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no. P4 2005

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE

No. 22006

N I C D U N L O P on the Cambodian Tribunal

An Interview with S H I R I N E B A D I

C H A R M T O N G: Fighting Repression with Education

Talking Human Rights in China

Challenging the Israeli Army

Thailand’s Tank Liberals

Traded to Extinction

Photo Essay on Drought in Tanzania by H E L E N K U D R I C H

Academic Essay on Burma by D AV I D S C O T T M AT H I E S O N

Human Rights

RESEARCH ACROSS BOUNDARIES

s om etim es i wonder if the term Human Rights is in dan-ger of becoming a hollow, meaningless slogan – like for ex-ample the term Sustainable Development, which has been watered down to where it is impossible to fi gure out what people using it are really talking about. The problem seems to come from people who at one moment claim to be guard-ians of human rights, at the next don’t care about them, and fi nally have no qualms about violating them. No government today admits that it is systematically vio-lating human rights. On the contrary they all claim they are doing their utmost to protect them. The unlawful detention and ill-treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is according to the US government necessary to protect the American popu-lation. The Burmese military regime has on the other hand labeled virtually all opponents to their rule as terrorists, including 25-year-old human rights advocate Charm Tong, who you will meet in this magazine. Protecting a population against her must surely be about protecting human rights. Statements on human rights by governments, elected or unelected, are not always credible, as most are compromised on this subject. On the other hand it is the very same gov-ernments that have the powers to do something about the situation, to reform legislation, to introduce new policies and to avoid actions that intentionally or unintentionally lead

to human rights abuses. Sometimes governments introduce reforms, and when they do, it is reason to give them credit. But it is easy to forget that such actions often are the result of initiatives, research, pressure or campaigns from individuals or groups of people who care about human rights, and who, often at great personal risk, are doing their utmost to en-sure that human rights does not become yet another hollow, meaningless slogan. Systematic violations of human rights are happening all over the world, and so are crucial attempts to prevent them. International cooperation in education and research is one key to ensure a better understanding for human rights in the future. Talking to Global Knowledge about the impor-tance of higher education, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi says: “When we do not know something, we are afraid of it. And when we are afraid of something we hate it. Hating something is the beginning of dispute and war. Therefore fa-miliarity with diff erent cultures is the most important thing in helping peace. Higher education enables the students to open their eyes to the outside world.”

Whose Rights?Torgei r nor l i ngedi t or , globa l k now l ed ge

News in Brief | 02

River RescueDrought in Tanzania | 04

Cooperation on the Top of the WorldAlpine Tourism in Kyrgyzstan | 14

Hum an R igh ts:

Beyond RevengeNic Dunlop on the Cambodian Tribunal | 18

An Interview with Shirin EbadiFrom Imprisonment to the Nobel Peace Prize | 24

Charm Tong Fighting repression with education | 30

Thailand’s Tank LiberalsCan a military coup be justifi ed? | 35

Challenging the Israeli ArmyB’Tselem’s work for human rights | 40

Talking Human Rights in ChinaCan international cooperation make an impact? | 44

A University in ExileImpatient university students in Sudan | 49

International Association of Universities (IAU)Presentation of the organisation | 51

Traded to ExtinctionSaving the world’s endangered wildlife | 52

Competing for Reality in BurmaAcademic essay by David Scott Mathieson | 58

Research Across Boundaries

Global Knowledge is an interdisciplinary magazine about international cooperation in research and higher education, and is aimed at academics, students, administrators and policy-makers. Global Knowledge focuses on cooperation, where partners have diff erent points of departure in the following areas: political history, economics, geography and/or cultural and religious understanding. The magazine off ers stories on political questions with global implications in research and higher education and provides an international arena for debate. The interviews, feature articles and news items are produced by journalists and photographers from all over the world. One academic essay appears in each issue. Global Knowledge is published by the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (S IU), but the content of the magazine is by no means limited to the programmes administered by SIU. Global Knowledge is fi nanced through funds from the programmes that S IU administers on behalf of Norad. Also funds from the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs and the Ministry of Education and Research contribute to the production of Global Knowledge. The magazine does not necessarily represent S IU’s offi cial view.

P U BL I S H ED | November 2006EDI T OR-I N- C H I EF | Head of Information, Hanne Alver KrumEDI T OR | Torgeir Norling (torgeir@norling.no)A DV I S ORY B OA R D | Associate Professor HaraldHornmoen, Norway, Researcher René Smith,South Africa, Associate Professor Tom Skauge,Norway, Researcher Džemal Sokolović, Norway/Bosnia-Hercegovina, Professor James Tumwine,Uganda, Vice-Rector Galina Komarova, RussiaC OV ER P HO T O | Nic Dunlop, PanosL AY- OU T & t y p o gr a ph y | Øystein VidnesPRO OF -R E A DER | Steve HandsPR I N T ED BY | SymbolonC I RC U L AT ION | 2000S I U p u bl ic at ion P6 / 2006I S S N 1503-2876S I U, P.O. Box 7800, NO –50 20 Bergen, Norwaywww.siu.no/globalknowledge

Material from Global Knowledge may be freely cited provided that due acknowledgement of the source is made and the editor informed.

CONTENTS Global Knowledge 2 / 2 0 0 6

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Rafto Prize to Thích Quảng Ðộ, Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank

W i n n er s of b o t h the Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize have been announced. The 2006 Rafto Prize laureate is Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author, Thích Quảng Ðộ. According to The Thorolf Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, Thích Quảng Ðộ is one of Viet-nam’s most prominent defenders of democracy, religious free-dom and human rights. He is awarded the Memorial Prize for his personal courage and perseverance through three decades of peaceful opposition to the communist regime in Vietnam, and as a symbol for the growing democracy movement in the country. The Rafto Foundation also uses the opportunity of this award to call on the Vietnamese government to stop their at-tacks on dissidents and enter into a dialogue with the demo-cratic opposition on reforms towards participatory democracy and on the respect for human rights, freedom of belief and po-litical liberty in Vietnam. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize is divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and to the Grameen Bank for their ef-forts to create economic and social development from below. The Norwegian Nobel Committee awards this year’s laureates for their work in developing micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Micro-credit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions, states the committee. E S

t h e o t h er Nobel l au r e at e s of 2006:Chemistry: Roger D. Kornberg Economics: Edmund S. Phelps Literature: Orhan Pamuk Medicine: Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello Physics: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot

http://www.rafto.no/ • http://nobelpeaceprize.org/

“Alternative Nobel Prize” awarded in Sweden

Long k now n a s the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, the Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 by Swedish-Ger-man Jakob von Uexkull. Von Uexkull provided an initial endowment for the awards by selling his collection of post-

age stamps for USD one million. He fi rst approached the Nobel Foundation with the suggestion that it establish two new awards, one for ecology and one relevant to the lives of the poor majority of the world’s population. He off ered to contribute fi nancially but his proposal was turned down. He then decided to set up the Right Livelihood Awards, pre-sented in the Swedish parliament on the day before the Nobel prizes, according to the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia. To date, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation has presented 115 awards to individuals and organisations often working on a grass roots level. Wangari Maathai is the only person who has received both the alternative and the offi cial Nobel Prize. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1984, 20 years prior to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. The 2006 Right Livelihood Award recipients, sharing SEK two million in prize money, are Chico Whitaker (Brazil), Daniel Ellsberg (USA), Ruth Manorama (India), and the Inter-national Poetry Festival of Medellin (Colombia). E S

http://www.rightlivelihood.org/

From Arms to Education – and Back to Arms

The l ast i s su e of Global Knowledge carried a story about Thailand’s Former Army Chief Surayud Chulanont and his educational schemes for Thailand’s southern Muslim population. Surayud, who is widely recognized for having reformed the Thai armed forces, also commented on recent political turmoil, and expressed satisfaction that the Thai military did not get involved. “I was quite pleased,” said Surayud. “The army didn’t get involved in politics, but main-tained the status of a professional force.” Surayud may be even more pleased now. After a mili-tary coup toppled Thailand’s controversial Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September the coup-makers installed Surayud as the new prime minister of Thailand. Surayud has vowed that he will return the country to democracy. He has also issued an unreserved apology to the residents of the Muslim southern provinces, for widespread human rights abuses. The coup in Thailand has been bloodless (except for a taxi driver who protested the military takeover by fi rst ram-ming his taxi into a tank, and then one month later hang-ing himself from a bridge), and has received popular support, particularly from Bangkok’s urban elite. But can a military coup be justifi ed? Read more about the situation in Thailand in Marwaan Macan-Markars article on page 35. T N

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Human Rights Course in N orthern IraqBus k eru d U n i v er s i t y C ol l ege (BUC) and The Norwe-gian People’s Aid have arranged an Internet-supported study in Human Rights, Multicultural Understanding and Confl ict Management in Iraq. The study is based on a similar course of-fered by the BUC since 2000, directed towards mature students with relevant experience as developmental assistance workers; as NATO or UN personnel; and others with an international mandate, such as local police, health and welfare personnel, school teachers and other representatives of multicultural so-ciety. The Iraqi study is adapted to the local context for similarly positioned mature and experienced students. The fi rst session, with an introduction to international hu-man rights and the European human rights system was held in mid-September. Between sessions, long-distance learning sup-port will maintain contact between students and lecturers. E S

International Week with Focus on E nvironment

Fo cusing on the wor k of the UN, the International Week was arranged in Bergen, Norway, for the third time on 21 through 28 October. The International Week, off ering debates, seminars, lectures, concerts, fi lms and art projects, focused particularly on the UN Millennium Development Goals. This year the main theme was goal number seven – environmental sustainability. The program included International Student Days, aimed at establishing a meeting place for Norwegian and international students, and the World Music Festival, showcas-ing how Norwegian culture is enriched by immigration. E S

http://www.fn.no/distriktskontor/vest/internasjonal_uke_i_bergen

Professor Shmuel N. Eisenstadt Receives Memorial Holberg Prize

The Holberg Inter national Memor i al Pr i ze for 2006 goes to Professor Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. The Memorial Prize is annually awarded for outstanding scholarly work in the arts and humanities, social science, law and theology. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt has developed comparative knowl-edge of exceptional quality and originality concerning social change and modernisation, and concerning relations between culture, belief systems and political institutions. His work combines sociological theory with historical and empirical re-

search in the study of ancient and modern civilizations, states the Academic Committee. The Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund was established on 1 July 2003 by the Norwegian Government. Former laureates are Julia Kristeva (2004) and Jürgen Habermas (2005). E S

http://www.holbergprisen.no/

52 nufu Projects

A tota l of 52 multi-annual bilateral and network projects have been allocated nearly NOK 221 million by the NUFU Programme Board on November 14, 2006. The cooperation projects will be implemented by project partners from 32 in-stitutions in 18 diff erent countries in the South, together with their counterparts at 10 Norwegian institutions of higher ed-ucation. NUFU – The Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Higher Education – is a Norwegian programme for academic research and educational co-operation based on equal partnership between institutions in the South and in Norway. Applications to the Norad’s Programme for Master Studies (NOMA) 2007-2010 will be evaluated and decisions taken on funding by meetings on 18-19 December. E S

http://siu.no/vev.nsf/o/NUFU

Stronger Global Commitment from ea i e

T h e European As s o ci at ion of In t er nat iona l Edu-c at ion (EAIE) is a non-profi t organisation whose main aim is the stimulation and facilitation of the internationalisation of higher education in Europe and around the world. Newly elected Vice-President, Norwegian Bjørn Einar Aas, promises a stronger global commitment. At the organisation’s 18th an-nual conference in Basel, Switzerland, this September, Aas said that even though the fi rst “E” in EAIE stands for “European”, the organisation’s work will become more global, according to the UiB newspaper På høyden. “We can expect heavy debate on the basis of values in education in the years to come. It is obvious that the univer-sities will play an important role here, and that global issues will aff ect the work of EAIE in the future” the vice president said. Next year’s conference will be held in Trondheim, Nor-way. This is important, according to Bjørn Einar Aas: “One of EAIE’s challenges will be its contribution to de-veloping a more professional administration of European in-ternationalisation. This is not a problem in Norway, but many European institutions have a long way to go.” ES

n e w s i n br i ef | 3

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River Rescue People suffer as the rivers run dry. Researchers from Norway and Tanzania join forces in an effort to save the drought-stricken Pangani River basin.

H EL EN K U DR IC H | P HO T O S JA M I L L A H M WA N J I S I | T E X TL ang’ata Bor a, Tanz ani a

W h at was once a huge l a k e now looks like a disused airport covered with bare sand with little shrubs and bushes scattered around. At a distance, you see what looks like a little stream – actually the remains of the Ruvu, a river of great impor-tance in the lives of many Tanzanians. “How can we survive? The river is dry and we have no fi sh and no food,” says Monica Chifuka, a resident of Lang’ata Bora. A gloomy atmos-phere greets us as we approach this village along the Ruvu river. Everywhere groups sit around on corners doing nothing, mostly dreary-faced men, while women rush up and down the village streets. The Ruvu is one of the two main rivers feed-ing water into the Nyumba ya Mungu reservoir, which becomes known as the Pangani after it fl ows out towards the Indian Ocean 430 kilome-tres away. Nyumba ya Mungu is one of Tanzania’s main sources of hydroelectric power. Low water levels at the reservoir mean the whole country has been forced to ration power. The river bank is also home to fi shermen who have established permanent settlements just a few hundred metres from the water’s edge. Where

Dry l a n d | The waters of the Ruvu river have decreased dramatically due to an ongoing drought which is aff ecting the whole East African region.

ta n z a n i a | 5

there was once a thriving riverine community, the place is now empty save for a few people and some starving cows.

WIDESPREAD DROUGHT

“We know the basin is in real bad shape, the rivers are losing water, the lakes are becoming much smaller, Mount Kili-manjaro is losing snow, but we do not have enough scientifi c

S e v er e drough t | A dry dam on the Maasai Steppes in northern Tanzania

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| 7 ta n z a n i a | 7

data,” says Professor Felix Mtalo, head of the Water Resources Department of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam. “We need data to help decision-makers to make proper policies and arguments to save the land.”

The main reason the Ruvu is dry is the ongoing drought that has aff ected the whole of East Africa. But nature’s caprice has been compounded by the acts of man: Illegal irrigation schemes and population growth have exacerbated the

S u f f er i ng | “How can we survive? The river is dry and we have no fi sh and no food,” says Monica Chifuka, a resident of Lang’ata Bora, one of many villages along the Ruvu aff ected by the drought.

problem. In response to this challenge, the University of Dar es Salaam in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and with funding from NUFU have designed a water management programme. The

programme is the concern of two PhD students who will study the Pangani basin as part of their PhD programme. Professor Mtalo, their supervisor, says that for several years the basin has been prone to water-related confl icts

Wat er | Maasai women and children take containers of water back to their village. The water has been collected from a parched dam.

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stemming from the poor water resource management in the area. “In order to suggest meaningful strategies on how to deal with these confl icts, we have to know how much water

we have,” says Professor Mtalo. “There is a scarcity of water which cannot meet all the demand.”

E x per i m en t | A dam-breaking experiment is conducted on a small scale model at the Water Resources Department of the Faculty of Engineer-ing at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

C a na l | River water fl owing through a narrow canal, in a rural area of northern Tanzania.

