Africa

Mayar Sherif is the first Egyptian woman to win a main draw match at a Grand Slam with victory at the Australian Open.

Amidst post-election violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), more than 200,000 people have fled for their own safety, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in January 2021. Conflict and violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) continue to be all too frequent across the country. Since 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has worked to curb the consequences of these clashes. Credit: UNHCR/Ghislaine Nentobo

By Bruce Biber
BANGUI, Central African Republic, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

Last October, an ICRC medical team helped a woman deliver a baby boy in the bush on their way to a health center we support in Grévaï, a small town in the north-central region of CAR. On her way to the market, by foot, the woman went into labour and only by chance did not have to go through it alone, surviving along with her baby.

That same year, my colleagues at the main hospital in Nana-Grébizi prefecture surrounding the town of Kaga-Bandoro helped a young couple deliver triplets – a moment of joy but also one that made the father cry, concerned about how to feed his family of now seven children. Our team at the hospital’s nutritional unit, where we help treat malnourished children, already knew they would see the three baby boys again before long.

Our doctor there also told me about premature babies who had to be revived several times during their first days before their health eventually stabilised.

These stories are just a glimpse into what people here face every day when it comes to accessing basic goods and services, such as food and health care. These things cannot be taken for granted. The local health workers at the Kaga-Bandoro hospital and the nearby health centers in Grévaï and Ouandago are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have.

But the needs remain enormous and working conditions remain difficult due to insecurity, making it hard to recruit and retain personnel, allowing impunity and criminality to reign and hampering development of proper infrastructure.

The crisis in CAR is a neglected one, receiving little attention despite the humanitarian consequences it has triggered since the outbreak of civil war around 2013. More than half of the country’s 4.9 million inhabitants live in desperate need, making it one of the worst, but most poorly known, humanitarian crises in the world. Sporadic violence is pervasive.

Security conditions are volatile. Armed groups maintain a presence throughout the country, and acts of criminality, such as armed burglaries, are reportedly widespread. Communal tensions – related to resource competition between farming and pastural communities, for instance – give rise to violence.

It has been two years since the signature of the latest peace agreement in February 2019 between the government and 14 armed groups. These groups control some 70 percent of the country. And as CAR struggles with post-electoral violence, conflict, insecurity, and criminality, the compounding impact of climate change and COVID-19 are making a bad situation even worse.

For weeks now, the country has been experiencing a new period of violence between a coalition of six armed groups who have launched an offensive to disrupt the presidential elections and take the capital Bangui. Before this latest violent outbreak, one in four Central Africans had been forced to flee their homes – living on the streets, struggling for survival in the bush, or sheltering in displacement and refugee camps.

Some of them had started returning home, but this violent outbreak has made that impossible, forcing even more people to flee. Many people have had to abandon everything and start over several times in the last few years. Over years of crisis, many of our Central African colleagues at the ICRC have also been displaced, lost their homes and loved ones, and carry memories that will never fade. I truly hope they don’t have to go through that again.

The widespread violence in CAR continues to have a serious impact on people’s lives. Citizens’ homes and livelihoods, such as crops and livestock, have been looted or destroyed. Access to safe drinking water is difficult in many places due to insecurity or lack of proper water infrastructure. A mother I met lost her baby because of unsafe drinking water – another loss that could have been prevented. Not least, sexual violence related to this insecurity is underreported, affecting mostly women and girls who work in the fields, go fishing, search for firewood, or fetch water for their families.

Violence in general is frequent, leaving generations with physical and mental scars. In Nana-Grébizi, our mental health team works with displaced children who have experienced violence as well as with survivors of sexual violence. They try to help them learn to live with their trauma that is almost impossible to forget.

CAR also remains one of the most dangerous countries for humanitarians, making it difficult to access certain areas and communities, due to widespread instability, crime, and the range of armed groups. The more actors, the more difficult it is to build structured dialogue and to obtain reliable security guarantees.

During the rainy season, some areas are also unreachable by road for months, and transport infrastructure remains underdeveloped in many places. During the ongoing clashes last year, the ICRC’s office in Bouar, in the Nana-Mambéré prefecture in western CAR, was raided, forcing us to drastically reduce our activities in the region until security in the town could be restored. Such attacks only punish the local communities, depriving them of desperately needed help.

In the wake of the peace agreement, violence briefly declined in the country. However, since September 2019, this trend has reversed, with recent clashes only making it worse. For sustainable results, authorities and their partners should address insecurity and impunity in the long run.

Insecurity is a scourge that prevents Central Africans from helping themselves and moving forward with their lives. It hampers the ability of the ICRC and other organisations to assist in these efforts.

To curb the worst of the violence, and in support to the Central African authorities, the ICRC continues to engage with the Central African armed and security forces, armed groups, and international forces to raise awareness of their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law.

The ICRC is also stepping up its support of the Kaga-Bandoro hospital and nearby health centers in Nana-Grébizi, alongside partners from CAR’s Ministry of Health and the World Bank. This complementarity between political, humanitarian, and development actors is key for the country to move towards peace, prosperity, and dignity. The people of CAR have paid the price of this crisis for too long.

This article is part of the “Forgotten Conflicts” series by the International Committee of the Red Cross in partnership with AIIA, highlighting the serious and often overlooked humanitarian consequences of armed conflicts and other situations of violence.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

 

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The post Forgotten Conflicts 2021: When Will the Crisis in the Central African Republic End? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Bruce Biber is Head of the ICRC Delegation in the Central African Republic.

The post Forgotten Conflicts 2021: When Will the Crisis in the Central African Republic End? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

When Palestine made history as Chair of the Group of 77 in 2019. The current chair is the Republic of Guinea. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

When the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, was trying to strike a hard bargain in its negotiations with Western nations years ago, one of its envoys famously declared: “You have the numbers. We have the money.”

But that implicit threat– signifying the power of the purse– did not deter the G77 from playing a key role in helping shape the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including sustainable development, environmental protection, universal health care, South-South cooperation, eradication of extreme poverty and hunger—all of them culminating largely in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 and targeted for a 2030 deadline.

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s second largest economy after the US, has remained an integral part– and a strong supporter– of the G77, going back to the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

At that summit meeting – which marked a battle between the West and the global South over funding to promote development while protecting the environment — a G77 delegate told his colleagues in a closed-door gathering: ”We have to confront them with an iron fist cloaked in a velvet glove.”

The G77’s strength in numbers—with over two-thirds of the UN’s 193-member states —provides it with an unparalleled political clout ranking ahead of the Non-Aligned Movement (with 120 members), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57), the Asian Group (55), the African Group (54), the Latin American and Caribbean Group (33) the European Union (27) and the Eastern European Group (23).

https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/regional-groups

While the G77 focused on achieving sustainable development, NAM pursued the hard-core politics of the global South, including human rights, neo-colonialism, international security, military conflicts and UN peacekeeping.

