One year later, the Chinese one-party regime is once more facing challenges, and once again it is a matter of debate how severe these challenges are. This time, regime stability is endangered not by social unrest among the alienated mass public, but by divisions within the ruling elites themselves. As a large body of scholarship on regime change dynamics shows, regime disintegration far more often results from splits among the ruling elite than from popular protests. A united leadership can weather even severe public opposition, but elite splits can cause the collapse of a regime even in the absence of popular challenges to its leadership.

Once more, I think that this crisis will pass and leave the one-party regime intact–in all likelihood, it has already passed. Nevertheless, this is a good time to take stock of what we know about the “Bo Xilai scandal” and examine its significance. I will sum up the various interpretations of the fall of Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai who, before his dismissal, had been slated for a seat on China’s topmost political decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These accounts, which mostly focus on the actors involved and their individual interests and provide explanations specifically pertaining to the leadership change scheduled for this fall, are widely compatible. Based on these accounts, I draw on established theories of autocratic regime maintenance to more generally highlight what this event tells us about the state of China’s political system.

THE EVENT

I will start with the facts as they are known to the public. The affair started with a fall-out between Bo Xilai and Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, who had fled the city dressed as a woman and sought refuge in the Chengdu consulate of the United States. After leaving the embassy, Wang was escorted to Beijing by agents of the Ministry of Public Security. He has not been heard of since then. In March, Bo Xilai was first removed from his posts in Chongqing, and one month later dismissed from the Politburo on account of “serious discipline violations”. The Bo family is being investigated for corruption, and Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, is facing charges of manslaughter. Allegedly, Wang Lijun carried information that Gu Kailai killed Neil Heywood, a British businessman with close connections to the Bo family.

Given the proximity of this event to the leadership transition planned for late 2012 and the scarcity of reliable information about what triggered these events and how they unfolded, speculation about what really happened and what it all means is rife. The fact that the breaches of discipline Bo allegedly engaged in have not been detailed by the government, and that unverified details are added to the story on a daily basis, allows for a range of possible explanations.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS

The most commonly accepted explanation, both within China and abroad, is that of a power struggle between different factions within the CCP, notably between the “Princelings”, i.e. descendants of famed revolutionaries, and politicians formerly associated with the CCP’s Youth League. According to rumor, a clique of politicians around former President Jiang Zemin have allied with the princelings. The deeper meaning of this explanation is that the procedures of leadership transition in China are less institutionalized than we believed.

Another explanation focuses more on individuals than on groups and claims that Bo Xilai teamed up with the CCP’s topmost security official Zhou Yongkang, to not only elate Bo into the PBSC, but to install him as Zhou’s successor as head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee. As China’s security apparatus has grown increasingly powerful in the last years, this explanation suggests that CCP hardliners attempted a soft coup against moderate forces within the Party. Rumors of an actual coup attempt in March, and further rumors that Bo eavesdropped on President Hu Jintao continue to keep this hypothesis alive.

A third explanation is centered on the challenge that Bo Xilai’s popularity posed for the institution of collective leadership. In contrast to the members of China’s top decision-making body, Bo Xilai has great charisma, and has gained fame not only for his hard stance against organized crime, but also for reviving Maoist traditions and for implementing pro-poor policies. This has made him popular to the extent that charges of populism and egotism were leveled against him. Shortly before Bo was sacked, Premier Wen Jiabao delivered an unusually emotional speech, warning against leftist tendencies in the Party. Though not mentioning him by name, it is clear that this speech, which also pointed out that such policies marked the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, was directed against Bo Xilai.

A fourth explanation, the one least popular with observers, is the official one: Bo Xilai is guilty of breaching the law, not more and not less. All candidates for a seat on the PBSC are subject to thorough background checks, and it is claimed that in this process evidence of corruption surfaced. This explanation, though hardly credible – Bo had been in the Politburo for some time and would have undergone a background check before being admitted to this elite organization – is favored by the officials as it makes the Party look strong instead of weak: the rule of law is upheld, and dirty elements are filtered out. By extension, it suggests that corruption is not systemic, but confined to individuals, upholding the image that the CCP’s leadership stratum is generally free of corruption and that people like Bo are an exception rather than the rule.

SIGNIFICANCE

Different as these explanations are, they have one thing in common: with the exception of the official position, all other accounts interpret this episode as a power struggle in the run-up to the 18th Party Congress. Observers have long been divided over the question if China’s leadership transition is formalized and institutionalized, according to political scientists an important precondition for regime stability, and this episode seems to confirm the position of the skeptics.

While not directly challenging this position, I would like to argue for a more refined stance. If we understand institutionalization as establishing formal or informal rules to regulate a process or an outcome that are widely known and commonly followed, we will find that the process of selecting the new leaders is not institutionalized, but leadership change itself is: although both the previous transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and the present transition from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping have been mired in factionalist struggles, Jiang eventually yielded the reins of power to Hu, and Hu, after the specified ten years, will yield them to Xi. This process might have been disorderly, but the transition itself has never been in question. In a related manner, one might argue that by removing Bo, the collective leadership eliminated a threat to its existence and thus proved that it is functioning better than might be assumed.

While it is tempting to relate the Bo Xilai scandal merely to the issue of leadership succession, I see additional significance elsewhere. In my opinion, this episode highlights a fundamental problem in the Chinese political system: it is in need of reforms too far-reaching to be tackled within the present leadership setup. This results from a fundamental paradox in the consolidation of authoritarian regimes: in order for an autocracy to survive, leadership change needs to be institutionalized. On the other hand, however, the more the mechanisms for picking successors from one’s own ranks become institutionalized, the less likely it is for persons with very different policy outlooks to enter the leadership stratum. In China, not the incoming, but the outgoing leaders decide on policy directions, and these directions are always the result of a compromise. In my opinion, Bo Xilai’s character and policies appealed to those who would like to see a more decisive approach not only to the fundamental problems China is currently facing, but also to how China is governed. Hence, Bo’s rise challenged not only the current leadership’s incremental approach to solving China’s problems, but also the institution of collective leadership itself. Therefore, the episode signifies more than simply a recurring struggle for leadership – it is the result of an inflexible struggling to muster enough strength to cope with major problems without changing the status quo.

This requires some explanation. While Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and to a lesser degree Jiang Zemin, wielded considerable power in deciding the direction of Chinese politics, their successors are far weaker in this regard. Hu Jintao needs to subject himself to the decisions collectively made by the nine-member PSBC, and this will most likely not be different for Xi Jinping. More importantly, the outgoing leadership has already decided the main policies for the coming years. Arguably, this causes policies to be far more cautious and less far-reaching than before. This situation is rendered even more difficult by the fact that governing China has become increasingly complex.

As a result, it has become very challenging to make fundamental changes both within and to the established decision-making routines. Most observers agree that endemic corruption and the influence of special interests on policy-making hinders the solution of problems like income inequality, environmental pollution and the protection of intellectual property rights, all of which need to be addressed for China’s economic growth to continue. Whereas the current leadership has, so far without much success, attempted to reform this increasingly sclerotic system from within, Bo Xilai promised radical alternatives to these piecemeal reforms and thereby challenged the existing system.

Bo’s charisma and the policies he implemented in Chongqing appealed to a Chinese public that has become increasingly cynical about politics; his style promised a change from the dry technocratic reign of the “nine engineers”, as the PBSC was often dubbed, to a more hands-on and deceivingly simple approach to solving the nation’s severe problems. By their nature, Bo’s charisma and his populist approach to politics stood in direct contradiction to the prevailing impersonal model of collective leadership, and his ouster might very well stem from the realization among the technocrats in the PBSC that the carefully balanced system of collective leadership is likely to be rocked if Bo should ascent into the Party’s highest decision making body. If the stories about Bo’s egocentrism, cruelty, lack of compassion and dictatorial work-style that have recently been lanced in the press are true, this concern was well-founded. However, while this provides additional justification for his removal, one of course wonders why such a dangerous man has been able to make it even this far.

Though certainly not an indicator of the imminent collapse of one-party rule in China, this episode nevertheless marks a crucial moment in Chinese politics. For the first time, the major reforms that are undoubtedly necessary will not be pushed through by a small number of strong individuals, but need to be engendered by collective fiat. On the one hand, the moment seems fortuitous: the current shake-up presents a unique chance to implement reforms that make the system more responsive to public demands. This will be more difficult as politics turn back to normal. On the other hand, however, it is unclear who exactly should seize this opportunity, as the Bo episode conveyed a very clear signal that too much personal initiative can be dangerous. In the absence of reform, power can always be maintained by repression and the control of public opinion. Either option, within-system reform and repression, has proponents in the current leadership, and it is utterly uncertain onto which path the new leadership will embark.

Christian Göbel
Senior Lecturer
Department of Political Science, Lund University

In the April 11 elections, the ruling Saenuri party won 152 of 300 seats in the 300-member National Assembly. The main opposition party, the Democratic United Party, received 127 seats. Although it is difficult to predict the impact on the presidential elections to be held in December, the chances of Park Kun-hye, the daughter of former President Park Chung Hee (1963-1979), to become the ruling party’s candidate could have improved. Politics will increasingly focus on the elections, which means that it is unlikely that anything dramatic will happen in domestic politics or in inter-Korean relations throughout the year.

Since North Korea announced on March 16 that it will make a missile test between April 12-16 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birthday on April 15, there has been much concern regarding the announcement world-wide. The test was made on April 13 but it was a big failure: the rocket crushed into the sea just one minute after it was launched. Considering that the launch not only concurred with the commemoration of Kim Il Sung’s birthday but also was intended to strengthen the new leader Kim Jong-Un’s position, the crash was very embarrasing for the leadership. The North Korean authorities have admitted the failure and initiated investigations to find out the causes. It cannot be excluded that the failure will have an impact on power politics within the ruling Korean Worker’s Party (KWP).

At the military parade held in the capital Pyongyang on April 15, the leadership showed up in front of tens of thousands of citizens in order to show unity. The appointment of Kim Jong-Un as first secretary of KWP and chairman of the Central Military Commission on April 11 followed by the appointment as first chairman of the powerful National Defence Commission on April 13 clearly shows that the North Korean leadership wants to maintain status quo. This wish also became clear when Kim Jong-Un declared that the ”military-first” policy pursued by his father Kim Jong Il (1942-2011) will be enhanced.

Since the 1950s, North Korea has always emphasized the juche idea of self-reliance in politics, economics and defense, but the missile test is an indication that this policy has contributed to make the country backwards in terms of military technology. The admission of the failure shows that there is awareness of the backwardness within the party, but whether the failure will cause fissures or not is an open question. Considering that there since the struggle for power within the party ended in the late 1950s have been no known signs of fissures within the party, it is hard to expect that such a situation will develop now.

On the other hand, one difference now is that the legitimacy of power for a third generation Kim is weaker than for his predecessors. In fact, Kim Jong-Un’s only source of legitimacy is being son of Kim Jong Il, but how long will that impact last? What will happen if he cannot bring the country out of its economic difficulties that to a large extent are caused by the huge military expenditures? We do not know yet by sure how firm grip he has on power, but even if Korean politics is characterized by one-man rule the leader must have trusted advisers around him. Could the failed test cause distrust among his closest people?

North Korea is in contrast to what was the case in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe  extremely isolated from the outside world which makes it virtually impossible to change the system from outside. Domestic pressure for a change is at the present out of the question but should fissures arise within the leadership, along with disunity within the powerful military, an unpredictable situation could develop in the country.

Gabriel Jonsson

Associate Professor Korean Studies, Stockholm University

The goal of the symposium was not to make a ‘grand theory of 311’ but to commemorate the first anniversary of the event. Professor Takashi Suganuma (Rikkyo University & Roskilde University) reflected this by opening the symposium with one-minute’s silence. Dr. Geir Helgesen (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) followed with his opening speech, referring to the shock the world felt as it watched the footage of the Tsunami on the news, as for many Japan was known to be one of the most prepared nations for natural disasters.

The afternoon’s proceedings begun with Professor Chiharu Takenaka (Rikkyo University, Japan), talking about ‘Reflecting on a year since 311’. Her lecture offered a broad overview of what the Japanese people learned from 311, touching upon the monthly workshop she and her colleagues at Rikkyo University have conducted since 311 to share experiences with students, NGOs, journalists and afflicted local communities. Takenaka mentioned key developments in Japanese society, such as changes in Japan’s relations with US, China and South Korea as people received assistance from them during and after the Great Earthquake. She also pointed out that there were drastic changes in the Japanese people’s views on individuals vis-a-vis communities, democracy, risk, as well as Japan’s position in Asia. She concluded by saying that it is going to be a long process for the people in Japan to integrate the experiences and lessons learned from the Great Earthquake but as Sakura (cherry blossom) in Rikuzen Takata (one of the most severely hit areas) managed to bloom shortly after the Earthquake, people are slowly but surely beginning the process of recovery.

