘genocide’ prior to the 1960s?
Wasn’t detention of Japanese Americans in World War II a clear-cut ‘genocide’?
How about the mass killings in Vietnam and elsewhere? Agent Orange?
Or wasn’t the mujahideen rebellion in the 1960s also a genocide? Or does genocide only occur when Yale wants to label it as such?)
If you are looking for a fact-by-fact analysis, you might find this post from Derek Tonkin interesting.
Dear Still Confused,
I appreciate your points and your argument. Just some comments:
1) that the particular name isn’t the point
True, but it has to capture some of the hostility that is intended for the group,
2) the label can be constructed by victims (“we are Rohingya”) or by perpetrators (“you are Bengalis” or “you are people-whose-claim-to-Rohingya-identify-we-reject”).
Not quite: The point is that the emic and etic names might differ considerably, and that can already be part of the problem.
For this prong of the definition of genocide, what matters is that a racial/ethnic/national group is being singled out as such.
You should better say: any group, because the markers are often quite arbitrary!
it isn’t only riots that are genocidal,
That is exactly the point: certain acts might be genocidal, but not genocide. Genocide need clear intent by state or other power structures. Let me explain: the pogrom of 9th November 1938 in Germany was genocidal, but not yet the full-fledged genocide perpetrated later (though these riots were also government-launched). There is a progression, and it is important to see that, if only to be able to intervene and nip the beginnings in the bud
restrictions on access to health care, employment, food, education
Precisely: these are government or military measures which can be clearly prove genocidal (as we saw with the Tamils of whom 40000 were massacred at the end of the civil war, which was a clear instance of genocide).
So what I am arguing here is similarly to what you say: use terms carefully and weigh the evidence, if only to be able to intervene before it is too late…
[…] serious was the storm of online criticism in Indonesia that greeted an article by Indonesia expert Professor Michael Buehler, which questioned the propriety of a US$80,000 […]
[…] tulisan asli Dr Michael Buehler dalam Bahasa Inggris: Waiting in the White House lobby dan pernyataan KBRI di Washington: Keterangan Pers KBRI Washington. (BBC tidak bertangung jawab […]
“To what extent did Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition to the generals stem from her indignation that the military had usurped the God given right of families such as hers to run the country.” Discuss.
Slaughter you say. Please try to look at recent news like NCA and such. The Army is aiming for peace now. However a minority of the rebel groups did not sign the treaty. The Army does not unnecessarily slaughter innocent people. If only they drop down their guns, this needless war wouldn’t begin in the first place
The Karen State Democracy and Development Party (KSDDP) is the political voice of the DKBA which came into existence at the time of its BGF incarnation. It is one of four Buddhist Pwo Karen parties in the southeast with different agendas. Another of these four parties, the newly formed Karen Democratic Party (KDP), emerged in a recent split with the PSDP, only for yet another new party, the appropriately named Karen Unity and Democracy Party (KUDP), to emerge at much the same time.
The differences and developments here speak of considerable political divisions amongst Buddhist Karen and their leaders. With four of the six Karen parties implicated in this, the Karen political project (certainly in the Karen heartland) is therefore predominantly in the hands of Buddhist Karen amongst whom the significant political fault lines appear.
The above makes divisions within Christian Karen party politics look like something of a dull sideshow, where the fledgling Karen National Party (KNP) has emerged as an alternative model to that of the Karen Peoples Party (KPP). The KNP is so small that it poses little threat to the KPP, still less after these elections. The aging KPP leadership are the best of friends over many years and are more likely to retire together than break up and form new political parties.
If you’re talking about the recent ‘NCA divisions’ in the leadership of the Christian Karen National Union then that of course is something else. I would say that if there has been any betrayal here it is the KNU’s betrayal of its NCCT brothers like the Kachin, whom you mentioned earlier, rather than their own people; but we all need to get a closer look at the specific shape, size and substance of that big juicy carrot you talk about before calling it.
With the KNU still deciding what to do with itself and the political parties left reeling in the wake of the NLD juggernaut the most pressing question now is ‘what leadership?’ because I don’t see much leadership, whether it be Buddhist Karen, Christian Karen or Benevolent Karen leadership, right now.
