Arakan is a good spot for Chinese settlements and naval outposts, but first the railway line accompanying the gas/oil pipeline from Kunming to the terminal at Kyaukphru must be built, no?
“Resource grabs” is a loaded term and doesn’t apply to all the cases that have occurred under Order 64, but yes, there has been a marked increase in these kind of evictions, displacements, and prosecutions since the coup. The last time there was this level of such actions was in the 1990s, though there was a uptick in them in both the Surayud and Abhisit governments.
ISIS or Al-Queda, I suspect could already be ‘extorting’ protection money from the royals of Brunei, which Greg Lopez inadvertently omitted from the purported ISIS target list in Asia.
‘c’ Myanmar IS a Buddhist country not only the 2/3 Bamar but also because 4 (Shan, Mon, Karen, Kaya, Of course Yakhine)other major ethnic groups are of majority Buddhist faith. That sure make Myanmar a Buddhist country.
‘d’ How the Yakhine is view within is not the premises of a westerner should use. How ever the truth is the Muslim Kalar are taking over the meager western part of Myanmar by “just being there” validated and justified and assisted by the west as well as NGO and yes OIC..
Last of all
OIC only “DO ISLAM IS for ISLAM and NOTHING ELSE”
There are ongoing Jihadist activity that can only attributed to OIC money.
Burmese seem to treat the much longer and even more porous border with China very differently. Why? Perhaps Suu Kyi should be visiting Bangladesh instead of going to China?
At a recent presentation, Associate Professor Bilveer Singh (NUS & NTU RSIS) noted that ISIS has already decided to make Southeast Asia a key battle ground.
How true — I’m unsure, but here are some other analysis for your reading.
ISIS may already be in Malaysia.
But Thailand can rest easy, as Bilveer Singh notes that ISIS has no interest in Thailand (only Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines)
Specifics JL, specifics of “…in several of the cases listed above this scrubland had the villagers evicted only to be handed over to military-aligned business interests for their own use…”
Or I’ll include you with the doubly-speaking Thongchai and Tyrell.
Thanks to Greg Lopez and his video clip about Sarawak land grab that could boil anyone’s righteous heart. If such shameful resource grab is rampant at Malaysia, shouldn’t ISIS be lurking around there somewhere?
So, JL, as someone who obviously pays attention to these issues, would you say that there has been a marked increase in “resource grabs” since the coup? Have you noticed the junta justifying these grabs in the name of reconciliation?
Or are Thongchai and Tyrell just doing the usual post-coup “Orwellian rag” and pretending that what is the norm in Thailand has somehow suddenly morphed into an anomalous manifestation brought about solely by the military dictatorship?
(1) Apart from a few high-profile cases just after the coup, the vast majority of the encroachment cases have been against poor villagers.
(2) As I’m sure you are aware, the issue of encroachment is not always a clear cut case of evil businessmen / simpleton villagers hacking down pristine virgin forest. The legal cases are often extremely complex involving several different government departments, each with differing definitions of what encroachment means, with villagers who may or may not have legal access to the land they have been thrown off.
Instead of going through the courts and there being at least some slight semblance of transparency and due process, they simply had their homes bulldozed.
(3) Much of the “forest” which these encroachment cases concerns is not actually forest as we would know it, but degraded forest or brush. In several of the cases listed above this scrubland had the villagers evicted only to handed over to military-aligned business interests for their own use.
Thai Studies has been reduced to bipartisan politicking and grandstanding. In 30 years when all the current participants are dead and gone, someone will likely write an objective history of “what actually happened.”
Until then, versions of events that do not denigrate Abhisit while praising Thaksin, will surely engender opprobrium from the Thai Studies presidium, an elitist group that bars entry from humble teachers of local origin with: 1. difficult to reach foreign conference locations and high conference attendance costs, 2. inaccessible scholarship in elitist western academic journals, most of which are barely accessible at all in Thailand or any other Southeast Asian nation, as well as 3. inaccessible teaching (no MOOCs)….
Huh? I don’t believe anyone would seriously confuse Abhisit as being “luk khrueng,” because his hi-so heritage insulates him from being associated with that term, which carries a lot of baggage beneath the surface, despite being born and having spent so many years in England. (After all, HM the King himself was born in Cambridge [the other Cambridge] and educated in Switzerland).
Now “nakrian nok” is another matter: his Etonian and Oxford pedigree certainly qualify him as educated abroad, but who would want to accuse Abhisit of being “nakrian nok” in the pejorative meaning of the term? I think the obvious answer would be Suthep Thaugsuban, who has often been at odds with the Abhisit and Korn wing of the Democrat Party, and who is reported to have made the famous dismissive statement “I don’t respect farangs”.