C ol l e c t i ng wat er | Maasai villagers collect water from a tank at a water-collection point in a village on the Maasai Steppes in northern Tanzania.

Wat erway | Some lakes still carry water, but the Pangani river basin is in bad shape according to scientists.

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MAKING PROGRESS

Under the collaborative programme other research projects are probing such matters as dam safety, the nature of the Lake Chala and Lake Jipe systems, stakeholder involvement in water management, Usambara rainfall patterns and

groundwater in the Arusha region. One PhD student has set up monitoring stations at Lake Jipe, Lake Chala and along the Ruvu River to record water levels and the rate of sedimentation. Using this data, researchers will be able to predict the future rate of sedimen-

S c a rc i t y of wat er | People suff er as the rivers in northern Tanzania run dry.

1 0 | ta n z a n i a

tation and its eff ect on the storage capacity of the Nyumba ya Mungu reservoir. The PhD students get a chance to work with research groups at both the University of Dar es Salaam and NTNU. Key fi ndings are expected to be used in improving the situa-

tion of the Pangani basin as well as to be integrated into the ongoing Master’s programme in Water Management at the university. The data collection exercise has already yielded some positive results. The project was able to provide scientifi c

Wat er | The lakes in Northern Tanzania have become much smaller.

ta n z a n i a | 1 1

data on Lake Jipe, which is shared by Kenya, to prove that water volume from the rivers fl owing into the lake on the Kenyan side had been drasti-cally reduced by irrigation dams. “Our team had a weapon – the data – to use in discussion with their colleagues from Kenya,” says Professor Mtalo. “It didn’t take long before they took up action to unblock the river. Now we see more water into the lake.” The project allows exchange of staff and students where both parties get the possibility to work in research and su-pervision. “The programme gives Norwegian students who want to work in international development a chance to get experience and exposure in Africa,” says Professor Ånund Killingtveit of the Department of Hydraulic and Environ-mental Engineering of NTNU.

NO TIME TO WASTE

Professors Killingtveit and Mtalo are optimistic about the results of their joint eff ort to study the Pangani River basin. They may not produce an immediate solution to drying riv-ers and lakes in the basin, but rather suggest a long-term so-

lution which may save the people of Lang’ata Bora and their neighbours. For Monica Chifuka, a mother of fi ve, there is no time to waste. Not long ago she was a prosperous busi-nesswoman, buying and selling fi sh and maize. With income from the fi sh

business, she and her husband built a modern house, paid school fees for their children and managed to live a decent life. “Look at us now,” she says. “I am not sure if I will be able to feed the family. My husband is out there looking for something to do to get money. The whole village has turned into beggars where people have to fi ght for the little food aid we get from the government.” GK

Helen Kudrich is an Australian photographer who has been based in Bangkok since 1 9 9 9 .

Jamillah Mwansi is a Tanzanian journalist who is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Dec r e a s i ng | Water level measuring posts show the low level of Kikuletwa River in northern Tanzania.

Model | A dam-breaking experiment is conducted on a small scale model at the Water Resources Department of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

“The whole village has turned into beggars where people have to fi ght

for the little food aid we get from the government.”

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F i r e wo od | Women carry fi rewood to their village in an area close to Lake Jipe and Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania.

ta n z a n i a | 1 3

E xc ep t f or t h e f ert i l e Ferghana Valley in the south, the Kyrgyz Republic is a land of mountains. Impressive and beautiful mountains, with the highest peaks well over 7000 metres. But converting the beauty of their mountains into a future economic asset is a challenge for Kyrgyzstan. Ecology and tourism are key words, and Norwegian partners have joined the Kyrgyz in these eff orts, by providing their exper-tise in the development of alpine tourism. In 2002 the Norwegian Trekking Association entered into cooperation with Kyrgyz partners to develop small-scale alpine tourism. As of 2006 Kyrgyz-Norwegian coop-eration is developing along academic lines as well, between Telemark University College (TUC) and Bishkek Academy of

Finance and Economics (BAFE). Together they aim to make the mountains, the culture and the nature of Kyrgyzstan ac-cessible to Kyrgyz and foreign tourists alike. It is time for the world to discover the land that was once referred to as the “backyard of the Soviet Union”.

TURBULENT HISTORY

When the Soviet Union fell apart in the fi rst half of the 1990s, the leadership of Kyrgyzstan set out to become the exception among the increasingly authoritarian and confl ict-ridden Central Asian Soviet successor states. The vision of becoming “the Switzerland of Central Asia” carried political as well as economic connotations. After 15 years of sovereignty, there

Cooperation at the Top of the WorldA newly established cooperation in higher education aims to contribute to the Kyrgyz Republic’s ambition to make their “C elestial Mountains” accessible to explorers from near and afar.

A R N E H AUGEN | T E X TA N N E A A S M U N D S EN | PHO T O

h igh wat er | Lake Issyk-Kul, located at more than 1 5 0 0 metres above sea level, is the second largest mountain lake in the world.

14 | K Y RGY Z TA N

is no doubt that the challenges sovereignty represented for the small Central Asian state were greater than the Kyrgyz optimists had at fi rst acknowledged. As the 1990s proceeded, the vision of a democratic and prosperous Kyrgyzstan became increasingly remote, with a growing number of alarming reports of undemocratic prac-tices and the curtailment of human rights. After 14 years the end of the Akayev regime came in the “Tulip Revolution” of 2005, an event associated with political events in Georgia and Ukraine. The economy will continue to represent a major chal-lenge for Kyrgyzstan. When the Soviet Union was organised into ethno-political entities in the 1920s, economic self-sustainabil-ity of the various republics was not a concern. Unfortunately for the Kyrgyz population, their republic does not have the oil, gas or minerals of neighbouring Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. Extracting profi t from the massive mountains requires a lot of creativity.

MEETING PLACE BISHKEK

Neither TUC nor BAFE are newcomers to international co-operation. BAFE, as a young institution established in 1994, considers international cooperation as a cornerstone in its development. Student exchange programmes have been es-tablished with countries in Asia, Europe and America. For TUC the more than ten years experience in cooperation with Russia provides a valuable background for cooperation with Kyrgyzstan. TUC’s administrative project leader Frode Lieungh ad-mits they did not know exactly what would meet them in the capital Bishkek on their fi rst visit to BAFE in June 2006, for a round table conference. On some points they were surprised, such as in the question of the Bologna process, the eff ort by more than 40 countries to develop a standardised European higher education system. Considering that they found them-selves close to the Chinese border, TUC were surprised to fi nd the Bologna process high on the agenda. Kyrgyz authorities have made this process the platform for the ongoing reform of higher education. Moreover, BAFE has been a pioneer in the implementation of the goals of the Bologna process, such as the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and a two-cycle degree system of Bachelor’s and Master’s. Deputy Education Minister Osmonaliev Kanybek assured the conference that international collaboration in higher education has a high priority in his ministry.

TOURIST ECONOMY AND ALPINE ECOLOGY

For the natural scientists in the delegation from Telemark University College it was particularly exciting to visit Lake Issyk-Kul in the north-eastern part of the country. Locat-ed at more than 1500 metres above sea level and covering more than 6000 square kilometres, it is the second largest mountain lake in the world, where the combination of high altitude and particular climate has produced a unique eco-system. Situated at the foot of the Tian Shan range, the Is-syk-Kul region is no less remarkable from a tourist’s point of view, with sandy beaches and fresh air. Although during So-

viet times the lake was a popular recreational area, redevelopment of the facilities is needed. Tapping Kyrgyzstan’s tour-ist potential is the focus of a joint educational and research

project currently being developed by BAFE and TUC. The vari-ous fi elds under study are tourism, alpine ecology and the knowledge economy. This cross-disciplinary collaboration will involve the exchange of students and staff as well as the joint development of study programmes. TUC already off ers undergraduate programmes in tourism and in environmen-tal studies. One element of the project will be to invite stu-dents from BAFE to take the full three-year undergraduate programme or single courses in the programme. However, the long-term goal will be to develop study programmes and capacity at BAFE in Bishkek. As is the case in the other ex-Soviet republics, ecological awareness has historically not been particularly strongly encouraged in Kyrgyzstan. How-ever, the ecological dimension is crucial for the development of tourism in the country. The study programme in alpine ecology at TUC fi ts very well with the future academic plans of BAFE. The two institutions will start a curriculum develop-ment project with the aim of establishing study programmes at the Master’s level in these disciplines. This will put BAFE in a position to make an even stronger contribution to the development of the human resources Kyrgyzstan needs. It is a long way from Telemark to Bishkek. Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz Republic and Norway share many challenges and opportunities. In that perspective, academic and intellectual exchange makes good sense. It is good reason to hope that the planned cooperation between Telemark and Bishkek can contribute new knowledge of great value for future eco-logical and economic development. GK

Arne Haugen is an Adviser at the Norwegian Centre for International Co-operation in Higher Education (SIU)

“It is time for the world to discover the land that was once referred to as the ‘backyard of the

S oviet Union’.”

K Y RGY Z TA N | 15

1 6 |

Genocide | By the time the Khmer Rouge were ousted by Vietnam in 1 9 79 , almost two million people had died from over-work, starvation or had been executed.

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Human Rights

Beyond Revenge In 1999 photographer Nic Dunlop tracked down Pol Pot’s chief executioner Comrade Duch, the only Khmer Rouge leader who today remains in prison awaiting trial. In this article Dunlop explores the importance of the u pcoming tribunal and ex-plains why education and making people under-stand this process is central to the success of the trial of former Khmer Rouge.

N IC DU N LOP | T E X T A N D P HO T O SPhnom Penh, Ca m bodi a

S u r r en der | The last of the Khmer Rouge surrenders to the Cambodian government.

I n J u ly t h i s y e a r the former Khmer Rouge com-mander Ta Mok died in Phnom Penh. He was 83 years old. A prisoner of the Cambodian government for seven years, he had refused to surrender. His body was then taken for a three- day Buddhist funeral held in the former guer-rilla headquarters of Anlong Veng. The world’s media car-ried photographs of his sunken corpse laid out beneath a garish series of paintings of the life of the Lord Buddha. Villagers of all ages fi led past the body, off ering their con-dolences to bereaved family members who wept openly. Monks performed rites and incense was burned. More than 600 people came to pay their last respects to “the Butcher” – a man considered by many as one of the cru-ellest and most violent of the Khmer Rouge commanders.

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For outsiders, the photographs of the funeral defi ed understanding

– the solemn ceremony could have been for a devout and popular lo-cal dignitary, not for one of the worst mass-murderers of the 20th century. So why are so many people mourning the death of this killer? Solving this apparent contradiction is crucial to the purpose of an up-coming tribunal of former Khmer Rouge leaders – to clarify responsibility for the killings and make the process comprehensible and relevant to ordinary Cambodians. In 2001, not long after Ta Mok’s arrest, I met with many former soldiers and ordinary villagers in Anlong Veng, the

former leader’s headquarters. Their attitude to “the Butcher” did not square with his epithet.

“We loved him,” one man an-nounced, “because he looked after us.” The same man de-

scribed how Ta Mok was seen as a man of the people and, although strict, looked over his fl ock. One former Khmer Rouge fi ghter, Ney Sarath, said Ta Mok’s regime was as gener-ous as it was strict. Sarath said his family was provided with suffi cient food and free health care. “I didn’t need to worry,” he said. As a result he “never questioned an order”. Ta Mok looked after him and his family and “in return he had given his loyalty. I would have done anything for him,” he said.

“The puritanical world of the Khmer Rouge was accepted and never questioned; those in power expected to rule absolutely and those

who served them expected to be ruled.”

H U M A N R IGH T S : C A M B ODI A | 19

When I asked him about the killings, answers were usu-ally opaque and oblique. “I never saw them get killed with my own eyes so I don’t know for sure,” said Sarath. So why did he think Ta Mok had been arrested? “Because he was a leader … but I don’t know,” he said. Much of the behaviour of men like Sarath can be ex-plained by traditional reverence for leaders and the estab-lished order. The puritanical world of the Khmer Rouge was accepted and never questioned; those in power expected to rule absolutely and those who served them expected to be ruled. Like the other villagers Sarath still held on to the image of his old commander with reverence and remembered him with genuine aff ection. Few had any understanding of the way the Khmer Rouge and their leaders were perceived out-side, cut off as they had been for years in the malarial forest by a strict regime.

LONG WAY TO JUSTICE

In April 1975, Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge. They evacuated the towns and cities and forced the entire popula-tion to work in the countryside as part of a radical plan to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless Utopia. By the time the Khmer Rouge were ousted by Vietnam in 1979, al-most two million people had died from overwork, starva-tion or had been executed. Under the Khmer Rouge anyone perceived to be a threat to the new order, particularly the educated elite, was murdered. By percentage, the Cambo-dian holocaust is the worst to have occurred anywhere in the world, a death toll that eclipses the Nazi and Rwandan holocausts combined, making the Khmer Rouge the most eff ective mass murderers in modern history. And yet, not one member of the movement has been held to account for its murderous rule. Pol Pot and Son Sen died several years ago. Three senior Khmer Rouge leaders are still alive: Noun Chea, “Brother

S ol di er s | Not one member of The Khmer Rouge has been held to account for its murderous rule.

20 | H U M A N R IGH T S : C A M B ODI A

Number Two”, who lives freely in the west of the country; Ieng Sary, the regime’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister; and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, all three of whom currently live in villas in Phnom Penh. They had defected to the government in the late 1990’s. Now, with the Ta Mok’s death, only one Khmer Rouge remains in prison awaiting trial: Comrade Duch, Pol Pot’s chief executioner. After years of protracted ne-gotiations, in October 2004, the UN fi nally ratifi ed an agreement with the Cambodian govern-ment to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Last July, just before Ta Mok’s death, the judges for the Extraor-dinary Chambers of Cambodia were sworn in. The Cham-bers are comprised of Cambodian and foreign legal experts, with Cambodians in the majority. The entire judicial process is expected to take three years at a cost of USD 56,3 million, most of which will come from the international commu-nity. The tribunal will be held in a military compound 15 kilometres west of Phnom Penh and the Cambodian judges will have a majority in the two chambers, but cannot make a ruling without the consent of at least one foreign judge. The Cambodian government and the UN decided that the court should limit prosecutions to the senior Khmer Rouge lead-ers who planned or gave orders, as well as those most respon-sible for committing serious crimes. It is expected that only a small number of people will fall within this remit and be tried. Prior to the trial process will be an investigative phase which is expected to last three to six months, with formal trials expected to begin in mid-2007. If the tribunal’s sole purpose were to fi nd the surviv-ing leaders guilty, it would be a straightforward business. But it is faced with a population who know little about, and much less understand, the process and what it means. For the vast majority of Cambodians – both perpetrators and victims – know little of the broader historical perspective of this period. The Khmer Rouge was obsessed with secrecy. Those who lived through the nightmare knew little beyond their own co-operatives and the leadership remained a mys-tery. It was known simply as “The Organisation.” It was not until after the Vietnamese came that people even heard the name Pol Pot. The majority of the population born after the Khmer Rouge know even less, and the subject is rarely, if ever, talked about at home with parents. Since “bourgeois”, or middle classes were especially targeted for persecution by the Khmer Rouge, and most of the educated were murdered, there is little scholarship or teaching in the schools of what actually did occur. In the standard history textbook for 15-

year-old students only six lines, out of 79 pages, refer to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?