Speaking from Beijing, Dr Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China, told IPS that while many countries in the Western camp have tended to dismiss the G77 and China as irrelevant to contemporary economic/political developments, the Group has provided the platform for developing countries to make a profound input to contemporary global economic policy formulation.

In its heyday, he pointed out, the G77 and China contributed significantly to the development of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Law of the Sea regulatory framework.

“Today, the Law of the Sea Convention is considered to be the Constitution of the oceans and seas,” said Dr Kohona, a one-time Chief of the UN Treaty Section and a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

More recently, he noted, its influence on the Rio Process, the conventions on Climate Change, Biological Diversity, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been seminal.

He said the G77’s influence on global policy development in these major areas of importance to humanity remain undiminished and cannot be underestimated.

“These global rules are now impacting on policy formulation in the Bretton Woods institutions as well”, he added.

The role played by individual intellectual giants from the developing world in highlighting the G77 and China needs to be acknowledged, he argued.

“Today China has assumed a lead role in addressing the challenge of climate change affecting the very survival of humanity,” he declared.

Mourad Ahmia, Executive Secretary of the G77, told IPS the integral role played by the Group in economic diplomacy and projecting the development interests of the global South is a testimony to its continued relevance in the ongoing global development dialogue.

When it was established on Jun. 15, 1964, the signing nations of the well-known “Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries” formed the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations to articulate and promote their collective interests and common development agenda.

Since the First Ministerial meeting of the G-77 held in Algeria in October 1967, and the adoption of the “Charter of Algiers”, he pointed out, the Group of 77 laid down the institutional mechanisms and structures that have contributed to shaping the international development agenda and changing the landscape of the global South.

Over the years, he said, the Group has gained an increasing role in the determination and conduct of international relations through global negotiations on major North-South and development issues.

The G-77 adheres to the principle that nations, big and small, deserve an equal voice in world affairs… Today the Group remains linked by common geography and shared history of struggle for liberation, freedom and South-South solidarity, said Ahmia.

The Group has a presence worldwide at U.N. centres in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Washington D.C., and is actively involved in ongoing negotiations on a wide range of global issues including climate change, poverty eradication, migration, trade, and the law of the sea.

The G-77 remains the only viable and operational mechanism in multilateral economic diplomacy within the U.N system. The growing membership is proof of its enduring strength.

http://www.g77.org/doc/

Chakravarthi Raghavan, the former Chief Editor of the Geneva-based SUNS, told IPS since its founding in 1964, the G77 came into being, along with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as an organ of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and brought about several changes for the better in the international economic system.

With UNCTAD came the scope for “alternate view” to “liberal/neoliberal economics and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP schemes) – – “True, they are voluntary, not mandatory.”

The principle of non-reciprocity, and Special & Differential treatment in trade relations with developed countries (initially non-binding, Part IV of GATT-1947, but contractual for developing countries after 1994 Marrakesh Agreement for WTO) that the US now is trying to eliminate as part of its proposals for “WTO Reform”, said Raghavan a. former Editor-in-Chief of Press Trust of India,

The Jamaica accord (following the collapse of international money and finance system with (former US President Richard) Nixon’s repudiation of dollar-gold convertibility at $35 an ounce) – and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

The G77 also created the concept of “development” as against the original IMF Bretton Woods concept of “Reconstruction and Development” for war-ravaged economies of Europe, said Raghavan, winner of the 1997 G77/UN Development Programme (UNDP) Award.

In the immediate post-war order, the major Industrialized countries decided on policy (with US holding a veto on most decisions) that others were forced to accept. Now there is at least an attempt at dialogue (from G7 to G20).

Initially, said Raghavan, the G77 concerned itself only with economic issues; the much earlier NAM dealt with political and security issues.

But gradually, individual G77 members, brought their political and security issues and alliances with Great Powers, to influence the G77 decision-making. This has resulted in weakening the G77 positions and influence in international economic matters, declared Raghavan.

The writer is a former editor of the Journal of the Group of 77

  

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Making life-saving vaccines, medicines and equipment available, freely or affordably, has been crucial for containing the spread of many infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, polio and smallpox.

Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, insisted that it remain patent free. Asked who owned the patent 65 years ago, he replied, “The people I would say. There is no patent. You might as well ask, could you patent the sun?”

Intellectual property induced scarcity
However, cross-border enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is relatively recent. The 1994 WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) greatly strengthened and extended IP transnationally. IPRs have effectively denied access to patented formulas and processes except to the highest bidders.

Recognising the extent of the pandemic threat, vaccine developers expect to be very profitable, thanks to national and transnational IP laws. Thus, IP has distorted research priorities and discouraged cooperation and knowledge sharing, so essential to progress.

As COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to rise alarmingly, rich countries are falling out among themselves, fighting for access to vaccine supplies, as IP profits take precedence over lives and livelihoods.

‘Vaccine nationalism’ involves cut-throat contests responding to scarcity due to limited output. Facing vaccine wars, multilateral arrangements, such as Covax, have not adequately addressed current challenges.

Vaccine nationalism has also meant that among the rich, the powerful – Trump’s US – came first. Consequently, most developing countries and most of their people will have to wait longer than necessary for vaccines, while the powerful and better off secure prior access, regardless of need or urgency.

Lethal combination
This lethal combination of IP and vaccine warfare is responsible for more avoidable losses of both lives and livelihoods. Developing nations, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, have been left far behind, even in most programmes for COVID-19 prevention, containment, treatment and vaccination.

Anis Chowdhury

The deadly duo are unnecessarily delaying the end of the pandemic, causing avoidable infections, deaths and related setbacks. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General (DG) Tedros warns “the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure…the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries”.

He advises that “the international community cannot allow a handful of companies to dictate the terms or the timeframe for ending the pandemic”; “vaccine nationalism combined with a restrictive approach to vaccine production is in fact more likely to prolong the pandemic … tantamount to medical malpractice on a global scale”.

While over 39 million vaccine doses had been given in 49 richer countries, only 25 doses had reached one poor country! At current rates, more than 85 poor countries will not have significant access before the end of 2023! In 70 lower income countries, only one in ten will be vaccinated.

Of the 7.2 billion confirmed sales of COVID-19 vaccine doses, 4.2 billion have gone to the wealthiest nations. With only 16% of the world’s population, high income countries have secured 60% of available doses. Meanwhile, the African Union has only procured 670 million for the continent’s 1.3 billion people.