There are a lot of dangerous right-wing idealogues in the news these days, like Suthep threatening to return to “activism”, and that poor excuse for a monk “Buddha” Issara, and there are just as many lurking about in Thai academia.
Thongchai places Abhisit at the bottom of his spectrum of “nakrian noks”, as the Oxford graduate who “never left Thailand”, but I see him a rung or two up the ladder as the apologist, such as when in his BBC interviews he has tried to defend and explain Thai xenophobia and its current rejection of liberal democracy.
Are Thaksin and Yingluck “nakrian nok”? In the strict sense of the word they are, although Yingluck’s critics can’t have it both ways if they still want to be contemptuous of her Thai and English language ability. What has always made Thaksin and Yingluck “korng nok” or outsiders is that they are FROM OUTSIDE BANGKOK: they come from Chiang Mai, and are of Sino-Thai heritage that is only a generation removed from China; they represent the new majority that live in the North and Northeast.
As it happens I was in Chiang Mai on December 6, 2014–the day following the King’s birthday. I found it curious that NOT a single resident I observed while traveling from Chiang Mai to Mae Rim was following Prayut’s recommendation to wear yellow shirts for the month to honor the King. I guess yellow shirts are permanently out of style there. This is just one example of the new reality of a badly divided Thailand.
Getting back to Thongchai’s talk, I am much more pessimistic than he is about the future of Asian Studies in Thailand. The repressive actions of the military against Thai academics and intellectuals, still ongoing, is having a chilling effect. If it persists for another year or three, I believe it will result in a purge of all those who have not been sufficiently cowed by their “attitude adjustment” campaign.
The unashamedly barefaced attempt at delinking the past from the present has never been more surreal as in today’s Burma.
Will the dual policy of ceasefires and continued deployment of troops and armour, or rather ceasefires on paper never property honoured, achieve peace in our time? Looks like it’s an integral part of the long running good cop bad cop show, a double act shared between the government and the Tatmadaw, ‘fooling’ the ‘international community’.
The popularity of terminology and imagery taken from Orwell’s iconic and severely overused “1984” since the most recent coup in Thailand is tiresome to say the least. It is also disingenuous and counterproductive.
There is a difference between promoting democracy and opposing military rule in Thailand.
Many people who like to think of themselves as supporting the right of Thai people to democratic government are simply expressing their disgust at yet another military coup and junta. Their interest in so-called “democracy” stops at the holding of elections and goes no further.
When the most recent Thaksin government was “in power”, where were the people demanding democratic governance?
Where were the demands for civilian control of the military, for the removal of corrupt judges and members of the “independent bodies” meant to provide checks and balances in Thai “democracy”?
When the floods of 2011 threatened chaos in the country, where were the people calling for the arrests of Bangkok’s governor and the leader of the RTA, both of whom ignored orders from their government leaders and established their own approaches to dealing with the flooding, aimed not at the national good but at their own respective “constituencies”?
When the Yingluck government capitulated to the illegitimate demands of the fascists in the streets of Bangkok, where were the people demanding that a legitimate, sovereign, democratically-elected government defend itself against the slow-motion coup everyone knew was taking place?
I think I understand why the Shin administration didn’t do any of these things; they, like their semblables on the other side, have no vested interest in democratic governance or popular sovereignty. They’d won the election and that was about enough democracy for them, as it will be for the more traditional elites once they remove the Shin cancer from the body politic.
What I don’t understand is why no one outside the Shin power circles saw fit to comment on the absolute lack of any commitment to democracy or popular sovereignty on the part of the “democratically-elected” government.
Just thought I would chime in on the article. I suggest the authors are somewhat naive. What they refer to as the democracy “cult” or “religion” could be equally applied to to the reform “cult” or “religion”.
I am a US citizen and recognize the flaws in our democracy (gerrymandering disenfranchising most Americans in electing our Congress, Senate composition inconsistent with one man one vote principles, electoral college allowing a president to be elected while losing the popular vote as in 2000).
However with all it’s flaws, American democracy has generally worked for us. I’m not well versed on the flaws in UK, EU and OZ and NZ democracy. However their are likely lessons to be learned from democracies that have emerged since WWII such as India and more recently from the ex-Warsaw pact nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In Asian Pacific, South Korea and Taiwan have recently joined the ranks of stable democracies.
