I can make a recommendation that will go a long way to solving the problem. Hand over Christmas and Ashmore to Indonesia. Most of Australia’s boat-people problem is due to the fact that we hang onto those places to spy on Indonesia. The Indonesian Government is happy to see us squirm because they’re sick of our spying.
That’s right Moe Aung, in Mexico thy behead tourists in Acapulco; I do not recall when the last Burmese beheading took place, perhaps by a crazed British Rifleman, but not by a Bamar Buddhist monk. I know you would just love to blame every White person, on the planet, and U Wirathu, for ALL of Burma’s problems, but I am sorry to inform you that you cannot. It doesn’t work that way. Instead focus on why U Thant, as UN Chief, allowed six Arab nations to illegally attack sovereign UN member Israel, and did absolutely nothing to try and stop it, typical of U Thant’s “dynamism”. Rather disappointing relative to U Nu, another of your “favourites”.
Adding fuel to the fire is what it is. Bad enough these people have been let down by their wrongheaded and ambitious leaders, egged on by their brethren outside like many of those expatriate leaders.
Living in harmony, impossible alas with the Chittagonians, to communal strife has an historic trajectory conveniently ignored by certain scholars and analysts. Backlashes happen for a reason. The Arakan is not Texas, nor Burma Mexico.
The operative word is”real” in the conclusion. Wishful thinking since the only thing real is continued military domination behind the fa├зade of democratic reform.
Nothing has changed since the last round of boats 94-2002. The same villages, same familes, same individuals are still involved. There are many, many ‘poor’ fishing villages in RI but only a few provide smuggling crews – it’s their choice and they enjoy the work. Most of the syndicates are headed by Bajau Laut smugglers who employ their own family and extended family members from east Indonesia. Most crew who take boats to Ashmore and Christmas Island are sourced from Pepela and Oelaba in Rote, and the Bajau homelands around Kendari. At one stage some 300 smugglers from Oelaba were in jail here. These guys know the way to Ashmore, have been in jail numerous times and loved it, could even be said to be institutionalised – it holds no fear for them. Many belong to smuggling families and begin by crewing, taking the ‘kambing’ [goats, passengers] to Oz as part of their career choice. Do the time, get street cred and move up in the syndicate.
Nor has there been a decline in fish stocks. The Oelaba fleet goes to Scott Reef for trepang, usually using Alorese divers. They tried to cheat the buyers by filling the trepang with sand and stones to increase the weight, it went rotten and they lost cred. With some 300 in jail the fleet collapsed and another 400 went to Papua. The Pepela shark fin fleet rarely works in the MOU, where there is very little shark. They work illegally in our waters outside the MOU and can take 10,000 shark in a good year. Very good money for owners and skippers. Last year the market collapsed due to Gov pressure on fin in the PRC. The boats didn’t go finning, some Bajau shark skippers went people smuggling. Who goes is usually decided by the wives and mothers, they get the money and liase with the smuggling agents.
There are some very rich former fishermen with palaces in Surabaya, apartments in Jakarta and multiple wives to suit their new status.
The big syndicates all have ties to Makassar. VP Kalla could have stopped them years ago with a simple sms – they’d shit themselves. Guess he, and Jakarta, had their reasons for not doing so.
Some Imams and their families are in it up to their pecis. They are a conduit for payments and the smugglers make large strategic donations to the mosque. The most important network is ethnic – Bajau Laut. Islam is secondary, Muslim solidarity appears only after the money is shown.
‘What can be done to generate viable alternatives.’ Yawn. They already have them and can generate others themselves if and when they feel like it. Sounds like some academics are pitching for the taxpayers’ heard-earned. It will be wasted. Again.
The Economist – in what is surely a seminal one among its always excellent special reports – argues very skeptical indeed that technology is in fact now limiting, if not blocking, middle-income countries such as Thailand, or “emerging economies”, to EVER get out of the “middle-income trap”. In fact they seem destined for either “pre-mature de-industrialisation”, or “pre-mature non–industrialisation”. See The Economist, Oct.4, 2014, p.10-12 especially.
Nicholas Farrelly’s comments on sock puppets don’t go far enough. All responses should be signed by a real person with the courage to stand behind his or her views, preferably with a one-liner about their position or authority. You lower your standards by tolerating pseudonyms.
lolitas brother: “I am not going to learn Thai; the language will be dead in twenty years, instead teach the boy English. ”
The only venom spitting i detect here is the venom in which you yourself spit out in every single one of your poorly worded utterances. In the mean time, instead of “spitting venom” here,your words, not mine, try bringing some factual information and evidence to support your claims to the table. I for one, am capable of taking things into consideration;IF the information at hand is based on factual evidence & is not based on hearsay or conjecture. You seem to exude the latter.