In the first panel discussion, moderated by Professor Toshiya Ozaki (Rikkyo University & Copenhagen Business School), the civil engineering dimension of 311 was taken up. In ‘When one says safe enough and others disagree’, Dr. Kazuyoshi Nishijima (DTU) introduced the basics of risk evaluation. He explained how risks are assessed from an engineering point of view and how that was (or was not) implemented in cases such as Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear plants. Nishijima also explained the thinking called ‘yet still probabilistic thinking’, which he believed should be used much more often to help societies make decisions through calculating how they could optimally allocate limited resources available. Nishijima’s lecture was particularly interesting as it made the audience realize how we, on a day-to-day basis, chose to ignore the possibilities of fatal accidents. Then followed Dr. Anni Greve’s presentation (Roskilde University) ‘Coping with the incalculable: Tokyo after the Great East Japan Earthquake’. Greve spoke about how Tokyo had managed to rebuild itself after several events of massive destruction in the past. Greve found that Tokyo’s unique capabilities to handle serious crises were seen again after the Great Earthquake through her analysis on the professional groups that engaged in the reconstruction process, such as architects, the mayor of Fukushima, school teachers and firemen. She concluded that the effects of 311 are cross-continental, suggesting this as one indication of the process of ‘cosmopolitanization’, as defined by Ulrik Beck.

The second panel discussion was about the civil society dimension of 311, which was moderated by Dr. Mika Yasuoka (ITU & Kyoto University, Japan). In ‘The Great East Japan Earthquake: Japan as an Aid Recipient’, Dr. Aki Tonami (myself) talked about how Japan, which has been mostly known as an aid donor rather than a recipient, experienced and viewed the Great Earthquake, both from the view point of the government and the Japanese NGOs. Overall, the Japanese government and NGOs were very grateful for the assistance offered from abroad. At the same time, they faced operational and institutional difficulties, which could be unique to a developed country that was suddenly put in a position of needing help. Dr. Annette Hansen (Aarhus University) backed this by her notes on postings to the Facebook site for the alumni of AOTS (The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship) and JICA (The Japan International Cooperation Agency) training courses in Japan in the aftermath of the Earthquake. Her main findings from her presentation ‘Responses to the 2011 Triple Catastrophe on Facebook’ were the number and the nature of messages posted on the Facebook site changed over time as the aftermaths of the Great Earthquake revealed themselves, and Facebook was used as a space for reaching out from and to Japan for those who had once received training in Japan.

Interesting points were raised during discussions among the panellists and with the floor throughout the symposium. One of the audience pointed out the biggest difference between the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake was that use of the Internet – because of that, people’s accessibility to information was naturally much more improved this time around. Another audience member suggested that, while expats living in Tokyo became much more involved in the Japanese society after the 311, Japan has not yet managed to recover its image as so many foreigners left Japan after the nuclear incident. How the nuclear accident has been dealt with and the future of Japan’s energy policy were also questioned.

This last point was indicative of a symposium, which illuminated that, even though one year has passed, it is not ‘over’ yet and the reconstruction process has just begun. The range of presentations and discussions covered reminded me once more of the variety of issues that Japan faced (or is still facing) as a direct consequence of the events of 311.

Aki Tonami
Researcher, NIAS
More information

The situation:

On the surface there is a more relaxed mood in Rangoon when I visited Burma. However, all agree that the old totalitarian system is still working. People are still arrested during the night. Thus, we are cautioned that the situation could change rapidly again after the by-elections.

There is a struggle in the government and the parliament between hardliners and reformists. The reformist are the President U Thain Sein and the Speaker of the parliament Thura Shwe Man. Recently they proposed to appoint village head men and other local officials by elections. This was rejected by the lower house. Headmen and other officials are appointed by the military. Thus, it is part of the social security for retired officers.

The president has not been able to stop the fighting in Kachin State. The army is not under government control according to the constitution. Arrests of individuals who criticize the army continues. The leader of the “Saffron Revolution” 2007, U Gambira, who was released recently, is in confrontation with the State Sangha Council who has warned him that he will end up in court accused of illegally entering his monastery, defaming the Sangha elders, and assisting the monk Ashin Pyinna Thiha who was evicted for making a political speech in the office of the National League Democracy (NLD), and for meeting Hilary Clinton. Monks are not allowed to act politically. Thus, freedom is still limited. U Gambira, who was dis-robed by soldiers and sentenced 63 years in jail in 2007, entered his monastery last month. The Maggi  monastery had been sealed by the army after the raid in 2007. U Gambira found all the destruction and blood left from the violent raid. He is now accused of illegally breaking into the monastery.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have been hackled during their election campaign by the USDP (Union Solidarity Development Party – the ruling party). USDP promised new roads to the voters and tried to impose a ban on the NLD using stadiums for their rallies. She is often prevented from using stadiums for her rallies. In villages near the capital Naypyitaw, officials told villagers that their electricity supply would be cut if they attended an NLD rally with Daw Suu Kyi However, Daw Suu Kyi draws huge crowds on her tour. NLD may take more than half of the 48 seats in the by-elections provided there is no fraud.

Thein Sein focus on the education of the young, and Rangoon University will be reopened in the near future. He said that the young ethnics should replace weapons with computers. One blogger ironically wrote the president and asked for a laptop. The mood is relaxed and cautiously optimistic, although the opposition is rather skeptical about the real intentions of the government. They say that relative freedom is about having the sanctions lifted and otherwise let the army stay in control behind the parliament.

Many international NGOs are ready to let big money flow into development projects and humanitarian aid. This can corrupt more than benefit those who are in need if it is not well prepared and sustainable. There is an over idealized view of the conditions. The old system is still in place and working – or rather not working unless ordered from the top. Bureaucrats are officers – they dare not act without clear orders from the absolute top. And since messages from the top are now blurred for and against, they do nothing! The frame laws are not resulting in specific laws on for example censorships,  the use of ethnic languages in education, investments and financial regulations. There is no rule of law yet.

The Karen:

The focus in following is mainly on the situation in the Karen State as related to the overall political changes. It is based on a very brief visit and the analysis is very preliminary:

The main stakeholders in the conflict(s)are:

• Tatmadaw, Karen National Union and its Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA), Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), Border Guard Force (BGF), The Phloung-Sgaw Democratic Party (Karen State), Karen Peace Council (Timothy Laklem), Padoh Aung San and his Peace Force, plus minor groups  of armed persons as well as the government represented by Aung Min (railway minister), Aung Thaung head of Union Solidarity Development Party (the ruling military party) and the final peace negotiations, and Saw Min, PM Karen State.[1]

The ceasefire in Hpa-an in January 2012 between Aung Min and the KNU delegation is obviously only an initial step towards a more realistic agreement. The impression from a two hour discussion with David Tharckabaw (Vice-President, KNU) before we came to Burma is that the KNU leadership is suspecting a Burmese trap. Tharckabaw and the hardliners of KNU seems to have rejected the agreement and there is a deep split within the KNU. Tharckabaw talked about the Karen being cheated so often by ‘ Bamah’ (ethnic Burmans). He also rejected the ‘developmentalism’ of the government. Development in their version, he said, means to take the resources from the Karen State and not real development for the Karen population. He claimed this ‘developmentalism’ is supported by Germany and other EU countries. He also blamed Harn Yawnghwe and the Ethnic Nationalities Council (ENC) of supporting this line.[2] This indicates that there is a split among the pan-ethnic organizations, although they seem to agree on a federal constitution. Tharckabaw is in the leadership of United Nationalities Federal Council, another pan-ethnic organization of the armed ethic groups. He dislikes ENC and Harn. But he seems to support Daw Suu Kyi’s strategy: ‘She won’t betray the trust of her people’.

To add to the complexity of the situation, the Karen Peace Council (KPC) under former KNU General Htein Maung and Dr. Timothy Laklem signed a peace agreement in Naypyitaw (7th. February) with minister Aung Thaung and the Union-level peace negotiating team.[3] He arranged a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi 10th. February to the deep frustration of the KNU and many Karen in Rangoon, because he posed as the front representative of the Karen. Aung Thaung thus undermined the efforts of Aung Min who negotiated with the KNU. It is also a clear sign that The NLD and Daw Suu Kyi need much more information about the ethnic situation, its complex political structure and its many actors. Lack of precise information on the ethnic situation can easily generate more mistrust. Many Karen still generalize in their mistrust towards all Bamah. Daw  Suu Kyi again referred to ‘The Spirit of Panglong’ during her tour in the Kachin State. This creates hope – but Panglong was a weak and incomplete agreement and there is a need for a specific political program.

The day after we left – 22nd. of February -, DKBA under commanders Saw Lah Pwe and Po Bi near Mying Gyi Ngu were attacked by the BGF – probably the group  commanded by Thong Hlaing. BGF took some of DKBA’s position and weapons. This group infringes upon the supporters of U Thuzana and does not respect the monk.[4] They drink, eat meat harass his followers and take taxes along U Thuzana’s new highway built with donations from large Thai food companies. U Thuzana had managed to establish some sort of a civil administration via his monks and lay followers. This structure could be dismantled by the BGF and the army if there is no general agreement between all groups.

In Hpa-an, the Phloung-Sgaw Democratic party left an impression of being a serious and concerned player. They have submitted questions from a Karen delegation (Kawkareik) to the local Hlutaw (parliament) about landmines and their removal. The party has a mentor (founder?), the monk Ashin Pyinya Thami, (Taungkalae) who is Mon-Chinese. He has been able to obtain large donations for a college, although it is not yet completed. He delivered a strong criticism of the generals, the NLD – “she wants to ‘burmanize’ the ethnic groups”. “She is like her father.” U Thuzana was dismissed: “he only collects money (and built zedis) for himself – proud of himself”- (It sounds as jealousy). “The 2007 monks demonstrations was a Bahma trick”, he said. Pyianya Thami is said to have direct line to Than Shwe’s wife who has supported him. In my analysis, he is a charismatic empire builder, but not a reliable political player.

Further, the Hpa-an Karen Student Association represents an important democratic segment. The town is however totally dominated by the 22nd. light infantry division and the BGF, although most of the mentioned groups including the NLD have a presence in Hpa-an.

Land confiscation is a huge problem in the Karen State (as elsewhere). The Karen complained that they also lost their commons for grazing animals, collecting firewood and leafs for thatching. This is probably the most urgent problem to deal with. A law is badly needed. Most of the confiscated land is now huge rubber plantations.

The ceasefire agreement between KNU delegation and Aung Min in Hpa-an was rejected by the KNU leadership. A new meeting took place in Chiang Mai, 2^nd March. Both sides agreed to meet in April. Significantly, the government delegation included business people. This underlines the KNU fear that ceasefire is mostly about quick economic deals more than genuine peace and reconciliation.

The PM of the Karen State Hlutaw, Saw Min (a former officer), seems to be very conservative and a military man. He is seen as one who supports the BFG.

For a future peace to be established, an initial reduction of the army as well as a repositioning of all armed groups within a few scheduled and monitored areas is necessary!

Concluding remarks:

• Lack of trust is a main problem, I believe, in all camps. It is without meaning if the government only negotiates with the KNU – all groups should come to the table and the agreement must be detailed – especially in relation to monitoring and conflict resolution if or rather when future disagreements erupt. In the situation, a neutral facilitator could be an idea if all agree on the selected persons/organization.
• Trust and reconciliation work together. There should be a forum where the various Karen groups, their leaders/commanders could meet regularly with government representatives and local army officers and exchange information, share news and have informal discussions. This is a way of establishing mutual knowledge, recognition and trust. It takes time – long time!
• Soldiers need a livelihood after a peace. But to offer money in order to persuade them to give up their weapons is to ignore the core political reasons to take up arms in the first place. Here is a huge task for NGOs to reintegrate thousands of fighters( this is closely related to de-mining programs).
• The NLD need a detailed political assessment and project for the ethnic case. It could be an idea to have an All Burma Conference, round table, with all political parties, the government and all ethnic groups/organizations. It is a huge task to organize such a meeting. But the complexity needs to be addressed.

This was the words of Cambodian Information Minister His Excellency Khieu Kanharith when I last visited him for an interview. About a week ago.

But let´s go back a little. Let´s go back to May 2003. Prime Minister Hun Sen gives a speech in which he declares his intention of upgrading 100 poor neighborhoods every year, until all of Cambodia´s urban poor has secure land tenure and full basic services. All the neighborhoods are granted a social land concession. A social land concession means that the state gives the land to the people living on it.

The promise is much needed. In 2003, the South East Asian Kingdom is only a few years away from political instability, frequent guerilla attacks and Khmer Rouge strongholds that just won´t give in.

As a consequence, there is an overwhelming amount of poor people and in addition – a high number of slum dwellers.