With Ta Mok’s recent death and after so many years of talk, some have openly questioned the purpose of a trial. Some have argued that a Khmer Rouge tri-bunal might unravel the fragile peace that exists and prove to be both politically and, for thou-

sands, personally destabilising. Many of the leaders are eld-erly and infi rm and may not make it to their day in court. So why a trial? I put the question to a doctor based in Phnom Penh. “I think it is very useful for future leaders of Cambodia to be

M i l l ions de a d | By percentage, the Cambodian holocaust is the worst to have occurred anywhere in the world.

“In the standard history textbook for 15-year-old students only six lines, out of 79 pages,

refer to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.”

H U M A N R IGH T S : C A M B ODI A | 2 1

accountable and responsible for their actions. Otherwise,” he added ominously, “history will be repeated.” But in a sense, with the current levels of violence and lack of accountability, history is being repeated. A well-run tribunal has the potential to begin a new era in Cambodi-an legal aff airs. Cambodia is a society plagued by violence. Human rights workers have investigated scores of political murders and extra-judicial killings but no one has ever been charged. Many believe this lack of accountability is one of the most enduring legacies of Khmer Rouge rule. One of the most disturbing aspects of this “culture of impunity” is the emergence of “peoples’ courts”, where lynch mobs routinely beat people to death, acting as police, judiciary and execu-tioner. It is a measure of the frustration and rage of a people who have never known any form of social justice. The director of the Cambodian Documentation Cen-tre, Chhang Youk, believes that a tribunal is an essential step in the country’s judicial reform. “It will be a lesson for the younger generation to learn that if you commit the crime of genocide or crimes against humanity, it does not matter how long it takes, people will be after you,” he said. The Documentation Centre was created in 1996 for the purpose of collecting as much data on the Khmer Rouge pe-riod as possible. Since then it has amassed hundreds of thou-sands of documents to generate a critical understanding of genocide to be made available to a tribunal. There are docu-ments that open a window on the leaders’ direct responsibil-ity, often covered in minute detail, in the chain of command that led to the massacres. Among them are telegrams that show senior Khmer Rouge offi cials received copies of reports and the leaders kept abreast of huge purges as well as indi-vidual executions. Although there is no shortage of evidence or witness-es, and the fact that the Khmer Rouge committed serious crimes is beyond dispute, the structure of the leadership and how orders for the killing were carried out still has to be fi rmly clarifi ed. As one former human rights investigator told me, “It is easy to get people like Khieu Samphan, but for the senior people who made decisions for the killings and police – who are they? Where are they? In order to know how

– you have to know who.”

WILL IT BE RELEVANT?

No one knows how much or what the tribunal will reveal or even who will be tried, beyond the surviving members of the Central Committee. What is known for certain is that

it will cover the period of Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979. But there are worries that it will not be free of political interference as former Khmer Rouge who are now in the government may have participated in mass killings could be indicted. Some believe that the deliberate delays are an attempt to ensure that no senior Khmer Rouge do make it to trial. There has also been criticism that, by focusing on a few high-profi le leaders, the tribunal will allow lower-ranking Khmer Rouge leaders involved in serious crimes to escape justice. But more importantly, others warn that this process is in danger of becoming irrelevant unless it is made more accessible to a wider audience. So how do you make a proc-ess in far away Phnom Penh meaningful to a people whose struggle to survive is an everyday concern? The Khmer Rouge understood how to manipulate the peasantry from where they drew their support. In the 1980s

and 1990s, when Ta Mok and Pol Pot still held sway in their zones of control and the wholesale purges were no longer practised, there was a system of “justice” of sorts. For example, if a radio was

stolen and the off ender was caught, they would work out how much money the radio was worth. Then they would calculate how many days of work in the paddy it would take to raise the amount needed to purchase the radio and that would be the time spent in prison. Crude but simple, and in the harsh peasant world of rural Cambodia it made perfect sense. Most Cambodians’ experience of the establishment is that they are expected to serve those in positions of power. They do not have an understanding of the separation of pow-ers that we take for granted in the West: separate police, court, jury, judge and executioner. All these roles are assumed by the same centre of power, whether that is a police chief or a village head. The system has been this way for centuries, even during the Khmer Rouge period. For example when a person is arrested, and it may only be on suspicion or malicious gossip, he is assumed to be guilty (the Khmer term for prisoner is neak thos, literally guilty person). He is then taken to the police station, very often tor-tured to confess, found to be “guilty” and then thrown into prison. In some cases suspects have been executed without a formal trial. Innocent until proven guilty is a new concept. And this also applies to the Khmer Rouge tribunal. As one peasant woman living in the west of the country said, “I want them killed for what they did. Separating loved ones, arresting people – I do not want just a trial,” she said. “I want to eat them.”

“The key to the tribunal’s success is not whether it fi nds a group of old men guilty,

but to explain how they are guilty.”

2 2 | H U M A N R IGH T S : C A M B ODI A

So another problem for the tribunal is to establish due process of law, to move away from the current cycle of re-venge killing. This can only come from decentralising au-thority and a proper separation of powers. But the tribunal’s problems do not end here. The work of the Extraordinary Chambers is to demonstrate not only justice being done, and being seen to be done, but to be under-stood. Vital to the tribunal’s success are outreach programmes explaining to a wider public the duties and limits of the Ex-traordinary Chambers. The majority of the population has not been consulted so few understand this process and how it relates to their own lives, despite the eff orts of various or-ganisations. However, there is a groundswell of opinion that if a real justice can be achieved then people will support it even if their understanding of the process is sketchy.

PREPARING FOR JUSTICE

Several Cambodian non governmental organisatons are already involved in tribunal-related projects coordinat-ing their efforts in the areas of monitoring, outreach, mental health services, and other activities. The Cam-bodian Documentation Centre has numerous projects under way, and the Khmer Institute for Democracy has developed an outreach project. And more is expected as the tribunal draws closer. The Cambodian govern-ment has also begun involving ordinary people in the process. In October 2004, the government distributed

16 000 copies of a glossy Khmer-language brochure, explain-ing to the public what it can expect from the tribunal. Earlier this year one NGO even organised the fi rst debating forum in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold, where invited participants were brought together to initiate a dialogue as a starting point for constructive discussion on the tribunal and what it means. So the work has begun. Even with the deaths of Ta Mok, Pol Pot and Son Sen, this is still an important process and much can be learnt. One investigator saw Ta Mok’s passing as a drawback but at the same time was not too worried: he saw it as an opportunity to bring other lesser known, but no less responsible, Khmer Rouge to account. The key to the tribunal’s success is not whether it fi nds a group of old men guilty, but to explain how they are guilty. It is also a public acknowledgement of the suff ering of those who experienced the voilence and for the UN to show that it does matter when two million people go missing. It will, many hope, be an education particularly for peo-ple in places like Anlong Veng. As Ney Sarath, the former Khmer Rouge fi ghter, told me just before I left, “We were the ones who lost legs and lives.” GK

Nic Dunlop is a Bangkok-based photographer represented by Panos Pictures in London. He is author of “The Lost Executioner”, a real-life detective story of the tracking down of Comrade Duch, the man responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the killing fi elds.

Hou s e | Ta Mok’s house in Anlong Veng. With his death, only one Khmer Rouge remains in prison awaiting trial

H U M A N R IGH T S : C A M B ODI A | 2 3

I n t h e fa l l of 2000, Shirin Ebadi, was working on what very well might be the most important case in her career. She was representing the families of two intellectuals killed by the Iranian government. The stakes could not be higher. It was the fi rst time the nation had admitted murdering its critics. Ebadi and the other lawyers had been allowed only ten days to read the entire dossier. Around noon one day, she reached a page more detailed than any one she had come across so far. It was a transcript of a conversation between a minister and a member of the death squad. Shirin Ebadi read: “The next person to be killed is Shirin Ebadi.”

LIFE HAS NOT BECOME EASIER

Shirin Ebadi, a judge who was dismissed from the bench af-ter the 1979 Islamic revolution, now works as a lawyer and human rights advocate. For her work, spotlighting gender inequity and child abuse, and defending dissidents against Iran’s theocratic regime, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Three years after getting this award, she is back in Oslo, Norway – this time to open the annual “Film from

the South” festival. But, Ebadi tells Global Knowledge, life has not become easier. Threats to her life are still common, and the lawyer is now living with 24 bodyguards around the clock. Why does she keep going? “Because I believe in what I am doing. If you believe in something, you cannot stop doing it,” Shirin Ebadi says. Speaking to the audience on the fi lm festival’s opening day, Ebadi tells of a country which both has 2500 years of civilization and is a patriarchal society which discriminates heavily against women: “Women throughout the world suff er from discrimination, the form of which varies with country and culture. Still, the status of women in Islamic countries are inappropriate in another way. Despite the fact that 65 per cent of students at Iranian universities are girls, the employment rate for men is three times that of women, who also are denied all high level positions. We have had no woman minister since the revolution. And according to Is-lamic penal law, the value of a woman is half of that of a man,” says Shirin Ebadi. An Iranian woman cannot leave the coun-try without permission in writing from her husband. “When

A N I N T ERV I EW W I T H SH IR I N EBA DI:

“Democracy is a culture. You cannot bring democracy to a country by dropping cluster bombs on the people’s heads.”From imprisonment to the Nobel Peace Prize, Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi has battled for the soul of a nation poised at the centre of Middle Eastern and global events. Global Knowledge met the woman who is putting the law on trial.

EI V I N D S EN N E S ET | T E X TA BBA S , M AGN U M | PHO T O SOslo, Norway

2 4 | H U M A N R IGH T S : e ba di

| 25

THR EATS | Shirin Ebadi in a restaurant after visiting the Nobel Peace Center and opening the “Film from the South” festival in Oslo. Life has not become easier for the Iranian human rights lawyer. Threats to her life are still common, and she is now living with 2 4 bodyguards around the clock.

receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, I was asked if this applied to me as well. Of course, I said. I live in Iran.”

RIGHTING THE WRONGS

At the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Shirin Ebadi is greeting the press en masse. She is as convinced as ever that the West should turn its focus on Iran away from the country’s nu-clear programme and instead concentrate on human rights.

“Democracy is a culture. It is democratic people that form a democracy. Fortunately, this culture has come about. The problem is that the government does not attach as much im-portance to democracy as the people would like. One should help the people on this front. This is why I say that the talks with Iran should centre around human rights and democ-racy and not around the nuclear energy programme,” Shirin Ebadi tells Global Knowledge. She is concerned with the West’s polarised views on Iran and Islam. This is something she wishes to right with her newly published memoir “Iran Awak-ening”, directed at a Western au-dience. “The West is sometimes mistaken in its views on Iran. They either paint the picture too black, as America wishes, or they portray it too white, as the Iranian government wishes. I wanted to make a picture of the true Iran,” Ebadi says.

USING ISLAM

Shirin Ebadi’s campaign for peaceful solutions to the coun-try’s social problems uses Islam as a starting point. Though by principle a proponent of a secular government, she be-lieves in a new way of thinking in Islamic terms. “The prob-lems of human and especially women’s rights in Islamic countries does not lie within Islam but within the patriar-chal structures of many Islamic countries,” she tells the au-dience in Oslo. “Religion must be separate from the State, so that the government cannot misuse the people’s religious feelings. Still, we must try to fi nd solutions within religion to improve human rights.” Shirin Ebadi is equally clear that the West cannot force-fully impose democracy on any Middle Eastern country:

“Democracy is not a commodity that you can export to a country. Democracy is not a gift that you give to a nation. You cannot bring democracy to a country by dropping clus-ter bombs on the people’s heads.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH SHIRIN EBADI:

Your organisation in Iran was recently banned by the Iranian government. How serious is this setback for the human rights movement in your country?

Our centre was not really banned, but we were told that it was illegal and that we would be arrested if we continued our work. We replied to the government that all our activi-ties were legal, and in fact it was the government that was acting illegally by not recognising us. We have continued our activities and up until now nothing has happened. Only God knows what will happen in the future.

How did the government respond to your accusations?

Unfortunately our government does not feel duty bound to an-swer anybody. This is our prob-lem. The government is not an-swerable to the people.

Do you believe that you will experience full human rights in Iran in your lifetime?

Improvements in the human rights situation depend on the people’s will. At the beginning of the revolution the situation was very bad. When I compare the present situation to what it was like 25 years ago, I think it has somewhat improved. Of course this does not mean that there is nothing wrong with the situation at the moment. We have many diffi culties. What I want to point out is that due to the people’s will and determination the situation has improved quite a lot.

What needs to change to improve human rights in Iran?

It is always the government that violates human rights by misusing the laws. The laws in Iran are bad and need to be changed – from the constitution right down to ordinary laws.

Do you see such changes taking place today?

During the past year there has been no improvement in Iran. This is why people are angry. We have many problems. We have discrimination on the basis of sex. We have discrimi-nation on the basis of religion. We do not have complete freedom of expression. The democracy is not perfect, not complete. There is a great deal of economic and fi nancial corruption in Iran.

“On the international stage the Nobel Peace Prize has helped me a great deal

and enabled my voice to reach many more people. But it has not done me any good or

helped me inside my country.”

26 | H U M A N R IGH T S : e ba di

| 27

NEW FO CUS | Shirin Ebadi is convinced that the West should turn its focus on Iran away from the country’s nuclear programme and instead concentrate on human rights.

You are both a Muslim and a human rights advocate. How compatible are human rights with Islam?

Like any other religion, Islam has diff erent interpretations. In the West you see that one church allows homosexual mar-riages while another church bans it. Still both churches are Christian. The same is true about Islam. The diff erent status of women in diff erent Islamic countries proves this. In Saudi-Arabia women cannot drive a car, let alone exercise any social or political rights. In other Islamic countries, like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, women have for a long time had the possibility of becoming prime ministers or presidents. Certain penal codes, like stoning to death or amputation of hands, are practiced in Saudi-Arabia and Iran, but have been banned in a number of other countries like Malaysia, Indo-nesia and Morocco. Polygamy is allowed in some Islamic countries while it is banned in others. The question, really, is which interpre-tation of Islam is compatible with human rights. With a proper inter-pretation one can respect human rights. The essence and the basis of all religions are the same. Religions have come into existence to save people, to make them better and more moral. This is something diff erent than human rights.

What has winning the Nobel Peace Prize meant for your work?

On the international stage the Nobel Peace Prize has helped me a great deal and enabled my voice to reach many more people. But it has not done me any good or helped me inside my country. The Iranian government tried to ignore the awards. Even when I received the Nobel Prize they did not announce it, neither on radio nor television. When other radio and television stations from abroad reported it and people protested the silence in Iran, one television channel at eleven o’clock at night reported it when people were asleep

– and that was it. They did not even show the ceremony. Our President Khatami even said that the Nobel Peace Prize was of no importance. Only the literature prize was important.

But has the prize made your work more noticed by the people of Iran?

Yes, of course. This prize has put the spotlight on my activi-ties.

Does this new and increased visibility mean that you are facing a greater danger in continuing your work?

I was facing the same dangers before receiving the prize as well. For the past ten to twelve years I have been receiv-ing letters from people threatening to kill me for speaking against Islam and the government.

You are a proponent of the Iranian nuclear energy programme. Why?

