Remember the Rohingya ‘forced to run for their lives’

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 14 December 2021

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GENEVA - The world must not forget the roughly one million Rohingya from Myanmar “forced to run for their lives from the military’s genocidal attack against them”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Monday, beginning his first mission to Bangladesh.

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, began his official visit with a statement reminding that when conditions allow for their safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation, “the Rohingya want nothing more than to return to their homes in Myanmar”.

The complex Rohingya refugee crisis erupted in August 2017, following attacks on remote police outposts in western Myanmar by armed groups alleged to be from within the community. These were followed by systematic counter attacks against the minority, mainly Muslim Rohingya, which human rights groups, including senior UN officials, have said amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Support those driven from home

During his six-day trip, the Special Rapporteur will visit Dhaka, the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, and the island of Bhasan Char – where many Rohingya have been relocated.

He will meet Government and civil society representatives, UN officials and, most importantly, members of the Rohingya community.

“While the Myanmar junta continues to systematically violate the people of Myanmar’s human rights, it is critical that the global community support those who have been forced to flee their homes in Myanmar for Bangladesh”, Mr. Andrews said. “I am honoured to have the opportunity to meet with them”.

Listen and lend support

The UN expert expressed his gratitude to the Bangladesh Government for providing him with access during this essential mission, noting that he has been given an important opportunity to meet with relevant officials as well as international and civil society organizations in relation to Myanmar.

“In particular, I look forward to meeting with Rohingya, to listen to them, lend support, and work together with them towards sustainable long-term solutions and pursuing accountability for the atrocities the military committed against them in Myanmar”, underscored Mr. Andrews

On his last day in the country, 19 December, the independent expert will share his preliminary observations during a press conference in Dhaka.

His findings will also form part of an update to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in March.

Special Rapporteurs and are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and they are not paid for their work.

Death toll rises after eruption of volcano on Java island

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 05 December 2021

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JAKARTA - The death toll following the eruption of the highest volcano on Indonesia’s most densely populated island of Java has risen to 14, with seven people still missing, officials said as smouldering debris and thick mud hampered search efforts.

Mount Semeru in Lumajang district in East Java province spewed thick columns of ash more than 12,000 metres (40,000 feet) into the sky, and searing gas and lava flowed down its slopes after a sudden eruption on Saturday triggered by heavy rains.

Several villages were blanketed with falling ash.

A thunderstorm and days of rain, which eroded and finally collapsed the lava dome atop the 3,676-metre (12,060-foot) Semeru, triggered the eruption, said Eko Budi Lelono, who heads the geological survey centre.

He said flows of searing gas and lava travelled up to 800 metres (2,624 feet) to a nearby river at least twice on Saturday.

People were advised to stay 3.1 miles from the crater’s mouth, the agency said.

“Thick columns of ash have turned several villages to darkness,” said Lumajang district head Thoriqul Haq.

Several hundred people were moved to temporary shelters or left for other safe areas, he said, adding that a power blackout hampered the evacuation.

The debris and lava mixed with rainfall formed thick mud that destroyed the main bridge connecting Lumajang and the neighbouring district of Malang, as well as a smaller bridge, Mr Haq said.

Despite an increase in activity since Wednesday, Semeru’s alert status had remained at the third highest of four levels since it began erupting last year, and Indonesia’s Volcanology Centre for Geological Hazard Mitigation did not raise it this week, Mr Lelono said.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said at least 13 villagers died from severe burns and 57 were taken to hospital, including 16 in critical condition with burn injuries.

He said rescuers were still searching for seven residents and sand miners along a river in Curah Kobokan village who were reported missing.

Entire houses in the village were damaged by volcanic debris and more than 900 people fled to temporary government shelters, Mr Muhari said.

Liswanto, the head of Semeru’s monitoring post, said his office had informed the community and the miners that hot ash could tumble down from Semeru’s crater at any time, after sensors picked up increased activity in the past week.

But some residents who fled to a government shelter near Lumajang district’s head office said authorities did not convey any information to them about the volcano’s activities.

“Suddenly everything went dark, the bright afternoon turned into night. A rumbling sound and heat forced us to run to the mosque,” said Fatmah, a resident who fled to the shelter from Curah Kobokan, about three miles from the crater.

“It was a far stronger eruption than in January.”

Transport ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati said her office issued a notice Saturday for all airlines to avoid routes near the volcano.

She said flight operations are still running as scheduled and that authorities will continue to monitor the situation.

The Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said the spread of volcanic ash from Mount Semeru was detected to the southwest moving at a speed of 50 knots.

Television reports showed people screaming and running under a huge ash cloud, their faces wet from rain mixed with volcanic dust.

The last time Semeru erupted, in January, there were no casualties.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped series of fault lines.

Is China capitalist?

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Written by northsouth

Category: Asia

Published: 01 December 2021

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LONDON - China has evolved from an impoverished nation into an economic superpower during the past seven decades of Communist Party power, writes the British publication The Week.