Many of them live in the country´s capital, Phnom Penh. The neighborhood of Dey Krahorm, the one the Minister is talking about, is a poor neighborhood just exactly in the midst of the city. This is, of course, quite fortunate for the 805 families living in the community – they can easily earn a living by driving a motorcycle taxi or sell goods on the market.

In his speech in May 2003 Prime Minister Hun Sen names four urban neighborhoods that are to be the first ones to be upgraded. Dey Krahorm is mentioned. Posters are put up in the neighborhood, informing the residents and a decree from the Council of Ministers certifies it. Ironically, most Dey Krahorm does not actually need it, because they already own the land, they live on. But nevertheless, a social land concession is a good thing to have.

And then…things take an unfortunate turn.

In 2005 suddenly a company makes its entrance in the lives of the people of Dey Krahorm. Construction company 7NG has now – without the knowledge or consent of the residents – made a deal with 35 village representatives to swap the land of Dey Krahorm for a strip of land 20 kilometers outside of the city.

Of course, one cannot sell what one does not own, so the agreement with the company is illegal and invalid. The residents are entitled, not only to remain on their land, but to have it upgraded. The Prime Minister promised them this.

There are absolutely no legal grounds to argue otherwise. None.

But then the intimidation begins.

Now the residents of Dey Krahorm experience theft, sudden fires, destruction of their property frequently. Over the next four years, this practice increases to the point where many of the villagers give up, take the meager compensation offered to them and leave. The ones that doesn´t? They get charged with trumped up charges and has to go to court so frequently, they cannot do their everyday job. They get threatened. They get beat up.

And then one day:

The excavators come.

Early in the morning January 24, 2009, the villagers are awakened by the sounds of their houses being torn down. An army of military police, police officers and company workers have sealed off the area and are aggressively beating down everyone, who steps in their way.

There is one man, who with his palms together raised in the air begs for the chance to go inside his own house and salvage a few of his belongings, while the excavator driver ignores him and carries on. A few moments later, a police officer comes with a fire extinguisher and sprays the praying man straight in his face to get him to move away.

One woman stands on top of the rubble trying to stop the excavator when she loses her balance and falls down under it. Shocked bystanders believe they just saw her die until they see her crying daughter carry her out and get her to a hospital.

In a few hours, the neighborhood is nothing but rubble. Half an hour later, then-Deputy Governor Mann Chouen holds a press conference on the site. Undistracted by the scenery behind him, and of what just happened, he congratulates the police and company workers on the operation.

Meanwhile the families from Dey Krahorm are on their way to the relocation site 20 kilometers from the city, a place they clearly and lawfully refused to move to. And no wonder. Everything out there is inadequate. In-adequate schools for the children, in-adequate hospitals too far from the residents, in-adequate sanitation, water, food…and for jobs? Well, there is a factory out there. It´s owned by the company that took their land.

So – I was in Phnom Penh to see what had happened Dey Krahorm since that day in 2009.

Nothing, really. A lot of the families had gotten a lot more complicated stories to tell now, but very few of them had gotten any better. Many were sick. Many were jobless. All were poor.

And the lucrative land of Dey Krahorm itself? There is a 7NG office there now, but I was not allowed to go in. Instead, I went up to say hello to the Minister and spokesperson for the Cambodian Government to ask him about the Dey Krahorm case. I asked him, why the Cambodian government has not kept their promise about upgrading the communities they had given social land concessions.

You already know what he answered.

“The neighborhood of Dey Krahorm has never received a social land concession.” Wish-wash.

But Mann Chouen – the then-Deputy Governor of Phnom Penh, who held the press conference on the rubble…he received a medal for his work on Dey Krahorm.

Facts:

Land grabbing is the biggest problem in Cambodia today. It affects about one million people every year. According to the Cambodian Land Law of 2001, people who have been living on a strip of land for five years have the right to ownership. It also states that if land is to be used for other purposes, the residents are entitled to a “fair” compensation. A common land grabbing scenario is selling a piece of land to a foreign company, who then removes the residents living there – like they did with the people of Dey Krahorm. In 2011, the Cambodian Government sold 800,000 hectare of land to foreign companies – in 2010, this number was 200,000 hectare.

Anya Palm
Freelance journalist based in Bangkok
www.parlmwritings.com 

Geographical and historical background

Even today, in spite of the westward expansion of Buddhism, Kalmykia remains the only ethnic Buddhist community in Europe. At present Kalmykia has a status of a republic with a presidential form of government within the Russian Federation. It is situated in the southeast of the European part of the Russian Federation in the territory of the Volga steppes. The population of present-day Kalmykia is about 330,000; of these Kalmyks comprise more than 50%, Russians around 30%, Chechens, Armenians and other minorities constitute the remainder. Ethnically the Kalmyks are of Mongolian origin; their language belongs to the Mongolian group of languages.

Buddhism began to spread among the Kalmyks in the 13^th century A.D.[1] At that time the Kalmyks inhabited South Siberia and were known as the Oirats or West Mongols, comprising several ethnically and linguistically related tribes. The name kalmyk, which is a word of Turkish origin and means ‘remaining’, ‘separated’, was applied to the Oirats who in the 17^th century migrated to Russia.[2]

When the Kalmyks became subjects of the Russian Empire, they brought Buddhism as their main spiritual tradition. Throughout the 17^th century until the second half of the 18^th century the Kalmyks had very close ties with Buddhist centers in Tibet and Mongolia. The religious policy of the Kalmyk khanate was conducted under the leadership of Tibet. However, at the end of the 18^th century Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great prohibited any relations between the Kalmyks and Tibet. Kalmykia became isolated from other Buddhist centers, which had an impact on the development of Buddhism among the Kalmyks. Nevertheless, until the beginning of the 20^th century the Kalmyks followed the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.

From the 1930s to the 1980s Buddhism was persecuted by the Soviet government, and not a single prayer-house functioned in Kalmykia.[3] The most tragic event in the history of the Kalmyks was the deportation of 1943, when the entire population of Kalmykia was exiled to Siberia and Central Asia and the republic was abolished by the Soviet government. More than 40% of the exiled Kalmyks lost their lives during the years of deportation. Only in 1957 were the Kalmyks given the right to return to their home on the steppes of the Volga.

The Complexity of the Present Buddhist Revival

After almost a century of severe persecution of Buddhism by the Soviet government the traditional religious institutions of Kalmykia are being restored now. The first Buddhist community after the collapse of the Soviet Union was registered in October 1988; and since the beginning of the 1990s there has been a boom of religious revival in Kalmykia: temples (khurul)[4] have been built in almost every Kalmyk town, more and more Kalmyks receive Buddhist education, Buddhist teachers from abroad visit Kalmykia regularly, and pilgrims come to Kalmykia from all parts of Russia. However, as my fieldwork experience showed, the present situation of religious revival is very complex and differs greatly from the state of religiosity in Kalmykia before the Soviet period. The present Buddhist revival is much more than a restoration of only one Buddhist tradition. The complexity consists in the parallel development of several levels of Buddhism. Two levels of Buddhism are developing in Kalmykia now: the level of institutionalized Tibetan Buddhism and the level of folk religion; both levels are far from being homogeneous and can be further subdivided.

Community Revival. Picture by the author.

Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary Kalmykia

The Gelugpa tradition

Historically most Kalmyks belong to the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, which is still the dominant religious tradition in Kalmykia. The first Buddhist temples and prayer houses opened in Kalmykia after 1990 belong to the Gelugpa order; and the overwhelming majority of monks in present-day Kalmykia adhere to the Gelugpa tradition.

At present the Gelugpa order in Kalmykia is centralized and interlinked: all Gelugpa monks and khurul in different regions of Kalmykia belong to the Kalmyk Central Buddhist Monastery Geden Sheddup Choskhorling. Therefore, the term ‘monastery’ in this case signifies a network of Buddhist temples and prayer houses functioning throughout Kalmykia.

The head temple of the monastery is The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni[5] or the Central Khurul as it is often called. It was constructed in only nine months of 2005 and now it is the largest Buddhist temple in Kalmykia and in Europe. The Central Khurul is an important cultural centre and a famous pilgrimage site in Kalmykia. The khurul has a center of traditional Tibetan medicine and a Buddhist library with a large collection of scriptures.

The head lama of the Kalmyk Centralized Buddhist Monastery and the Shadzhin Lama (the ‘Supreme’ Lama) of Kalmykia is Telo Tulku Rinpoche (Erdne Ombadykov), an ethnic Kalmyk and a citizen of the USA.[6] He was recognized by the 14^th Dalai Lama as the 7^th incarnation of Tilopa, the 11^th century Indian yogi. The tradition of recognized reincarnations (tulku) was lost in Kalmykia already in the 17^th century; therefore, the establishment of tulku is an innovation for Buddhism in Kalmykia, indicating a significant change in religious authority under the influence of Tibetan Buddhism. As a result, the head lama acquired additional power in the eyes of the laity: home altars of many Kalmyk lay believers also have images of Telo Tulku Rinpoche.

A need for trained monks is a serious issue for Kalmykia. At present there are 22 monks in the Central Khurul and about 20 monks working in other Gelugpa temples throughout Kalmykia. Most monks are neither Kalmyks nor Russians, but Tibetans, mainly from Tibetan exile communities. Nevertheless, new generations of Kalmyks receive their monastic education abroad, mainly in Tibetan monasteries in India. The usual place for the training of Kalmyk monks is Drepung Gomang Dratsang monastery in Karnataka (South India), which adheres to the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche supports the tendency of unification of Buddhist practice and orientation towards the Tibetan Buddhist heritage and the Tibetan government in exile. It is obvious that Tibetan monks play a very important role in the contemporary Buddhist revival in Kalmykia. However, some Kalmyks believe that it is not the traditional ethnic Kalmyk religious heritage that is being revived in the republic at present. For many lay Kalmyks, especially for those of older generations, is it very important to see the restoration of the regional form of Buddhism that had developed in the Kalmyk steppes during the 17^th – 19^th centuries, which is regarded by many Kalmyks as different from other regional forms of Buddhism. Telo Tulku Rinpoche, however, refutes the notion of “Kalmyk Buddhism”, arguing that Buddhism as religion overcomes all ethnic and national borders and cannot be divided into Kalmyk, Tibetan or Mongolian variants.

Other Tibetan Buddhist schools represented in Kalmykia

The Nyingma stupa and temple. Picture by the author.

Apart from the Gelugpa order, other schools of Tibetan Buddhism are present in Kalmykia now. Of special interest are the Nyingmapa communities developing in Kalmykia now. Whereas the Kagyupas and the Sakyapas are represented in Kalmykia only on the level of Dharma centers, the Nyingmapa tradition functions on the level of khurul; which gives it additional importance in the eyes of believers.

In contrast to the Central Monastery, the Nyingma communities try to give Buddhism a Kalmyk flavor, which is very appealing for some Kalmyk laity (especially from smaller towns and villages). As Padma Sherab, the abbot of the first Nyingma khurul in Kalmykia and Russia, said, “Our community is a synthesis of the Tibetan Nyingma tradition and Kalmyk Buddhism”. The Kalmyk Nyingmapas position themselves as being much closer to lay people than the Central Khurul. All sutras and most ritual-texts used in the Nyingmapa khuruls have been translated into the Kalmyk language; so far they have been the only ones to use Kalmyk as ritual language in Kalmykia. As mentioned above, most monks in the Central Monastery are Tibetans and do not speak Kalmyk or Russian, although I was told that one of the main reasons for lay people to go to khurul is to discuss their problems with a lama or a monk. Some lamas even see themselves more as psychologists than ritual experts.

The role of the Kalmyk government and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in the religious and cultural revival in Kalmykia

The present religious revival in Kalmykia is not just the result of missionary activities, but also the result of the governmental support. Of special importance is the role of the first president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, an eccentric and charismatic figure. He was first elected the president of Kalmykia in 1993 at the age of 31; at that time he was already a millionaire businessman, promising prosperity and development to the republic; he even refused to accept his salary of the republic’s president.  Ilyumzhinov occupied this post until 2010, having been reelected three times.[7]

Ilyumzhinov is popular with the Kalmyks for his support of all religions and of Buddhism in particular. Himself a devout Buddhist, he once mentioned in a television program that he may want to become a lama one day. Though the Constitution of the Russian Federation separates religion from the state, from 1993 to 1995 religion and church was declared by Ilyumzhinov an essential part of the state policy of Kalmykia. During these years a special Department for Religious Affairs functioned as executive agency subjected to the president of Kalmykia. Large subsidies were collected by the department and donated for the building of Buddhist temples as well as Christian churches; moreover, Ilyumzhinov sponsored the construction of temples and churches from his private funds. The first initiative to build the Central Khurul also belongs to the first president.

The Kalmyk culture-of-heroes approach to the leader has been employed in creating the image of the president. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is perceived by many Kalmyks as a national long-awaited hero corresponding to the image of a leader in Mongolian legends and epic: young, charismatic, claiming to be of kinship with Chingis Khan, oriented towards spiritual development, supporting Buddhism and other religions. In spite of his authority, Ilyumzhinov is democratic in his attitude and accessible for common people.