I am not a proponent of the nuclear programme. My words have been misinterpreted. In one interview I said that the Ira-nian government claims that it wants to make peaceful use of nuclear energy. But the world does not accept this claim because Iran is not a democratic country and decisions are taken behind closed doors. When people are not supervising the activities of the government the world does not trust the words of that government. If the Iranian government wants

the world to trust it and to believe what it says there is only one way. That is to improve democracy in Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be using the issue of nuclear power to foster nationalism. What are your views on this?

I have always said that the government can not misuse the nationalistic feelings of the people. They can not arouse the people’s nationalism with this issue.

What should the West do about Iran’s nuclear programme?

The West should pursue a programme on nuclear disarma-ment throughout the world, in all countries. Last month I was in Hiroshima. You should go to that city and see what people suff ered from. This is not something that one can re-ally convey with words. The world should never repeat that experience.

You have recently published your memoirs, directed at Western audiences. What do you hope to achieve by this book?

Through my own memoirs I wanted to paint a proper pic-ture, a true picture of the life in Iran. The West is sometimes mistaken in its views on Iran. They either paint the picture too black, as America wishes, or they portray it too white, as the Iranian government wishes. I wanted to make a picture of the true Iran. I wanted to say that despite its many dis-criminative laws, despite the many restrictions that women suff er from, more than 65 per cent of all students in our uni-versities are girls, and they are fi ghting very well. I wanted

“The West is sometimes mistaken in its views on Iran. They either paint the

picture too black, as America wishes, or they portray it too white, as the Iranian

government wishes.”

28 | H u m a n r igh t s : e ba di

to say that despite a great deal of human rights violations in Iran, the people are very peaceful and at the same time vigi-lant, alert and intelligent. I wanted to tell how they fi ght.

Why does the West have so many misinterpretations of Iran?

You should ask the American me-dia, in particular, why they por-tray Iran in such a black way, and what their aim is.

Is the West helping in its attempts to bring democracy to the Middle East? Democracy is not a commodity that you can export to a country. Democracy is not a gift that you give to a nation. You cannot bring democracy to a country by dropping clus-ter bombs on the people’s heads. Democracy is a culture. It is democratic people that form a democracy. Fortunately, this culture has come about. The problem is that the govern-ment does not attach as much importance to democracy as the people would like. One should help the people on this front. This is why I say that the talks with Iran should cen-tre around human rights and democracy and not around the nuclear energy programme. The West is only thinking about its own security and has forgotten the Iranian people. For instance during the past two months, two young Iranian political activists have died in jail due to a hunger strike. The world was not informed about this. But you can read about the talks on the nuclear programme in the newspapers every day. What role does higher education play in forming a democracy and improving human rights?

It defi nitely has a big impact. One of the advantages of higher education is that one gets acquainted with diff erent cultures. When we do not know something, we are afraid of it. And when we are afraid of something we hate it. Hating some-thing is the beginning of dispute and war. Therefore famili-arity with diff erent cultures is the most important thing in helping peace. Higher education enables the students to open their eyes to the outside world.

How about censorship in Iran?

Censorship is still prevalent. In order to publish any book one needs permission from the government. Since Mah-moud Ahmadinejad came to power, censorship has become more intense. Now one even needs new permission to print

new editions of a book that has formerly been allowed. They have fi ltered a large number of Internet sites, and especial-ly sites that deal with women’s rights. This fi lm festival in Oslo opened with an Iranian fi lm, but this fi lm has not had permission to screen in Iran for the last 18 months. Hope-fully this will change now that the fi lm has been screened

throughout the world.

You have yourself suff ered death threats and imprisonment. Why do you keep go-ing?

Because I believe in what I am doing. If you believe in some-thing, you cannot stop doing it. GK

Eivind Senneset is a journalist based in Bergen, Norway.Abbas is an Iranian photographer represented by Magnum Photos.

““The West is only thinking about its own security and has forgotten the Iranian people.”

H u m a n r igh t s : e ba di | 29

30 |

EDUCATOR AND AC TI V IST | Charm Tong is still only 2 5 years old. But her dedication to her country’s brutalised ethnic minorities has already won her an authority beyond her years.

Charm Tong: Fighting Repression with EducationAs a teacher and activist, Charm Tong is on a mission to educate people about human rights abuses in Burma – starting with the world’s most powerful man.

A N DR E W M A R S H A L L | T E X TPH I L I P BL EN K I NS OP, AGENC E V U | PHO T O Schi ang m a i, th ailand

“I told him a bou t the forced labour and mass relocations, about extra-judicial executions and rape,” recalls Charm Tong of her hour-long meeting with George W. Bush at the White House last year. “He asked many questions. He was very inter-ested and concerned. He also asked what else the US could do to promote change in Burma.” Charm Tong, herself a refugee from Burma’s long-running military dictatorship, is still only 25 years old. But as her meet-ing with the US president shows, her dedication to her country’s brutalised ethnic minorities has already won her an authority beyond her years. She is a founding member of a small but vocal group called the Shan Women’s Action Network, whose infl u-ential reports have documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Burmese soldiers. She also runs a unique school in northern Thailand that is training a new generation of human rights activists for Burma. “It is promoting young people to pro-mote other people’s needs,” she explains. Most of the school’s 100 or so graduates now work for youth or women’s organisations as teachers, rights defenders, health workers and community radio broadcasters. “Some are now risking their lives doing cross-bor-der work,” adds Charm Tong.

OPPRESSED MINORITIES

Charm Tong belongs to Burma’s largest ethnic minority, the Shan. Ethnic minorities help make Burma a land of dazzling human diversity, with groups such as the Naga, Akha, Kachin, Karenni, and Pa-O making up a third of the 50 million popula-tion. Tourist brochures depict Burma as a Southeast Asian para-

H U M A N R IGH T S : c h a r m t ong | 3 1

dise where these hill-dwelling people live peacefully along-side the majority Burmans. The reality is complex, shocking and ill-reported. The Burmese junta is waging a campaign of calculated savagery against these ethnic minorities. More than a million people have been driven from their homes. Hundreds of thousands have spilled into neighbouring coun-tries, where they are stalked by poverty and disease and traf-fi cked into the sex trade. Thanks to her parents, and to a woman she still reveres as “Teacher Mary”, Charm Tong’s own education began early and soon dominated her life. She was born in Shan State, and as the Burmese army stepped up its murderous campaign, her parents sent her to the relative safety of a Catholic or-phanage on the Thai-Burma border. She travelled there in a basket strapped on the back of a horse. At the orphanage, a Shan nun called Mary brought her up with 30 other children. She was fi ve years old, and from then on only saw her parents once a year. “I cried a lot,” she remembers. “I was young and did not understand why my parents had sent me away. Now I appreciate it. They thought I would be safe and get an educa-tion.” She did. Teacher Mary “gave me such a big opportunity”, says Charm Tong, who was determined not to waste it. She started with English lessons at dawn, spent the day at a Thai high school, and then took evening classes in Chinese. At weekends she studied her mother tongue, Shan. (This is why, today, she speaks out for Burma in not one, but four separate languages.) And through the years, as she watched refugees fl eeing poverty and persecution in Burma pour across the border into Thailand, she learned to see her heart-breaking separation from her parents against a much greater backdrop of human misery. “Many children suff ered more than me,” she says.

LECTURING THE ENEMY

At age 16, Charm Tong began working with human rights groups in Chiang Mai, the capital of northern Thailand and home to many exiles from Burma. She interviewed sex workers and illegal migrants, HIV-sufferers and rape victims. At age 17, she travelled to Geneva to address the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. She de-scribed the Burmese junta’s savage campaign in her home-land to a 200-strong audience which included junta mem-bers. “My voice was shaking,” she admits. “But I thought, ‘You have to do this. You don’t get so many opportunities to tell the world.’” In the end, the presence of Burmese of-fi cials only emboldened her. “They were forced to listen to what I had to say,” says Charm Tong. “We are the voice of people whose suff ering is not heard. If we do not speak

out, who will? We have to continue to break the silence.”Charm Tong considers herself “very lucky” to have received nine years of education. Many of her compatriots are less for-tunate. With mass relocations and forced labour common, survival is the fi rst priority for many people in Shan State. “Staying alive comes fi rst,” says Charm Tong. “Education is not a priority.” Especially for young women, who are often obliged to cross the border into Thailand to seek work to support their impoverished families. Unlike some other eth-nic minorities from Burma, the Shan have no refugee status in Thailand, and therefore no offi cial protection or support. Many risk arrest and ill-treatment as illegal manual labour-ers, and desperate young women and men are lured into the sex trade. Even outside confl ict areas, Burma’s education system is collapsing. Teachers at state-run schools supplement their meagre salaries by private tutoring, often leaving their day-students teacher-less, or by exacting bribes from parents. The state of university education is equally dire. Students played a key role in nationwide pro-democracy protests in 1988, which the military crushed with the loss of thousands of lives. Since then, the junta has closed universities for long periods and ordered undergraduates to complete their studies through distance-learning courses. Such cynical measures have suc-cessfully kept students from organising democracy protests on campus. They have also helped to destroy the educational prospects of a whole generation of young people in Burma.

UNIQUE SCHOOL

In 2001, aged 20, Charm Tong set up the School for Shan State Nationalities Youth to rescue this “lost generation”. It serves not just Shan students but also those from other ethnic mi-norities such as the Palaung, Akha and Pa-O. Most are in their early twenties, and hail from a variety of backgrounds: some are migrant workers or war refugees, others are already teachers or community workers. Charm Tong receives more than 150 applicants every year. This year she can accommo-date only 29 students. Largely funded by private donations, the school is locat-ed in a two-storey rented house in northern Thailand. (Due to the school’s ambiguous legal status in Thailand, Charm Tong asked Global Knowledge not to reveal its exact loca-tion.) It is spartan: the tiny classroom has plastic chairs, a whiteboard and walls decorated with inspirational homilies, one of which reads: “Only education can provide a nation.” Some of the furniture is water-damaged. Last year northern Thailand endured the worst fl oods for four decades, and one of the dormitories was chest-high in dirty water. For a sur-

3 2 | H U M A N R IGH T S : c h a r m t ong

real few days, Charm Tong was obliged to travel to the near-est main road in a borrowed canoe. Students study English and computing, and receive human rights training from Charm Tong and other expe-rienced local activists. Unlike in their distant homelands, they are encouraged to discuss political issues. One student is 22-year-old Hseng (not her real name). She had been at-

tending university in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, but poverty forced her family to fl ee Burma. Hseng ended up as a housemaid in Bangkok, earning USD 80 a month, a paltry wage but still four times what she might earn at home. Then Hseng successfully applied to studying with Charm Tong. At the time, she spoke no English and had never seen a compu-ter. “When I touched one for the fi rst time, I was so excited I

S t rong voic e | At age 1 7 Charm Tong addressed the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. She described the Burmese junta’s savage cam-paign in her homeland to a 2 0 0 -strong audience which included junta members.

H U M A N R IGH T S : c h a r m t ong | 33

was shaking,” recalls Hseng, in excellent English. She is now training to be a human rights journalist. When not at the school, the workaholic Charm Tong works with the Shan Women’s Ac-tion Network. Their meticulous 2002 report, “License to Rape”, en-raged the junta, by establishing that its soldiers used rape as a weapon of war to terrorise communities. The practice is “still widespread and very systematic,” says Charm Tong. Not surprisingly, a fi ghting spirit runs in Charm Tong’s family. Her late father was a commander with the Shan State Army (SSA), one of the few ethnic insurgent groups still battling Burmese government troops. The SSA headquarters lies not far away at Loi Taileng, a settlement clinging to a cloud-raked ridge which straddles the rugged Thai-Burma border. It is the refuge for thousands of villagers fl eeing the junta’s troops. The SSA’s goal – an independent homeland for the Shan, Burma’s second largest ethnic group – is nearly impossible to achieve: its 2 000 fi ghters face a 400 000-strong Burmese army. Charm Tong says she and her father “fi ght for the same goal. We want our people to be free and happy in their own land.” Charm Tong knows the fi ght against the Burmese dic-tatorship is not just a military aff air. The Shan and other ethnic minorities must also resist a similarly ferocious as-sault on their cultures. At a basic school at the SSA’s hilltop headquarters, teachers write in Shan script on blackboards, an act for which they could be arrested in Burma. The junta has banned books and school lessons in the Shan language, destroyed signs bearing village names in Shan, and razed his-toric Shan buildings. The practical result? Many young Shan in Burma have little knowledge of their culture and cannot speak their mother tongue. Similar government restrictions have pushed other languages in Burma, such as Mon, to the very brink of extinction.

CANDLE IN THE DARKNESS

Charm Tong’s thriving school and high-profi le campaigning have doubtless won her enemies in the Burmese junta. But those enemies are far outnumbered by her admirers among Burma’s ethnic diaspora. May, a 19-year-old student from the northerly Kachin state, marvels at how early Charm Tong gets up each morning, and how hard she works. So what time does her teacher go to bed? “I don’t know,” replies May. “We’re always asleep before her.” Charm Tong is “a candle in the darkness,” continues May. “She never behaves like she’s superior or better. She is like our sister, and the school is our family.” A family waiting to go home. Ask Charm Tong about her earliest memories, and for the fi rst time during the interview

this driven, dry-eyed woman becomes nostalgic. She talks about foraging for honey in the jungle, of eating rice fi re-roast-ed in a length of bamboo. “That was how good a childhood

could be,” she says. “You had friends. You were connected to your birth-place, connected to your culture.

That’s what the people of Shan State are missing today: the life of normal human beings.” GK

Andrew Marshall is the author of The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire (Penguin, 2 0 0 3).

Philip Blenkinsop is an Australian award-winning photographer. He is based in Bangkok, Thailand.

S c ho ol | In 2 0 0 1 Charm Tong set up the School for Shan State Na-tionalities Youth. Students study English and computing, and receive human rights training from Charm Tong and other experienced local activists.

“We have to continue to break the silence.”

3 4 | H U M A N R IGH T S : c h a r m t ong

Thailand’s Tank LiberalsThailand’s military coup draws support from large segments of Thailand’s academia and Intelligentsia. But can a coup be justifi ed?

M A RWA A N M AC A N-M A R K A R | T E X TAGN E S DH ER BEYS , C O S MO S | P HO T O SBangkok, Th a il and

On a Satur day ev ening in October, with the setting sun as a backdrop, Thammasat University found itself in a role for which it has gained iconic status in Thailand’s struggle to build democracy – as a staging ground for a political rally. Some 200 people of varying ages had gathered by the side

of the university’s football fi eld to hear a few angry voices. There was no stage for this impromptu event. What served as a substitute was the back of a pick-up truck. The banners in front of the truck were a stark reminder as to who was in the fi ring line that evening: the military

C OU P | A military coup in September toppled Thailand’s controversial prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

H U M A N R IGH T S : TA N K L I BER A L S | 35

DEMONS T R AT ION | Some students have challenged the coup, but the majority of Ba

leaders of the coup d’etat that had toppled the government of twice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra on the night of 19 September. “Dictatorship Get Out”, screamed one banner that had white text on a black background. “Military Get Out!” declared another, in yellow on black. The senti-ments were echoed in the conversation of some in the crowd on the campus, located on the banks of the Chao Phraya Riv-er, which fl ows past Bangkok. The rally, which later culminated with a march along nearby streets to the country’s Democracy Monument, was one of a few protests in Bangkok since the coup. Those who gathered there were well aware that it was an act of defi ance

– martial law had been imposed by the junta and any political gathering of more than fi ve people was outlawed. “They have guns but I have guts,” said Nit, an angry busi-nesswoman in her mid-fi fties. “I do not care about who is right or wrong, but change should come through democracy. That is the way civilised countries behave.” Yet it was not till Uchane Cheangsan took the micro-phone that the signifi cance of this gathering at an institution venerated for its liberal – or at times radical – political legacy was brought into relief. The 30-year-old graduate student in political science railed against members of Thammasat’s faculty and academics from other universities for openly endorsing the coup, justifying the putsch as a much-needed intervention to help Thailand’s troubled democracy. “The coup exists because these people have supported it,” said Uchane, dressed in black T-shirt and jeans, and with his hair in a pony-tail. “They should not have done so because these are educated people. Their words speak louder than normal people’s.”

