| FALL 2022 LECTURE SERIES: BORDER POLITICS, STATE LOGISTICS, AND PRECARIOUS ZONES
Event Title: Contemporary Violence of State Crime and the Making of Statelessness. Chair: Prof. Joyce C.H. Liu and Dr. Poonam Sharma Date: November, 7th 2022 Address: R 106, HA Building 2, NYCU, 1001 Daxue Road, East District, Hsinchu City, 30010. Authors: Monika Verma and Poonam Sharma Introduction This mini-lecture series discusses the plight of Rohingyas in South Asia such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India. Since the 70s, Rohingyas have been fleeing to various countries to escape ethnic discrimination, military impetuosity, persecution, and human rights violations in Myanmar. A Buddhist-Muslim divide developed after Myanmar’s independence, resulting in a conflict between Rakhine Buddhist communities and Rohingyas, which intensified to unprecedented levels and culminated in the “state-sponsored massive violence.” It is not only in Myanmar but also in their asylum countries such as Bangladesh and India, where the Rohingyas find themselves subjected to discrimination and violations of their human rights. With the opening remarks, Prof. Ranabir Samaddar addressed the question of “the state and responsibility” as well as “who makes refugees”, which is followed by Dr. Michal Lubina’s lecture on how Myanmar legitimizes State crimes and justifies crimes against humanity, creating the Rohingya problem. As a part of her research, Dr. Kristina Kironska was interested in what people think about the Rohingyas in ASEAN countries. As a follow-up to that, Monika Verma provides insight into India’s harsh attitude towards Rohingya refugees in the country, and Dr. Bonny Ling elaborates on the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) as well as Taiwan’s Asylum Law. Main Speakers ‘Who Makes Refugees? The Contemporary History of Responsibility 是誰製造了難民 ?當代歷史的責任 Speaker: Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Distinguished Chair, Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group, India.
Prof. Samaddar’s writing on migration, forms of labor, urbanization, and political struggles, particularly in light of his affiliation with the critical school of thought, signaled a new tum in post-colonial thought. He, while presenting different ways to conceptualize responsibility in the post-colonial age, explained the connection between ‘power’ and ‘responsibility’. By referencing the study of refugee protection in India, he highlights the responsibility being a critical counterpoint to the question of ‘power’, which at the same time can become an element of ‘influence.’ Thus, ‘power’ also produces protection, the ability to care, and vice versa and thus power also holds a dual role. He gives an example of Hindu mythology to explain why ‘power’ is perennial. Therefore, in the global refugee regime, the other role of ‘power’ and ‘influence’ is that of ‘power’ and ‘responsibility’ at the margins. While referencing the structure of power in the post-colonial setup, it is implied that the implications of power and responsibility should be studied in correlation to one another whenever required. He argued, how incomparable and inadequate the legal set-ups and protection rules for the victims of forced migration are mostly impacted by the war-like crisis in today’s age. The final part of his presentation provides an example of the India -Pakistan partition and the vulnerability it caused to the migratory groups. In his presentation, he urges that the dynamics of power and responsibility be studied in the context of the situation of the victims and refugees of the present times because, for him, it is the post-colonial reality. He pointed out that Political power is suffering from the power of sovereignty and very little from the concept of responsibility. Importantly, last but not least, he points out that the global space of responsibility and power bend to each other. There is a requirement to understand the relationship of power with globalization about power.
The never-ending Four Cuts: The Tatmadaw’s state violence – Legitimizing the State Crimes: Myanmar’s View on the Rohingya Crisis. Speaker: Dr. Michał Lubina (魯米浩), 2022 Taiwan Fellowship Scholar, Taipei, ROC (Taiwan), Associate Professor, Jagiellonian University, Institute of Middle and the Far East, Kraków, Poland Dr. Lubina started the discussion by talking about ‘Tatmadaw’ i.e., the royal army of the Military state in Myanmar. While providing a brief explanation of his experience of stay and research in Myanmar he tried to explain the various role of the Military in regulating the state in Myanmar. During his explanation regarding the failure of the nation-building process and the Tatmadaw’s state violence, he argued that the Tatmadaw’s presence in Myanmar is like “an army with a state, not a state with an army” which works on “one blood, one voice, one command/order (တစ် သွေး ၊ တစ် အသံ ၊ တစ် တစ်မိန့်)” ideology. Tatmadaw’s practice is based on the colonial legacy where violence is seen as ‘a means to resolve social conflicts’. As a result, he emphasized, burmanisation, violence, xenophobia, the issue of (non-)belonging to a nation, and essentialist notions of ethnicity played a significant role in the Tatmadaw’s engineering of the state based on the politics of inclusion and exclusion. For him, Tatmadaw is an army built on anticolonial, revanchist feelings, anarchist, and WWII’s Japanese version of the army. By pointing out certain events like the Burma Citizenship Law, 1982, and the exclusion of ethnic minorities from citizenship rights, he furthered his discussion about the flaws in rules and regulations. According to him, Myanmar’s political system has been unjust from the beginning. There are two major domestic actors in the Rohingya crisis: The Tatmadaw and the NLD-civilian government. He describes these actors as being ‘intertwined in a barely workable coexistence’ and as having various perspectives and narratives. While emphasizing the problems and crisis in the state, he called illegal immigration and the (non)belonging as the two main problems in Myanmar. The ARSA and most of the Rohingyas are not only labeled as ‘illegal’ but also seen as ‘terrorists’, ‘Bengali terrorists, ‘extremist terrorists’. Consequently, Tatmadaw successfully installed, he argued, “the domination of emotions over information”, and also sparked fear of insecurity among the Burmese. With the reference to the Tatmadaw, he showed how the anarchy that is prevalent in Taiwan is relatable. Following the analysis of all the above-mentioned points, he made a concluding statement stating that the Rohingya crisis was the result of “‘correcting’ colonial-made problems” or “finishing the unfinished business of 1942”. By doing this, the army was able to legitimize, he stated, its ‘leading role’ in national politics and emerge victorious from the crisis with its credibility intact. Bangladeshi attitudes towards the Rohingya 5 years on – Myanmar-ASEAN and hearing the voices of the (ASEAN) people on the Myanmar crisis Speaker: Dr. Kristina Kironska, Advocacy Director, CEIAS | Central Europe Institute of Asian Studies.