Playing up to his image of a mythological ruler from a spiritual land, Ilyumzhinov became known outside Kalmykia and the Russian Federation for some of his sensational announcements. Thus, for example, in 1997 he openly confessed in a television programme that he had seen a UFO and had been kidnapped by aliens for a two-hour tour around their spaceship. Some Kalmyks I talked to during my fieldwork believe in Ilyumzhinov’s ability to see spirits and aliens, but most people that I had a chance to interview see it as the president’s unique sense of humour. Nevertheless, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been endowed with mythological properties and has become a near-cult personality in contemporary Kalmykia, he is even worshipped as bodhisattva by some Kalmyks.

The level of folk religion, “folk Buddhism” and the ancient cult of the White Old Man interpreted anew

The White Old Man statue. Picture by the author.

Besides schools of Tibetan Buddhism other Kalmyk religious traditions that are dynamically revitalizing at present can be referred to the level of folk religion. This level is not institutionalized; it is represented by religious experts (of both genders and of different ages) who perform various rituals for the benefit of the laity. In Kalmykia folk religious practices, beliefs and movements are often called “popular” or “folk” Buddhism, because they combine elements of Tibetan Buddhism with Oirat-Kalmyk pre-Buddhist, folk-religious spiritual traditions. Some scholars and representatives of the Kalmyk Buddhist clergy reject the notion of “folk Buddhism”, arguing that contemporary folk religious practices in Kalmykia have nothing in common with Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha Shakyamuni.

Kalmyk folk religious practitioners do not have monastic education, but receive knowledge and power from their guardian deities of Buddhist as well as pre-Buddhist origin. The most important deity for them is the White Old Man (Tsagan aava), a pan-Mongolian pre-Buddhist deity, the owner of the land and water, included in the Buddhist pantheon in Kalmykia with the function of a dharmapala, i.e. a defender of faith, in the 18^th century.

The scope of practices of Kalmyk “folk Buddhist” ritual experts is very wide: they heal illnesses, tell fortune, have prophetic dreams, remove curses and bad luck, carry out love magic rites and calendar rituals. They use various methods and implements, ranging from Buddhist prayers to animal sacrifice depending on the individual practitioner.

It is difficult to state the exact number of folk religious practitioners in Kalmykia now because of their unofficial status. However, some ritual experts form communities. Thus, a community of ritual experts was registered in Kalmykia in 1999 under the name the Buddhist Community «Revival», though the application of the term Buddhist in this case is very debatable. The name “Revival” reflects the main aim, which is to revive traditions and ceremonies of the Oirat-Kalmyks and to restore the faith in the White Old Man. The cult of Tsagan Aava is seen by the community as the true ethnic Kalmyk spiritual heritage. The head and the founder of the community is a fifty year old Kalmyk woman, Galina Muzaeva. The community believes that Galina is Maitreya, the future Buddha; she is called the Bakshi (which means ‘teacher’) and all other members in this organization are her students.

The community largely draws inspiration from Buddhism as well: they venerate Buddhist deities, use Buddhist ritual objects, and perform rituals that traditionally have been conducted by Kalmyk Buddhist monks. The employment of Buddhist as well of Kalmyk folk religious elements attracts lay Buddhists to the activities of the community. However, Buddhist and traditional Kalmyk pre-Buddhist elements are mixed with new (at least for Kalmykia) ideas and aims that have nothing in common with Buddhism or shamanism. The final goal of the community is to unite the world religions and to create one faith in the White Old Man. Besides Buddhist deities, the community venerates Jesus Christ, Mother Mary and other Orthodox Christian saints. Thus, in the prayer house outside Elista, built in 2004, I saw images of Buddhist deities, the 14^th Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, Mother Mary and other Christian saints, a big poster of Prophet Muhammad and even a picture of the first president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

The old Mongolian cult of the White Old Man, however, has been reinterpreted, rather than revived by the community: Tsagan Aava is identified as the Highest Cosmic Intellect; therefore, this movement is also called “cosmic religion”. All ritual texts (numerous offering-prayers, healing prayers, etc.) the members of the community claim to have received telepathically from space in the “sun” language. The “sun” language is another invention of the community, which they believe to be “the sacred language of the White Old Man”. It is written in the Russian Cyrillic script and rhythmically may resemble Tibetan.

The community is actively involved in missionary activity, publishing books and a newspaper Maitreya. So far the community has published seven volumes of the cycle The Sacred Precepts of the White Old Man.  

Concluding remarks

In the context of Kalmykia it becomes rather problematic to use the word ‘revival’ with regard to religious and cultural developments; only if talking about a revival in a very broad meaning (as of religious activity in general). To what extent can these processes be called a revival? Buddhism in contemporary Kalmykia is not just revived but reinvented with new levels developing and new elements being added to what is believed to be “traditional Kalmyk Buddhism”. These new reinvented forms of Buddhism present a multifaceted material for ethnographic and anthropological research.
Valeriya Gazizova

PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Humanities (the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages) at the University of Oslo Study Areas: Buddhism and folk religion in Tibet, Mongolia, Kalmykia, Buryatia and Tuva.

Much of the confusion over China can be found in misperceptions over Chinese international policies and priorities. (Communist) China is still a relatively young actor in global politics, and on many issues, the Chinese position seems to be: leave domestic matters for ourselves to work out. A question of classic sovereignty as defined by Morgenthau. Chinese leaders make us believe that China is indeed a unitary actor. So when China is put under international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and commit to a global legally binding agreement, many fail to understand how fragmented China really is, and how difficult it is for China to undertake a needed transformation from a coal based to a sustainable economy.

And although climate change politics is one of the Chinese leadership’s main concerns, it is primarily a domestic concern related to three interlinked issues; energy security, sustainable economic development, and social stability and progress. China’s primary international concern is, however, to protect China’s sovereignty. Within China there are many diverging interests and understandings of climate change. Regions, cities, Chinese and foreign companies as well as NGO’s each play their different part in China’s economic, social, and environmental development. Officially these non-state actors cannot play a role in Chinese foreign policy, but they are still part of what frames the international understanding that China is becoming greener, because the green actors and the central government have an interest in showcasing their green development – thereby attracting investments or gaining other co-benefits such as better public health.

Other actors in the coal industry and the majority of the production economy dependent on cheap and accessible energy should also be taken into account. These actors protect their vested interests and fight against moving too fast from a brown to a green economy. And coal is still by far the largest energy source in China.

So there are many incentives for the Chinese leaders to present China as green and going green, but it is far harder to achieve, because of the fragmented domestic scene.

The major reason, however,  for Chinese lack of global commitment is that an eventual implementation of a global legally binding climate change agreement will clash with priority number one: sovereignty. And it will furthermore have enormous consequences for China’s role in the developing world.

In the global institutional framework being negotiated there is a pressure from most of the developed world, including USA and Canada, to agree on a global standardisation of how to measure and report GHG levels and reductions. The argument is simple and persuasive: If we don’t have the same measures globally we will not be sure that we’re doing enough – we won’t even be sure about what needs to be done. This principle is called MRV – Measure, Report, Validate – and this clashed with the Chinese understanding of sovereignty in such a degree, that China is fighting the principle of MRV with all means. The Chinese leaders all to vividly imagine what the consequences would be, if an international corps of GHG-controllers were allowed to enter China and validate the Chinese statistics with access to even the smallest coal plant and factory. This in itself is not so scary, but the dangers are many; Chinese statistics could be full of mistakes (deliberate or not), which would mean more international shaming, but the biggest danger is that the principle of the international community gaining access to China to validate progress on a certain policy area means that soon enough, human rights would be mentioned as the next area.

A different kind of consequence of a Chinese commitment to a global legally binding agreement is that of a change in definitions of equity. One of China’s main arguments against Chinese commitment is framed as common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) meaning basically that climate change is a global problem and common for all to share the burden, but the developed world must bare the biggest burden and do most since historically and per capita the developed world is more responsible, etc.

China is still aligned with the developing world on this issue. But if China really opened up for discussions on binding commitments, equity and CBDR would have to be reinterpreted; by asking if equity is the same for all developing countries – are there not a substantial difference between the small island states and e.g. China, which would then – more true to China’s economic size and growth rates categorise China as an emerging economy? It would split up the world in many more categories than just the developed and developing countries with a much more differentiated understanding of responsibility than is currently attached to the principle of equity and CBDR.

Furthermore, a China with a different global identity will probably lose her ability to act as a leader of the developing world in international forums like the UN. And China would lose her status as a developing country within the WTO, which would mean losing benefits of subsidies, the ability to keep tariffs. And maybe China would also be more easily pressured into letting the currency float. This is in this light we must understand Obama’s phrasing of China as a grown-up.

So for all these reasons and Chinese imaginations of “what could go wrong”, China is doing what is possible domestically but resisting a global legally binding agreement on fighting climate change.

Lau Blaxekjær
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
Copenhagen University

 
Nordkoreas “Kære Leder” er død. Tilsyneladende er historier om grådkvalte studieværter og Kim Jong-Ils feticher nogle af de mest interessante for de danske nyhedsmedier.

Hvis der er noget, vi danskere ikke er opdraget til, er det at tilbede despotiske ledere og totalitære systemer. Der skal være plads til det rimelige og det sandhedssøgende.

Og fremfor alt skal der være plads til det enkelte menneske.

Mediernes parodiske fremstilling af Nordkorea i disse dage trykker på nogle farlige knapper. Hvis man ikke allerede havde fordomme liggende om nordkoreanere som en flok imbecile verdensbenægtere, kan man hurtigt få dem.

Det kan undre, at farcerne får lov at dominere mediebilledet. For hvor sandhedssøgende og væsentlig er nu egentlig dén form for journalistik?

Selvom der også foreligger politiske analyser og kommentarer til lederskiftet, er vigtige elementer udeladt fra dækningen. Den nordkoreanske befolkning fremstår aldrig som andet end en identitetløs og grinagtig masse.

Det er ikke helt ufarligt. Sprog og billeder skaber distance, så farcerne får en konsekvens.

En identitetsløs flok

I mit kandidatspeciale undersøgte jeg, hvordan fjendebilleder af Nordkorea bliver skabt gennem sprogbrug i vestlige medier. Helt konkret undersøgte jeg en række lederartikler bragt i Politiken, The Guardian og The New York Times i løbet af år 2010.

I artiklerne var befolkningen stort set aldrig fremstillet som andet end identitetsløs – og derfor tenderende til ligegyldig – masse. Noget af det samme synes at have gjort sig gældende i de danske medier siden mandag.

Det er klart, at Nordkorea er et særligt tilfælde for journalister. Bare at komme ind i landet som reporter kan som bekendt være en udfordring. Men gengivelsen af de officielle nordkoreanske billeder af grædekor er stadig et valg, der ikke kun kan skyldes manglen på alternativ kildemateriale. Mange nordkoreanere lever i eksil, men kommer sjældent til orde.

Pointen er, at når de grinagtige billeder af befolkningen ikke får en modvægt, skabes distance. Set i et humanitært perspektiv er det ikke helt ligegyldigt. Distancen får nemlig konsekvenser. Kim Jong-Ils død går ind i rækken af episoder, der medvirker til et afstumpet billede af et helt land.

Ifølge FN er omkring 6 millioner mennesker i Nordkorea lige nu ramt af hungersnød. Det er måske ikke tilfældigt, at der ikke løftes mange danske øjenbryn. For hvem bekymrer sig om de, der ingen identitet har?

Den gamle “vi mod dem”

Ifølge mit speciale har distancen rødder i et sprogligt forsimplet modsætningsforhold mellem Nordkorea på den ene side og den vestlige verden på den anden.

Flere steder i lederartiklerne forekom det, at en underliggende præmis var et lighedstegn mellem ordene ‘Vesten’, ‘os’, ‘vi’ og tilmed ‘Verden’ på den ene side, og ordene ‘de’ og ‘Nordkorea’ på den anden.

Man kan vel næppe forvente, at læserne skal kunne identificere sig med andre end “vi i Verden”? Nordkorea bliver altså hurtigt en fremmet størrelse.

Der er nu ikke noget nyt i den dikotomi. Modsætningsforholdet er et sprogligt levn fra den Kolde Krig, hvor den kommunistiske blok blev portrætteret i medierne som den ‘Frie Verdens’ onde alter ego.

I det hele taget findes der adskillige historiske eksempler på, at binære modsætninger i sproget har været brugt til at skabe eller fastholde fjendebilleder.

Den græske historiker Herodot beskrev allerede omkring år 450 f.v.t. fjenden i Orienten som den direkte modsætning til den suveræne græker. Fjenden var portrætteret som irrationel, svag, tom og fremmet. Ikke langt fra det billede af Nordkorea, min analyse viste.