Public health exception
Following strong advocacy led by South African President Mandela, a 2001 WTO Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health affirmed countries’ right to protect public health by enabling access to medicines, even without a health emergency.

Although TRIPS now allows such government public health efforts, developing countries remain constrained by compulsory licensing’s complex rules, procedures and conditions. Threats and inducements by transnational corporations and their governments limit its use.

Hence, use of compulsory licensing by developing countries has been largely limited to several more independent middle-income countries and HIV/AIDS medicines.

TRIPS waiver
The TRIPS waiver proposal to the WTO – led by South Africa and India – seeks temporary suspension of several TRIPS provisions to greatly scale up production of and access to COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and equipment to contain the contagion.

The Trump administration, the European Union (EU) and their allies have so far blocked the waiver proposal, although its measures are allowed by their own national laws. Some rich countries even increased such provisions with the pandemic.

South African TRIPS negotiator Mustaqeem Da Gama has debunked the waiver opponents’ claim that even if “approved tomorrow, there are no companies in the developing world that can produce any number of products relevant to COVID-19, including mRNA vaccines”.

In fact, the Serum Institute of India is acknowledged as the only facility in the world with the mass vaccine production capacity to rapidly greatly scale up output. Furthermore, 72 of the 154 vaccines ‘pre-qualified’ by the WHO are already being manufactured in developing countries.

Such production in developing countries is subject to very restrictive IP regulations and licensing agreements with stringent conditions. Hence, existing capacity in India, China, Brazil, Cuba, Thailand, Senegal and Indonesia, among others, remains underutilised, primarily due to such legal barriers.

IP main barrier
Despite growing support for the waiver, the proposal was rejected by the TRIPS Council on 4th February. The EU insists that IP will “ensure the publication and dissemination of research results, when otherwise they will remain secret”.

But everyone knows the IP system discourages, rather than encourages cooperation and sharing, both essential for accelerating progress. Although IP requires sharing research results, no vaccine developer has done so yet. Nonetheless, waiver opponents insist the system is working well.

Rich countries opposing the waiver have quietly, even secretly bought up vaccines. Even as the EU has lost vaccine wars despite furthering pharmaceutical company interests, it has claimed the moral high ground as a major Covax donor. The recent EU export authorisation scheme, restricting exports, is bound to trigger retaliatory restrictions by others.

Incredibly, rich countries opposed to the TRIPS waiver proposal, particularly the EU, now want WTO members to instead accept its trade and health initiative for further trade liberalisation and removal of export restrictions –to address a problem of its own making!

Biden can still lead
The Biden administration has shown renewed commitment to multilateralism by rejoining the WHO, but still needs to offer leadership beyond funding the ineffective Covax scheme and lifting Trump’s embargo on exports of vaccines, vital medicines and equipment.

One ‘people’s vaccine’ proposal involves sharing research results in return for public financing. This can affordably, quickly and greatly scale up generic production, enabling ‘vaccines for all’ in the world at little additional cost.

As rich country governments have already spent to accelerate vaccine development, they can make this happen. As vaccine developers do not expect to profit much from the poor, this will benefit many at little added expense.

Depriving and delaying vaccines for those with less means has to be seen for what it is. Such avoidable behaviour is, frankly, nothing less than genocidal, for causing many people to die needlessly for IP profit.

At the forthcoming 23 February TRIPS Council meeting, US President Biden can secure consensus support for the waiver proposal, thus providing the Rooseveltian leadership internationally that he seems to be emulating in the US.

 

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The BBC's Wael Hussein describes witnessing an uprising unfold in the heart of Cairo, 10 years on.

Social media has revived African styles of Koranic recitation led by Sudan's Nourin Mohamed Siddig.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Feb 8 2021 (IPS-Partners)

In response to Bangladesh authorities’ recent filing of charges under the Digital Security Act against photographer Shafiqul Islam Kajol, writer Mushtaq Ahmed, and cartoonist and Kabir Kishore, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:

“We are extremely alarmed by Bangladeshi authorities’ continuous and blatant abuse of the Digital Security Act in an effort to silence any critical reporting in the country,” said Aliya Iftikhar, CPJ’s senior Asia researcher. “Authorities should immediately drop the charges against Shafiqul Islam Kajol, Kabir Kishore, and Mushtaq Ahmed, and release Kishore and Ahmed from prison.”

On February 4, police charged Kishore and Ahmed under the Digital Security Act, and charged Shafiqul Islam Kajol yesterday, according to news reports. Kishore and Mushtaq have been jailed since May 2020, according to CPJ research; Kajol was previously detained for nine months and was released on December 25, 2020, according to CPJ research on his case.

Authorities allege that Kishore and Ahmed violated the act by publishing propaganda, false or offensive information, and information that could destroy communal harmony and create unrest, according to police documents reviewed by CPJ. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 10 million taka (US$118,000), according to the Digital Security Act.

A complaint filed last year alleges that Kajol violated the act by criticizing political leaders and spreading false information on his personal Facebook page, according to CPJ research on his case. Authorities allege that Kajol published false or offensive information, published or transmitted defamatory information, and made unauthorized use of identity information, according to the text of the law and court documents reviewed by CPJ. If convicted, he could face three years in prison each for the charges of publishing false or offensive information and transmitting defamatory information, and up to five years in prison for the charge of unauthorized use of identity information, as well as a fine of 300,000 to 500,000 taka (US$3,500-$6,000), set at the discretion of a judge.

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Robert Lewandowski scores twice as Bayern Munich progressed to the Fifa Club World Cup final by beating Al Ahly on Monday.

Heavy rain flooded an illegal textile factory in the basement of a Tangier house, authorities say.

In commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday this iconic photograph of the first meeting of King and Richard Nixon will be displayed at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, 400 N. Ashley Dr., Tampa, through April 19 as part of the inside exhibition, “Griff Davis- Langston Hughes, Letters and Photographs, 1947-1967: A Global Friendship. For more information about the exhibit and to learn more about Griff Davis via video, please go to www.fmopa.org.

By Dorothy M. Davis
TAMPA, Florida, Feb 8 2021 (IPS)

My dad, Griff Davis, was a boyhood friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. They ran in the same crowd and, after graduating from Morehouse College, stayed in touch their whole lives. Dad, who was both an international photojournalist and U.S. Foreign Service officer, captured a famous photo of a rising “M.L.,” as they called him in Atlanta, and Vice President Richard Nixon meeting for the first time in newly independent Ghana in 1957. That photo couldn’t have been made in America at the time.

Dad was 24 when he graduated from Morehouse in 1947. After M.L. graduated a year later at 19, they both set out to make their lives, knowing that they had a right to dream and the tools to make those dreams come true. They only needed experience.

