Jummas of CHTs: Caught Between Accord and Discord

Violent clashes erupted between ethnic Jumma (largely Buddhists) minorities and Bengali settlers in the Khagrachhari and Rangamati districts in Chittagong Hill between 19-23 February, resulting in at least four deaths. Hundreds have reportedly been injured or displaced. Reports claim that thousands of indigenous people were made homeless after arsonists supported by Bangladeshi soldiers burned down nearly 600 Jamma buildings, including residential houses, temples, churches and schools, during the violence. However, the Bangladeshi government has denied any involvement, direct or indirect, in the recent violence.

Now that a tenuous peace has returned to Bangladesh’s tribal Chittagong Hill Tracts region following clashes between tribes and settlers in violence that some say was encouraged by the military, all eyes are now on how Dhaka will respond. I published a report on this issue titled “Bangladesh Under Fire over Tribal Violence” at ISN Security Watch, Zurich, with views from couple of expert observers of the situation.

For a brief background, read ASI Blog report, “Ethnic Violence Grips Bangladesh”, February 24, 2010.

Here is the transcript of my interview with Sophie Grig, senior campaigner with Survival International. The London-based Survival International advocates for tribal rights worldwide and has been long monitoring the CHT situation. Your (ASI Blog readers) Comments are very welcome.

Q1- Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh have witnessed violence recently. How do you describe this episodic ethnic violence that surfaced in the area between Bengali settlers and Jumma Hill people?

Sadly, the recent violence comes as no surprise to those who are following the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Tension had been building up in the Sajek region for some time, with settlers, supported by the soldiers, taking land from the Jumma tribal people. The history of conflict between the two groups means that any incident can spark great tensions which can rapidly get out of hand. As happened here, once the violence was triggered, settlers have taken the opportunity to burn down the houses of innocent Jumma villagers. Because the army supports and encourages the settlers, they are able to act without restraint. Soldiers have been involved in gross human rights violations in the CHT, with impunity, for many years. It is essential that those responsible for the shooting of Jumma people are brought to justice and a full impartial investigation should take place into the whole incident. Until the Jummas have their land rights fully recognized and the CHT is demilitarized (including the removal of all the temporary military camps, as agreed in the Peace Accord), the Jumma people will not be able to feel safe on their own land.

Q2- CHTs Peace Accord is 12 years old and yet to be implemented in real terms. Is there a lack of political will or vested interest playing a larger game here? 

I think for many years there was a absence of much needed ‘political will’ to implement the peace accord. Couple of years back, there have been many positive signs but nothing although it is not happening fast enough. I also believe that there are vested interests in the CHT, within the army and the settler communities, who do not want the accord to be implemented and who do not want the military to lose their control in the region. Survival is calling on the government to fully implement the CHT peace accord and to ensure that all those responsible for attacks against the Jumma people are brought to justice.

Q3- Do you think that there will be reemergence armed groups in CHTs to protect minority rights, especially in the face of alleged military repressions?

I hope that this won’t be the case, and that this recent violence will have helped those within the Jumma community, who are divided about how best to push for peace in their region, to unite and work together for the rights of all Jummas.

Q4- Any recommendations for the Dhaka authority?

It is important for the Jummas to regain trust in the Government after these brutal attacks. Therefore, it is essential that there should be a full, independent investigation into the recent events and the role army played there. Those responsible for this atrocity must be brought to justice. While the army, and settlers, are seen to be able to kill and destroy with such impunity, the Jummas will never be safe on their own land. We call on the Bangladesh government to put an end to army violence in the CHT, withdraw the army camps, and fully implement the Peace Accord.

Posted by Animesh Roul on March 11, 2010. Respond »

A Feminist Foreign Policy for the US?

It’s just about a year since the Obama inaugural. That euphoric morning, the mantra of ‘change’ was everywhere. But in the life after the inaugural, the logic and process of government dominate to slow down the whirlwind and subdue it to the measured pace of administrations everywhere. One thing, this blogger would suggest, has changed. And that is the growing profile of gender issues in the discourses and programmes of the US State Department.