At præmissen stadig gør sig gældende i en tid, hvor liberale, vestlige medier hævder at være neutrale og upartiske, kan være forstemmende. Ligesom det kan være forstemmende at være vidne til den unuancerede og farceagtige dækning af Kim Jong-Ils død i disse dage.

Episoden gør det bare endnu mere aktuelt at fastholde den tåkrummende banale pointe, at det vi ser er billeder og forestillinger. Det er ikke sandheden. Der bor 23 millioner mennesker i Nordkorea.

Når fjenden bliver et umenneske

At Mission Øst er den eneste danske nødhjælpsorganisation, der uddeler mad i det sultramte land, kan være tankevækkende.

Generalsekretær Kim Hartzner har udtalt, at hungersnøden er en af verdens mest oversete katastrofer. Nordkoreanerne har desperat behov for hjælp.

Men humanitær bistand forudsætter jo helt grundlæggende en bevidsthed. Social, politisk eller økonomisk. Derfor må første skridt mod hjælp være bevidstheden om, at nordkoreanere er andet end en “ond, identitetsløse masse”.

Man danner sin egen sandhed på baggrund af det, man ser og hører. Lige siden verdens første krigskorrespondent William Howard Russell rapporterede fra Krim-krigen har journalister vidst, at vinkling betyder alt, når parterne i en konflikt kommer til orde.

Samtidig er umenneskeliggørelse via sproglig praksis helt grundlæggende for dannelsen af fjendebilleder.

I de artikler, jeg analyserede, blev Nordkorea – bevidst eller ubevidst – fremstillet som overvejende utroværdig, barbarisk, destruktiv og irrationel. Det modsatte af det ‘gode’. Menneskelighed var helt udelukket.

I disse dage kan danskerne primært se det nordkoreanske folk som en farce af et grædekor. Det er ligeså forsimplet og farligt.

Ida Zidore er uddannet MA i Journalism and Media within Globalization: the European Perspective fra Swansea University, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Danmarks Medie- og Journalisthøjskole og Aarhus Universitet. D. 15. December bestod hun sit afsluttende speciale Beyond the Enemy: North Korea and Iran in Western Newspapers.

Introduction

On October 19, 2011, in a sports field outside the Papuan provincial capital Jayapura, a solemn declaration was read, proclaiming the independence of West Papua, the restoration of its national symbols, the formation of a new government, the introduction of new national languages and of the Dutch New Guinea Guilder as the new currency.[2] The meeting, the Third Papuan Congress, was soon broken up by Indonesian security forces – with excessive violence. At the end of the afternoon three, possibly six Papuan civilians were dead, several dozen badly beaten, around 300 detained and the six leaders-to-be of the newly proclaimed state arrested, facing charges of treason. While the police remain adamant that they did no wrong and had to respond to an act of secession, the Indonesian government is under pressure from national and international human rights bodies to carry out credible investigations.

The proclamation and violent crackdown by the Indonesian security forces highlighted one of the key issues simmering beneath the surface in the two provinces which make up the western half of the world’s second largest island (the eastern half of the island being part of Papua New Guinea). It was, however, not the only issue keeping the territory in the spotlight. At the time of the Congress, one of the biggest and most sustained industrial actions in recent Indonesian history was into its fifth week at the world’s biggest gold and copper mine in Grasberg, several hundred kilometres away, with a death toll of eight people and no sign of abating.[3] Though not politically motivated, the strike has severely reduced the output at the mine, Indonesia’s largest taxpayer, and thus concentrated minds in the capital. The police, in the meantime, have been politically embarrassed by revelations of having received several million USD over the years in what the national police chief called ‘lunch money’ from PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), the company operating the Grasberg mine. PTFI has in the past admitted to paying the Indonesian armed forces for protection as well.

A few days later, the police chief in a restive Highlands district of Papua was shot dead in broad daylight, with a fringe group of the Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka – OPM) claiming responsibility. While the OPM, which has been waging a small-scale armed struggle for around 45 years, does not present a military threat to Indonesia, the high-profile killing was a stark reminder of the tenacity of this struggle and of the motivating factors behind it.

While these events have mostly not made the headlines in Europe, for the first time in a long time, the media and political elite in the Indonesian capital Jakarta have seriously awoken to the fact that the special autonomy packages passed a decade ago have not solved the conflicts in the two easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua.

West Papuan villagers in Matefa village in consultation with a local NGO. (Photo by the author).

Background to the conflict, 1965-2001

A good point in time to begin with looking at the political conflict in Tanah Papua, the Land of Papua as the two Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua are jointly know as, is exactly 50 years to the day before the Third Papuan Congress. Though views on the exact date differ as to when the demands were actually made, a declaration was passed by the First Papuan Congress on 19 October, 1961 demanding that the territory be renamed West Papua, its inhabitants be called Papuans and new national symbols be accepted alongside the Dutch ones.[4]

The demands were made to the colonial government of Netherlands West New Guinea. The Dutch had retained control of the western part of New Guinea after acceding to the independence of the rest of its colonies in what was then termed the East Indies. The newly formed Republic of Indonesia was adamant that the territory be incorporated into the republic while the Dutch government initially insisted on holding on to the colony. By 1961, however, the winds of decolonisation were blowing strong against any remaining Dutch hopes of permanently holding on to West New Guinea.

Regardless of whether it was actually the First Papuan Congress which made these demands and the exact point in time when they were made, by 1 December, 1961, the Dutch government had accepted the demands. The territory was renamed West Papua, the new ‘Morning Star’ (Bintang Kejora) flag was flown alongside the Dutch flag outside the building of the New Guinea Council and the new Papuan national hymn, Hai Tanahku Papua, was played after the Dutch Wilhelmus anthem. Though in popular Papuan political thought, this occasion has become re-cast as the declaration of independence, this is not strictly true – independence was to occur after 10-20 years of Dutch tutelage.

The reaction of the Indonesian government was swift: President Sukarno denounced the display of Papuan national symbols and the inauguration of the Nieuw-Guinea Raad as a Dutch colonial ploy that attempted to deny Indonesia’s claims to the territory. In his Trikora (Tri Komando Rakyat – The Three Commands of the People) speech, Sukarno made the incorporation of the territory into the Republic of Indonesia one of the paramount objectives of Indonesian policy.

Though officially this was to be an effort of ‘the people,’ in practice the initial efforts consisted of unsuccessful small-scale military incursions. Where the military failed, though, diplomacy triumphed. Fearing the growing influence of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI – Partai Komunis Indonesia), the US government pressured the Netherlands to agree to a transfer of sovereignty under the auspices of the United Nations to Indonesia.

The transfer, under the auspices of the United Nations, was a long and highly contentious one, with the first instances of armed Papuan resistance against Indonesian rule emerging in 1964, events which the still-active OPM sees as its founding moment. The seven-year transition ended in 1969 with a ‘plebiscite’ by 1 025 Papuan elders hand-picked by Indonesian administrators.[5] All voted in favour, sealing the integration of the territory, which was renamed Irian Jaya, into the Indonesian Republic.

As in other ‘backward’ parts of Indonesia, the newly-installed government of General Soeharto began an ambitious project of modernisation, urbanisation and development. Apart from the opening of the Freeport gold and copper mine, this also included agricultural projects such as palm oil plantations, for which tens of thousands of ‘transmigrants’ as labour came into the territory from other parts of Indonesia. According to the official line, the ‘backward’ Papuan brothers and sisters, free now from the shackles of Dutch colonial power, were being accommodated into the development project of Suharto’s New Order and brought into the fold of the prosperous Indonesian family. There were, admittedly, some misguided elements who resisted this, but they would be either convinced by the fruits of development – or crushed.

In stark contrast to official Indonesian narratives of Tanah Papua’s integration, most local narratives are strongly shaped by what Herniawan and van den Broek (2001) call the Papuan ‘memoria passionis,’ a memory of suffering. These narratives are characterised by memories and the re-telling of stories military oppression, of torture, of murder, of sexual exploitation, of fear, of racism, of disrespect, of socio-economic marginalisation by the influx of economically more successful non-Papuans and of what is often perceived by indigenous Papuans to be a systematic campaign of attempts by the central government to destroy the Papuan nation.[6] These fears are exacerbated by widespread Papuan disquiet over the impacts of increased migration from other parts of Indonesia. As many, though not all migrants are Muslims and most, though not all Papuans are Christians, there is often a thinly-veiled fear of ‘Islamisation’ in Papuan discussions of the impacts of migration.

The fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 raised Papuan hopes of a new deal, perhaps even of a Timor-Leste style referendum on the status of the territory. The initial reaction of the Indonesian security forces to such calls was harsh, and at least several dozen Papuan demonstrators were killed on the island of Biak in July 1998 following the raising of the Morning Star flag. With Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur taking over the Indonesian presidency in 1999, however, the stance of the central government became more conciliatory. The Morning Star flag was approved as an official Papuan ‘cultural symbol’ to be used alongside the Indonesian flag, the province was renamed Papua and President Wahid even contributed personal funds for organising the Second Papuan Congress in 2000. In 2001, the Special Autonomy (Otonomi Khusus – or Otsus) package for Papua was passed, later extended to the province of West Papua after this was controversially split off by decree of Wahid’s successor, President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Special Autonomy and Discontent

In the roughly ten years since the passing of the Law on Special Autonomy, indigenous Papuan representation at all levels of the executive in the two provinces has increased, powers have been devolved from the central government and unprecedented sums of money have flowed to the two provinces. Nonetheless, it is often hard to find indigenous Papuans outside state administration who see Otsus as a success. Opposition to special autonomy has grown increasingly vocal and in 2010 a coalition of local civil society organisations symbolically ‘returned’ the law to the Indonesian government, deeming it a ‘total failure’ and demanding a thorough review. These calls were echoed by a wide coalition of Papuan churches in early 2011.

This discontent is fuelled by various widespread discourses: the increased influx of funds is generally seen to have only benefited a small local elite while large sections of the indigenous population continue to live in poverty; the central government has been seen as torpedoing Papuan efforts at self-governance; migration remains high stoking fears of marginalisation and key demands such as the use of Papuan symbols have been revoked. While some of the Papuan critique of Otsus is overblown (or, more precisely, often presented with rhetorical hyperbole), special autonomy has clearly not worked as well as for example in Aceh, with actors at all levels of state administration not living up to high expectations.

Criticism of the status quo has been dangerous in the past, especially in the Suharto years, when it could lead to being labelled as being separatist or subversive, a label which could mean imprisonment or death. Although the situation has improved greatly, the political atmosphere in Papua and West Papua nonetheless remains more stifling than in the rest of Indonesia. Public displays of the Morning Star flag or calls for ‘merdeka’ (freedom) often, though not always, can lead to lengthy prison sentences for subversion.[7] Intimidation of activists and journalists working on less controversial issues such as environmental degradation, land grabbing or corruption is not uncommon. Access for foreign researchers, NGOs or media is heavily curtailed.

The growing discontent over the political settlement has been flanked, especially since 2009, by a marked upturn in violence. This violence has had numerous causes, ranging from groups affiliated to the OPM battling the security forces, local tribal conflicts, localised political and economic power struggles to millenarian religious movements (see for example ICG, 2010 for a partial overview). Many of the most high profile cases such as a series of lethal shootings along the road to the Freeport mine have remained unsolved. Increasingly, many civil society representatives in Papua and West Papua also raise the fear of violent communal conflicts both between indigenous Papuans and migrants and amongst Papuans themselves. What is often striking is how differently representatives of the Indonesian state and most Papuans I have talked to see the violence. While the official Indonesian view tends to blame either the OPM or other presumed separatists, many Papuans are inclined to see more sinister forces at work, suspecting Indonesian security forces of staging incidents to justify their lucrative presence and a repression of Papuan political aspirations.

New palm oil plantations in Kebar, West Papua. Photo by the author.

Searching for solutions

While the discontent with the status quo has been steadily growing and the number of violent incidents have been on the rise, a twin initiative by a prominent Papuan theologian, Neles Tebay, and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, LIPI, has sought to find a way out of the impasse (see Tebay, 2009 and Widjojo, 2009).[8] The approach advocates a dialogue between ‘Jakarta’ and ‘Papua,’ i.e. the central government and Papuan representatives, based on a Road Map which advocates for addressing issues of socio-economic marginalisation, re-visiting the divergent views on the integration of Tanah Papua with Indonesia and accountability for past human rights violations. In spite of opposition from nationalists from both sides, the initiative has been slowly gaining traction. A Papua Peace Network has been conducting a series of public discussions in both provinces on the initiative and a peace conference in July 2011 brought together representatives of the central government and Papuan society.

What the declaration of independence and the resurgence of violence will mean for the delicate process of finding a negotiated solution to the multiple problems facing Tanah Papua remains to be seen. As with so many other issues, the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been slow to react to the challenges in the two easternmost provinces. If nothing else, the violent events of the past few weeks have at least added urgency to the process.