In 1947, Langston Hughes arrived at Atlanta University as the visiting professor for creative writing. Recognizing that Dad was the photographer for the campuses of the Atlanta University Center and the Atlanta Daily World, Hughes adopted him as his photographer in Atlanta.

Dad became the first roving editor of Ebony magazine at Hughes’ recommendation to its founder and publisher. He subsequently graduated in the Class of ‘49 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism while renting a room in Hughes’ home. It turned into his home base while working as the only African-American international freelance photojournalist for Black Star, the first privately owned picture agency in the United States. His work appeared in Fortune, Ebony, Time, Modern Photography, Steelways and Der Spiegel.

During this time, he made three separate trips to Liberia, which with Ethiopia were the only independent black countries in Africa and among the charter members of the United Nations in 1945.

My parents returned to Liberia in late 1952 after Dad passed the foreign service exam, the beginning of his 35-year career. Unlike their white counterparts, African-American Foreign Service officers at the time were posted by the U.S. State Department only to Liberia or Haiti.

When Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957 to become the new nation of Ghana, our family was ending a four-year tour in Liberia. Back in the United States in 1955, Rosa Parks had been arrested after refusing to give up her bus seat, and King had come to national prominence as the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott.

Vice President Richard Nixon and Patricia Nixon led the official U.S. delegation to Ghana’s Independence Day ceremonies — Nixon’s first trip to Africa. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King had been invited by Ghana’s prime minister himself on the heels of the end of the Montgomery bus boycott. It was also the Kings’ first trip to Africa.

Having attended Lincoln University, Kwame Nkrumah was very aware of the racial dynamics in the United States and had been following the American civil rights movement. He could equate it to the colonialism in his own country. Recognizing the common fight for freedom between the two movements, he used the Independence Day celebrations of Ghana as a global platform to bring key people together. This included Ralph Bunche, the first person of color to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, in his new capacity as undersecretary of the United Nations.

The U.S. Information Service (USIS) assigned my Dad to cover Nixon’s visit to Liberia and Ghana, one of only 20 official photographers to cover Ghana’s independence celebrations. It was the first African country to become decolonized.

The Kings arrived in Accra, the capital, on March 4, 1957 and attended a reception at Legon University. That’s where he met Nixon. As the official photographer for the Nixon delegation and former photojournalist, my father took the picture of their first meeting.

Dad said, “When they met, Nixon invited M.L. to come by his office the next time he travelled to Washington. … It was ironic to me that Montgomery, Ala., and Washington, D.C., had to meet at Accra, outside the United States. However, it was only a short time later that M.L. and his nonviolent movement entered upon the national scene in America.”

The next time my father saw M.L. and Coretta Scott King was back in the U.S. at my Dad’s 10th year class reunion at Morehouse in June 1957. They were building the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1963, my father attended the March on Washington in Washington, DC and heard M.L. give his “I Have A Dream” speech. It reminded him of their teachings at Morehouse. He last saw M.L. at the Capitol in Montgomery at the conclusion of the March from Selma in 1965. In 1966, our family was posted to Nigeria. M.L. was scheduled to visit Nigeria the week after he was assassinated.

All through the years since their college days, M.L. and Dad exchanged greeting cards at Christmas. This is the message in the last Christmas card:

“We who know we are brothers,” M.L. said, “have a duty to bring others back into the broken family of man, into our world house. In the context of the modern world, we must live together as brothers or we shall perish divided as fools.”

This story was first published by Tampa Bay Times

Dorothy Davis, president of Dorothy M. Davis Consulting and Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives, is a member of the board of directors of the Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts and United Nations Association-USA Chapter Tampa Bay Chapter. She serves on the Board of Directors and program committee of the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs.

 

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A protestor in Myanmar holding up the three-finger salute of opposition to military dictatorship from the film “Hunger Games” which was popularised by the democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand. Courtesy: CC BY-SA 4.0

By Larry Jagan
BANGKOK, Feb 8 2021 (IPS)

Myanmar is in a deep political crisis. Over the past week — reminiscent of the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1988 — Myanmar’s citizens are openly and publicly challenging the country’s powerful military, whose coup earlier this month now threatens to stifle the country’s fledgling democracy.

Since the weekend, thousands of people have come out onto the streets in most of the country’s major cities in defiance of the military authorities: noisily opposing the coup and demanding that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which overwhelmingly won the November election, be allowed to form a civilian government.

These demonstrations of support for democracy are growing daily with thousands and thousands across Myanmar voicing their rejection of the military coup.

It is like 33 years ago when millions of students, civil servants, workers and Buddhist monks took to the streets demanding democracy. Those protests provoked the military to seize power in a coup in September that year.

Again, the future of the country’s transition to democracy has reached a critical crossroads. After weeks of tension between the military and the elected civilian government of Suu Kyi, the Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a military coup on Feb. 1 and assumed all government powers – of the executive, judiciary and the legislature – for 12 months after which fresh elections would be held and power transferred to the winner.

Protests started with noise & via social media

People spontaneously started to demonstrate their opposition to the coup by creating a cacophony of noise – beating drums, banging, blowing trumpets and singing in unison every night at 8pm. Since then the ‘banging brigade’ has got louder and louder, as the country’s main urban centres come to a standstill and all that can be heard is the rhythmic sound of the beating of pots and pans all showing their opposition to the military and support for Suu Kyi.

“Most people in Myanmar support the ideals of democracy and want the army to withdraw from politics permanently,” Shwe Yee Myint Saw, who has joined the street protests almost every day from when they started on the weekend, told IPS.

The vast majority of those who have taken to the streets are under the age of 30. “You see the youth of this country understand what we lost in 30 years of military misrule, and we can’t afford a repeat of that.”

Peaceful protest in #Myanmar . #HearTheVoiceOfMyanmar #SaveDemocracy pic.twitter.com/WN0e98ehdU

— khant thaw (@akthaw) February 7, 2021

As in 1988, the charismatic pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi – and leader of the NLD — is at the centre of the movement. She was detained last Monday, Feb. 1, when the military launched their coup and arrested her in an early morning raid. She remains under house arrest and has been charged for possession of illegally imported radios that were used without permission – six walkie-talkie radios were found in the search of her home after she was arrested. If convicted it would bar her from contesting any future elections, including those the military have promised to hold later next year.

Most of the country’s civilian leaders were also detained in these dawn raids. This included all key politicians, regional chief ministers, government ministers, the top leadership of the governing NLD, most national and local members of parliament, and hundreds of pro-democracy and human rights activists. Many of them have been released since and effectively sent home to house arrest.

In the past week the opposition to the coup has built momentum and a concerted campaign of civil disobedience grew through the use of social media.