To imply Thailand is not ready to join the ranks of stable democracies is condescending and ethnocentric.
The influence of the anti-democratic military is the largest obstacle to Thailand. Does one honestly expect the the people of Thailand to directly confront this without the escalation into a full scale civil war?
Democracy can be boiled down into three basic principles:
1) The right to elect ones leaders and government and leaders.
2) The right for an elected government not to be remove by other than institutions empowered by the elected representatives of the people.
3) Basic rights such as the freedom of speech, assembly, due process and the press.
The current junta fails on all three points. The previously elected governments failed on the third point. Given the flaws previously noted in American government, I completely understand the Thai populous’ preference for an imperfect democracy over no democracy.
For the record, as a US citizen, I consider my belief in democracy for American (and all others of the world) a “religious” belief as recognizing its implementation as being imperfect it is the best way forward for all people. To assert otherwise for non-US, EU and OZ and NZ is condescending and ethnocentric. May I suggest the authors next posting deal with the “religion” and “cult” of democracy in the US, CA, EU, OZ and NZ. If this is too western for the authors, please consider the experiences in our lifetime in Poland, the Czech republic, South Korea and Taiwan.
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Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to China
Arakan is a good spot for Chinese settlements and naval outposts, but first the railway line accompanying the gas/oil pipeline from Kunming to the terminal at Kyaukphru must be built, no?
On the border, spite is no answer
Speaking of porous borders:
http://time.com/3915605/indian-army-myanmar-militant-attack-border-manipur/
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
Emjay – #3.2.2.2.1
“Resource grabs” is a loaded term and doesn’t apply to all the cases that have occurred under Order 64, but yes, there has been a marked increase in these kind of evictions, displacements, and prosecutions since the coup. The last time there was this level of such actions was in the 1990s, though there was a uptick in them in both the Surayud and Abhisit governments.
On the border, spite is no answer
Why ? So Dhaka can convert DASSK to Islam ?
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
ISIS or Al-Queda, I suspect could already be ‘extorting’ protection money from the royals of Brunei, which Greg Lopez inadvertently omitted from the purported ISIS target list in Asia.
Beef and prejudice
Are we allowed to talk about Israel?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-09/israeli-abattoir-sacks-slaughtermen-after-footage-of-brutality/6531906
‘The perfect storm’
Except for the assessment in
‘c’ Myanmar IS a Buddhist country not only the 2/3 Bamar but also because 4 (Shan, Mon, Karen, Kaya, Of course Yakhine)other major ethnic groups are of majority Buddhist faith. That sure make Myanmar a Buddhist country.
‘d’ How the Yakhine is view within is not the premises of a westerner should use. How ever the truth is the Muslim Kalar are taking over the meager western part of Myanmar by “just being there” validated and justified and assisted by the west as well as NGO and yes OIC..
Last of all
OIC only “DO ISLAM IS for ISLAM and NOTHING ELSE”
There are ongoing Jihadist activity that can only attributed to OIC money.
On the border, spite is no answer
Burmese seem to treat the much longer and even more porous border with China very differently. Why? Perhaps Suu Kyi should be visiting Bangladesh instead of going to China?
Rohingya crisis: cause for optimism
“resolution of the communal conflict in Rakhine State should be founded on the principles of human rights, democracy and rule of law”
God (Buddha is a Philosopher) bless Mr Wilson for a rose tinted glass view to this quagmire.
Shall we now define:
Principles of HR
ROL
and Democracy ??
On the border, spite is no answer
Nich
1) The loss and suffering of the Kalsr compared to over 100K in 24h under Nargis that has not flinch this administration zeal on control.
2) Recent validation of insistence on no one in Yakhine as Rohingyas.
3) Repeated demonstration of intolerant for ethnic rebels control of any part.
Plus many more factors indicate that in order to change minds in Hlutthaw and the military, every one must speak Bamar.
Speaking Bamar means understanding the where this administration is consistently hell bent on heading to given the historical facts!
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
May be you should read this article, to see what is actually going on with crackdown on land encroachment…
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/587837/take-the-axe-to-state-war-on-forest-poor
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
G’day Korn, #3.2.2.2.2
At a recent presentation, Associate Professor Bilveer Singh (NUS & NTU RSIS) noted that ISIS has already decided to make Southeast Asia a key battle ground.
How true — I’m unsure, but here are some other analysis for your reading.
ISIS may already be in Malaysia.