Bibliography

Drooglever, Pieter, 2005. Een Daad van Vrije Keuze: De Papoea’s van westelijk Nieuw-Guinea en de grenzen van het zelfbeschikkingsrecht, Amsterdam

Hernawan, Budi and van den Broek, Theo, 2001. Memoria Passionis Di Papua – Kondisi Sosial Politik dan Hak Asasi Manusia. Jayapura: SKP

ICG, 2010. Radicalisation and Dialogue in Papua, Asia Report Nº188. Brussels/Jakarta: International Crisis Group

Leith, Denise, 2003. The Politics of Power – Freeport n Suharto’s Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press

Saltford, John, 2002. The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962-1969: Anatomy of a Betrayal. London: Routledge

Tebay, Neles, 2009. Dialog Jakarta-Papua. Sebuah Perspektif Papua, Jayapura: SKP

Widjojo, Muridan, 2009. Papua Road Map. Jakarta: LIPI

Outer courtyard of a shrine in Bhit Shah, Sindh province of Pakistan where an 18th Century poet-saint Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai is buried. The shrine is visited by thousands of people on daily basis.

“I am distressed, anxious and befallen. I cannot rest till I find my son again. Please do something. Please pray. Please help.” These were words uttered by Hameeda, a middle-aged tall brown-skinned lady clad in shalwar-qamis (Pakistani national dress) who arrived at Baba Ji’s (a revered man; a spiritual guide) Astana Paak in a city in southern Punjab, Pakistan.  Astana Pak is a private lodge which receives guests and devotees from various walks of life who visit in devotion for a sanctified person. She was talking to Amma-Apa, the lady of the house, opening her heart out to her. Amidst crying and sobbing, she narrated the story of the day. That morning, her 12 year old son, who mentally lags behind children of his age, asked his mother for permission to go to the shop around the corner of the street, not too far from his home as he wanted to buy himself cheeji (a local expression used by children for sweets and other things that children like to munch on or chew). His mother gave him permission as usually he visits the shop, buys his sweets and then returns home not too long thereafter. Only that morning, he did not return home after a couple of hours. The shop keeper told her that her son had left a few hours ago after buying his sweets, indicating that he had been sitting on the donkey cart used by a man selling fruit. The shop keeper thought that the fruit seller would drop the child at home after giving him a short ride. Hearing this Hameeda was overwhelmed with anxiety imagining that perhaps the fruit seller had kidnapped her son. In desperation, she asked everyone in the street if they had seen her son. Some children playing in the street pointed to a direction where the fruit seller had taken his carriage. However, Hameeda did not find her son.

 So she ran to Astana Paak to ask for the help of Baba Ji.  Amma-Apa, the lady of the house, consoled her and told her not to lose heart. Yet Hameeda was so upset that she would neither drink nor eat anything. Amma-Apa then told Baba Ji about Hameeda’s story. Baba Ji said that Hameeda should remain calm, return home, and inform him later in the evening about what had happened during the rest of the day.  In the meantime he would pray for her. Thus, Hameeda, who came in crying her heart out for her son left consoled, her tears dried by some sympathetic lady residents and visitors at Astana Paak.

As always men and women gathered in the evening at Astana Pak to listen to Baba Ji’s teachings and the qawwali music[1] that he played on his stereo sound system. Among them were Hameeda and her 12-year old son. She was happy, content, and thankful now that her son had returned. Actually, the fruit seller with a donkey cart had taken Hameeda’s son for a ride and dropped him a few streets away from their home. Here some other boys from the neighborhood helped him find his way home.

This is one of the stories that one hears when one visits Astana Paak. Ordinary Pakistanis frequently face such challenges but they find courage, consolation and support from people around them to face these challenges. Families and friends do help by offering emotional or sometimes economic support. However, individuals such as Hameeda respect and revere a person whom they have accepted as their guru as the latter provides them with hope and positive expectations.

A local music band singing folkloric songs and saints’ poetry in a Pakistani shrine on the annual celebration.

The South Asian tradition of venerating saints (sant – Sanskrit/Hindi term used primarily among Hindus; Auliya Allah- Arabic term used among Muslims) and spiritual guides (gurus - local Hindi term used among Hindus and Sikhs; and murshid – Persian/Arabic/Urdu term) is found in all major religions—Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. People of diverse faiths contact persons that are considered sacred due to their spiritual merits, venerate them and ask for their guidance in their worldly as well as spiritual lives. These revered persons are known to have acquired, through inner struggles, spiritual exercises and sometimes long distance travels higher stages of spiritual advancement and enlightenment under the guidance and supervision of their spiritual guides, following which some of them are commanded to guide and help the suffering humanity. Since these saintly persons are considered to be closer to God, people turn to them for blessings and prayers for various objectives such as material prosperity, marriage, fertility, cure of illnesses, welfare of families, cattle, etc. A limited number of people also contact these enlightened persons for spiritual education and training. Whereas one finds persons with genuine saintly qualities in South Asia, one also runs across fake and self-proclaimed saints who earn their living by extracting money from gullible devotees in turn for ‘unqualified’ prayers and blessings[2].

Parallel to this tradition of revered saintly persons is the practice of venerating the deceased saints in South Asia. South Asian landscape is dotted with thousands of tombs of saints and shrines. Thousands of people of diverse religious backgrounds visit these shrines on daily basis. Some major shrines where Muslim saints have been buried are visited by Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Muslim devotees alike.

Uzma Rehman has a Ph.D. from the Department of History of Religions, Institute for Regional and Crosscultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.

The Purulia Arms drop in 1995 was a rare example of a private team of white criminals delivering weapons to an oppositional group in India. The main organizer of the arms drop was a Dane inter alia named Niels Holck. This blog discusses various issues of the extradition case heard in the Lower Court and the Eastern High Court in 2010-11. The courts agreed that Holck could not be extradited mainly due to India’s poor human rights record. In return, India “froze” relations to Denmark

Niels Holck being interviewed after winning in the court in Hillerød, November 1, 2010 (Photo: Stig Toft Madsen)

Niels Holck is a Dane presently living in one of the better cities north of Copenhagen. In 1981, when accused of bank robbery, he escaped from the police earning him the nickname “Barfodsrøveren”, the Barefoot Robber (Hansen 2008). Later Holck went abroad where his activities apparently ranged from development work among the poor in Guatemala to gold smuggling in Africa. In that process he acquired several passports one of which identified by as Kim Peter Davy, the name by which he is known in India. Holck’s entry to India was via the Ananda Marga, a religious group which has been at loggerheads with the Indian state. In December 1995, Niels Holck dropped four tonnes of weapons over Purulia in West Bengal for the Ananda Margis from a small airplane. According to a recent interview with Peter Bleach, who was on board the plane, the consignment included “77 cases of Kalashnikov rifles, Makarov pistols, sniper rifles, anti-tank grenades, RPG rocket-launchers, anti-personnel mines, night-vision binoculars and 25,000 rounds of rifle ammunition” (Scarborough Evening News 2011). However, the arms drop was not well executed by the crew which also counted five Latvians who later became Russian citizens. After a confusing return trip from Thailand, all were arrested in Bombay airport save Niels Holck who once more managed to slip off and make his way back to Denmark.[i] When India initially requested the extradition of Holck, Denmark was unable to extradite him because the crime he stood accused of was not a crime in Denmark (sic). After the attack on USA on September 11, 2001, Denmark passed a new and tough law in 2002 enabling the extradition of Danish citizens accused of serious crimes not just to the Scandinavian countries but to the EU and to other countries as well (Lov 378). India renewed its request to get Holck in December 2002. Denmark finally agreed to India’s request on April 9, 2010, but the extradition order was challenged by Niels Holck in court. With the help of a well-articulated lawyer, Tyge Trier, and his team, Holck won the case in the lower court. The state prosecutor appealed the case to the Eastern High Court, which confirmed the decision of the lower court when an unusually large bench of five judges unanimously held his extradition illegal because India has a bad human rights record as regards treatment of prisoners. Tellingly, India has not ratified the UN Convention against Torture and not signed the Optional Protocol to the convention. The diplomatic agreement reached by India and Denmark had sought to bracket such general issues by focusing on the individual case at hand, but it was found by the court to be devoid of sufficient muscle to secure Holck’s safety if handed over to the Indian custody.[ii]

Conspiracy

According to Holck, important Indians, including a Bihari MP and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were all parties to the arms drop and actually helped him to get back to Denmark when they realized that things had not gone as planned. According to Holck, key Indians had teamed up with him because, like him, they were frustrated with the violent communist regime in West Bengal. When the arms drop misfired they wanted to cover their trails. Were Holck to turn up in India again, the same actors or institutions would kill him to hide the truth, Holck alleges. Not only has Holck maintained that the arms drop took place with the knowledge and concurrence of the CBI and unnamed Indian MPs, but also with the knowledge and concurrence of Danish and the British Intelligence. In his version of the story, Bleach maintains that the British intelligence services were aware of what he did as an arms dealer after he contacted the Defense Export Services Organization to seek clarifications regarding the proposed arms sale. The MI5/MI6 sensed that a crime was in the making and they contacted the Indian authorities.[iii] British intelligence, Bleach holds, let him proceed with the plan to enable the Indian authorities to catch the kingpin, i.e. Holck, red-handed. Bleach acceded to the advice of the British authorities, thereby deceiving Holck. This was the storyline presented by Bleach when he made an appearance in the Danish High Court in 2011 and it may contain more grains of truth than Holck’s version. In a debate on this issue, the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said in a response to an MP:

“The hon. Gentleman also asked whether Mr. Bleach advised officials of issues relating to the arms drop. I can confirm that he provided details to North Yorkshire police about the arms drop during interviews on three separate occasions—on 14 September, 22 September and 8 December 1995. On 22 September and 8 December the police strongly advised Mr. Bleach to withdraw from the deal and not to go to India. The information given by Mr. Bleach was passed on to the Indian authorities on three separate occasions—10 November, 17 November and 15 December 1995.” (www.parliament.uk, 2002)

The British, it appears from this, were aware of the plan, but they did not concur. To me it is inconceivable that British Intelligence would accede to clandestinely arm a small and geopolitically insignificant sect against the democratically elected government in West Bengal in India.[iv]

The main armed opponent of the government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was never Ananda Marga. Its main opponent was the Maoist revolutionaries, or Naxalites, who intensified the class war in the late 1960s. During this period when the Congres was still in power, and later after the Left Front CPI(M)-led government came to power in 1977, the police spared few means to subjugate the revolutionaries. One of the people tortured was Archana Guha whom the police picked up in 1974 while in search of her brother. She was tortured under the supervision of Runu Guha Neogi against whom Archana Guha filed a case in 1977 after she was released. With the help of Amnesty International and others, she came to Denmark where she received treatment. The trial took nineteen years. In 1996, Runu Guha Neogi was sentence to one year’s simple imprisonment with a possibility to appeal (Roy 1996). During this period, the Left Front government did not suspend Neogi who retired as Deputy Commissioner of Police (Roy 1996).

Apart for its role in suppressing the Maoist revolutionaries, there is another side to the CPI(M). As one of its critics, Ramachandra Guha, has conceded:

It may be that of all the major parties in India, it is only the leaders of the CPI(M) who do not have Swiss bank accounts. (Some do not even have Indian bank accounts.) Their views may be out-of-date, even bizarre, but in their conduct and demeanour most major leaders of the CPI(M) are—the word is inescapable—gentlemen. As a bourgeois friend of mine puts it, they are the kind of people in whose homes she can safely permit her teenaged daughter to spend the night (Guha 2011).

Had British intelligence attempted to remove the CPI(M)-led government from office it could have created uproar far greater than the benefits such a removal might have entailed.

Arms supplies and resistance

It is not easy, in fact, to find any example of European governments aiding and abetting armed uprisings in independent India. Perhaps, the person to close in on is George Fernandes, the labor leader and socialist MP who rose to become the Defense Minister of India. Fernandes was accused (but never convicted) in the “Baroda Dynamite Case” of plotting to set off small bombs during the Emergency. Before and after he was apprehended in Calcutta in June 1976, he and his family did receive moral support and physical shelter from several Western governments or their representatives, but even during Emergency I doubt that UK or other Western European countries provided weapons for Fernandes or for anyone else in miniscule armed resistance to the Emergency regime.