The most populous country on the planet now has “an economy on course to topple the US as the world’s biggest”, said Bloomberg. But China's economic transformation has also raised questions about the extent to which the regime has adhered to socialist economic policy.

Impoverished past

After taking power in 1949, then party leader Mao Zedong sought to boost China's economy through agricultural collectivisation and nationalised industrialisation.

But “by Mao’s death in 1976, it was clear these reforms had failed”, said the BBC. His social and economic campaign resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese citizens, “easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded”, said The Washington Post.

However, extensive reforms introduced by Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, began China’s transformation from “an impoverished nation into a global economic powerhouse”, said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Deng brought collective farming to an end, and allowed farmers to sell surplus crops for profit. Foreign trade and investment were encouraged, and investors were given tax concessions in return for revenue and technical knowledge in special economic zones (SEZs) in Southern China.

“Never before in history have so many people escaped poverty in such a short time,” said Forbes.

Since 1978, China’s gross domestic product growth has averaged almost 10% a year, and more than 800m people “have been lifted out of poverty”, according to the World Bank. The country is now the world's biggest exporter, while on the domestic front, significant improvements have been made in health, education and other key services.
Capitalism’s role

The Chinese Communist Party “still describes ‘the realisation of communism’ as its highest ideal”, and maintains that China is not a capitalist state, said the WSJ. But in practice, its leaders “have long embraced capitalist methods and encouraged entrepreneurship”.

In 1980, with de-collectivisation already under way, would-be industrialists across the country started to set up small-scale businesses. The creation of SEZs – where “capitalist experiments were permitted” – accelerated “the increasing erosion” of the social systems of public ownership and a state-managed economy, said Forbes.

Deng had spotted “a gap in the market of ideas”, wrote Tomasz Kamusella, a reader in modern history at Scotland’s University of St Andrews, in an article at The Conversation. The Chinese ruler realised “that you can have capitalism without democracy”, Kamusella continued, “meaning that capitalism was ideologically neutral and could serve the needs of a communist regime”.

The policies enacted under Deng “kick-started the stagnant economy” and encouraged investment from foreign firms, said the BBC. As capital continues to flood into China’s bond and equity markets, the Asian nation last year overtook the US to become the top destination for foreign direct investment, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Current state of play

“Communism is alive and well in China,” according to political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, “but with capitalist characteristics”.

While China is politically totalitarian, with free speech under tight control, its economy is now “market-consistent, if not market-driven”, wrote Pongsudhirak, a professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, in an article in the Bangkok Post.

Kamusella on The Conversation agreed that under China’s unique economic model, “communist-capitalism is not an oxymoron any more”, so long as entrepreneurs and enterprises are subservient to the political order. And now “the often touted hypothesis about capitalism’s democratising effects must be put to the test”.

In Europe, “pro-authoritarian leaders are enamoured with Chinese economic and political success” and “hope to establish privileged links and collaboration with the communist superpower”, Kamusella wrote.

“The ideological struggle of the 20th century between the ‘free world’ versus ‘the socialist-communist’ camp is ongoing,” said Pongsudhirak. But “the struggle now features the United States-led Western alliance versus the China-centric global network of nations with authoritarian tendencies.”

The question then, said Kamusella, is “now that capitalism is the engine of China’s economy, what is communism today?”

A new era of economic socialism?

Since taking over leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2013, Xi Jinping has been “trying to roll back China’s decades-long evolution toward Western-style capitalism”, said the WSJ’s chief China correspondent Lingling Wei. At a meeting of the party’s central committee in November, a resolution was passed that defined President Xi’s system of thought as “Marxism of the 21st century”.

For a long time, a policy of socialism “with Chinese characteristics” allowed the ruling regime “massive philosophical leeway to run a society which, in many ways, was not very socialist at all”, said the BBC. Now, Xi is pursuing a policy of “common prosperity”.

“In Mr Xi’s opinion, private capital now has been allowed to run amok,” said the WSJ’s Lingling, and he is now “trying forcefully to get China back to the vision of Mao Zedong”.

When his party celebrated its centenary in July, Xi “donned a Mao suit and stood behind a podium adorned with a hammer and sickle, pledging to stand for the people”, she continued. “Such gestures, once dismissed as political stagecraft, are being taken more seriously by China watchers as it becomes evident Mr. Xi is more ideologically driven than his immediate predecessors.”

Xi has reportedly told fellow party members that the difference between his vision and Western-style capitalism is that in China, “capital serves the people”. Under his policies, he has claimed, low-incomes will be boosted, more citizens will join the middle-income social tier, and high earners will face a greater level of taxation.

There should be “no doubt” that the most rigorous socio-economic change since those brought in under Deng’s leadership “is now under way,” said Time. And the move could have “huge repercussions for the rest of the world”, said the BBC’s Asia correspondent Karishma Vaswani.

“A sort of top-down Utopian China”, the Communist Party now hopes to offer a “viable alternative model” to Western capitalism, wrote Vaswani. But “it does come with a catch: even more control and power in the hands of the party”.