During Dr. Kironska’s talk, she provided a very interesting presentation of her qualitative research that she had also conducted in Myanmar and Bangladesh during her research visits to her research areas. Her research more focused on the Rohingyas and the Bangladeshis to understand the attitudes of the Bangladeshi host population. She started her talk with specific and well-defined figures and numbers about the Rohingyas and how the Bangladeshis feel about the Rohingyas, just 5 years after the refugees came to the country. The growing number of refugees is also putting up pressure on the Bangladeshi people and the government. It should be mentioned that she provided conducted surveys in 56 countries in total. Her research results show most Bangladeshi respondent knows that most Rohingya people are Muslims and were mostly confined to the Rakhine state and restricted from moving around freely, getting state education and civil job in Myanmar, on the one hand. On the other hand, her results also show most Bangladeshi respondents don’t know that Rohingyas are residing in Bangladesh since the 1990s. In Bangladesh, the half people feel negative and half the people feel positively about Rohingyas. And Chittagonians have a slightly worse feeling about Rohingyas. So this is a polarizing issue. The people have a lot of sympathy for them. People believe that the Rohingya are likely to go back to Myanmar but the people in Chittagong are less likely to believe that Rohingya people will go back to Myanmar at some point than people on the national level. More people don’t believe than believe that allowing Rohingya to travel will help reduce problems. Most believe that if Rohingya were to move around freely in Bangladesh, they would create chaos. People believe it is a good idea to relocate the Rohingya to the island. Her research tried to understand and analyze the reaction of the local Bangladeshi population and how the policies and rules are regulated concerning these Rohingyas. With the help of figures and numbers, she showed the countries which supported the settlement and sympathy of the Rohingyas, and a large section of the Bangladeshis are seen to have supported them while Malaysia is the one who least supported the resettlement of the Rohingyas. Dr. Kironska in her presentation showed how perspectives and notions transform from one country to another. Discussants (討論人) The plight of Rohingyas in India: Hindutva politics and its practices of exclusion. 羅興亞人在印度的困境：印度教政治及其排外政策. Monika highlighted the problems and prospects of the Rohingyas in India and specifically in North India and started by highlighting the protests of the Rohingyas in New Delhi. She talked about the UNHCR’s documentation cards and the confiscation of Aadhaar cards of Rohingyas and how the new government started to portray them as illegal migrants and illegalize their status. Dr. Poonam Sharma and Ms. Monika Verma also elaborated on the situation of the migrants in northeast India and how the implementation of anti-immigrant policies like the NRC and the CAA impacted the migrant community and the locals alike. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Asylum Law in Taiwan 國際法院與難民法在台灣 Dr. Bonny Ling, Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham Taiwan Studies Programme; Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Rights and Business; and Advisory Board Member of the INGO Human Rights at Sea. Dr. Ling provided was with an overall tragedy and crisis that has stormed the various parts of the world and how the status of the migrants has reached an all-time low considering that we are in a modern age and day. While summarizing her views, she provided instances of Gambia and Genocide in 2019. She also mentioned how the world has become such a difficult and unfair place overall and she referred to how they are struggling with the situation in the U.K. Discussion After these exciting presentations, the final session of the event moved forward to the Q & A round, which grabbed the participation of the audience and provided the speakers and the students to interact with each other. There were several questions asked regarding the State’s responsibility and solidarity, political activism, human right issues, the conundrums of citizenship in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India, Myanmar’s narration of military dominance and security issues, and the future of refugees. It was explained by Dr. Lubina that the dictatorship had brought many difficulties and insecurities in Myanmar, including the inability to carry out research and collect data for researchers. On the question of public opinion regarding refugees, Dr. Kristina Kironska believes that public opinion probably can have a huge impact in Europe when the Syrian crisis happened or when Russia invaded people had to flee. She furthered the discussion on political activism by mentioning that ‘shaming’ usually works but not with the Myanmar military. Political activism could have a potential symbolic impact such as standing with people and fighting for the people that are opposed and giving them hope and recognition. Additionally, Prof. Joyce Liu, who leads the discussion, mentions the limitations of international law as it relates to the human right issues that are discussed during the seminar. Citizenship issues, for her, are covertly and overtly intertwined with ethnicity which leads to differential citizenship, especially in South Asia and Southeast Asia. For Bonny Ling, these questions are very systematic about time. There are no easy answers, she mentioned. She ended her observation on not having asylum law in Taiwan which is not easy and not will be. She furthered her answered about how we need to think about the questions of ‘integration.’ By recalling her experiences with refugees and asylum seekers, she stresses that the picture on the ground is very bleak. Note: It is important to note that both authors have contributed equally to this activity report. |
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【Webinar】Understanding Nature, Championing Sustainability : From Education to Work
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