Could Holck have a point about Indians in key positions condoning illegal trade in arms for non-state actors? Here it may again be worth noting that Fernandes has been sympathetic to several armed groups, including the LTTE. As Defense Minister… “In July 1998, he reportedly stopped the Indian Navy from intercepting ships suspected of carrying illegal arms to Tamil guerrilla groups…” The Sri Lankan government reportedly stated that, “the LTTE’s biggest supporter in India is Defence Minister George Fernandes” (Wikipedia). Fernandes has also morally supported Burmese rebel groups and students fighting the military government both before he became Defense Minister and while in office. Arms dealers supplying weapons (similar to those dropped over Purulia) to Naga and Assamese rebel groups in North-East India and in Burma are alleged to have been given free passage in the Andaman Sea on the order of the Defense Secretary while Fernandes was the minister. These allegations were fielded by amongst other the former Navy Chief Vishnu Bhagwat. I am mentioning this not only to lend some credence to Holck’s version of events, but also because after the extradition case against Holck in the Danish High Court was decided in 2011, the Government of India (GOI) asserted that the Danish decision not to appeal to the Supreme Court would increase the risk of international crime and terror. A former Defense Minister of India could be accused of having done much the same. In all cases, the counter-argument would be that external support to just armed resistance is legitimate – even if directed against democratic states.[v]

The “Purulia Arms Drop” made front-page news in India, but it is not as if the Ananda Marga is the only group in India or South Asia which has imported weapons for its struggles. The Maoist groups in the “Red Corridor” in central India have apparently been supplied weapons through a supply chain stretching from Tamil Nadu to Nepal, The Khalistani Sikhs imported relatively advanced weapons for their secessionist struggle launched around 1980, and umpteen Islamic jihadist groups have received weapons from Pakistan off and on from October 1947 onwards.[vi]

At home India has a considerable sector of illegal small-arms manufacturing. A United Nations study has reported that Indian civilians have around 40 million firearms of which only around 15 percent are licensed (Asian Age 2011). By tapping into these arms distribution networks Holck would probably have gotten a bigger bang for his buck than by contacting a Rhodesian Brit and five Latvians with scant local knowledge. But, then, he evidently wanted to supply the Ananda Marga with advanced weapons of a higher caliber than were necessary for an ordinary watch guard.

The Purulia Arms Drop remains unique insofar as it involved an airdrop of arms by White Westerners to a religious group. The reaction in policy circles in India to the case may be compared to the Pakistani reaction to the US raid on Osama bin Laden’s residence in Abbottabad. In both cases the elite felt hurt when Western incursions into national airspace starkly exposed their state’s inability to enforce its sovereignty. In the Pakistani case, the reaction was widespread. In the Indian case, the reaction has been largely limited to the elite. The “Bengali Street” has been largely silent perhaps because the enmity between the Ananda Margis and others in West Bengal has declined considerable over the years. Moreover, the Ananda Margis themselves have kept a low profile as regards Niels Holck.

Self-defense and legal activism: Holck and Salwa Judum

What was the motive for the arms drop? As far as I can see, Holck purchased and dropped the weapons because he sympathized with the Ananda Margis whom he felt were persecuted by the West Bengal government and perhaps also by Maoist armed groups operating in the Purulia area. Others may have known about the plans, but Holck remained the driving force. It was his project. Who among the Ananda Margis wanted the weapons is unclear, but Holck wanted the Ananda Margis to have the weapons for “self-defense.” At the very end of the High Court case, Holck said that he wanted the truth to come out and that he would win a fair court trial case because the right to self-defense is a valid legal argument. The issue, therefore, arises when a situation exists that allows an actor to disregard the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of force.

The Indian Penal Code (IPC) recognizes the right to self-defense in section 81, which states that … “Nothing is an offence merely by reason of its being done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause harm, if it be done without any criminal intention to cause harm, and in good faith for the purpose of preventing or avoiding other harm to person or property.” I am not sure whether an Indian court would find this section of the IPC applicable if Holck were to stand trial in India, but it is worth noting that the Indian state recently has walked the same thin line as Holck. In the struggle against the armed uprising of the Naxalites/Maoists in the state of Chhattisgarh in Central India, the GOI in 2005 raised an armed force of about 6,500 barely literate village youth aged seventeenth upwards ordering them to operate as Special Police Officers within the law at a honorarium of Rs. 3000 per month, i.e. much less than the 10 dollars a day that Taliban foot soldiers are said to receive. This force, named Salwa Judum, proceeded to engage in “mass violations of fundamental constitutional rights” (Venkatesan 2011:44) often in connection with the forced removal of people from “naxalite-infested villages” to safe village under Salwa Judum control. In 2007 anthropologist Nandini Sundar, who is professor of sociology at Delhi University, together with the historian-anthropologist Ramachandra Guha, and EAS Sarma, former Secretary to GOI and former Commissioner for Tribal Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court. The court accepted the petition as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) case. Eleven judges heard the case for 26 days over several years before delivering the verdict in 2011. The case was repeatedly stalled by the Government of Chhattisgarh, confirming that it is not only private litigants who are adept at prolonging litigation in India, but that official India is equally adept in the art of adjournments.

The verdict of the Supreme Court in Nandini Sundar and others vs State of Chhattishgarh went in favor of the petitioners finding the formation of Salwa Judum an abrogation of the state’s obligation to protect its citizens by a professionally trained police force only. The court “directed the State government to prevent the operation of Salwa Judum or any other such group that seeks to take the law into its own hands or violates human rights of any person” (Venkatesan 2011:44). In other words, the court affirmed the state’s monopoly of violence specifying that the state can only delegate its right to use force to duly constituted groups. By extension, if the state did not have a right to defend its citizens against the Maoist threat – which is a real threat – by raising a motley army in the name of self-defense, it is also not likely that an equally motley crew of non-nationals would enjoy the right to arm a socio-religious group like the Ananda Marga. Niels Holck, the Government of Chhattisgarh, and the GOI seem alike in their in misconstruing the right to self-defense.[vii]

Were Danes and others to be acquainted only with acts of armed rebellion and armed “self-defense” in India, the decision in the Salwa Judum case would seem surprising. It is worth, therefore, to look closer at how the Supreme Court of India arrived at its decision. The short answer is: By legal activism and the scholarly deployment of social science. For a start, in section 2, the court says:

2. As we heard the instant matters before us, we could not but help be reminded of the novella, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, who perceived darkness at three levels: (1) the darkness of the forest, representing a struggle for life and the sublime; (ii) the darkness of colonial expansion for resources; and finally (iii) the darkness, represented by inhumanity and evil, to which individual human beings are capable of descending, when supreme and unaccounted force is vested, rationalized by a warped world view that parades itself as pragmatic and inevitable, in each individual level of command.

The verdict goes on to deride the “development paradigm unleashed by the State”, arguing that:

“The root cause of the problem, and hence its solution, lies elsewhere. The culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neo-liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of ever increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone, under-gird this socially, politically and economically unsustainable set of circumstances in vast tracts of India in general, and Chhattisgarh in particular.“

Touching on the “resource curse” and “developmental terrorism’, the Supreme Court verdict posits that:

“Policies of rapid exploitation of resources by the private sector, without credible commitments to equitable distribution of benefits and costs, and environmental sustainability, are necessarily violative of principles that are “fundamental to governance”, and when such a violation occurs on a large scale, they necessarily also eviscerate the promise of equality before law, and equal protection of the laws, promised by Article 14, and the dignity of life assured by Article 21.”

The verdict muses that:

“Tax breaks for the rich, and guns for the youngsters amongst poor, so that they keep fighting amongst themselves, seems to be the new mantra from the mandarins of security and high economic policy of the State. This, apparently, is to be the grand vision for the development of a nation that has constituted itself as a sovereign, secular, socialist and democratic republic”

Before finally ordering that:

“(i) The State of Chattisgarh immediately cease and desist from using SPOs in any manner or form in any activities, directly or indirectly, aimed at controlling, countering, mitigating or otherwise eliminating Maoist/Naxalite activities in the State of Chattisgarh;”

… and that:

(v) The State of Chattisgarh shall take all appropriate measures to prevent the operation of any group, including but not limited to Salwa Judum and Koya Commandos, that in any manner or form seek to take law into private hands, act unconstitutionally or otherwise violate the human rights of any person…..”

The Supreme Court’s verdict has been received very positively by some commentators. Liang (2011) writes that

“This judgment attains such greatness by virtue of its deft combination of insightful legal analysis, the articulation of a moral vision of constitutionalism and development and its sharp invocation of rhetoric (in the best sense of the term) and fiction to buttress its arguments” (Liang 2011).

In his write-up about the case, Venkatesan (2011: 46) makes reference to the 22 initial paragraphs of the judgment, which, as is evident from the above, are critiques of the “the neoliberal development paradigm and the resultant privatisation and globalisation” rather than typical legal arguments. The reason behind all of this is that the Indian Supreme Court since the 1970s has often been an activist court, which basically means a court “at war” with the way the legal system and the state normally works. Legal activism has been an emergency answer, or safety-valve, to the inordinate delays and the miscarriage of justice that are endemic to the courts. By taking up cases at the behest of concerned individuals without locus standi, the Supreme Court (and to some extent the state High Courts) have been able to re-interpret the fundamental civil and political rights and the directive principles in the Constitution. This means that Indian law is internally compromised and that it may externally compromise the state as it did in the Salwa Judum case. Since the invention of PIL in the 1970´s, Indians have been able at once to decry the Indian Penal Code and other laws as “colonial” while lionizing and exploiting Article 21 (guaranteeing the broadly interpreted “Right to Life”) and Article 14 (guaranteeing ”equality”) of the Constitution to secure a series of landmark judgement.[viii] Often this has been affected by applying justiciable political rights to social and economic issues where the non-justiciable Directive Principles exercise less clout. As Shankar notes (2009: xiv-xix), these legal innovations (bordering on judicial populism) took place in the aftermath of the Emergency which had undermined the Constitution. The courts tried to make up for its mistakes.

The number of PIL-cases has declined since the 1970. In 2008, PIL-cases only constituted around 2% of the cases seeking a Supreme Court hearing and very few of them were eventually admitted. Moreover, many PIL-cases are now entertained by the rich and powerful. Nevertheless, as the Salwa Judum case shows, the Supreme Court may still act as a forceful corrective to the executive akin to the courageous verdicts passed by the President of the Israel Supreme Court Aharon Barak.[ix] On this background it is understandable that the GOI, and Indians at large, may expect the Danish courts to take on a similar trailblazing role, but the Danish courts do not take that bait because they aim to maintain coherence in the face of contestation. A Danish court may be flexible, but the activism that has taken roots in India using PIL as an unorthodox quasi-political tool to intervene as a “last resort for the oppressed and bewildered” (Robinson 2010) has no counterpart in Denmark. In Denmark there is a strong Ombudsmand’s institution, but, so far, there is no PIL and no Anna Hazare short-circuiting the law and the legal process. The Ombudsmand’s institution takes up around 50 cases in its annual reports which the executive often consider as guidelines. It is rare, however, that ministers are impeached or civil servants tried (Elbæk-Jørgensen 2001: 223). The Danish political system may on occasion bend over backwards as it did in order to promise Holck’s extradition, but Danish courts remain careful. They see themselves neither as protagonists of the civil society, nor as tools of the state.

In the Niels Holck case, the prosecutors limited the scope of their arguments to the central issues: Could Niels Holck be extradited or not? Noting that Danish law now opens for extradition to any country in the world and showing that both governments had proceeded correctly in entering into a diplomatic agreement, the prosecution largely left it at that. When the prosecution lost twice because the courts held that it could not be ruled out that Holck would be submitted to torture or mistreatment in Indian jails, the state chose not to appeal. In India, appeals all the way to the Supreme Court are common. In 2008, there was a 2.5 per cent likelihood that a case would be appealed from High Court to Supreme Court. In cases originating in Delhi the likelihood rose to 10 per cent (Robinson 2010). The official India might have felt disappointed by the non-activist manner in which the Danish prosecution argued the case, but it certainly felt disappointed about the decision not to appeal. Indians in Denmark expressed such opinions (Copenhagen Post Online 2011). Some held that the Danish decision not to extradite Hock was a result of a colonial superiority complex. Basing her interpretation on readers’ comments on the Blogosphere rather than on the court case at hand, which she considers less interesting, Kaur argued that while the official Danish policy of opening up for extradition correctly reflected the new reality of India’s increased economic and political power, the Danish public stayed mired in old prejudices viewing India as a pre-modern and uncivilized country to which Danish citizens should not be extradited (Kaur 2011). In contrast, a number of Danes to whom I have spoken consider it right that Hock is made to face justice in India not in order to atone for colonial misdeeds, nor in order to kowtow to the rising superpower, but because of the crime he had apparently committed. The irony is that it is the law (and not money or political influence) which stands in the way of extradition.

After a period of silence, the GOI in August 2011 announced it would freeze relations to Denmark as a (collective) punishment for its failure to extradite Holck. The Danish government did not announce any counter-measure but expressed its regret while it contemplated seeking the assistance of the EU (Bostrup 2011). The situation was reminiscent of the Muhammad cartoon crisis where Third World powers also felt slighted and put pressure on the Danish government to “do more”. In both cases the Danish government responded that court decisions – whether about cartoons or extradition – should be respected. The basic difference seems to be that among “argumentative Indians” contestation is God: Legal decisions are not necessarily reached by reference to the law in a narrow technical sense but by allowing a plurality of elite and subaltern interests to be presented and a compromise worked out within an expanded constitutional framework. Legal pluralism allows for such contestation while legal monism seeks closure by applying Occam’s razor.[x]

In India over 50,000 people were detained under TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act) over a period of ten years. Less than one percent of them were convicted (Shankar 2009: xxi). Doing more may not always be very efficient from a legal point of view.