“We have digital power, so we’ve been using this to oppose the military junta ever since the start of the coup,” human rights activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi, who is one of the main organisers of the ‘Civil Disobedience Movement’ which has taken Myanmar by storm since the coup, told IPS. “And we must continue to use it: to seek an immediate end to this culture of coups.”

Banks reopened in Yangon, Myanmar on February 2 after closing the day before. Credit: IPS / Yangon stringer

Health workers went on strike

The social media protests quickly snowballed into a civil disobedience campaign initiated by the country’s health workers. The day after the coup, the country’s health workers galvanised public resistance to the military by refusing to work under a military government.

“It isn’t that we don’t care about our patients – we certainly do — but we can’t work under a military government again,” Dr Mya Oo, a doctor at Mandalay General Hospital who went on strike the first day, told IPS. “We all feel we must do everything we can to stop this bullying and preserve our democracy.”

Support for the opposition movement has grown enormously ever since, affecting hospitals, schools and other government offices. Although the doctors and nurses in the two main cities of Mandalay and Yangon took the lead — refusing to work and gathering outside their hospital to protest against the military coup — it quickly grew to government ministries, schools and universities throughout Myanmar.

Pictures can be seen of staff congregating together in uniform, wearing the red ribbon of protest, and defiantly holding up the three-finger salute of opposition to military dictatorship from the film “Hunger Games” – popularised in the democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand. There has also been a flood of resignations from government posts.

Civilians on the street

It culminated over the weekend, when the campaigners took to the streets to demonstrate their anger at the coup and its leaders. Their main grievance is the army’s seizure of power has effectively annulled the results of last November’s election which Suu Kyi and the NLD convincingly won.

“We voted for Aung San Suu Kyi and now the military are trying to steal this election from us and put us under their harsh controlling power like before,” Sandar, a young university graduate, told IPS. “We won’t stand for it: we have tasted democratic freedom and we know it’s the only way for our country to develop,” she said.

In most urban centres across the country, there are massive demonstrations of support for Suu Kyi demanding the military respect the election results. More and more civil servants are joining the movement. And now there are calls for a general strike.

“The ‘civil disobedience movement’ is a non-violent campaign – started by young doctors across the country which has inspired everyone and has grown into a mass protest involving all sectors of society,” Thinzar Shunlei Yi told IPS. 

Suu Kyi is believed to have signalled her support for the movement in messages from her house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw, according to senior party officials. Late last week the NLD central executive committee released a statement supporting the current Civil Disobedience Movement.

“In order to take back the country’s sovereignty – invested in the people — and restore democracy, all the people of Myanmar people should support this political resistance movement — in a peaceful and non-violence way,” the statement read.

So far the authorities have been powerless to stem the movement. But as the momentum grows there are increasing fears of a major confrontation between the peaceful protestors and the security forces.

 

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Nazlan Ertan

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Feb 8 2021 (IPS)

Over the years, Turkey has survived three Coup d’état in which its military forces took power, in 1960, 1971 and 1980. The coup in 1997, was carried out in a “post-modern way”, where generals sat down with the then prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan and forced him to resign. However the turning point in Turkey has been the failed coup attempt in July 2016, which has till date been one of the bloodiest coup attempts in its political history, leaving 241 people killed, and 2,194 others injured.

Soldiers and tanks took to the streets, explosions rang out in Ankara and Istanbul, fighter jets dropped bombs on their own parliament, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hulusi Akar, was kidnapped by his own security detail. Thousands of citizens gathered in streets and squares around Anatolia to oppose the coup and with the help of loyalist soldiers and police forces, defeated the coup attempt.

“Freedom of expression in Turkey continues to backslide, particularly after the 2016 attempted coup,” says journalist Nazlan Ertan to IPS News. “Currently 70 journalists in Turkey are in jail, and some 170 media outlets have been closed down since 2016. More than 80 percent of the press institutions – newspapers and TV channels we considered admiral ships – are now in the hands of the companies close to the government. Key news either goes unreported, or comes out heavily biased,” says Nazlan.

In october 2020, eleven international rights groups issued a statement on Turkey’s clamp down on its press freedom,including its efforts to silence the press by stepping up online censorship through the new law targeting social media, mobilization partisan regulatory bodies, and launching a new offensive against judicial independence by targeting Turkey’s Constitutional Court (TCC). The group also flagged the continued jailing and prosecution of journalists as well as ongoing concerns over the safety of journalists and judicial independence.

International community must step up its bilateral and multilateral efforts to bring Turkey back into the club of countries that respects the rule of law, the group said.

According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2019, 130,000 public officials were dismissed following the 2016 coup over alleged association with U.S. – based Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen. Turkey’s Ministry of Justice stated that as of June, “almost one-fifth of the total prison population was charged or convicted of terrorism offenses. Others have been charged with “insulting the president”.

A Turkish court on Friday resumed its high-profile show trial targeting leading Turkish civil society figure and philanthropist Osman Kavala accused of espionage and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order in the 2016 coup. Kavala has been accused of collaborating with Henri Barkey, a prominent U.S. based Turkey scholar who has been accused of having links to Fethullah Gulen’s network, which Ankara says orchestrated the coup attempt.

The court rejected Osman Kavala’s request to be released, and also ruled to merge two ongoing proceedings against Kavala and adjourned the trial until May 21, extending his detention since late 2017 by nearly four months.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed the wife of jailed philanthropist Osman Kavala for provoking student protests at Bogazici University where she is an acclaimed academic. A report in Bloomberg stated that Erdogan called Ayse Bugra a “provocator” and her husband a “representative” of George Soros in Turkey.

Hundreds of protestors have been arrested at the university since January 4, including others who have been arrested at demonstrations in support of the students and LGBTQ rights in cities such as Ankara, Izmir and Bursa.

According to Nazlan, Bogazici University is a “microcosmos of all the issues we talk about in Turkey – academic freedom, independence, the right to assembly, LGBTQ movements and more”.

“Ever since the protests have started, hundreds of students have been taken into custody, those who expressed a rightful and peaceful opposition to the government appointed rector were vilified, the president and his cronies referred to them as terrorists, vandals, or “snakes whose heads should be crushed.”

The LGBTQ students who demonstrated with a rainbow flag were called “perverts who had no place in Turkey” by the Interior Minister,” says Nazlan.

The European Union and the United Nations has condemned these homophobic comments and called for demonstrators to be released.

Rights group Amnesty International has called on the government of Turkey to take urgent action to counter the increasing number of discriminatory statements and policies by the State officials against LGBTQ people. In a statement published in 2020, the rights group had urged the authorities to promote “equality both in their statements and actions.”