One of the very first things that President Obama did right after taking oath was to lift the ban on federal funding for family planning programmes that recognize abortion. From there on, take a look at these notes from the last six-seven months:

 On June 12, 2009, Melanne Verveer was sworn in as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.
 In July, Secretary of State Clinton and film star Aamir Khan spent a couple of hours during her visit to Mumbai speaking before a large audience about the importance of education, especially for girls.
 Sexual violence against women received a great deal of attention from the Secretary of State on her visit to seven African states in August, including time taken to speak with activists in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. (See also: Jane Morse, Conflicts in Africa Exacerbate Gender-Based Atrocities, August 3, 2009) During this visit, it was announced that the US would assist with a three-year program to provide medical aid, counseling, economic assistance and legal support to vulnerable women and girls.
 In September, when the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution to end sexual violence during armed conflict, Hillary Clinton spoke out against those states that had turned a blind eye to such violence in recent conflicts.  (See earlier ASI post on this topic.)
 In November, the State Department’s Program on “Women’s Empowerment: Preventing Violence Against Women and Children” invited Take Back the Night Foundation to speak about its history and its work on preventing and ending violence against women to groups across India. Dr. Suraiya Baluch, an American of South Asian origin who sits on their Board, made the trip to cities across India during the global fortnight of advocacy against gender violence (November 25 to December 10).
 In January, Clinton addressed the 15th Anniversary meeting of the International Conference on Population and Development with these words: “Now, as those of us gathered in the Ben Franklin Room on the eight floor of the State Department know very well, the topic of reproductive health is subject to a great deal of debate. But I think we should all agree that these numbers are not only grim, but after 15 years, they are intolerable. For if we believe that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, then we cannot accept the ongoing marginalization of half the world’s population. We cannot accept it morally, politically, socially, or economically. 
…. So we’re here today to examine the distance that remains to be traveled before the world fully realizes the ICPD goals. This is a journey that the Obama Administration and the United States Government will travel with you. But we need to travel quickly, because we only have five years to meet our original goals.” (Italics added)

It’s fair to say that foreign ministers and foreign policy establishments issue hundreds of statements and press releases and really most of them are meaningless. But given the high profile of each of these, it could be said these are shifts intended to be noted.

What’s the history?

Traditionally, women and gender issues have only featured in international relations as victims—to be protected, lamented, assisted. A growing global women’s movement over the last half-century has forced a gradual accommodation of women’s issues on the global agenda.

Since 1975,  the international community has taken increasing cognizance of the separate and different experience of women in every sphere of life. Momentum gathered from that year dedicated to women’s advancement, through a similarly dedicated decade that culminated in the formulation of Forward-looking Strategies at Nairobi in 1985. These were reviewed in Beijing in 1995 following a decade in which the world had verily changed: the Cold War ended; the Soviet Union collapsed; ethnic conflicts seemed to replace interstate wars; new ideas about security were emerging; and perhaps most critically, information and communication technologies made globally networked advocacy easy.

Since Beijing, we have seen the emergence of gender-related norms into the mainstream of international relations. The mass-rapes in Bosnia brought an old reality to light: the use of rape as a weapon of war. In 2000, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 recognized the impact of war on women and posited that women should be a part of peace-making and peace-building. Outrage has steadily mounted to culminate in the adoption by the Security Council in 2008 of a resolution condemning war rapes. The 2009 UN Security Council Resolution takes 1325 further, condemning sexual violence during conflict and mandating peacekeeping and postconflict operations to take women’s needs into account. Finally, it should be noted that the third Millennium Development Goal relates to gender equality: “Promote gender equality and empower women.”