Terima kasih atas klarifikasinya, Dr. Buehler. Sebagai tambahan, ada dokumen lanjutan lain terkait yang bisa diakses dari situs FARA yang bersifat seperti laporan kegiatan dan keuangan, di situ ada tanggal-tanggal pembayaran yang diterima, dan kegiatan yang dilakukan. Bisa dilihat di http://www.fara.gov/docs/6229-Supplemental-Statement-20150730-2.pdf
[…] serious was the storm of online criticism in Indonesia that greeted an article by Indonesia expert Professor Michael Buehler, which questioned the propriety of a US$80,000 […]
The DKBA is a relatively recent phenomenon arising from historical disenfranchisement of the Buddhist Karen in the struggle finally exploited to its tremendous military and political advantage by the military regime.
The current division I believe has been among the Christian leadership, achieved by dangling a big juicy carrot in front of them which some of them just found it too hard to resist and attractive enough to betray their own people.
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Private: Genocide and the vote
The Definition of Genocide is clear and precise: “The targeting of a group of people, based on culture, ethnicity and religion, with the subsequent intent and act of violence against such a group, leading to large scale killing of such a group, without any recourse for their protection..” This could not be clearer ! In addition, one may commit genocide against members on one’s own race, religion and culture.
Genocide (NOT EXHAUSTIVE);
Jews
Romani
Armenians
Sudanese
Kurds
Yezidi
Khmer Rouge
Tutsis
Native Americans (North and South)
Bengali Muslims
Berbers
China (Cultural Revolution)
Stalin
Tsar Nicholas II
Syrians (Bashar al-Assad)
Japan’s occupation of Korea, China,
Formosa and SE Asia.
Australian Aborigines
Ibo of Nigeria (1971)
African-Americans (slavery and Tuskegee experiments)
East Timor (Timor Leste)
Indonesia (1965)
NON-GENOCIDE (NOT EXHAUSTIVE):
“Rohingya”
“Palestinians”
Bosnians
Orang Asal (Malaysia/Indonesia) [Persecution]
Ami (Taiwan) Forced Acculturation
Ainu Forced Acculturation
Arab Christians (e.g., Copts and Chaldeans) Persecution
Tibetans Persecution
Uighur Persecution
Persecution of Ahmadis by Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Persecution of Papuans by Indonesia.
Malaysia (1969)
Malaysian women parliamentarians: why the different numbers?
[…] Martin argues that there are a few reasons why women candidates in Malaysia have a hard time getting elected. One is that political parties […]
The Buddha was bald
Bhuddha got his hair shaved because he had attained renunciation- reached in a state where he neither despised nor craved for worldly affirmations about beauty, outer appearance but stressed on the thing- which is upright beyond the bondage of time- to have righeous unbiased thoughts, to respect others.
He had no reason to look distinct as he himself wanted priotity should be given to thoughts than to a thing/person.He never wanted anyone to follow him blindly but to judge first what he said then only to follow.
There is no ground hating him just because he is not god-by-birth of someone or the one who denies to accept what he said.
Private: Genocide and the vote
@Still, not, somewhat, or a little bit, confused 🙂
The Yale report is not, contrary to what you might expect, written by experts. Its authors are law school students. The main purpose is to give them some training in ‘human rights advocacy’. It’s surprising that Yale has allowed its students who have never been to Myanmar to claim genocide here just to give them some training.
This created a perfect opportunity for Fortify Rights (FR). Big-name institutions attract attention, exactly what FR is seeking. As a nascent NGO (not even tax exempt yet), you need to attract some publicity to establish legitimacy as a human rights organization. Yale name is a good deal. In the future, you will be doing ‘good things’ to create a better world. It’s just a small fabrication, and once only! The end justifies the means, doesn’t it?
You might say, the material, not the authors, is all that matters. But if you take out FR and Al Jazeera, both of which have distorted, twisted and fabricated facts several times in the past, almost nothing is left of the ‘evidence’ in the report. The authors have never been to Myanmar. They wrote everything based on what they called ‘literature review’. Apart from that, many claims in the report are not supported by the cited text. There are over 20 NGOs including famous ones like MSF, NRC and IOM, operating in Rakhine. If you need more, just call election observers and ask them about what is happening.