Nazlan adds that women in Turkey who have often used humour to make their voices heard, their situation continues to remain grim. In 2019, 474 women were murdered, mostly by partners and relatives and the figures in 2020, affected by coronavirus lockdhowns, are expected to be even higher.

“Women have been on the streets and various hashtags have surfaced – such as #ChallengeAccepted, #IstanbulConventionSavesLives and also #menshouldknowtheirplace. Domestic violence has increased, nearly half of all the women claim that they have faced some form of physical or psychological abuse in their lives,” says Nazlan.

Much before these brutal crackdowns on dissent following the attempted coup two years ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held promises of turning Turkey into a “beacon of democracy for a region rife with religious conflict”, except today authoritaianism has destroyed the country and “the current Bogazici protests – which are still going on – is an example that no opposition is tolerated in Turkey anymore, no matter how peaceful or democratic,” says Nazlan.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views.

 

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By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Feb 8 2021 (IPS-Partners)

President Joseph Biden of the United states and President Vladimir Putin of Russia vide a telephone talk have agreed to extend the New Start treaty beyond the expiry date of 5th February of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or New-START by another five years. By ageing to do so, President Biden was reversing the decision of his predecessor, President Donald Trump. It is actually the only remaining agreement that curtails US and Russian nuclear forces.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

The New Start limits both sides to no more than 700 ICBMs, SLBMs and nuclear-capable bombers, and 1500 deployed strategic warheads. The numbers are the lowest since 1960s. Sheer numbers, more often than not, do not tell the whole story. Within the treaty framework one could introduce qualitative improvements, or new weaponry that could add capabilities and upset the equilibrium. This has always been an apple of discord between the parties.

An immediate positive spin-off of the extension would be the continuation of the Bilateral Consultative Commission to discuss the aforementioned issues, among other things. The Commission meets periodically to discuss all matters of treaty operations. Of late both parties have been concerned about certain doctrinal adjustments on either side: the US over the perceived ‘”escalation for de-escalation” and associated ‘hybrid war’ policies of the Russians, and Russia over the defensive measures undertaken by the US , as well as addition of low-yield weapons to US arsenal, both of which they assess as destabilizing.

It would be appropriate here to discuss some element of the Russian nuclear doctrine that western and non-Russian readership might not be familiar with. Briefly this is encompassed in the two concepts of SDERZIVANIE (“nuclear restraint”) and USTRASHENIE (“intimidation”).This combination is meant to persuade the adversary that it has no chance of achieving its strategic goals by force, and this policy, which implies use of conventional and strategic weaponry, remains in operation in peacetime and war , nuclear weapons being only one tool in the broad tool-kit of warfare. It, therefore, encompasses the western concept of deterrence, as well as coercive warfare and compellence, and is designed to be a multi-domain cross-cutting effort using both soft and hard power. Hence the western perception of Russian doctrine as “’hybrid”.

On 2 June 2020, President Putin signed off (Executive Order 355) on an important document that outlines Russia’s current strategic doctrine. It entails a systematized asymmetric approach, underscoring the severity and certainty of ‘’ punishment”. The document lists a whole series of activities by the adversary that may be constituted as a threat to Russia, and/or its “allies” to be “neutralized by the implementation of nuclear deterrence” (translation: ‘’by use of nuclear weapons”). The order also allows for the use of nuclear weapons not only to counter the enemy’s similar capabilities, but also ‘other types of weapons of mass destruction or significant combat potential of general purpose forces”. Western analysts read this as a wide range of options to introduce nuclear weapons at an early stage of conflict to prevent its spread, reconfirming the so-called “escalate to de-escalate” strategy.

One criticism of the New-START, and the Trump Administration made much of it, was the non-inclusion of China. While the Chinese armoury is barely one-tenth of that of the US, it possesses very advanced hypersonic platforms. Its DF 17 (“Deng Feng” or East wind) missiles can be mounted on hypersonic glide vehicle, which the Chinese are said to claim that could render the US Air defence systems in the Near East obsolete. At the 2019 October Revolution Anniversary parade, it displayed what was designated as DF 100, a very advanced hypersonic rocket that can “kill” large enemy ships, and even Carriers. A significant point about hypersonic vehicles is that even without weapons payload, it can unleash enormous destructive kinetic energy while impacting on targets because of its sheer speed! It is, however, difficult to see why China would, quite unnecessarily in its perception, subject itself to any agreement on constraining its capacity to be a comparable military rival to the US (or even Russia, for that matter).

The Biden Administration could use the New- START discussions to negotiate limits on new types of platforms such as Russia’s ‘’Avangard’’ hypersonic glide vehicles with speed of Mach 20 to 27, which means that many times the speed of sound ( any propulsion over Mach 5 is normally classified as ‘hypersonic’; only Russia and China possess such capabilities). This is one of six new strategic weapons unveiled by Russia in 2018. The Russian side can bring to the table their concerns about US missile defense; for instance, the 44 Ground based Interceptors or GBIs based in Alaska and California. It is important to note that the 1972 ABM Treaty was predicated on the theoretical proposition that since defensive measures of this kind erode retaliatory strike-capability of the adversary, is hence destabilizing, the assumption being that vulnerability encourages good strategic behaviour. The Republican legislators in the US, as a rule, tend to be “pro-defense” (recent voting patterns of Senators such as Messrs Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Joshua Hawley can be cited as a case in point). This factor may prove a modicum of constraint for Biden. The New Start would facilitate Strategic Stability Talks which will not perhaps produce agreements but will enhance understanding of each other’s doctrines and concerns. Particularly as the Russian concept of strategic SDERZIVANIE is more complex, using soft and hard power tools in peace and war.

The Trump Administration was said to be toying the idea of testing, which would have well and truly put the genie out of the bottle around the world. Experts view that the US, which has not tested since 1992 can make do with what is called ”Stockpile stewardship”. It is a process by which reliability is determined through simulations and supercomputers without having to conduct tests.

The Obama Administration had made a deal with the Senate to win New-Start ratification with a commitment for modernization of the US deterrent. So, Biden will have to continue with this over USD 1 tr programme. The so-called triad on which this deterrence is based has three legs: bomber aircraft, the land-based ICBMs, and the sea-based SLBMS.

The strategic bombers, 60 under the START Agreement, comprise such aircraft as the venerable B 52 and B-2 Stealth, highly mobile, and effective as both first and second strikers. As for ICBMS, Start permits 400 Minutemen 111 to be deployed. Some experts see these in immobile silos as more vulnerable and also due to their targeting inflexibility as of reduced strategic value and would argue for their elimination. The third and most effective leg, SLBMs, is also the smallest, only 14 deployed Trident Submarines. Since submarines are more difficult to track and destroy, they are most useful for second strike, which is the critical component of deterrence, and for this very reason, seen as a stabilizing factor in any nuclear balance. The US Navy will replace the current Ohio Class with Columbia Class. The latter will be interoperable with the British Dreadnaughts Class of submarines, poised to be deployed as British deterrence. This will signify further enhanced partnership between the two.