SUPPORTING THE COUP

The question that his speech raised – what is the role of Thai academics in response to the coup – was one that Thamma-sat University, itself, had to answer. This university, estab-lished in 1934 with a commitment to strengthen the social sciences, had been clearly on the side of the early pro-de-mocracy movements in the 1970s. But three decades later the stance many of its leading lights had changed. None conveyed this shift of support towards military power over civilian power better than the endorsement of the coup by Surapol Nitikraipoj, Thammasat’s rector. He was among 29 leading Thai academics – some of them presidents of univer-sities, rectors, deans of faculties and lecturers – who accepted a place on the military-appointed 242-member National Leg-islative Assembly (NLA). At Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s oldest aca-demic institution, based in Bangkok, wide support for the

coup can be found among the political science faculty. “We have about 70 lecturers in our faculty. About ten support Thaksin, four or fi ve are against the coup, and the rest are against Thaksin and support the coup,” says Surat Horach-

36 | H U M A N R IGH T S : TA N K L I BER A L S

aikul, an assistant professor of political science and a coup sympathiser. Surat’s endorsement of the coup echoes arguments made by other academics in the media and at seminars dis-

cussing the country’s political future, now that Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party was driven out of power, the parliament dissolved and the constitution an-nulled by the junta. “There was no alternative to getting rid

ngkok’s middle and upper-middle class has endorsed the military takeover.

H U M A N R IGH T S : TA N K L I BER A L S | 37

of Thaksin and his regime,” says Surat. “He divided the coun-try with his politics and he was undermining democracy by the abuse of power.” Other scholars take a very diff erent view of the coup, the country’s 18th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. “I am very sick and disillusioned to see many smart in-tellectuals in Thailand support the coup,” says Thongchai Winichakul, professor of history at the University of Wiscon-sin-Madison, in the United Sates. “One of the most disap-pointing things about Thai intellectuals is not merely that they support the coup, but their arguments for the coup are lame, simplistic, even ‘defensive’.” In Thailand, few academics can equal Thongchai’s cre-dentials as a committed advocate of democracy. In October 1976, as a 19-year-old undergrad-uate at Thammasat, he was in the vanguard of a student-led pro-democracy movement that ended in a massacre within the walls of the campus. Over 49 people were shot to death by the Thai military, police and right-wing paramilitary squads. Some of the protesters were raped, while others were burnt alive. Dead bodies were hung from trees. Thongchai was arrested and thrown into jail for two years. The bloody showdown of 1976 came on the heels of a 1973 outpouring of pro-democracy sentiment on the streets of Bangkok, once again with Thammasat University as the initial staging ground. That drew hundreds of thousands of students and civilians, marking the beginning of a popular movement to end the successive military dictatorships that had dominated the country for most of the previous four decades.

TANK LIBERALS

The overthrow of Thaksin, whose party had been twice elected with thumping parliamentary majorities, the fi rst time in January 2001, was far from bloody. The tanks and troops that took over Bangkok’s streets on the night of 19 September were greeted with cheers, fl owers and, in some places, ice-cream. The welcome party by Bangkok’s middle and upper-middle class brought to an end an acrimonious battle they had been waging with the country’s 23rd prime minister since the beginning of the year. The regular anti-government street protests in the capital, at times attracting over 100 000 people, charged Thaksin with a litany of crimes, including corruption, nepotism and destruction of political institutions created to check the government’s power. The moment that defi ned Thaksin’s hubris was the controversial,

tax-free sale in January of his family’s telecommunications conglomerate for nearly USD two billion to Singapore’s state investment fi rm Temasek. But while such showdowns are part of democratic cul-ture in any country, what has placed this Southeast Asian in a league of its own is the solution off ered to resolve the politi-cal deadlock – a coup, again – and the substantial support it has received from the intelligentsia. The contradictions do not stop there, either, since academics openly cheering the demise of the TRT are in principal against such violent meas-ures. Surat is typical, when he says, “We are totally against coups in the classroom.” The gulf between what is good in the classroom and what is good on the street has not been lost on Giles Ung-

pakorn, a Marxist professor who is a member of the same faculty as Surat. He labels the coup sym-pathisers “tank liberals”. “These are people who have turned their backs on democracy,” he says.

“They have revealed that they do not believe in using the democratic process and laws to get rid of Thaksin.” Similar disappointment is expressed by activists who were troubled by Thaksin’s increasingly authoritarian rule but have refused to join the bandwagon of coup supporters.

“The coup is not legitimate to begin with,” says Junya Yimpra-sert, a leading labour rights activist. “It is a step backwards and does not advance democracy. It is a very sad thing for me.” The emerging fault-lines within the country’s aca-demic community have given some a reason to pause. “I am surprised by this spilt, with the critics of the coup being in the minority,” says Thanet Aphornsuvan, assistant professor of history at Thammasat University. “The previous coups did not get such popular support from the intellectuals. But this coup has received a lot of support from academics.” “They feel they are on top of the coup, with the army coming to the assistance of Thai democracy,” he adds. “It is a curious kind of logic.” In addition to the fall of Thaksin, what has also won so much academic admiration for the putsch is the junta’s an-nouncement that will it restore Thailand’s democracy in 12 months. Such faith in the generals has continued even after the drafting of a new constitution, which gives the junta’s leader wide power, the appointment of a former army chief as the prime minister, and the selection of the new NLA, a third of which are current and former military men. For now, they are prepared to believe the words of Gen-eral Winai Phattiyakul, a ranking member of the junta. He

“One of the most disappointing things about Thai intellectuals is not merely that they support the coup, but their arguments for the coup are

lame, simplistic, even ‘defensive’.”

38 | H U M A N R IGH T S : TA N K L I BER A L S

told a gathering of foreign correspondents that “we sincerely do not hope to retain administrative power,” adding later that, “The armed forces are quite professional and will ac-cept the orders from a civilian government in the future.” Yet Uchane refuses to fall in line with such views. “What does this say about the attitude of academics in our country?”

asks the son of a rice farmer from the southern province of Nakhon Sri Thamarat. “We must expose them.” GK

Marwaan Macan-Markar, a Sri Lankan journalist, is a Bangkok-based cor-respondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), a Third World news agency.

Agnes Dherbeys is a Bangkok based French photographer.

H U M A N R IGH T S : TA N K L I BER A L S | 39

TA N K S | The tanks and troops that took over Bangkok’s streets on the night of 1 9 September were greeted with cheers, fl owers and, in some places, ice-cream.

Yacobov ich, 35, tr ies to tr ace the gunfi re to its source, fi rst up the steep hillside to Israel’s separation barrier where it heads south and then into the heart of the valley, where the village graveyard at the northern end is also circumscribed by the barrier. But tracking the sound of gunfi re in a valley is a decep-tive business and as the shooting stops, Yacobovich gives up. There is no obvious explanation for the gunfi re and no sub-sequent reports of injuries in this small agricultural village, northwest of Jerusalem. “Sometimes,” he says, “the army just shoots for fun.” Yacobovich’s rather counter-instinctual approach to the sound of gunfi re comes with his job description. As video coordinator and cameraman with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the aspiring fi lmmaker is responsible for documenting on video any human rights abuses he comes across in the course of his work in the occupied Palestinian territories. He helped set up B’Tselem’s video department a few years back. It now possesses an archive of over 600 hours of footage. The online video archive, part of B’Tselem’s website, is visited by some 150 000 people a month, he says. The number of online hits is testament to the status B’Tselem has achieved as a go-to source for journalists, activ-ists and researchers for information on human rights abuses in the occupied territories. It is a status that has been interna-tionally recognised: in the same year it was established, 1989, B’Tselem received the prestigious Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights.

PROMINENT FOUNDERS

The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Oc-

cupied Territories – to give B’Tselem its full name in English – was founded by a group of prominent Israeli academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members, among them present Israeli Minister of Defence Amir Peretz. It was set up to provide accurate information, primarily about the actions of the Israeli army and government in the occupied territo-ries during the fi rst intifada that started in 1989. The Oslo Accords, the advent of the Palestinian Authori-ty (PA), the outbreak of the second intifada and suicide bomb-ings signifi cantly changed working conditions for the group. Practically, in that it is now almost impossible for Israelis to enter the occupied territories and so local fi eld workers are relied on. And in terms of scope, as the group now also cov-ers human rights abuses by the PA. But B’Tselem is keen to avoid being seen as a peace organisation or having any politi-cal agenda. “We do not take political positions and we do not let our personal views play a part. We do not advocate any particu-lar solution,” says spokesperson Sarit Michaeli. “We look at the situation based on our analysis of International Law and universal principles of human rights.” The group has periodically come under criticism in Is-rael for focusing exclusively on the occupied territories, but Michaeli says that while there are human rights abuses in Israel, since the Palestinian population of the occupied ter-ritories lives under military rule the decision was made early to concentrate exclusively on the situation there. She also points out that B’Tselem makes no distinction between hu-man rights abuses of Palestinian and Israeli residents in the occupied territories. “We are perceived in Israel as robust. We produce data that is solid and exhaustive. We check and re-check our data

Challenging the Israeli ArmyA burst of gunfi re spurs Oren Yacobovich into action. “Those are Israeli guns,” says the former Israeli army combat soldier as he jumps into a white bullet-proof Cherokee jeep and sets off down a narrow mud track at breakneck speed.

OM A R K A R M I | T E X T A N D P HO T O SQatana, Pa lest ine

4 0 | H U M A N R IGH T S : B’T S EL EM

and we try to be a reliable source. We have to, otherwise we will be challenged on our numbers from those, in particular the Israeli army, whose actions we call into question,” says Michaeli. That questioning takes many forms, from providing cas-ualty statistics in the occupied territories to detailing house demolitions, deportations and imprisonments without trial

– what the Israeli army calls administrative detention.

HARASSMENT

Challenging the Israeli army has also earned B’Tselem a repu-tation among Palestinians. Yacobovich and fi eld researcher Kareem Jubran are in Qatana for some ‘on the spot’ data collec-tion after villagers called the group to complain of harassment

from the Israeli army. The village is part of the so-called Bidu-area villages in the West Bank, north-west of Jerusalem. The hillsides here are covered with olive trees.

Under normal circumstances the area would be idyllic, but a combination of Israel’s separation barrier and a cluster of Jew-ish settlements have left the villages enclosed in an enclave to which there is only one exit and entrance, through an Israeli army checkpoint. While that has seriously curtailed movement for the vil-lagers, locals had hoped the completion of the barrier, in May of this year, would at least see an end to the increased army presence during construction. But two Israeli jeeps hover con-stantly on the military-only road behind the barrier, an elec-tronic barbwire fence here, and villagers say, with the onset of

OL I V E S | Since the olive-picking season began in mid-September, Fadel Shamasna says military harassment has been getting worse. In the picture Shamasna’s wife pauses from picking olives. Behind her, Jubran, center, is talking to Shamasna while Yakobovitch surveys the land.

“We do not take political positions and we do not let our personal views play a part. We do not

advocate any particular solution.”

H U M A N R IGH T S : B’T S EL EM | 4 1

the olive season, the army has become more active, not less. “It’s a good year for the olives,” Fadel Shamasna, 42, says, with a farmer’s insight. It’s about 50 metres from his house up the hill to the separation barrier. Since 1997, his main income has come from the land he harvests and wages from a job at the local town council. But in the past few years, Shamasna, like many Palestinian farmers in the West Bank whose land is either near the separation barrier or near a Jewish settlement, has found it diffi cult to harvest his land. Where the olive harvest ought to be a season of plenty for Palestinian farmers, it has instead become a season of anguish. Closures across the West Bank since the outbreak of the Aqsa Intifada, extended “security” areas around illegal Jewish set-tlements, the advent of Israel’s separation barrier as well as set-tler violence against farmers, has meant that farmers across the West Bank have found themselves fully or partially cut off from much of their land. Much of this has been well documented by B’Tselem, which has produced statistics that show that settler violence against Palestinians in the past few years spiked around the olive harvest. Late last year, B’Tselem made the Israeli army admit that more than 2 400 olive trees had been uprooted or cut down by settlers in the period since 2003. The news caused uproar in the Israel media: it forced then deputy prime minis-ter Ehud Olmert to speak out against the uprooting of trees in a cabinet meeting in January. “I think it was something Israelis could react to,” says Ya-cobovich. “It seems absurd with all the killings, but here was fi nally an issue that people could safely condemn without hav-ing to think too much about it.” RENEWED HARASSMENT

Since the olive-picking season began in mid-September, Sha-masna says military harassment has been getting worse. On

25 September he claims Israeli soldiers had sounded their si-rens at around two in the morning and proceeded to fi re tear gas and hurl insults over loudspeakers for about an hour. “I have no idea why they did it,” he tells fi eld researcher Jubran.

“It was pure harassment.” It prompted him to call B’Tselem. Going on past years’ experience it was the only form of action he felt might be fruitful. Jubran is taking down Shamasna’s testimony. He is B’Tselem’s Jerusalem area researcher. As a veteran human rights worker, Jubran was a volunteer with the Palestinian human rights group, al-Haq, which together with B’Tselem won the 1989 prize, and also worked with Amnesty Interna-tional before joining B’Tselem. A Palestinian Jerusalemite, he and Yacobovich make an intriguing partnership. While Jubran avoided lengthy prison spells because he went to study in Bulgaria during the fi rst intifada – “that saved my ass” – he has, like most Palestinians who grew up during that and the present intifada, spent short spells in jail. Yet he has no qualms about working for an Israeli hu-man rights organisation and says he receives no criticism for it among his own community. “Personally, I have no prob-lems. B’Tselem has a good name among Palestinians. It is well known and gets a lot of respect.” Yacobovich, on the other hand, says he gets “a lot of shit” from other Israelis. “Most of my friends are lefties and artists, so to them the job has a certain status. But among mainstream Israelis, people consider me anything from, at worst, a traitor, to at best naïve.” Nevertheless, Yacobovich is very committed to his work.