Arguably, the most difficult aspect of any study about Myanmar is to distinguish facts from fiction. Not to mention a student in a totally unrelated major like me, even experts like Robert Taylor have to struggle on that one. For example, are Letpadan students democracy heroes or zeroes trying to gain some attention? Since those alleged to have been killed were found to be alive, did Du Char Yan Tan incident occur at all? Even after verifying facts, we have to choose which facts are the most representative of the issue. If you had lived in Myanmar in 2012, you would have been fed up with photos of ‘Bengalis’ burning Rakhine homes. These photos are real. But if you’re from outside of Myanmar, you would see photos showing suffering of the ‘Rohingya’. Again, all these photos (at least from reliable media) are real and the Muslims certainly suffered more than Rakhine on aggregate. BUT why are the depictions of the same event radically different?
This is a situation what psychologists might call “what-you-see-is-all-there-is” (WYSIATI) or “availability heuristic”. Both sides rely on the media for facts, creating polarized perspectives since the journalists themselves choose which facts to present based on their own biases. We have to be mindful of what we have not seen. Moreover, we also have to care about our own biases that come from our upbringing. For example, if I’m a Buddhist from Chittagong hill tract, I would side with the Rakhine. If I’m someone from a Western country, I would be too eager to take the side of the Muslims, and lecture Rakhine in the name of “human rights” (some out of sympathy but many out of we-have-better-morals-than-yours!).
My post is not to debunk each and every allegation. Certainly, it took incredibly huge ego for some people in New Haven who have never been to Myanmar to lecture every expert here in a way that sounds “We know it better than you all!” If they need to feed their ego by lecturing Myanmar, let them. My point though is that, their assumption that such extreme allegations ‘do no harm’ is wrong. The authors believe that, by exaggerating the issue to the maximum, they would attract international attention and offer the Muslims maximally possible protection. They assumed that there can be ‘no harm done’ by doing so. And that’s wrong. As I stated above, such allegations encourage siege mentalities and force people to stand on their ground rather than choose to compromise. This risks becoming a deadlock similar to the one all Burmese had suffered from 1990 to 2011.
(Related ‘genocides’ Yale should investigate.
Did black Americans suffer a ‘genocide’ prior to the 1960s?
Wasn’t detention of Japanese Americans in World War II a clear-cut ‘genocide’?
How about the mass killings in Vietnam and elsewhere? Agent Orange?
Or wasn’t the mujahideen rebellion in the 1960s also a genocide? Or does genocide only occur when Yale wants to label it as such?)
If you are looking for a fact-by-fact analysis, you might find this post from Derek Tonkin interesting.
http://www.networkmyanmar.org/images/stories/PDF21/Myanmar-Human-Rights-and-Academic-Integrity.pdf
If you want to read a field research from a similar institution, you should try this report from Harvard.
http://ash.harvard.edu/files/a_fatal_distraction_from_federalism_religious_conflict_in_rakhine.pdf
Or just read The Politics of Rakhine State from the International Crisis Group.
http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-east-asia/burma-myanmar/261-myanmar-the-politics-of-rakhine-state.pdf
Or you can find reports from the United Nations as well. They are available on the UN website.
Best wishes,
Soe Win Han
Private: Genocide and the vote
Dear Still Confused,
I appreciate your points and your argument. Just some comments:
1) that the particular name isn’t the point
True, but it has to capture some of the hostility that is intended for the group,
2) the label can be constructed by victims (“we are Rohingya”) or by perpetrators (“you are Bengalis” or “you are people-whose-claim-to-Rohingya-identify-we-reject”).
Not quite: The point is that the emic and etic names might differ considerably, and that can already be part of the problem.
For this prong of the definition of genocide, what matters is that a racial/ethnic/national group is being singled out as such.
You should better say: any group, because the markers are often quite arbitrary!
it isn’t only riots that are genocidal,
That is exactly the point: certain acts might be genocidal, but not genocide. Genocide need clear intent by state or other power structures. Let me explain: the pogrom of 9th November 1938 in Germany was genocidal, but not yet the full-fledged genocide perpetrated later (though these riots were also government-launched). There is a progression, and it is important to see that, if only to be able to intervene and nip the beginnings in the bud
restrictions on access to health care, employment, food, education
Precisely: these are government or military measures which can be clearly prove genocidal (as we saw with the Tamils of whom 40000 were massacred at the end of the civil war, which was a clear instance of genocide).
So what I am arguing here is similarly to what you say: use terms carefully and weigh the evidence, if only to be able to intervene before it is too late…
Waiting in the White House lobby
[…] serious was the storm of online criticism in Indonesia that greeted an article by Indonesia expert Professor Michael Buehler, which questioned the propriety of a US$80,000 […]
Stopover charm is not enough
I think we can actually not expect much from Australia if it maintains its “neo- colonialistic” arrogant stance as it shows itself lately.