At some point in time the bilateral agreement could possibly be widened, but it will not be easy. China stands little to gain by constraining its capabilities in realpolitik terms. Also, nations who have the capability, and perceive security being linked to nuclear weaponization will do so. North Korea, for instance. Some others, who are also capable but see more current benefits in avoiding or delaying it would hedge, as Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Iran. Happily, proliferation has not been as rampant as earlier feared. Some credit is owed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 for this. So, this would be a good time for the US to back the various non -proliferation and arms control negotiations. For instance, the Biden Administration could encourage the reactivation of the nearly-defunct Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, which is the sole existing multilateral disarmament forum, though that could be a tall order. But a good example, its critique notwithstanding, has been set by the Biden team in continuing with the New-START with Russia.

Meanwhile, the push by both the US and Russia, is to increase accuracy, which is measured by Circular Error Probability or CEP. If the CEP of a warhead is 10000 yards, it means 50% of the ordnance will fall within that distance of the target. Theoretically, increased precision is always suspect as it enhances propensity to use, which, in turn, encourages warfighting as opposed to deterrence. Indeed, at one point in 1974, the then US Defence Secretary, James Schlesinger, had propounded a ‘limited options” strategy, known as “Schlesinger doctrine, which was critiqued for just that. Unfortunately, this race to be one-up on the adversary, be it in terms of posture or policy, quality or quantum, will continue. Nuclear Strategists tend to share the same belief, two thousand years ago, of the classic Roman thinker, Cicero: Si vis Pacem, para bellum, if you want peace prepare for war.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President & Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac@nus.edu.sg

 

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Kul Gautam, UNICEF Regional Director for Asia-Pacific meeting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in 1998.

By Kul Chandra Gautam
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 8 2021 (IPS)

The 1 February 2021 coup d’état by Myanmar’s military (Tatmadaw), has been widely condemned by all the world’s democratic leaders, human rights activists and genuine friends of the people of Myanmar around the globe. In an unusual manner for the world’s top diplomat, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has gone so far as to urge the world community to make sure that Myanmar’s military coup fails.

Like many other world leaders, he urged the military leadership to respect the will of the people of Myanmar as expressed in the 8 November 2020 general elections that gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) Party a resounding 83 % of the popular vote. Guterres called the reversal of those elections “absolutely unacceptable”.

Notwithstanding the Secretary-General’s strong call, the most powerful organ of the UN, the Security Council, issued a mild statement that failed to condemn the coup because of strong objection by China, a veto-wielding member of the Council with significant economic interests in Myanmar. Reflecting the Beijing government’s views, China’s state news agency Xinhua referred to the military coup simply as a “major Cabinet reshuffle”.

Given the potential veto by China and Russia (both permanent members of the Security Council that sell huge quantities of arms to Tatmadaw), it is unlikely that the Council will muster the courage or the unanimity needed to intervene or impose stern sanctions against the military junta.

However, even an indirect condemnation of the coup and a call for restoration of democratic institutions and respect for people’s human rights sends a clear signal of solidarity of the international community to the people of Myanmar to fight for their rights.

Donald Trump’s impact

The ostensible reason for the Tatmadaw’s putsch is their objection to apparent electoral irregularities in the November 2020 elections in which the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) suffered a humiliating defeat.

Coincidentally, the Tatmadaw’s charges of massive electoral fraud in Myanmar sound very similar to those of the former US President Donald Trump’s discredited claims of similar electoral fraud in the US presidential election. Indeed, the Trump administration’s cuddling of authoritarian regimes may have given some encouragement to the Burmese junta.

The junta was certainly aware that its power grab would be condemned by the new Biden administration in the US, the European Union and other democratic governments, and human rights groups around the world. But knowing it can count on strong support of China and Russia,
and tacit approval or acquiescence of its ASEAN neighbors and India too, seems to have given it the confidence that it can afford to withstand the opprobrium by the rest of the world.

The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi’s international stature has greatly diminished in recent years was probably another factor in the military’s calculation to dare to overthrow her.

However, it is difficult to fathom what Tatmadaw’s long-term calculations and strategy are. For an army that is despised by a large majority of the people of Myanmar, because of its decades of oppression and corruption that has gravely retarded the country’s development, it already enjoys a very favorable position under the current power-sharing arrangement with Suu Kyi.

It can appoint 25 percent of the members of parliament. It controls three of the most powerful government ministries in charge of national security. It is allowed to carry out very lucrative business ventures that has made many army generals among the richest people in the country.

The current power-sharing arrangement is such that if the elected government fails, the blame would go largely to its leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but if it succeeds the Tatmadaw too could claim some credit and brag that the Myanmar model of power-sharing works!

It is, therefore, baffling to figure out why the military would give up such a sweet-heart deal in pursuit of an uncertain future knowing that the putsch would push the country into the ranks of a pariah regime once again.

The speculation is that either the Tatmadaw leadership was fearful of the NLD government clipping its current prerogatives by attempting to amend the army-imposed constitution or more likely the top General Min Aung Hlaing’s inflated personal ambitions led him to make this pre-emptive strike.

Outfoxing each other

A decade ago, Tatmadaw and Aung San Suu Kyi negotiated a power-sharing deal. After Suu Kyi’s NLD Party scored a sweeping victory in the 2015 elections, Myanmar became the democratic darling of the world. It heralded the end of Myanmar’s international isolation, the blossoming of a relatively free media, as well as an explosion of social media.

Young Burmese flocked to the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, followed by their elders soon afterwards. Tourism started flourishing. Foreign investment, particularly from neighboring ASEAN countries, and especially, China boomed.

International media and NGOs, banned during the military regime, flocked to Myanmar. And UN agencies severely constrained by highly restricted mandate and shortage of funding because of sanctions against the military regime by Western donors got a new lease of life and expanded their operations.

But the euphoria of Myanmar’s transition away from military rule to a seemingly liberal democracy was premature and exaggerated. It was more wishful and hopeful than the ground realities justified.

In the power-sharing deal she entered with Tatmadaw in 2011, Suu Kyi tentatively accepted the 2008 Constitution drafted by the military with a view to perpetuating its dominance on all key issues of “national security” under the garb of a pro-forma electoral democracy.

With her confidence in securing overwhelming election victory, Suu Kyi’s calculation was that she will be able to outfox the Tatmadaw and amend the constitution to weaken or eliminate the military’s power, and strengthen genuine democracy.