Bosnia and Rwanda first brought gender violence during conflict into newspaper and talkshow agendas in the US, but the email petitions that were circulated by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the mid-1990s seeking support to condemn the Taliban’s policies on women and women’s education seem to me to mark a watershed in the way global gender issues entered into ordinary homes and offices.  Activism surrounding these petitions and the news coming out of Afghanistan certainly contributed in some measure to the post-9/11 support for US intervention in Afghanistan. For a few years now, the State Department has been recognizing women around the world that it identifies as exceptional advocates for women’s right and advancement.

In other words, these issues are not entirely new to the world of international relations or diplomacy; it’s the high profile they are now being lent that is new. And interesting.

Why this high profile activism now?

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that it is the culmination of a thirty-year global change.

But what sorts of international relations observers would we be, if we did not cynically ask: What is the realpolitik of this change, if we do accept that there is change? FP establishments tend to be status quo, and if they are embracing this change, then it is tempting to subject to a realist reading: what’s in it for the US? It’s hard to buy into the idea that genuine idealism and humanitarian interest motivate any administration, anywhere. As President Obama pointed out in his Nobel lecture, we face the world “as it is.” 

So why high-profile social activism in the foreign policy establishment? Does it have to do with Hillary Clinton being Secretary of State, not just because she is a woman but because so much of her work in the past has related to these issues? Does it have to do with a changed domestic environment in the US where economic downturns are forcing attention to social hardship?

While this is probably a question best answered by historians, such a change raises other interesting questions that we might take the opportunity to revisit.

Two interesting questions

1. Do women make a difference in decision-making roles?

“Where are the women?” is the famous point of departure for liberal critiques of international relations. It is a moral given that women should be well represented and that women should be able to participate in every sphere at every level. There is more ambivalence about whether the mere presence of women makes a substantive difference in favour of women’s interests, broadly generalized.

The essentialist assumption that women will extend a caregiving, nurturing presence to the policy sphere is not substantiated by history. It is common to cite recent examples of Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher to illustrate that women in power make the same decisions on the same bases as men. Furthermore, gender issues do not necessarily find space on their lists of priority.

But the coincidence of Hillary Clinton’s swearing-in and the raising of the profile of gender issues in the State Department makes it worthwhile for political and diplomatic historians to take this opportunity to explore this question.

Take a look at:

David Rothkopf, It’s 3 a.m. Do You Know Where Hillary Clinton Is? Washington Post, August 23, 2009.
Megan Carpentier, Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal talks Hillary and international women’s rights, Madam Secretary: FP Blogs, January 23, 2009.
John Meacham, Meeting of the Diplomats, Newsweek, December 21, 2009.

2. What are the elements of a feminist foreign policy?

Feminism has been defined as the “radical notion that women are people” (Cheris Kramarae) The advancement of women’s issues and interests worldwide, a gender perspective on other issues and a structural rather than de-contextualised view of the world surely must make up some elements. But what would a truly thoughtful, comprehensive list comprise?

Here are a couple of links, to which I will keep adding as I come across interesting links.

Christine Stansell, The War on Women: Establishing a Feminist Foreign Policy, Dissent Magazine, June 26, 2009.
Nona Willis Aronowitz, Searching for Feminism on America’s Roads, Women and Foreign Policy: The World Affairs Blog Network, December 26, 2009.

Surely, this is not the last post on this subject!

Postscript (A little confession)
Found a paragraph on a campaign we run here against gender violence on America.gov. We are not funded by the US government, don’t invite guests through the local consulate, pretty much are a local, community initiative. But if the official radar are now sensitized to pick up such obscure signals, it must mean that they have been tuned to do so. 

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on January 21, 2010. Respond »

Still speaking about Shopian…

The story so far: Two sisters were found dead in an apple orchard in Shopian. In the context of insurgency, this gave rise to allegations of rape and murder by members of the Indian armed forces posted in that area. Investigations were inconclusive, protests rocked the valley and the case was handed over to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation. On December 14, 2009, the CBI reported that it had not found any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the armed forces, saying the girls had not been raped and killed. Moreover, the agency filed chargesheets against a dozen individuals who were said to have tampered with evidence along the way.