“My army experience completely shaped me,” he says. “Be-fore I went into the army, I was, I suppose, right-wing in the way most Israelis are. My time there opened my eyes. I do not understand why it does not shape more people.” He left Israel for Berlin, after his service. Eventually he came back, but “it was not easy for me just to sit and watch what was going on.” B’Tselem thus off ered him the opportu-nity to pursue both his interest in fi lm-making and to escape the feeling of helplessness. “At least we document what hap-pens; for now, for the future, for I do not know who. But just being there I think makes a diff erence.” That is a sentiment echoed by spokesperson Michaeli. During the fi rst intifada, she says, it was hard to obtain re-liable information about human rights abuses in the occu-pied Palestinian territories. “At least now it’s impossible for Israelis to say they do not know. They may not care, they may not look, but the facts are now there for them to see if they want to know what is happening. That alone is making

42 | H U M A N R IGH T S : B’T S EL EM

B OR DER | Israel’s separation barrier in Qatana.

a diff erence. “But even if all we do is document violations, it is enough. We are not here to ease the Israeli conscience. Someone has to document violations, hopefully in order to prevent them.” While Jubran confesses to loving his job he also admits it can bring him down. “In Jerusalem I do not have to deal so much with killings as my colleagues in the West Bank or Gaza. The worst for me are the house demolitions in Jerusalem. People will ring me for help, but I am not able to help. All I can, is document, sit down and fi ll out a form. I like this work, but it is sometimes depressing. You work on something for a long time and see no progress, and sometimes people blame you. Sometimes you blame yourself.” It is a job for the dedicated, he says. “Sometimes we stay [out] for days and nights. We have weekends and holidays but often they just pass by. It’s impossible not to think about the work at home.”

ROCKS AND TEAR GAS

While Jubran fi nishes up with Shamasna’s testimony and pre-pares to interview a neighbour, a couple of the children from the village, out of school because of a general strike in PA schools, have approached the barrier above Jubran’s house, where an Israeli army jeep is parked. The children throw a couple of stones. It takes a few minutes, but soon enough a tear gas canister is fi red over the heads of the children and into the fi eld neighbouring Shamasna’s. The children run but are back soon. Shamasna calls to his wife who is picking olives and tells them to go inside. She is newly pregnant. A few nights ago, he tells Jubran, he had to take her to the local medical centre because of the tear gas. The stone and gas exercise repeats itself a few times until the soldiers get out of their jeep and cross the barrier. As they move closer the children run further. One tear gas canister is fi red far down into the village. “When it is a game, OK,” observes Yakobovich. “But when they shoot tear gas right into the village, it is something else.” The air starts to get pungent with the smell. Three soldiers take up positions inside the barrier as the children scramble. Shamasna does not look unduly worried. “This is nothing. The children are not in school and they are bored. Before they used to go to Abu Ghosh [a Palestinian village inside the 1967 borders] to sell bread or hang around. Now they can not go there, so this is the closest they get to excite-ment.” The “game” eventually peters out, but then the rounds

of live fi re ring out across the valley and Yakobovich’s hair-raising and ultimately fruitless jeep pursuit begins. With only one tear gas canister fi red into the village, however, the rest fi red harmlessly over the heads of the chil-dren and some inexplicable live fi re, there is nothing too newsworthy here. Nevertheless, the B’Tselem researchers

have seen enough to want to re-turn. Before they leave, they give Shamasna a video camera and in-structions for how to use it in case soldiers act overnight. Shamasna is delighted. There is no point, he

says, in complaining to the PA or the Israeli army. He wants results and that is why he turned to B’Tselem. Jubran and Yakobovich meanwhile hold out hope that their work might have an eff ect on the olive harvest. “If we start monitoring the season early,” says Yakobovich, “maybe it will not be so bad this year.” GK

Omar Karmi is a Palestinian editor and journalist based in Ramallah, Palestine.

“Before I went into the army, I was, I suppose, right-wing in the way most Israelis are. My time

there opened my eyes. I do not understand why it doesn’t shape more people.”

H U M A N R IGH T S : B’T S EL EM | 43

CAMERA | Oren Yakobovich teaches Fadel Shamasna how to use a camera.

“In the long run I believe we, the human rights schol-ars in China, can do more for society than those who are very brave, very admirable, but step in a minefi eld and get destroyed,” says Professor Sun Shiyan at the Chi-nese Academy of Social Science (C A S S) . The C A S S , with more than 3000 research staff , is an academic research in-stitute directly under the State Council, and in eff ect a huge government think thank. We meet the professor in downtown Beijing. Together with the three Nordic hu-man rights institutes, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Sweden, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and the China Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) of the University of Oslo, Sun Shiyan may be credited with one signifi cant change – the introduction of human rights education to China. The fi rst course for law teachers was held in 2001, several more have followed, and another course has just taken place in Chongqing in Western China. More than 30 law teachers attended the two-week workshop which was arranged by the Norwe-gian China Programme and the Southwest University of Political Science and Law. After completing the course the participants are expected to set up human rights train-ing courses at their own universities. “Back in 1999 when we came up with the idea of human rights courses and teacher training, there were no independent human rights courses available at Chinese law faculties. Today more than 20 universities have such courses, and I’m sure that the number will increase,” says Sun Shiyan. Global Knowledge did not have permission to visit the training course, but we can speak freely with Sun Shiyan,

Talking Human Rights in ChinaThere is a big gap between Western demands and Chinese practice in terms of human rights. Can international cooperation make an impact?

T ORGEI R NOR L I NG | T E X T SDU P | PHOTOSBei j ing, China

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and there are no government minders, who reportedly often follow foreign journalists around. “Back in the 1980s when you were talking about human rights you could be accused of talking for the West. But now, as the concept has already been incorporated in the Chinese constitution, we as human rights scholars feel very confi dent about talking about human rights,” he says. While admitting there are taboos you cannot touch he maintains there is plenty of room to work with. “Some peo-ple like to test the limits, but in China, if you really want to contribute to the development of the Rule of Law and hu-man rights, you need to be smart and keep a balance.”

TOUCHY SUBJECT

Human rights in China is still a touchy subject. To dispute the treatment of Falun Gong followers or to mention the Tiananmen massacre is likely to get you into serious trouble. So may other issues–particularly those that challenge gov-ernment powers. According to Amnesty International the only recent positive development in terms of human rights is China’s reform of legislation regarding capital punishment. Under the new legislation, all death penalties handed down by pro-vincial courts must be reviewed and ratifi ed by the Supreme Court. Observers estimate that China executes more than 10 000 prisoners every year, more than the rest of the world combined, and it is hoped that the new reform will help to bring the numbers down. In other fi elds, however, Amnesty maintains that hu-man rights are heading in the wrong direction in the lead-

up to the 2008 Olympics. The situation for both Chinese and foreign media is getting tighter. Arbitrary detentions, unfair tri-als, torture and ill-treatment remain commonplace, and in Beijing they report that hun-dreds of people have become casualties of “Beijing’s frenzied

construction and clean-up opera-tion” before the Olympics. “I see the same things as Am-nesty see, so they are not wrong. On the other hand, to measure

improvement or impact on human rights at a national level of a country with 1.3 billion people like China is really dif-

“Some people like to test the limits, but in China, if you really want to contribute to the develop-ment of the Rule of Law and human rights, you

need to be smart and keep a balance.”

P OL IC E | Human rights in China is a touchy subject. To dispute the treatment of Falun Gong followers or to mention the Tiananmen massacre is likely to get you into serious trouble. So may other issues - particularly those that challenge government powers.

H U M A N R IGH T S : C H I NA | 45

fi cult,” says Cecilie Figenschou Bakke, director of the China programme at NCHR, which is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign aff airs. According to Figenschou Bakke there are improvements to be seen. “It is going slowly, but I think it is moving in the right direction, but of course there is a lot that needs to be done. There are large and tremendous problems with human rights in China.” The China Programme has unlike Amnesty been wel-come in China for almost ten years. They are engaged in spe-cifi c fi elds, such as women’s rights and workers’ rights, but human rights education and to increase competence in the academic sector is the priority. “What puzzled me when I started working with China in the 1990s is that the inter-national community requires a lot from China on human rights, but how are they going to do that? To implement, to monitor and do good work on human rights it is important that groups in society know what human rights are. We saw that the academic community had an important role to play, and I think that is where we are seeing a shift now,” she says and continues: “You have an increasing number of legal experts, they know what human rights are, they know the articles and they know what is expected on implementation. They teach at their law schools, and they are teaching the new generation of prosecutors, lawyers and judges, so there are a lot of students entering society with knowledge about human rights.” She maintains that the Chinese government seems to appreciate their input, particularly on issues where they have committed, or are in the process of committing to international standards of human rights. “The Chinese government now realises that human rights has a legal concept, it has meaning, you can fi nd con-ventions in the UN, many of which now have been ratifi ed by China. They express willingness to discuss these issues with the international community and that gives us the framework to work practically on human rights with Chi-nese partners. So when China ratifi ed the ILO convention on non-discrimination in employment we saw that the aca-demics knew nothing about non-discrimination. So we sup-ported six research groups to do research about the situation in China and while they were doing that we trained them in international standards, and we then published the fi rst textbook on non-discrimination in China,” she says.

ISOLATION OR COOPERATION?

But how do you make China ratify a human rights conven-tion in the fi rst place, and how do you make sure that a coun-try with 1.3 billion people and the world’s fastest-growing economy actually honours its commitments? On a political level the Chinese government has offi cial human rights dia-

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logues with nine countries, and has regular consultations with others. While the US is taking a hard line, and have had their dialogue suspended, others, and the Nordic countries in particular, are running a softer line, where engagement and cooperation are common terms in the discussions. Some-times these dialogues run into diffi culties, however. When the Norwegian Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Aff airs visited China earlier this year, their Chinese counterparts were, according to the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, more interested in warning the Norwegian delegation about the possible bilateral consequences of a Nobel Peace Price to the Uyghur human rights campaigner Rebiya Kadeer, in ven-turing into discussions on factual human rights issues. “There could be many diff erent approaches, from pushing to cooperation,” says Sun Shiyan. “The Chinese government has always emphasised that we have diff erent circumstances. I do not think diff erent circumstances can be a justifi cation for not complying with international standards of human rights, but still on the other hand we have to admit that the situa-tion in China is diff erent from Western Europe,” he says and continues: “One challenge is that generally people, including government offi cials and scholars, are still not very comfort-able with the discourse of human rights. The taboo from the 1980s still remains to a certain extent in their mentality.” “Then there are some other practical challenges. One is that people from government offi cials to scholars have been trying to develop a Chinese human rights discourse. They say we accept the generally accepted human rights standards, but these universal human rights standards have to be un-derstood and implemented in the Chinese context by taking into account the special historical, economic, political and social conditions in China. From an academic point of view the interesting or ridiculous thing is that while this is a point made by many, very few have been making eff orts to clarify what the special implementation in the Chinese context is or how you will combine a specifi c provision in international law with a domestic context. I mean, as an international law scholar I would say that the acceptance of universally recog-nised human rights standards is still not adequate.” “Then there are some technical problems. Yes, we have 20 universities with human rights courses. Yes, we have trained more than 200 lecturers. But in China we have about 1000 universities and at least half of them have law faculties.” He concludes: “In China I think one general principal strategy is that you have to be extremely patient. This is not only for foreigners, but even for us. We are Chinese, we know Chinese society and sometimes we encounter tremendous problems in facilitating human rights education and pro-moting human rights.”

LEARNING FROM EUROPE

Someone who has encountered problems in his career is Li Datong, former editor of Bingdian (Freezing Point), a popular and sometimes controversial news supplement to the China Youth Daily. In February Bingdian was closed down, and Li Da-tong fi red from his position and transferred to an inactive

“research” post at the newspaper. His crime was publishing

stories that did not go down well with the political estab-lishment. A journalist of 30 years’ standing, he knows the system in-side out, and he was probably well aware that he was stepping over the line. “My motive was a sense of responsibility, the pub-lic needed this information,” he says. While Li Datong main-tains the Chinese media is freer than ever, he says it is paradoxi-

BU I L DI NG BR I D GE S | There is a big gap between Western demands and China’s practice in terms of human rights. “There could be many diff erent approaches, from pushing to cooperation,” says Professor Sun Shiyan.

W e m eet “Joyce” and three of her student friends at a restaurant in the centre of Khartoum. The students have a few things in common. They have all been displaced by the civil war between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). For years they have been living in poverty in the suburbs of Su-dan’s capital Khartoum. And now, more than a year after the comprehensive peace agreement ended the war, they cannot wait to return home. They all agree that their university should move back with them. None of the students want their names used or pic-tures taken, as they fear getting in trouble. They may have something to worry about. Several of their student friends have been arrested, and more have been expelled from the university, after a demonstration turned vio-lent in February. Their initial demand for a student un-ion quickly turned into a demonstration for moving the university back to the South, and then escalated into violence. With several buildings destroyed, the univer-sity has closed down until further notice and none of the students are allowed on campus, which is carefully guarded by police. The students we meet claim not to have been directly involved in the riots, but they agree with the organisers. “I am studying to be a teacher. Here in Khartoum I can not do anything, if I go back I can help out with the education there,” says 23-year-old “Joyce”.

COMPLICATED MOVE

She has a point. When the University of Juba was founded in 1975 the main aim was to bring progress and develop-ment to southern Sudan, and a swift return of the uni-versity is seen by many observers as essential to show the

cally also controlled as never before. He maintains that the pre-reform media up to 1978 could be characterised as an ideological tool of “propaganda, indoctrinisation and lies” while today under a more market-based economy “the only standard the government currently uses is what is good or bad for government power”. The diff erence compared with his fi rst days as a journalist in 1978 and today is huge, he maintains. “One major factor today is the pressure from the market. Today only a few media receive a budget from the national government. The rest is trying to survive in the market, so they need to cater to their audience.” The system of control remains the same, however. “Since the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949 there has been no change. The party is in charge of all the media and has the right to interfere in, arrange or to sack any media organisation or editors at any level.” He does not think a real freedom of the press can be achieved under the present system. “Press free-dom is closely connected with the political system. There will never be press freedom in a country with a one-party dictatorship.” Then when will the Chinese political system have a real change? “I think we still need to wait for twenty or 30 years,” he says. He agrees with Sun Shiyan’s call for patience. “Now the government begins to learn from the social democratic par-ties of northern Europe. That is to say, the ideas of the gov-erning party have begun to change in this generation, and then the next generation will be more diff erent and with more international vision since they accept international-ised education.” Li Datong believes continued reforms in the legal system will be the key to a more open and transparent society. One important step he hopes will be a quick ratifi -cation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “The true change should be in the law, otherwise we don’t have the weapons for change,” he says. Weapons it will be up to Chinese human rights schol-ars to develop, perhaps in cooperation with initiatives such as the Norwegian China Programme. Sun Shiyan is optimis-tic about the future. “Twenty years ago even the term ‘right’ was very strange for Chinese people, but now ordinary peo-ple, it does not matter how little education, know they have some rights, recognised by law. This development in China is obvious. We do not know how fast China will change in the future, but in this respect I am confi dent that China is de-veloping in the right direction, even on human rights.” GK

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A University in ExileIn the late 1980s the University of Juba was moved to the capital Khartoum because of the war. Impatient university students now want it to return to the south. “The univer-sity should move back immediately,” says 23 year old “Joyce”.