But it appears that the Tatmadaw actually outfoxed Suu Kyi. It even got her, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to condone the military’s ethnic cleansing and genocidal oppression of the Rohingya Muslims and to cuddle Burman Buddhist xenophobia.

To the consternation of the international community, but continuing adulation of the ethnic Burman population, it turned out that as a politician Suu Kyi and Tatmadaw shared many common Bamar ethno-nationalist sentiments and deeply held prejudices against most non-Bamar ethnic communities, particularly the Rohingya Muslims, questioning their status as equal and patriotic citizens of Myanmar.

Forming and Spurning the Kofi Annan Commission

Stung by international criticism of Tatmadaw’s brutal oppression of the Rohingyas, and as a face-saving gesture, in 2016 Suu Kyi formed an international Advisory Commission on Rakhine State headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to propose measures to ensure the social and economic well-being of both the Buddhist, the Muslim and other ethnic communities in Myanmar’s conflict-ravaged regions.

In my view, this Commission came up with the best possible recommendations and a roadmap for not only Rakhine state but to ensure a sustainable, democratic, prosperous and equitable multi-ethnic future for all of Myanmar. But Suu Kyi essentially cold-shouldered Annan’s recommendations, perhaps fearing that the military would never accept them.

Inspired and disappointed by Suu Kyi

As a senior UNICEF official in the 1990s and 2000s, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with Suu Kyi as well as several senior Burmese military leaders, including the seemingly progressive General Thein Sein when he was the powerful Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Committee (SPDC) who later became Prime Minister and the first “elected” “civilian” President of Myanmar. He was the one who negotiated the power sharing deal with Suu Kyi in 2010.

I recall Suu Kyi, being an articulate and inspiring personality. Very strong-minded and stubborn at times, she presented herself as a staunch defender of democracy and human rights in Myanmar and globally. Her advocacy of a Gandhian non-violent civil disobedience and her reputation as a Mandela-like prisoner of conscience over a prolonged period, led to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

But like many of her previous admirers, including her fellow Nobel Prize laureates, I became deeply disappointed by her politically-calculated alliance with the military when she defended the indefensible ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim community at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Although Suu Kyi’s international stature as an icon of democracy and human rights has suffered irredeemably, she continues to be immensely popular domestically. If anybody can potentially tame Myanmar’s powerful Tatmadaw, it still continues to be Aung San Suu Kyi, given both her undiminished domestic popularity and her father General Aung San’s nationalist credentials and legacy.

Thus, despite all her flaws, I believe the international community has no choice but to support the restoration of democratic process in Myanmar led, in the near-term, by Suu Kyi and her NLD party.

The possible ways forward

However, in the longer term, both the people of Myanmar and the international community ought to internalize three important lessons from the Burmese conundrum of the past six decades: a) not to rely on the leadership of one individual, no matter how charismatic, b) the necessity of delegitimizing the privileged political role of Myanmar’s military, and c) looking beyond the necessary restoration of electoral democracy to a laser-like focus on tackling a range of issues that have perpetuated poverty, inequality and violent conflicts in this immensely resource-rich country that remains one of the poorest in the region.

Nobody believes the military’s promise that it will organize new elections in a year’s time and hand-over power to a newly-elected government. If free and fair elections are held, the military and its puppet party, the USDP, are likely to fare even worse than in the November 2020 general elections.

The junta maybe able to prolong its rule in the short-term by organizing sham elections and increased repression, but the durability of such a regime is questionable. We are already beginning to see the sprouting of a courageous campaign of civil disobedience in various forms, which is only likely to accelerate over time.

We can expect Tatmadaw to unleash harsh repression using all the tools and tricks in the authoritarians’ toolbox, starting with shutting down the internet and the social media. But there is no conceivable scenario under which the Tatmadaw can solve Myanmar’s entrenched problems and endear itself to a restive population.

In this day and age, harsh repression alone cannot ensure political stability. Even the military regime’s backers like China and most of the ASEAN countries that treasure political stability over democratic norms, are likely to abandon their active or tacit support of the junta, once they realize that a regime deeply despised by the populace and incapable of delivering sustainable development cannot ensure lasting stability and tranquility.

It is clear that the military has grossly misjudged the mood of the Burmese youth. Having tasted democracy and an open society during the past decade, Myanmar’s digitally savvy youth, like those of many other countries, are now so well-connected with their counterparts around the world, so well aware of their rights and their potential, so determined to pursue a prosperous future, that they will find many creative ways to outfox the military’s shenanigans.

Among the best proposals for a way forward is a solemn appeal by a wise and thoughtful religious leader, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, President of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conference, and a Co-President of Religions for Peace International.

He made a strong case for “demilitarizing Myanmar”, warning even before the latest coup: “History teaches us, diplomats and peacemakers know, that there is never going to be a military solution to a political conflict. Pursuing military solutions leads only to endless war and endless misery”.

Following the coup, the Cardinal issued an urgent message addressed to the people of Myanmar; its civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi; to the Myanmar military, and the international community.

The message calls for the people to stay calm, avoid violence, but pursue their goals peacefully.
The Bishop chastises the military for its empty promises and urges the junta to respect people’s rights as expressed through their elected representatives, writers, activists, and especially Myanmar’s youth. He urges Suu Kyi and the NLD leaders to continue dialogue and with Tatmadaw to overcome the new challenges created by the latest coup.

To the International community, the Bishop cautions how sanctions in the past brought few results, and to avoid measures that risk collapsing the economy and throwing millions into poverty.

I tend to agree with the Bishop that general sanctions are a blunt instrument that hurt ordinary people while the rich and the powerful find many ways to evade them. However, I believe there is room and need for tough but very specifically and narrowly targeted sanctions against the key perpetrators and enforcers of the military putsch and their business interests, while meticulously sparing the ordinary people.

The international community would be wise to follow the Burmese historian Thant Myint-U’s advice to avoid a narrow focus on political change and help ensure the protection of ordinary people’s lives and livelihoods as part of any international action to thwart the military coup.

“Myanmar needs a fresh path to democracy” he says, “Free and fair elections (and respect for the results) are essential. But also essential is the transformation of a society shaped by decades of dictatorship, international isolation, brutal armed conflict, racial and religious discrimination, extreme poverty and widening inequality”.

In a world struggling to recover from the ravages of the COVID pandemic, and many other epochal crises, the plight of the people of Myanmar may not get the full attention it deserves. But let us hope that the sentiments of global solidarity will inspire them to regain their inalienable human rights and dignity.

 

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The post Post-Coup Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Way Forward appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kul Chandra Gautam, a Nepali diplomat, is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. (www.kulgautam.org). He is also the author of the recently-published "Global Citizen from Gulmi: My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of the United Nations"

The post Post-Coup Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Way Forward appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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