In the News: “Dialogue Key to Ending Leftist Violence in Asia”

In the Bangkok Post, Michael Vatikiotis writes that a “new threat is emerging in Asia.”

...[T]he newest non-state armed groups battling governments in the name of justice and freedom draw on what was once thought to be a dead ideology: Marxism.”

Citing examples from India, to Nepal, parts of Burma, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Thailand, Vatikiotis concludes:

... In the experience of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which has convened dialogue with parties in armed conflict across Asia and Africa for the past decade, resolving any conflict necessitates the initiation of dialogue, almost always in conditions which initially will not be conducive or promising.

More broadly, governments need to recognise that armed violence against the state won’t disappear when Osama bin Laden is one day captured and al-Qaeda defeated.

For millions of disenfranchised people across Asia, whether they are facing ethnic or economic marginalisation, it would appear that Marxist ideas of popular struggle still have enormous appeal.

It would be a shame indeed, if all the effort expended on defeating terrorism this past decade is not related back to the basic root of the problem, which is that when people run out of peaceful ways to see their grievances redressed, they will take up arms.

Rather than becoming obsessed with cultural and religious divides - and in the process reinforcing them - the best way to deal with the problem is to engage in a dialogue to bring about an end to violence, whatever the root cause or driving ideology.”

Read the entire op-ed here.

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on December 14, 2009. Respond »