CBI files chargesheet in the Shopian case, December 14, 2009.

Predictably, this finding has met with outrage in Kashmir and in civil rights circles around India. Commentary on this issue in the Indian press ranges from support to scepticism.

Bashaarat Masood, Shopian dirt on this dozen, Indian Express, December 16, 2009.
Shopian changes little, Economic Times, December 16, 2009.
Shopian riddle, Daily News and Analysis, December 16, 2009.

Simultaneously, the Independent Women’s Initiative for Justice in Shopian (IWIJ), a fact-finding committee made up of eminent activist-professionals to investigate the incident (Uma Chakravarti, Usha Ramanathan, Vrinda Grover, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, Seema Misra and Dr. Ajita) released their report: Shopian: Manufacturing a Suitable Story: A Case Watch. (The report is available in pdf format at this link.)

Will we ever know how Nilofer and Asiya died? Probably not. But we can predict that this will be an important political issue for a long time.

Why should writers and readers of the ASI blog care about this obscure pair of sisters in a village most of us had never heard of? There are two reasons this case is important. First, it illustrates the link that scholars make between gender and identity politics. Women’s bodies stand for the community itself, and violence perpetrated against them carries the symbolic value of violence perpetrated against the body politic of the community. This confliction of woman and community reduces the importance of the individual woman and her life and her rights, even as it makes violence against women disproportionately provocative. Disproportionate, I write, not because it is not important but because it is considered important for the wrong reasons: community pride, honour and sanctity. The result is that it is virtually impossible for the individuals affected to get justice.

The second reason is that it underscores that a trust deficit is the biggest challenge in any conflict setting. Nobody trusts anybody to care enough either about the victims of violence nor about justice for its own sake. Every round of investigations is suspect. Every set of circumstances dubious. Addressing specific grievances is far easier than rebuilding trust.

Both of these are reminders that are relevant far beyond this case and the valley. That is why this blogger returns to the Shopian case at regular intervals.

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on December 17, 2009. Respond »

Special Report: Rajagopalan on Feminist Flashpoints in East Asia

As President Obama travels through East Asia, he provides South Asian feminist scholars with an opportunity to look east and review those issues that have been contentious for women’s rights activists. Each of the President’s stopovers has its own feminist flashpoints that are either consequences of society’s engagement with the outside world or that have consequences for that engagement. 

The movement of people is one of the main sources of concern for Japanese feminists. Women’s immigration from other parts of Asia into Japan when legal is largely in the “entertainment” category, with most immigrants working as bar hostesses, in factories, as commercial sex workers or waitresses. International marriages through brokers are known; along with the old pattern of Japanese wife/ non-Japanese husband now there are also Japanese men who seek non-Japanese but Asian wives either for more control in the marriage or for sham marriages that cover up and facilitate exploitation. (See Vera Mackie’s Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 for more.)

The Japanese also have to confront their status both as perpetrators and victims on the question of wartime sexual exploitation. If the use of “comfort women” during Japan’s mid-20th century occupation of Korea is a history Japan has to live down at minimum and apologize and compensate for at best, then Japan’s own experience with the US presence in Okinawa has been similar. Either way, women have simply been the spoils of militarization, not uniquely in East Asia but here this issue has acquired both feminist and nationalist resonance.

Singaporean women’s organizations have to walk a tightrope, calling attention to social inequities without criticizing the state; placing the blame on culture without blaming religion; being political by virtue of working on political questions, but all the while abjuring politics. Reproductive rights have been one arena of activism, but in insider-for-self-correction mode rather than as dissent or critique of the state’s agenda. Many women from other parts of Asia come to Singapore to undertake jobs as domestic workers. Their status and their rights become political issues in their countries of origin, but in my admittedly cursory search, it was not clear how much their presence registered with the local women’s movement. (Lenore Lyons has written a great deal on the women’s movement in Singapore.)