But Thailand can rest easy, as Bilveer Singh notes that ISIS has no interest in Thailand (only Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines)
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/04/21-malaysia-isis-conundrum-liow
http://www.todayonline.com/world/isis-attack-malaysia-imminent-says-top-counterterror-official
http://www.ibtimes.com/malaysia-army-isis-70-soldiers-have-joined-islamic-state-officials-say-1879299
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/10/30/Malaysias-ISIS-problem.aspx
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2015/04/07/ISIS-inspired-Malaysia-detainees-plotted-terrorist-attacks.html
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
Specifics JL, specifics of “…in several of the cases listed above this scrubland had the villagers evicted only to be handed over to military-aligned business interests for their own use…”
Or I’ll include you with the doubly-speaking Thongchai and Tyrell.
Thanks to Greg Lopez and his video clip about Sarawak land grab that could boil anyone’s righteous heart. If such shameful resource grab is rampant at Malaysia, shouldn’t ISIS be lurking around there somewhere?
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
So, JL, as someone who obviously pays attention to these issues, would you say that there has been a marked increase in “resource grabs” since the coup? Have you noticed the junta justifying these grabs in the name of reconciliation?
Or are Thongchai and Tyrell just doing the usual post-coup “Orwellian rag” and pretending that what is the norm in Thailand has somehow suddenly morphed into an anomalous manifestation brought about solely by the military dictatorship?
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
(1) Apart from a few high-profile cases just after the coup, the vast majority of the encroachment cases have been against poor villagers.
(2) As I’m sure you are aware, the issue of encroachment is not always a clear cut case of evil businessmen / simpleton villagers hacking down pristine virgin forest. The legal cases are often extremely complex involving several different government departments, each with differing definitions of what encroachment means, with villagers who may or may not have legal access to the land they have been thrown off.
Instead of going through the courts and there being at least some slight semblance of transparency and due process, they simply had their homes bulldozed.
(3) Much of the “forest” which these encroachment cases concerns is not actually forest as we would know it, but degraded forest or brush. In several of the cases listed above this scrubland had the villagers evicted only to handed over to military-aligned business interests for their own use.
ANU Thai Studies conference keynote address
Thai Studies has been reduced to bipartisan politicking and grandstanding. In 30 years when all the current participants are dead and gone, someone will likely write an objective history of “what actually happened.”
Until then, versions of events that do not denigrate Abhisit while praising Thaksin, will surely engender opprobrium from the Thai Studies presidium, an elitist group that bars entry from humble teachers of local origin with: 1. difficult to reach foreign conference locations and high conference attendance costs, 2. inaccessible scholarship in elitist western academic journals, most of which are barely accessible at all in Thailand or any other Southeast Asian nation, as well as 3. inaccessible teaching (no MOOCs)….
ANU Thai Studies conference keynote address
Huh? I don’t believe anyone would seriously confuse Abhisit as being “luk khrueng,” because his hi-so heritage insulates him from being associated with that term, which carries a lot of baggage beneath the surface, despite being born and having spent so many years in England. (After all, HM the King himself was born in Cambridge [the other Cambridge] and educated in Switzerland).
Now “nakrian nok” is another matter: his Etonian and Oxford pedigree certainly qualify him as educated abroad, but who would want to accuse Abhisit of being “nakrian nok” in the pejorative meaning of the term? I think the obvious answer would be Suthep Thaugsuban, who has often been at odds with the Abhisit and Korn wing of the Democrat Party, and who is reported to have made the famous dismissive statement “I don’t respect farangs”.
There are a lot of dangerous right-wing idealogues in the news these days, like Suthep threatening to return to “activism”, and that poor excuse for a monk “Buddha” Issara, and there are just as many lurking about in Thai academia.
Thongchai places Abhisit at the bottom of his spectrum of “nakrian noks”, as the Oxford graduate who “never left Thailand”, but I see him a rung or two up the ladder as the apologist, such as when in his BBC interviews he has tried to defend and explain Thai xenophobia and its current rejection of liberal democracy.
Are Thaksin and Yingluck “nakrian nok”? In the strict sense of the word they are, although Yingluck’s critics can’t have it both ways if they still want to be contemptuous of her Thai and English language ability. What has always made Thaksin and Yingluck “korng nok” or outsiders is that they are FROM OUTSIDE BANGKOK: they come from Chiang Mai, and are of Sino-Thai heritage that is only a generation removed from China; they represent the new majority that live in the North and Northeast.
As it happens I was in Chiang Mai on December 6, 2014–the day following the King’s birthday. I found it curious that NOT a single resident I observed while traveling from Chiang Mai to Mae Rim was following Prayut’s recommendation to wear yellow shirts for the month to honor the King. I guess yellow shirts are permanently out of style there. This is just one example of the new reality of a badly divided Thailand.