Prime Minister Abbott is a nice man and he has done a lot for Malaysia with respect to assisting Malaysia in searching for lost flight MH370, for which Prime Minister Najib has never acknowledged any thanks, at least in public. Prime Minister Abbott’s comment is chivalrous, not literal. Perhaps you should also quote Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s criticisms of Malaysia’s human rights record. One can respect, in my personal instance, the messenger and totally disregard the message. Prime Minister Najib has no credibility, except with Prime Minister Abbott. PM Najib is no moderate, and he presided over increasing and rampant racism in Malaysia, directed at non-Malays. PM Najib 1.0 was for Malay jihadists, before PM Najib 2.0 was against them. Mr Abbott’s words are mere anodyne to demonstrate good relations between Malaysia and Australia. They, in no way, reflect PM Najib, who is neither a pious Muslim or a pious anything.
I respect Mr Abbott, but his words are dross.
Malaysia has been severely ruined by PM Najib, race and cultural relations have never been worse, and the so-called moderate PM has encouraged racism and Islamic chauvinism against non-Malays, so much so, that moderate Malays are leaving Malaysia for Australia. In fact, perhaps that is the real audience for Mr Abbott: Not the strident, hateful, intolerant Muslims back in Malaysia who voice Nazi-like vituperative attacks against non-Muslim Malaysians, but the intended audience of all Malaysians, including with greater frequency, moderate Malays themselves, who have had enough of the lies, machinations and hatefulness of the UMNO/BN autocratic leadership. One need not believe me; simply ask all the moderate Malays who criticise their own government, and then are charged with sedition, or the thousands who have now flocked to Australia, to be free to live their lives unburdened by incompetent leadership and radical Islamic extremism. You can start by interviewing Kassim Ahmad in Malaysia and then Lina Joy in Australia.
The words that I like to quote are those of Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia. Prime Minister Najib is a pious Muslim but the phrase that he has used of ISIL and its activities – it doesn’t represent God, it doesn’t represent religion, it doesn’t represent our common humanity, in fact it’s against God, it’s against religion, it’s against our common humanity. I think that’s a splendid message and I hope it’s heeded by people all over the world including in this country.
This article is so wrongly presumptuous as so manly levels.
Historic, political, religious and even HR.
Historic and Political: Well summarized by Mr Derek Tonkin above.
Religious: Not realizing Myanmar is the known center of ‘Purified Buddhism’ next to historical Sri Lanka make the author’s call for any diminishing of Buddhism and any discussion of any subject rather wanting.
The politics of belonging in Myanmar has long being set by the Muslim and others in Maulamyanin.
Mr. Tonkin is absolutely correct. The Arakhan Muslims, who are indigenous to Burma, are not politically expedient for “Pro-Rohingya” groups, who range in motive from Burma bashing to Mahathirian global Islamic liberation. The Rohingya, I will repeat, as I am also a scientist,
are 100 % DNA allelic frequency comparisons with Bangladeshis from Dhaka or Chittagong.
There is no cultural, ethnic or even genetic difference between “Rohingya” and Bangladeshi Muslims, and we must distinguish between neo-Asiatic hill tribes in NW Bangladesh, who are Sino-Tibetan in ethnic origins, and are not Indo-Aryan like Bengalis. The politicization of the Rohingya as a Cause de Jour, for those who need cathartic release, is not going to solve the problem of refuges in Burma. I do NOT claim that Thein Sein’s policies are necessarily wise, fair or in the best interests of all Burmese, more likely in his own (Bamar) best interests. But the non-Burmese latching on to the Rohingya issue for political purposes will not help them. As even Bangladesh does not want them back, from whence they came, it is Bangladesh’s lack of birth control and overpopulation, that has led, over many, many years, to this burgeoning population. Despite the inaccurate claims of some Rohingya “fanatics” that they are all apolitical, that is true only in part. Most are, but the ambitious among them have established “Rohingya” political movements, which are closely watched and aided by Bangladesh, and even more so, by Malaysia, for whom the Rohingya have become a cause celebre, as if Malaysia did not have enough problems with increasing Malay stridency. The UN and outside relief agencies may mean well, but despite Thein Sein’s own machinations, I can’t say that these foreign agencies haven’t antagonized Burma either. I suspect soon, we will all see the likely inevitable “Palestinisation” of the Rohingya issue, if we haven’t already, and that is not a recipe for equitable adjudication of the Rohingya’s fate, nor entirely fair to Burma, either.