T ORGEI R NOR L I NG | T E X T A N D P HO T OK h artou m, Ju ba, Su dan

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L I BR A RY | Dep-uty Vice-Chancellor Venansio Tombe Mu-ludiang in the library of the old campus in Juba. “Had it not been for the war God knows where we would have been. Probably the best university in Sudan,” he says.

population the value of peace. “If the university is brought back it will really show peace has come,” says “Joyce”. There are some obstacles. While the university was to bring progress, 21 years of war has taken the south in the op-posite direction. In the late 1980s the situation in the govern-ment-held southern capital Juba deteriorated to the point where it was no longer possible to continue. “It was prac-tically impossible to run the university and a decision was taken to move it to Khartoum,” says Deputy Vice-Chancel-lor Venansio Tombe Muludiang. We meet the deputy vice-chancellor in the library of the old campus in Juba, once the pride of the university and one of the best in the country. The books are still there, but apart from that the building is almost empty. So is the rest of the campus. “Had it not been for the war God knows where we would have been. Probably the best university in Sudan,” says Tombe Muludiang. He says only one degree programme, in music, drama and arts, has started up at the old campus. All other activities still remain in Khartoum. An agreement has been reached that all new students should begin their studies in Juba, but the number of students able to enrol has been reduced from 2500 to 680 students a year. Tombe Muludiang maintains however that there is no question of whether the university should move back. “The question is how to bring it back,” he says.

“Those who argue for moving the entire university back at once should come here and take a closer look at the condi-tions we are dealing with.”

NOT WORRIED

And conditions are poor. More than one year after the peace took hold, the process of rebuilding the region remains slow. There is a lack of hospitals, roads, electricity and water, and security is a major issue. The situation of accommodation is critical to the point that most Western NGO workers pay up to USD 150 for a night in a simple tent. It also does not help that the University of Juba since moving to Khartoum has expanded rapidly. “When we moved we had fi ve colleges and maybe 800 students, now we have 11 colleges and the number of students is several times higher,” says Tombe Muludiang. He claims that an entire new campus is needed. “When we bring the university back, we need to be able to cater for both staff and the students,” he says. In Khartoum the students are not so sure about the prospects of a swift relocation to Juba. They maintain that a majority of the university staff are from northern Sudan, and may have their own reasons for delaying the return. “Joyce” is not worried about lack of facilities in the South. “We are suff ering here already so what is the diff erence,” she says. GK

BEN DAV I E S | T E X TPAT R IC K BROW N, PA NO S | P HO T O SBangkok, Th a il and

C lu t c h ing a b ot t l e of tiger tonic pills in one hand and a gibbon’s skull in the other, the 51-year-old environ-mental biologist describes how some of the rarest species on the planet are being plundered to satisfy demand for everything from tiger penis – used as an aphrodisiac – to exotic pets and furs. Worse still, he says, the authorities are doing little to stop it. “It is a sad, heart-breaking story,” he says. “Wildlife is seen as a way to make money. Conservation is on the de-cline.” Sompoad’s sense of urgency is not hard to under-stand. A poster on the wall of Mahidol’s biodiversity cen-tre dramatically illustrates the explosion of the wildlife trade in Thailand and its shift from common animals to exotic pets. Beautifully patterned Indian star turtles, rare hornbills and large-eyed slow lorrises can be purchased openly in Bangkok despite being protected under local and international law. Birds and reptiles smuggled from neighbouring countries can be ordered on the Internet, like supermarket groceries. The sale of a few wild animals is hardly going to wipe out the planet’s biodiversity, but the trade here in Thailand is multiplied thousands of times the world over. Combined with large-scale deforestation it is driv-ing many species to the brink of extinction. “People have to take responsibility for what is going on,” he says. “We need to be able to convince governments and the authori-ties of the need to act.”

Traded to ExtinctionIt is ten o’clock on a steamy Bangkok morning and Sompoad Srikosamatara, an associate professor at the city’s prestigious Mahidol University, is on a mission to save the world’s most endangered wildlife.

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ORGANISATION

“F or a wor l dw i de c om m u n i t y of higher educa-tion,” reads the motto of the International Association of Universities (IAU). Founded in 1950, the IAU is a UNESCO-based association of higher education institutions, bring-ing together institutions and organisations from some 150 countries. More than half a century after the association’s founding, its mission remains intact: To serve as a global forum where its members can come together to address common problems and achieve common goals through cooperation. As put in the introduction to the IAU’s renewed mis-sion statement: “[…] The responsibility to respond to the needs of society and to promote justice, freedom, respect for human rights, human dignity and solidarity, contin-ue to drive the actions of the Association to this day.” The IAU focuses at any point on a few specifi c topics or themes that change over time. At the top of the as-sociation’s priority list today, are “internationalisation, globalisation, cross-border higher education, including intercultural learning and dialogue”. The IAU has also made a priority of focusing on the role of higher educa-tion in society as a whole, by among other things look-ing into sustainable development, and the role of higher education in UNESCO’s “Education for All” programme. The IAU’s services are available on a priority basis to members but also to organisations, institutions and authorities concerned with higher education, as well as to individual policy and decision-makers, specialists, ad-ministrators, teachers, researchers and students. GK

http://www.unesco.org/iau

International Association of Universities (IAU) EI V I N D S EN N E S ET | T E X T

RAISING AWARENESS

Sompoad Srikosamatara has a long-standing interest in endan-gered wildlife. During the 1970s, he teamed up with his uni-versity tutor Warren Brockelman to obtain funding from the New York Zoological Society to study and survey wild populations of the threatened pileated gibbons of Southeast Asia. But his fi rst real experience of the trade in wildlife was in the early 1990s when he visited Laos and came across hun-dreds of pangolin skins hanging out to dry in the sun, before being made into leather. “I was so shocked by what I saw that I decided that I had to do something,” he says. “Looking back on it, the inci-dent was a turning point.” Part of what Sompoad did was to gather data, which he passed on to the Lao authorities. The data showed how, over little more than a decade, around 90 per cent of the coun-

try’s pangolins, a type of anteater, had been wiped out. Since then Sompoad has written a number

of papers on the wildlife trade and conservation. He and his colleagues have also attempted to instil their views in their students, the wider public and government. Sompoad’s students comprise undergraduates and doctoral students studying a range of species from Asian el-ephants and orchids to tigers and pileated gibbons. Together they are attempting to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity and the impact of the wildlife trade on animal populations around the region. The hope is that they can succeed before it is too late. “We have to educate the next generation,” says Sompoad. “This is the only way forward.”

ENORMOUS TRADE

It is a big hope. Every year around three million birds, ten

“We need to be able to convince governments and the authorities of the need to act.”

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T R A DE | A shop owner shows off some of his wildlife products in the Thai-Burma border town of Thakhilek. The market in Thakhilek has many shops that sell wildlife products.

million snakes, 5 000 tonnes of turtles and 500 million tropi-cal fi sh are traded around the world. And that’s just the legal trade. According to Interpol, the illegal trade in wildlife is worth more than USD six billion a year, making it the third biggest form of illegal traffi cking after drugs and arms. And with better communications, better transportation sys-tems and the opening up of even the most far-fl ung corners of the world, wildlife traffi cking has never been easier or more profi table. Burgeoning demand and only limited supply has trans-lated into ever-rising prices. In South Korea a bear’s gall bladder, used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat liver disease, can sell for up to USD 10 000, whilst in China, a single rhino horn to treat fever can go for USD 40 000. Little surprise, then, that ever larger numbers of poachers go into the forest to hunt them down. As the big valuable mammals disappear poachers turn their attention to smaller animals. Recently in Japan, a seven-centimeter-long male stag beetle was re-portedly sold to a private collector for a record USD 92 240.

Even scorpions and poisonous spiders are in demand across the globe. One woman who has watched this new trend in horror is Barbara Maas, head of Care for the Wild International in London. A recognised authority on the capture and trans-portation of wild animals, she has documented mortality rates of up to 50 per cent for wild-caught primates imported into the United States. In the case of ornamental fi sh, the fi gure is as high as 80 per cent. “What we need is tougher enforcement,” she says. “If governments and people are serious about stopping the ille-gal wildlife trade, there is an enormous amount that can be done.” Despite the best eff orts of people like Barbara Maas, the situation continues to deteriorate. Over the past 100 years, the worldwide population of rhinos, tigers, elephants and bears in the wild has shrunk by a staggering 90 per cent. And that’s the high profi le, so-called “charismatic” species. To-day it is estimated that there are just 150 Chinese crocodiles

P OAC H I NG | According to Interpol, the illegal trade in wildlife is worth more than USD six billion a year, making it the third biggest form of illegal traffi cking after drugs and arms.

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left in the wild in China – barely enough to maintain a healthy breeding population. In Indone-sia there are fewer than 5 000 of the famous Komodo dragons. Without greater action and more stringent penalties, soon the only place where we will fi nd rare animals is in cages.

HUGE MARKET

One of the most shocking cases that Sompoad has followed in recent years is the case of 53 orangutans that were smuggled from the jungles of Indonesia to tourist hot spots in Thai-land. The orangutans ended up in the Safari World private zoo a short distance from Bangkok where they were used in boxing shows for tourists. In November 2004, the forestry police raided the zoo. Under Thai and international regu-lations, the apes should have been immediately DNA-tested to prove their country of origin and then repatriated. But despite a concerted campaign by conservationists, the Thai government for more than two years refused to take action.

Had it not been for a Dutch-man by the name of Edwin Wiek, the case might have slowly died

along with most of the orangutans. But Wiek, who works for Wildlife Friends of Thailand, refused to give up. “This could be the world’s biggest case of ape smuggling,” says Wiek. “All we want is for justice to be served.” His eff orts may fi nally be paying off . Within the next few weeks, the orangutans are likely to be transported by plane from Bangkok to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. The apes will eventually be transferred to the remote island of Kali-mantan. After being quarantined in an animal rescue centre the orangutans will be returned to their natural habitat and reintroduced into the wild. The 53 rescued orangutans are the lucky ones. Many wild animals end up in China, probably the world’s biggest con-sumer of wildlife, where they are used in traditional Chinese medicine to cure anything from piles to hepatitis and impo-tence.

“Wildlife is seen as a way to make money. Conservation is on the decline.”

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In one of the most hor-rific examples of the illegal trade, Thai police in late 2003 raided a secluded farmhouse in Nonthaburi, a short distance from Bangkok. Inside, they discovered a freezer containing 20 freshly cut bear paws as well as the body of a fully-grown tiger, which had been shot at close range then cut into quar-ters. Turtles, snakes and dead pangolins were scattered around the house, whilst six live tigers, fi ve bears and two baby orangutans were held in steel cages awaiting the inevi-table slaughter. The animals were destined for a local restaurant where Asian tourists pay big money to eat endangered wildlife in the belief it will increase virility. Although the owner of the illegal slaughterhouse was apprehended weeks later, he was released soon after. As of today no one has been jailed for the crime.

Besides the traffickers them-selves, the biggest obstacle that people like Sompoad face is com-placency. “It is diffi cult to get gov-ernments to listen,” he says. “The

international wildlife trade is not high up on their list of priorities.” To some extent that is understandable. People in the West blame wildlife traffi cking on corruption in the devel-oping world, whilst impoverished villagers in the developing world say that if westerners and the increasingly prosperous Chinese did not off er them money for animals, they would not go and trap them. Attempts to bridge the gap have had only limited success. Back in 1975, an international convention was set up to regu-late the international trade in plants and wildlife. Known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Spe-cies of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) it aimed to put an end to

T U RT L E | At a restaurant in Hanoi, a turtle has its head removed and the blood and bile collected. The blood and bile are then drunk and the remainder of the turtle is cooked for consumption.

“I believe that there has to be a combination of research and action. This is something that

I try to communicate to my students.”

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the unsustainable trade in rare plants and animals. In the 30 years since, it has banned the commercial trade in tigers, rhi-nos and 220 other mammals as well as providing varying de-grees of protection to more than 30 000 species of animals and plants. But whilst the CITES Secretariat can claim with justifi -cation that no major species have become extinct in recent times, the reality is that the population of almost every ma-jor wildlife species has been decimated. Indeed despite grow-ing eff orts to halt the trade, the black market continues to drain wild animals from the last pristine forests on earth. That is why increasingly the onus is falling on academics like Sompoad and the big non-governmental organisations like WWF and WildAid to carry on the fi ght. Celebrities like Jackie Chan are also doing their bit to bring home the mes-sage that we must stop the trade in protected wildlife. “It is very simple,” says Chan during a rare interlude in his busy work schedule. “Do not buy any products made from endangered species.” HARD WORK

Back in Mahidol it’s 11am and Sompoad’s students are hard at work in the fi fth-fl oor biodiversity centre. Reminders of the illegal wildlife trade are scattered all over the spacious labo-ratory. They range from bottles of gecko wine and a civet’s skull to bear bile products and pangolin scales. The pango-lin is being traded to extinction by villagers who believe the scales will bring them good luck and cure cancer. Sompoad is only too realistic about the diffi culties that he faces in raising public awareness about the scale of the wildlife trade in Asia. But that does not stop him from trying. With the help of his students, he has carried out investiga-tions in wildlife markets along the Thai-Lao border as well as in Chatuchak Market, which is situated just a short distance from the university. Recently one of his students monitored the illegal traffi cking of ivory from Africa, where elephant populations are still relatively buoyant compared to Asia. Much of the smuggled ivory is used to make meticulously sculpted personal name stamps known as ‘hankos’. These command high prices and are particularly popular amongst the Japanese who consider ivory stamps a status symbol. To halt the trade in ivory, exotic pets and other types of wildlife, Sompoad and his colleagues know that they must change long-standing beliefs and superstitions. “I am a scientist, but not everything that we do here is normal sci-entifi c work,” he says. “I believe that there has to be a com-bination of research and action. This is something that I try to communicate to my students.” The emphasis on action makes Sompoad something of a

rare breed in the world of academia. But he also knows that he is battling against the odds and that without greater inter-national cooperation and support some of the best known species on the planet will be lost. Time is running out. GK

Ben Davies is author of “Black Market - Inside the Endangered Spe-cies Trade in Asia”, published by Earth Aware Editions, a division of Palace Press International.

Patrick Brown is an award-winning Australian photographer.

M I S S ION | Sompoad Srikosamatara is on a mission to save the world’s most endangered wildlife.

t h a i l a n d | 55

The Insiders and Outsiders of BurmaFor David Scott Mathieson, the crux to understand the problems of Burma is to have an accurate picture of the reality of the country.

S T E V E H A N D S | T E X TT orgei r Nor l i ng | P ho t o

Bu t the v iew of r ea li t y one has, is the product of what information one has access to. In forming a balanced view the important thing is to consider whether your sources are “insiders”, based in Rangoon, or “outsiders”, based in the confl ict zones along Burma’s borders, and the diff erent per-spectives inherent in this distinction. Mathieson describes himself as “an outsider who would like to be an insider”. He has been blacklisted by the regime. But he warns that anyone who wants to do ‘inside’ work has got to be careful. “If you want to work inside you have to be very discreet, if you are doing that kind of research. In particular you have to be very concerned for the people you talk to, to protect them [from arrest]. Sometimes that kind of work is simply too dangerous.” The diff erent realities perceived by insiders and outsiders are more than just a diff erence between Rangoon and the confl ict areas. “There is also a big diff erence between parts

of Rangoon foreigners go to and parts they rarely see – the periphery, areas where people are being relocated to. It is ba-sically two worlds. As an example, next to the Strand Hotel is an alley where people were living in shanty huts. Most foreigners talk about the pagodas and nightclubs – suff ering gets ignored.” Mathieson, who has been interested in Burma since the early 1990s when studying for his master degree, also has strong views on the “engagement versus isolation” issue. “Isolation does not work at all,” Mathieson says. “But you have to be clear what you mean by engagement. The concept is entangled. Sanctions, and being critical of the regime, is a form of engagement. The regime has got a responsibility to respond to the rights of its citizens and of the international community.” He adds, “I’m not an isolationist – I’m a victim of the Burmese regimes paranoia. What I do is a form of en-gagement.”