Getting back to Thongchai’s talk, I am much more pessimistic than he is about the future of Asian Studies in Thailand. The repressive actions of the military against Thai academics and intellectuals, still ongoing, is having a chilling effect. If it persists for another year or three, I believe it will result in a purge of all those who have not been sufficiently cowed by their “attitude adjustment” campaign.
Future lies in reconciling the present with the past
The unashamedly barefaced attempt at delinking the past from the present has never been more surreal as in today’s Burma.
Will the dual policy of ceasefires and continued deployment of troops and armour, or rather ceasefires on paper never property honoured, achieve peace in our time? Looks like it’s an integral part of the long running good cop bad cop show, a double act shared between the government and the Tatmadaw, ‘fooling’ the ‘international community’.
The Thai junta’s doublespeak
The popularity of terminology and imagery taken from Orwell’s iconic and severely overused “1984” since the most recent coup in Thailand is tiresome to say the least. It is also disingenuous and counterproductive.
There is a difference between promoting democracy and opposing military rule in Thailand.
Many people who like to think of themselves as supporting the right of Thai people to democratic government are simply expressing their disgust at yet another military coup and junta. Their interest in so-called “democracy” stops at the holding of elections and goes no further.
When the most recent Thaksin government was “in power”, where were the people demanding democratic governance?
Where were the demands for civilian control of the military, for the removal of corrupt judges and members of the “independent bodies” meant to provide checks and balances in Thai “democracy”?
When the floods of 2011 threatened chaos in the country, where were the people calling for the arrests of Bangkok’s governor and the leader of the RTA, both of whom ignored orders from their government leaders and established their own approaches to dealing with the flooding, aimed not at the national good but at their own respective “constituencies”?
When the Yingluck government capitulated to the illegitimate demands of the fascists in the streets of Bangkok, where were the people demanding that a legitimate, sovereign, democratically-elected government defend itself against the slow-motion coup everyone knew was taking place?
I think I understand why the Shin administration didn’t do any of these things; they, like their semblables on the other side, have no vested interest in democratic governance or popular sovereignty. They’d won the election and that was about enough democracy for them, as it will be for the more traditional elites once they remove the Shin cancer from the body politic.
What I don’t understand is why no one outside the Shin power circles saw fit to comment on the absolute lack of any commitment to democracy or popular sovereignty on the part of the “democratically-elected” government.
Now that, that is Orwellian.
Democracy worship in Thailand
Hi all,
Just thought I would chime in on the article. I suggest the authors are somewhat naive. What they refer to as the democracy “cult” or “religion” could be equally applied to to the reform “cult” or “religion”.
I am a US citizen and recognize the flaws in our democracy (gerrymandering disenfranchising most Americans in electing our Congress, Senate composition inconsistent with one man one vote principles, electoral college allowing a president to be elected while losing the popular vote as in 2000).
However with all it’s flaws, American democracy has generally worked for us. I’m not well versed on the flaws in UK, EU and OZ and NZ democracy. However their are likely lessons to be learned from democracies that have emerged since WWII such as India and more recently from the ex-Warsaw pact nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In Asian Pacific, South Korea and Taiwan have recently joined the ranks of stable democracies.
To imply Thailand is not ready to join the ranks of stable democracies is condescending and ethnocentric.
The influence of the anti-democratic military is the largest obstacle to Thailand. Does one honestly expect the the people of Thailand to directly confront this without the escalation into a full scale civil war?
Democracy can be boiled down into three basic principles:
1) The right to elect ones leaders and government and leaders.
2) The right for an elected government not to be remove by other than institutions empowered by the elected representatives of the people.
3) Basic rights such as the freedom of speech, assembly, due process and the press.
The current junta fails on all three points. The previously elected governments failed on the third point. Given the flaws previously noted in American government, I completely understand the Thai populous’ preference for an imperfect democracy over no democracy.
For the record, as a US citizen, I consider my belief in democracy for American (and all others of the world) a “religious” belief as recognizing its implementation as being imperfect it is the best way forward for all people. To assert otherwise for non-US, EU and OZ and NZ is condescending and ethnocentric. May I suggest the authors next posting deal with the “religion” and “cult” of democracy in the US, CA, EU, OZ and NZ. If this is too western for the authors, please consider the experiences in our lifetime in Poland, the Czech republic, South Korea and Taiwan.
Without a hint of condescension, I am,
Tom