While I entirely agree with the main thrust of your presentation, which is as you say “to recognise the broader discussions around how Muslims want to be identified by the state”, I would myself be cautious when making even the most basic of assumptions. There is for example no internationally accepted definition of who the ‘Rohingya’ are. In an article published in 2006, attributed to Moshe Yegar and entitled “The Crescent in Arakan”, I read that the main adherents of the movement to siphon off Northern Arakan to Pakistan “were Muslims of Chittagong origin, the native Rohinga (sic) being less inclined to it”.
In 2014 it would seem that the roles have been completely reversed. The Muslims of Chittagong origin have become the ‘Rohinga’, while the Arakan Mohamedans, whom the British recognised as indigenous – the native Rohinga of Moshe Yegar – have seemingly disappeared without trace, as have the Myedu and other minor Muslim communities in Arakan. What started as an indigenous ‘Rwangya’ community of less than 100,000 souls in 1948 has gone through various ‘R’ designations to become in 2014 the monolith juggernaut of some 3 million or more, in Myanmar and overseas, with the maximalist interpretation including all those post-1870 Chittagonian and Bengali migrants who ventured beyond Arakan into other divisions and states of Myanmar.
There is, in short, a political dimension to the discussion which we ignore at our peril. I get a (no doubt unreasonable) shiver down my spine when I hear the word “fatwa” and when I read in the latest ICG report about the influence of camp leaders. The holy principle of “self-identification” then takes on a completely new meaning.
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What’s God got to do with it?
I can make a recommendation that will go a long way to solving the problem. Hand over Christmas and Ashmore to Indonesia. Most of Australia’s boat-people problem is due to the fact that we hang onto those places to spy on Indonesia. The Indonesian Government is happy to see us squirm because they’re sick of our spying.
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
That’s right Moe Aung, in Mexico thy behead tourists in Acapulco; I do not recall when the last Burmese beheading took place, perhaps by a crazed British Rifleman, but not by a Bamar Buddhist monk. I know you would just love to blame every White person, on the planet, and U Wirathu, for ALL of Burma’s problems, but I am sorry to inform you that you cannot. It doesn’t work that way. Instead focus on why U Thant, as UN Chief, allowed six Arab nations to illegally attack sovereign UN member Israel, and did absolutely nothing to try and stop it, typical of U Thant’s “dynamism”. Rather disappointing relative to U Nu, another of your “favourites”.
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
Adding fuel to the fire is what it is. Bad enough these people have been let down by their wrongheaded and ambitious leaders, egged on by their brethren outside like many of those expatriate leaders.
Living in harmony, impossible alas with the Chittagonians, to communal strife has an historic trajectory conveniently ignored by certain scholars and analysts. Backlashes happen for a reason. The Arakan is not Texas, nor Burma Mexico.
What’s God got to do with it?
You seem to be a world’s expert on the issue. Any realistic recommendation to solve the problem?
Will Myanmar’s reforms continue after 2015?
The operative word is”real” in the conclusion. Wishful thinking since the only thing real is continued military domination behind the fa├зade of democratic reform.
Life under a railway flyover
Thanks Tom. Glad you like them.
What’s God got to do with it?
Rot. Total unforgivable nonsense.
Nothing has changed since the last round of boats 94-2002. The same villages, same familes, same individuals are still involved. There are many, many ‘poor’ fishing villages in RI but only a few provide smuggling crews – it’s their choice and they enjoy the work. Most of the syndicates are headed by Bajau Laut smugglers who employ their own family and extended family members from east Indonesia. Most crew who take boats to Ashmore and Christmas Island are sourced from Pepela and Oelaba in Rote, and the Bajau homelands around Kendari. At one stage some 300 smugglers from Oelaba were in jail here. These guys know the way to Ashmore, have been in jail numerous times and loved it, could even be said to be institutionalised – it holds no fear for them. Many belong to smuggling families and begin by crewing, taking the ‘kambing’ [goats, passengers] to Oz as part of their career choice. Do the time, get street cred and move up in the syndicate.