Shanghai is now one of Asia’s showpiece cities; Beijing is one of its oldest capitals. Through much of the twentieth century, women activists were as focused on nation-building and social modernization issues as their male colleagues. State feminism under the People’s Republic did self-consciously address the institutional and many structural issues relating to the status of women. In the public sphere, gender became irrelevant for both men and women in many ways. Since the 1990s, when China has opened up to the world and western feminist writing has been translated and made available, Chinese feminists are now critiquing this same effacement of gender identity and blaming this for the invisibility of women in many spheres.

From a South Asian perspective, what is most interesting is to look at the impact of how China has opened up and grown, on women’s lives, their decision-making frames and freedoms and finally, gendered expectations that they may now face. Given that China’s political opening is yet to equal its economic changes, it is hard to see what the emerging internal critiques and debates are among Chinese feminists. Whatever they are, they matter for international relations for two reasons. One, there are a lot of aspirants to growth along the Chinese model (or should I say, Shanghai model). For them, this could be an early warning of problems they should anticipate and address. Two, insofar as the Shanghai model is identified elsewhere with the replacement by American-style capitalist economics of socialist development models, its failures will be seen as American failures, exported to Asia. It is in US interests to appear introspective and self-critical with regard to socio-economic issues on the home-front.

Two important strands to the women’s activism in Korea appear to be improving working conditions for women and of course, the issue of “comfort women.” As elsewhere, sexual violence—its prevention, protection issues and victim support services—is a priority for most organizations. It was hard to find very descriptive accounts from which I could learn more.

Two issues seem to recur in this region. The first relates to democracy and space in the public sphere for social activism at all: in its absence or where it is strained, how likely is it that activists will prioritize women’s rights over civil rights and political reform agendas? Women are likely, yet again, to have to take a number and wait their turn. The other is that although my post scarcely suggests it, sexual violence is an important rallying point. Reading about Japan, I learned that in some cases, what were originally shelters for refugees were also taking in victims of domestic violence. That to me really underscores the continuum of violence in which most women’s lives play out. And violence in the name of the state—during war, to reinforce state rules, to ensure regime survival—is one stretch on this continuum.

States are bound by international convention to do business with other states. What this means is that when any head of state comes calling, s/he must meet and confer with whatever regime is in power. A strident discourse on human rights and democracy usually becomes background noise as a summit plays out—that’s diplomacy. But where then is the space for women’s rights issues to be raised and discussed in the international arena? Will we have seen something new in the course of President Obama’s international excursions this time and in coming months?

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on November 19, 2009. Respond »

Hearts, Minds and Maoists

In recent weeks, India’s Home Minister has taken a tough line against Maoists, stating that far from fighting for better living standards, their hostilities hinder development efforts. This polemical response has been welcomed by the Indian Express in an editorial that affirms:
“This intellectual challenge to the extremists’ ideology is not a softening on Maoists, but an invitation to civil society to form its ideas and opinions on the basis of facts and not the other way round.”

See also:
Barkha Dutt, Deeper and darker, Hindustan Times, October 16, 2009.

The use of violence over a prolonged period diminishes the validity of a cause as well as the legitimacy of a state’s response. South Asia is no stranger to this quandary.

For South Asia’s liberals, these are really tough times because they require us not just to take a stand, but to take one in a shifting, turbulent sea of grey waves. That is, we are called upon to sift from situations that are all nuance and contingency, thresholds and limits that we will set upon ourselves and others.Yes, governance and development failures are at the root of many violent struggles and the responsibility for them does rest with the state and its ruling classes. However, can this critique constitute unconditional acceptance that a popular response must be violent rather than constructive as so many other South Asian traditions would promote?

A free and honest discussion about these matters is what creates a secure socio-political climate in a society. If the state must be monitored against its tendency to silence dissent in the face of security crises, then civil society is also responsible for seeing that there are no other silences that it imposes upon those who disagree or question the dominant view of its most vocal members. Democracy fosters security, and the ongoing discussion about South Asia’s Maoist challengers and its development failures is a great illustration.

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on October 18, 2009. Respond »