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OPI U M |A woman working in the opium fi elds of Burma’s confl ict ridden Shan State. The production of narcotics in Burma is only one issue where Burma’s “insiders” and “outsiders” have diff erent versions of the truth.

Competing for Reality in BurmaBY Dav i d S c o t t M at h i e s onPhD S chol ar , Poli t ica l and S o ci a l Ch angeR esearch S cho ol of Pacif ic and As i an Stu diesAustr a li an Nationa l Uni v er si t y

Counter-narcotics efforts in Bur ma, the world’s sec-ond largest producer of opium, are supported by the United Nations Offi ce on Drugs and Crime, which uses sophisticated satellite imaging technology to determine land usage and poppy cultivation sites. While this produces some impressive pictures, the UN admits that this high-tech search method alone cannot give conclusive fi gures for opium production. So they attempt to verify the satellite data – in what are known as ‘ground-truthing’ operations, UN staff and their Burmese police colleagues venture to selected opium fi elds to determine if the satellite was indeed telling the truth. These results are often taken as reality. Other observers, without access to satellite technology and international funding, interview opium farmers, drug traffi ckers and intelligence sources to seek the truth. Not surprisingly, both sides rarely agree with each other. This is just one example of the competition for truth and reality in military-ruled Burma, where the authoritarian State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has maintained a tight police state over a largely impoverished nation, holds more than a thousand political dissidents in prison and wages war on ethnic minorities in the country’s rugged hinterland. Scholarship, activism and reportage on Burma are multi-level competitions for truth and reality. Defi ning the ‘real situation’ in the country has become almost an industry in itself, and instead of conducting original research many scholars and writers vehemently disagree over interpreting broad trends, a sort of Burmese ‘Kremlinology’ of searching for broader meaning in subtle shifts in personnel, power or factions. It should come as no surprise that much of what passes for insight on Burma reads as if it came from a satel-lite. The best way to understand modern Burma’s politics,

economics and social development is to move away from the interpretations of foreign observers and look at the way peo-ple from the country view reality.

TWO WORLDS

There is a sharp divide between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ per-spectives of change in Burma. The ‘inside’ is represented by Western-style coff ee shops, fashion shows, and the glitz of the social pages of the pro-regime The Myanmar Times English-language newspaper. ‘Outsiders’ emphasize the deplorable human rights record and the repressive military regime. ‘Insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ can often be identifi ed by what they call the country. ‘Insiders’, sensitive to Burmese military sensitivities, use Myanmar, the offi cial name of the country (and the name of the country in the Burmese language, like saying Deutschland instead of Germany). It was changed by the regime in 1989 as a nationalist gesture and to defl ect attention from the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in the country the previous year. ‘Outsiders’ prefer to use Burma, arguing that the name change was passed by an illegitimate government. ‘Insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are split over what is the ‘real’ situation in Burma. The SPDC reconvenes the National Con-vention to write a new constitution, while at the same time waging war on ethnic minorities and imprisoning political dissidents. What aspect do you emphasize? This debate of-ten breaks down into choosing a side. One side supports the eff orts of the military regime to develop the country, even acknowledging its fl aws, but arguing that the huge challenge of undertaking reform will occasion unpalatable human suf-fering and the abuse of authority. This is often labeled as the ‘pragmatic approach’ (Stein-

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berg 2004; Taylor 2006). This perspective contends that the international campaign to isolate the military government through sanctions and criticism has exacerbated the proc-ess, slowing it down by diverting attention to suff ering. In eff ect, they argue, it has prolonged suff ering. Many foreign detractors of the exiled democracy movement dismiss its ef-fectiveness, and even contend that it has been manipulated by a Western democratic and human rights agenda that is not just unsuitable to Burma, but also a major factor in de-laying national reconciliation eff orts (Aung-Thwin 2002). Exile media, which emphasizes the repression of the pop-ulation over more positive elements of development and aid initiatives, has been a prime example of the way that Western norms have been ‘misused’ by outside elites (Brooten 2004). Academic perspectives seek to provide insights into the com-plex dynamics of politics, confl ict and engagement and en-hance understanding between sides, but these too have been largely marginalised (South 2004). At times it seems that both sides of Burma’s political divide have no desire to talk to each other. Yet many of the ‘insiders’ often downplay or dismiss the scale of suff ering in Burma. The recently released report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma, Paulo Sérgio Pinhero, argued that human rights abuses have worsened in the past year, not improved as some ‘insider’ observers contend. He cited “the criminalisation of the exercise of fundamental freedoms by political opponents, human rights defenders and victims of human rights abuses” as being the norm in Burma (Pinhero 2006). The report also emphasised the immense suff ering of over half a million internally displaced people and the dire health situation of many of the borderlands populations. Other recently released reports argue that this situation is one of the most desperate in the world (TBBC 2006; BPHWT 2006). It has been exacerbated by the biggest military off ensive in ten years, which has deployed over 50 000 government sol-diers against Northern Karen State that has resulted in over 27 000 civilians being displaced, 232 villages being destroyed and scores killed with thousands more taken as forced labour by the army. On the other side of the divide, many ‘insiders’ wel-comed the raising of the Three Diseases Fund in 2006, which will spend nearly USD 100 million on combating HIV, tuber-culosis and malaria which are Burma’s biggest health threats. Little if any of this money will reach confl ict zones of Burma,

which many people who work inside Burma claim have been privileged for years. Dissent in Burma is also often derided, with many observers claiming that Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democ-racy (N LD) as impediments to change because of their sup-port for Western sanctions and intransigence in bargaining with the regime.

RESEARCHING CONFLICT

The diff erent versions of ‘truth’ that the sides produce is largely a result of the methodology they use to fi nd it. Along these lines, I suggest that the ‘professional observers’ con-cerned with modern Burma may be broken down into four categories. The fi rst category is the Burmese themselves, both those who live inside the country and those exiled and working as analysts, researchers and journalists. They have the benefi t of cultural and linguistic skills, as well as person-al and familial contacts, that eclipse most if not all foreigners. This need not suggest that they have any greater capacity, but as an intelligentsia they should be listened to more than they are (Zaw Oo 2006). The remaining three categories are made up of foreign observers. The second and third categories are foreigners dedicated to working on Burma either as academics, journal-ists, aid workers or for advocacy groups. Many of these have spent large amounts of time within the country, speak lan-guages and have established good contacts with individuals and organisations. The second category is ‘insider’ foreigners. As ‘insiders’ they are permitted to travel inside Burma and routinely meet military and business elites. Many pro-en-gagement scholars and aid workers live and work in privi-leged areas in Burma’s commercial capital Rangoon (and who may relocate some time soon to the new administrative capital of Naypyitaw, recently constructed in the mountains north of Rangoon). If they are not resident, they fl y in for short visits, and spend most of their time speaking to government offi cials and other, generally like-minded aid workers. This produces an elite-level perspective that is valuable and insightful, but only a narrow side of the equation. They rarely spend time in Burma’s impoverished urban sprawls, rural towns where the majority of the population live, or can gain access to con-fl ict zones or the many cease-fi re areas that contain ethnic armies and their poor and often marginalised populations. The third category is ‘outsider’ foreigners, doing simi-

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lar jobs to the ‘insiders’, but working predominantly along the borderline or in other countries, and who either eschew travel inside Burma proper or choose to travel incognito or under some form of assumed name in order to gather in-formation. ‘Outsiders’ are resident in neighbouring coun-tries, overwhelmingly Thailand, where they work in border towns such as Mae Sot and engage closely with exiles, refu-gees, displaced populations and migrant workers (Thornton 2006). Their reality is generally one of hearing tales of suf-fering and resistance. They research, teach, report and help to alleviate the consequences of decades of state violence in Burma. Their colleagues and friends from Burma have fl ed the rule of the SPDC, and are often at threat to their lives if they return to their country. Often forgotten is the concern many Burmese have for the lives of their families still living inside Burma. It is no wonder they often have strong views resulting from their experience. The fourth category is what I term the minlaung (pre-tender king), those part-time or newly arrived analysts who have quickly arrived at a set of solutions to all of the coun-try’s problems. One example of the minlaung trend is a recent article by academic Jon Holliday, in which he argued that business engagement provided the most successful route to opening Burma up to the outside and paving the way to political reforms. Despite the re-heated theory of such an approach, much bandied around in the 1990s, he posited oil companies as the best example of ‘ethical business engage-ment’ (Holliday 2005). This may come as a surprise to villagers in Tenassarim Division or Mon State, who had been displaced, killed or forced into corvee labour to build the Yadana gas pipeline during the 1990s, or the oil companies themselves that have been besieged by activists, shareholders, litigation and con-demnation for years. Business confi dence itself, marked as one of lowest in the world by The Economist magazine, speaks volumes about the effi cacy of such an approach. Examples such as this abound in perspectives on Burma, in aid work, academia, journalism and shrill external advocacy, but they tend to cloud perspectives, not clarify them. So which of these perspectives can inform more accu-rately of the realities on the ground? Elite-level research on confl ict zones is inherently biased and distant from the daily reality of establishing trust and accord with people. People on the ground see the suff ering at fi rst hand and have a mi-cro-view of events often unconnected to other parts of the

country. There are ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, all of whom have a dimension of the confl ict that is necessary to under-stand in order to construct even a hazy portrait of the real-ity (Hoff man 2004). More practically, confl ict areas rarely are contained data collection nodes: there are dozens of groups and multiple levels of actors such as fi ghters, peasants, mer-chants, aid workers and journalists. These ‘shadows’ of confl ict harbour the real people who live with poverty and violence, who are recipients of aid, re-ceivers of abuse and agents of illicit activity (Nordstrom 2005). Their voices are rarely heard in United Nations reports, con-sultant assessments or academic analysis even though many of those people’s jobs are predicated on helping them. Most confl ict areas suff er from this competition for truth, with ‘experts’ talking in plush hotel lobbies or seminar rooms about suff ering they have rarely, or if at all, briefl y, experi-enced. Burma is a notable example of the disjuncture of elite-level perspectives and subordinate and marginalised voices. The extent and severity of human rights abuses is the most notable debate of these two sides. A prime and frequently debated example is the project of the SPDC to develop border areas predominantly populated by ethnic minorities. While one side supports these eff orts at developing often marginalised and impoverished regions, others argue that these eff orts are predicated on extending state control through road building and a much increased military presence (ICG, 2004; Lambrecht 2005). The construc-tion of hospitals and schools and the creation of economic opportunities is rarely pursued, which means that from a distant view the project seems laudable and eff ective, with so many roads, bridges and hydroelectric plants. From a lo-cal perspective, however, it brings only more Burmese sol-diers and repression. Few foreigners are around to see this, let alone live with it. The ‘real situation’ then, is elusive and contested. TRUTH FROM THE GROUND

Most of the quality research and insight on the real situation in Burma comes from grassroots civil society groups and news organisations. Both these sectors are either banned or severely restricted in government-controlled Burma, but the exiled advocacy and media organisations have gradually expanded in the freedom aff orded by exile. One of the most credible and hard-working organisa-tions is the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), which was

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formed by Canadian Kevin Heppner and exiled Karen re-searchers in 1992. In the past fourteen years it has produced hundreds of reports, photo sets, maps, interviews with civil-ians and Burmese army soldiers, and translated thousands of repressive Burmese army orders for forced labour, food requisitioning and relocation. It is a damning and powerful collection of diffi cult and dangerous work that gives voice to the suff ering of people in rural, Eastern Burma. It has shown how Karen villages survive and resist Burmese army occupa-tion and violence that is a far more nuanced account than the bland detailing of victimisation that distances reporting from reality (KHRG 2005). There is no equivalent inside gov-ernment-controlled Burma. Also notable for its advocacy is the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a relief organisation operating from the borderlines to train mobile health teams to serve internally displaced people in confl ict zones. Their advocacy and reporting on conditions in confl ict areas is innovative: real time reports are often sent out by satellite phone from deep inside free-fi re zones, with pictures of Burmese soldiers rounding up scores of civilians for forced labour and burning villages and victims of Burmese army atrocities (FBR 2006). Grassroot organisations that assist displaced commu-nities in Burma also serve as valuable partners for inter-national aid organisations. Groups such as the Mon Relief and Development Committee, Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People and the Karenni Social Welfare and Development Centre provided the highly detailed report-ing for Thailand Burma Border Consortium’s (TBBC) annual internal displacement report (TBBC 2006). It is work such as this that provides much of the detail for Norway’s highly-re-garded Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The growth of the exiled women’s movement has also been a noted success story in terms of its international advo-cacy, capacity building in communities and the less glamor-ous but important areas of local development, health and education (O’Kane 2005). Groups such as the Karen Women’s Organisation, Shan Women’s Action Network and many oth-ers are prime examples of the quality of reporting the real situation. One excellent example is the Palaung Women’s Organisation, from the small Palaung ethnic group of Shan State, which issued a report in 2006 on the impact of drug addiction and drug eradication in Palaung areas (PWO 2006). Such detail and relation of people’s concerns and hardships is often missing from the dry policy vernacular in United

Nations and other ‘insider’ reports. In independent media reporting, ‘outsiders’ keep alive the press freedoms in Burma that were dismantled following the 1962 coup. Reporters Without Borders this year placed Burma fi fth from the bottom in over 160 countries for press freedom, yet exiled media groups such as the authoritative The Irrawaddy magazine, the Shan Herald Agency for News, India-based Mizzima News, and smaller groups such as the Arakan State focused Narinjara News keep people inside and outside Burma informed about events that are never reported in the rigidly controlled state media such as The New Light of Myan-mar, or in pro-SPDC foreign newspapers such as The Myanmar Times.

STAYING APART

‘Insiders’ rarely venture out of their safe havens and travel through confl ict zones. In Burma, most ‘outsider’ observers who work in confl ict zones along borders are not welcome in the SPDC surveillance state where their views are seen as national security threats. The two methodologies of distant, elite ‘satellite’ research based inside Burma, and consistent grassroots ‘ground-truthing’ in exile and isolation will tell two stories about one country. Any authoritative account of Burma will need to bridge this perceptual and ideological gulf. None of this is to suggest that we should give up. But speculation as an art is a pretty shoddy one, and no amount of complaints about ‘diffi culties’ should prohibit more rigor-ous research, checking of facts, and above all, accuracy. If you are not sure, say it, if you do not know, then do not write it, and if you are affl icted with these two limitations then overcome them. The way forward in analysis is people who have experience both ‘inside’ and with developments out-side. There a few notable foreign analysts doing this and the quality of their work is clearly above the rest of the bickering pack. The distance between these divisions is small, but the desire to overcome the distance is widening amongst foreign observers. For the Burmese themselves the key to unlocking their country from military rule is to pursue their own ver-sion of reality, and they know vastly more than the outsiders who speak so loudly. The performance of ‘outside’ organisa-tions and media groups demonstrate clearly that there is an alternative to military rule, and they embody the ability of Burmese ‘inside’ to eff ect change.

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