Nor has there been a decline in fish stocks. The Oelaba fleet goes to Scott Reef for trepang, usually using Alorese divers. They tried to cheat the buyers by filling the trepang with sand and stones to increase the weight, it went rotten and they lost cred. With some 300 in jail the fleet collapsed and another 400 went to Papua. The Pepela shark fin fleet rarely works in the MOU, where there is very little shark. They work illegally in our waters outside the MOU and can take 10,000 shark in a good year. Very good money for owners and skippers. Last year the market collapsed due to Gov pressure on fin in the PRC. The boats didn’t go finning, some Bajau shark skippers went people smuggling. Who goes is usually decided by the wives and mothers, they get the money and liase with the smuggling agents.
There are some very rich former fishermen with palaces in Surabaya, apartments in Jakarta and multiple wives to suit their new status.
The big syndicates all have ties to Makassar. VP Kalla could have stopped them years ago with a simple sms – they’d shit themselves. Guess he, and Jakarta, had their reasons for not doing so.
Some Imams and their families are in it up to their pecis. They are a conduit for payments and the smugglers make large strategic donations to the mosque. The most important network is ethnic – Bajau Laut. Islam is secondary, Muslim solidarity appears only after the money is shown.
‘What can be done to generate viable alternatives.’ Yawn. They already have them and can generate others themselves if and when they feel like it. Sounds like some academics are pitching for the taxpayers’ heard-earned. It will be wasted. Again.
Review of Catch-Up Industrialization
The Economist – in what is surely a seminal one among its always excellent special reports – argues very skeptical indeed that technology is in fact now limiting, if not blocking, middle-income countries such as Thailand, or “emerging economies”, to EVER get out of the “middle-income trap”. In fact they seem destined for either “pre-mature de-industrialisation”, or “pre-mature non–industrialisation”. See The Economist, Oct.4, 2014, p.10-12 especially.
Jokowi fails his first test
Nicholas Farrelly’s comments on sock puppets don’t go far enough. All responses should be signed by a real person with the courage to stand behind his or her views, preferably with a one-liner about their position or authority. You lower your standards by tolerating pseudonyms.
A numbers game: Social media and political legitimacy
lolitas brother: “I am not going to learn Thai; the language will be dead in twenty years, instead teach the boy English. ”
The only venom spitting i detect here is the venom in which you yourself spit out in every single one of your poorly worded utterances. In the mean time, instead of “spitting venom” here,your words, not mine, try bringing some factual information and evidence to support your claims to the table. I for one, am capable of taking things into consideration;IF the information at hand is based on factual evidence & is not based on hearsay or conjecture. You seem to exude the latter.
Review of Catch-Up Industrialization
Great review Rick, thanks for this. Haven’t read the book, but have now ordered it. Suehiro is a scholar who always says interesting things!
Life under a railway flyover
Superb photos and fascinating insights, Ray. As ever.
Islam: A religion of peace
Prime Minister Abbott is a nice man and he has done a lot for Malaysia with respect to assisting Malaysia in searching for lost flight MH370, for which Prime Minister Najib has never acknowledged any thanks, at least in public. Prime Minister Abbott’s comment is chivalrous, not literal. Perhaps you should also quote Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s criticisms of Malaysia’s human rights record. One can respect, in my personal instance, the messenger and totally disregard the message. Prime Minister Najib has no credibility, except with Prime Minister Abbott. PM Najib is no moderate, and he presided over increasing and rampant racism in Malaysia, directed at non-Malays. PM Najib 1.0 was for Malay jihadists, before PM Najib 2.0 was against them. Mr Abbott’s words are mere anodyne to demonstrate good relations between Malaysia and Australia. They, in no way, reflect PM Najib, who is neither a pious Muslim or a pious anything.
I respect Mr Abbott, but his words are dross.
Malaysia has been severely ruined by PM Najib, race and cultural relations have never been worse, and the so-called moderate PM has encouraged racism and Islamic chauvinism against non-Malays, so much so, that moderate Malays are leaving Malaysia for Australia. In fact, perhaps that is the real audience for Mr Abbott: Not the strident, hateful, intolerant Muslims back in Malaysia who voice Nazi-like vituperative attacks against non-Muslim Malaysians, but the intended audience of all Malaysians, including with greater frequency, moderate Malays themselves, who have had enough of the lies, machinations and hatefulness of the UMNO/BN autocratic leadership. One need not believe me; simply ask all the moderate Malays who criticise their own government, and then are charged with sedition, or the thousands who have now flocked to Australia, to be free to live their lives unburdened by incompetent leadership and radical Islamic extremism. You can start by interviewing Kassim Ahmad in Malaysia and then Lina Joy in Australia.