NLD needs to lift the standard
[…] NLD needs to lift the standard […]
Waiting in the White House lobby
[…] tulisan asli Dr Michael Buehler dalam Bahasa Inggris: Waiting in the White House lobby dan pernyataan KBRI di Washington: Keterangan Pers KBRI Washington. (BBC tidak bertangung jawab […]
The president and the proxy
Myanmar 101 Question 1.
“To what extent did Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition to the generals stem from her indignation that the military had usurped the God given right of families such as hers to run the country.” Discuss.
The King Never Smiles?
Dont bring it back to Thailand.
Just read it outside, for your safety.
The president and the proxy
Slaughter you say. Please try to look at recent news like NCA and such. The Army is aiming for peace now. However a minority of the rebel groups did not sign the treaty. The Army does not unnecessarily slaughter innocent people. If only they drop down their guns, this needless war wouldn’t begin in the first place
Karen parties and the vote
The Karen State Democracy and Development Party (KSDDP) is the political voice of the DKBA which came into existence at the time of its BGF incarnation. It is one of four Buddhist Pwo Karen parties in the southeast with different agendas. Another of these four parties, the newly formed Karen Democratic Party (KDP), emerged in a recent split with the PSDP, only for yet another new party, the appropriately named Karen Unity and Democracy Party (KUDP), to emerge at much the same time.
The differences and developments here speak of considerable political divisions amongst Buddhist Karen and their leaders. With four of the six Karen parties implicated in this, the Karen political project (certainly in the Karen heartland) is therefore predominantly in the hands of Buddhist Karen amongst whom the significant political fault lines appear.
The above makes divisions within Christian Karen party politics look like something of a dull sideshow, where the fledgling Karen National Party (KNP) has emerged as an alternative model to that of the Karen Peoples Party (KPP). The KNP is so small that it poses little threat to the KPP, still less after these elections. The aging KPP leadership are the best of friends over many years and are more likely to retire together than break up and form new political parties.
If you’re talking about the recent ‘NCA divisions’ in the leadership of the Christian Karen National Union then that of course is something else. I would say that if there has been any betrayal here it is the KNU’s betrayal of its NCCT brothers like the Kachin, whom you mentioned earlier, rather than their own people; but we all need to get a closer look at the specific shape, size and substance of that big juicy carrot you talk about before calling it.
With the KNU still deciding what to do with itself and the political parties left reeling in the wake of the NLD juggernaut the most pressing question now is ‘what leadership?’ because I don’t see much leadership, whether it be Buddhist Karen, Christian Karen or Benevolent Karen leadership, right now.
Soal lobi, pertanyaan yang belum dijawab
Terima kasih atas klarifikasinya, Dr. Buehler. Sebagai tambahan, ada dokumen lanjutan lain terkait yang bisa diakses dari situs FARA yang bersifat seperti laporan kegiatan dan keuangan, di situ ada tanggal-tanggal pembayaran yang diterima, dan kegiatan yang dilakukan. Bisa dilihat di http://www.fara.gov/docs/6229-Supplemental-Statement-20150730-2.pdf
Elections just the beginning
[…] article forms part of New Mandala’s ‘Myanmar and the vote‘ […]
The president and the proxy
Meanwhile, the NLD has done nothing to stop the slaughter of Shan and Kachin civilians. The Burmese army needs not just constraining but defeating
Waiting in the White House lobby
[…] serious was the storm of online criticism in Indonesia that greeted an article by Indonesia expert Professor Michael Buehler, which questioned the propriety of a US$80,000 […]
Waiting in the White House lobby
[…] strong denial is in response to an article published by New Mandala last week written by professor Michael Buehler, lecturer in Southeast […]
Malaysia’s ‘strongman’?
[…] http://www.newmandala.org/2015/11/09/malaysias-strongman/ […]
Karen parties and the vote
The DKBA is a relatively recent phenomenon arising from historical disenfranchisement of the Buddhist Karen in the struggle finally exploited to its tremendous military and political advantage by the military regime.
The current division I believe has been among the Christian leadership, achieved by dangling a big juicy carrot in front of them which some of them just found it too hard to resist and attractive enough to betray their own people.