Islam: A religion of peace
In the words of Prime Minister Tony Abbot:
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-09-19/joint-press-conference-sydney
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
This article is so wrongly presumptuous as so manly levels.
Historic, political, religious and even HR.
Historic and Political: Well summarized by Mr Derek Tonkin above.
Religious: Not realizing Myanmar is the known center of ‘Purified Buddhism’ next to historical Sri Lanka make the author’s call for any diminishing of Buddhism and any discussion of any subject rather wanting.
The politics of belonging in Myanmar has long being set by the Muslim and others in Maulamyanin.
SO why reinvent the wheel of getting along?
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
Mr. Tonkin is absolutely correct. The Arakhan Muslims, who are indigenous to Burma, are not politically expedient for “Pro-Rohingya” groups, who range in motive from Burma bashing to Mahathirian global Islamic liberation. The Rohingya, I will repeat, as I am also a scientist,
are 100 % DNA allelic frequency comparisons with Bangladeshis from Dhaka or Chittagong.
There is no cultural, ethnic or even genetic difference between “Rohingya” and Bangladeshi Muslims, and we must distinguish between neo-Asiatic hill tribes in NW Bangladesh, who are Sino-Tibetan in ethnic origins, and are not Indo-Aryan like Bengalis. The politicization of the Rohingya as a Cause de Jour, for those who need cathartic release, is not going to solve the problem of refuges in Burma. I do NOT claim that Thein Sein’s policies are necessarily wise, fair or in the best interests of all Burmese, more likely in his own (Bamar) best interests. But the non-Burmese latching on to the Rohingya issue for political purposes will not help them. As even Bangladesh does not want them back, from whence they came, it is Bangladesh’s lack of birth control and overpopulation, that has led, over many, many years, to this burgeoning population. Despite the inaccurate claims of some Rohingya “fanatics” that they are all apolitical, that is true only in part. Most are, but the ambitious among them have established “Rohingya” political movements, which are closely watched and aided by Bangladesh, and even more so, by Malaysia, for whom the Rohingya have become a cause celebre, as if Malaysia did not have enough problems with increasing Malay stridency. The UN and outside relief agencies may mean well, but despite Thein Sein’s own machinations, I can’t say that these foreign agencies haven’t antagonized Burma either. I suspect soon, we will all see the likely inevitable “Palestinisation” of the Rohingya issue, if we haven’t already, and that is not a recipe for equitable adjudication of the Rohingya’s fate, nor entirely fair to Burma, either.
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
While I entirely agree with the main thrust of your presentation, which is as you say “to recognise the broader discussions around how Muslims want to be identified by the state”, I would myself be cautious when making even the most basic of assumptions. There is for example no internationally accepted definition of who the ‘Rohingya’ are. In an article published in 2006, attributed to Moshe Yegar and entitled “The Crescent in Arakan”, I read that the main adherents of the movement to siphon off Northern Arakan to Pakistan “were Muslims of Chittagong origin, the native Rohinga (sic) being less inclined to it”.
In 2014 it would seem that the roles have been completely reversed. The Muslims of Chittagong origin have become the ‘Rohinga’, while the Arakan Mohamedans, whom the British recognised as indigenous – the native Rohinga of Moshe Yegar – have seemingly disappeared without trace, as have the Myedu and other minor Muslim communities in Arakan. What started as an indigenous ‘Rwangya’ community of less than 100,000 souls in 1948 has gone through various ‘R’ designations to become in 2014 the monolith juggernaut of some 3 million or more, in Myanmar and overseas, with the maximalist interpretation including all those post-1870 Chittagonian and Bengali migrants who ventured beyond Arakan into other divisions and states of Myanmar.
There is, in short, a political dimension to the discussion which we ignore at our peril. I get a (no doubt unreasonable) shiver down my spine when I hear the word “fatwa” and when I read in the latest ICG report about the influence of camp leaders. The holy principle of “self-identification” then takes on a completely new meaning.
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
I agree with your piece and Sean! Let’s hope this inspires research on Muslims in Myanmar.
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
Hi Melissa, would that book be available at book shops?
Thanks!
Myanmar’s Muslim mosaic and the politics of belonging
Thanks Sean, I hope it challenges a few of the stereotypes out there