RE-FRAMING THE ISSUE, SHARPENING ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

How could the prosecution conceivably have turned the case to his or her advantage? For a start the prosecutor could have painted a more detailed picture of the Ananda Marga which would have challenged the image Holck and the defense counsel painted of a development organization building schools and hospitals. What is the Ananda Marga?  Based on an article by Helen Crovetto (Crovetto 2008), I have offered a short answer to this question in an earlier NIAS blog (Madsen 2010).

Please see http://infocus.asiaportal.info/2010/04/29/the-path-of-bliss/

Had the prosecution paused to paint a detailed picture of the Ananda Marga it might have re-framed the issue from one relating to the legality of extradition versus the protection of individual human rights to an issue of the duty of one democratic state not to assist, actively or passively, any of its citizens to foster violence in another democratic state versus the protection of individual human rights. This would have addressed the question that many Danes have raised: “What if Indians dropped weapons over Copenhagen? Would Denmark not demand that such arms-droppers be extradited?” (Information 2007; see also Kyrø 2011, Hansen 2008), and it might have enabled the court to reach another verdict.

To illuminate the context, the prosecution could have reiterated that India has repeatedly sought the extradition of various people without success. India wanted LTTE-supremo Prabhakaran for the murder of Rajiv Gandhi, but did not get him. India wants Warren Anderson, the ex-CEO of Union Carbide headquartered in the USA, to face trial in the Bhopal Gas Leaks Case (Expressindia 2010, Misra 2011, and Zeenews 2011). Well-known writer and journalist MJ Akbar feels that Anderson showed contempt for the Indian legal system when he left India (or absconded) in 1984 (Akbar 2010). India also demands the extradition of about a dozen people hiding in Pakistan ranging from Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar for his alleged involvement in the Bombay Blasts in March 1992 to the Lashkar-e-Toiba and ISI operatives behind the attack on Mumbai in November 2008.[xi] The fact that India wants for the extradition of several others apart from Holck increases the likelihood that India would treat Hock according the agreement reached with Denmark in order to facilitate the extradition of other, and more wanted, persons, the prosecution could have argued. From the Indian point of view, the failure to hand over Niels Holck is one more example of other countries obstructing the process of bringing criminals to justice. The decision hurt Indian pride at a time when India has made a number of sweet deals in (including the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement) in the diplomatic field. With Indian pride growing, the setback in the legal sphere caused official rancor.

In return, the defense counsel could have mustered a list of Indians living in India and hiding from prosecution elsewhere. For example, he could have cited the case of confidence trickster and serial killer Charles Sobhraj who took shelter for decades in Indian jails (sic!) to avoid prosecution in Thailand (Wikipedia).  Or he could have pointed to the case of Haji Mohammed Yaqoob, Minister for Haj and Minority Welfare in the state of Uttar Pradesh who in 2006 promised Rs 51 crore and the equivalent in gold of the weight of anyone who would chop off the head of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard (Dougal 2006). Indian authorities apparently have not taken the initiative to prosecute this honorable MLA.

Apart from the above possibilities to reframe the issue the prosecutor could have pursued obvious mistakes on the defense side. For example, Niels Holck claimed that he did not know the true size of the consignment until the crates containing the weapons were reloaded in Varanasi airport. But then he felt helpless to do anything about it because, as he explained in High Court, the temperature was 55 degrees centigrade. Here the prosecution could have informed the court that in Varanasi the average maximum temperature for the month of December when the airdrop took place is less than 25 degree Celsius and the average minimum temperature about 10 degrees Celsius. The temperature, in other words, is likely to have been quite pleasant. Similarly, the prosecution could have faulted the defense lawyer for arguing that it would take 19 hours to drive the approximately 1,400 km from Delhi to Calcutta according to Google map by informing the court that the Danish embassy staff would most likely take a plane to Calcutta. More seriously, the prosecution could have nullified a string of key arguments the defense counsel made in the Lower Court and to a lesser extent in the High Court to the effect that prison conditions and police and army brutality was a particular problem in West Bengal. Several of the sources (International Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch) which the defense counsel cited to build this argument referred to North-East India and not to West Bengal. In effect, the court was led up the garden path when the defense counsel wrongly placed West Bengal in North-East India. Further, the prosecution could have argued that it is never possible to guarantee that Holck, or anyone else, would not suffer death in an Indian prison. The prison population of India was about 332,112 (BBC News no date). The total number of prisoners who died in 2006 was reported to be 1,424 (Udskrift af Østre Landsrets Dombog, p. 10) amounting to 0.43%. In Denmark in 2009 the total prison population was 9,732 of who six died and six committed suicide (Kriminalforsorgen 2009, table 9.2). This amounts to 0.12%. There is a clear difference between India and Denmark but it is not as vast as the defense counsel (and Peter Bleach) indicated.

In return the defense counsel could have argued that the case against Hock could drag on for much longer than visualized in the diplomatic agreement between the two countries. The public prosecutor in the lower court held up the promise that Holck could be back in Denmark in three weeks provided he pleaded guilty, but the diplomatic agreement specified that Holck would not be tried in a Special Court. This means that the case would be initiated in a court of first instance, in casu the Calcutta Chief Metropolitan Court, from where appeals and interventions may be made (by either party or by third parties) to High Court, the Supreme Court and finally as a mercy petition to the President. Mercy petitions with the Indian President regularly take many years to decide.[xii] In effect, the case could plausibly drag on for years.

Even so the prosecution could insist that the issue is properly one of how democracies should relate to each other in the long run in a globalizing world. Political science claims that democracies do not wage war against each other. How could a Dane be allowed to do so with impunity? Denmark, as the prosecution did say in the Lower Court, should not become a safe haven (“et helle”) for terrorists. As the Security Council resolution 1373 states:

By other terms, the Council decided that all States should prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other countries and their citizens. States should also ensure that anyone who has participated in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in supporting terrorist acts is brought to justice. They should also ensure that terrorist acts are established as serious criminal offences in domestic laws and regulations and that the seriousness of such acts is duly reflected in sentences served (Security Council 2001).

As noted by Sasikumar who traces the India route from “sponsor state” to “victim state”:

“This resolution has become the rallying point for ‘victim states’ like India. Indian leaders draw attention to the fact that it proscribes all forms of support to terrorists” (Sasikumar 2010: 620).

International cooperation is based both on law and on trust. India bent over backwards, exhibiting its soft underbelly in the process, to accord Denmark exceptionally broad guarantees in order to capitalize on the new situation arising after September 11, 2001. However, Holck still evaded them because the Danish courts did not want to extradite a citizen to an uncertain fate outside its civilisational orbit. As the defense counsel noted at the end of the High Court case: “This is a difficult case. It is the first time that a Dane risks being extradited outside the West European cultural area” (“Dette er en vanskelig sag. Det er første gang en dansker i givet fald skal sendes uden for vor vesteuropæiske kulturkreds”). Prominent defense lawyers, such as Trier, tend to plead for the rights of refugees to stay in Denmark. Drawing on international human rights law, they seem correspondingly eager to protect clients from extradition. On the prosecution side, feeble attempts to reframe the issue with reference to international law, the common fight against terror and the importance of supporting an ordered process of globalization turned out fruitless as the bench kept its focus on the protection of individual human rights.

Holck’s argument about the right to self-defense against communist misrule – setting aside the state monopoly of violence – was left hanging in the air. Perhaps the prosecution should have shot it down as it was shot down in the Salwa Judum case. The argument that a person, or a people, have a right to self-defense may have merit, but often is does not. In July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik committed a gruesome act of terror in Norway. Like Holck, he claimed to be fighting communism. Like Holck, the ideology of this “Angry Norwegian” was framed as a form of self-defense directed, in his case, against Islamic incursion into Norway abetted by the treason of crypto-communist multiculturalists paying no heed to the right to national self-determination. Breivik is likely to receive a hard punishment. It was India’s bad record which has prevented Holck from being sentenced. In that sense India has itself to thank for its defeat.

Interestingly, the Calcutta High Court has subsequently upbraided the Indian government for not ratifying the Convention against Torture: Acting on a petition the High Court directed the GOI to ensure that India would ratify the Convention against Torture because, “If the U.N. Convention against Torture had been ratified in Parliament, it might have been possible to ensure the extradition of Kim Davy” (The Hindu 2011).

This may be a vain hope, however. As has been argued by Asian Human Rights Commission, what counts is not only the signing of conventions, but reforming the police force which are charged with doing an impossible job:

“In most cases the officers are expected to discharge a job that no one in the world could ever do. For instance, what could a police officer responsible for traffic control do if the roads are filled with persons driving vehicles who obtained their licences by merely paying bribes?; what could a traffic police officer do if the junction at which the officer is posted has no traffic lights and the road conditions are terrible due to corruption in road construction?; how can a police officer investigate a crime other than by torturing a suspect and obtaining a confession when the officer is not trained in scientific crime investigation?; what else could a police officer do other than demanding and accepting bribes when the officer is not provided a house in the city where the officer is posted and forced to rent a house that would almost cost half of the officer’s salary?; how can police stations function when the telephones and vehicles at the station do not work?; what morality will such a force have when they are expected to protect political masters who enjoy fruits of corruption?

…

Of equal importance is the role of the Indian civil society, including the country’s media, to keep a focus upon the conditions of the police and to hear their concerns. In that there is no sense for the civil society to push the government to ratify the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), which the government for understandable reasons is delaying to undertake. The ratification of CAT without having a comprehensive national policing policy to improve the state of policing makes no sense. In fact in the neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, which have all ratified the CAT without a sensible policy to improve the state of policing in these jurisdictions are examples from which both the government, and the civil society in India can draw learning (Asian Human Rights Commission 2011).”

It seems that even if the prosecution had been more innovative, (s)he would have a hard time convincing the judge to allow Holck’s extradition.

REFERENCES

Akbar, MJ, 2010,”Anderson laughed at Indian law and State”, Times of India, 20 June, http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/anderson-laughed-at-indian-law

Asian Age 2011, “40m civilian-owned firearms in India: UN”,September 21,  http://www.asianage.com/india/40m-civilian-owned-firearms-india-un-385

Asian Age, “Fernandes in Nanda pocket: Adm. Bhagwat”, 23 February, retrieved from http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/reg.burma/archives/199902/msg00498.html on September 12, 2011.

BBC News (no date), World Prison Populations, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm

Bostrup, Jens (2011) “EU star klar til at hjælpe Danmark mod Indien”, Politiken, Internationalt, 19. August, p. 8.

Copenhagen Post Online, “Indian residents claim “hypocrisy” in Holck case”, August 24, http://www.cphpost.dk/news/international/89-international/52029-indians-in-denmark-hypocrisy-in-holck-case.html.

Crovetto, Helen (2008)”Ananda Marga and the Use of Force”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 12, 1: 26-56. Also published in Violence and New Religious Movements. Edited by James R. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Dougal, Sundeep (2006) “Off With His Head!”, Outlook, February 20, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?230294

Expressindia, 2010, “Bhopal gas tragedy: ‘Case against Carbide chief still on’”, June 8, www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Bhopal-gas-tragedy-Case-against-Carbide-chief-still-on/631089/.

Gokhale, Nitin A, 1999, “Why is George Fernandes allowing gun-running that hit the army?”, Outlook, retrieved from http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/reg.burma/archives/199902/msg00334.html on September 12, 2011.

Guha, Ramachandra (2011) “After the Fall”, The Caravan, June 1, www.caravanmagazine.in/Story.aspx?Storyid=916&StoryStyle=FullStory

Hansen, John (2008) “En forsvarstale”. Review of Niels Holck and Øivind Kyrø, De kalder mig terrorist, People’s Press, http://bog.guide.dk/Erindringer/Niels%20Holck/Samfund/Om%20forfatterne/En_forsvarstale_1350977

Information, 2007, “‘Hvad nu hvis det var en inder, der havde kastet våben ned over Nørrebro?”, 21. August.

India Today (1996), “A Lethal Invasion”, Special Reports, February 15, pp. 42-55.

Indian Penal Code, Act No. 45 of 1860, http://districtcourtallahabad.up.nic.in/articles/IPC.pdf

Kaur, Ravinder (2011) “Danske vrangbilleder af Indien. Fatter danske medier ikke, at Indien i dag er en global og demokratisk magt og ikke et levn fra en fjern kolonitid?”, Politiken, kronik, http://i.pol.dk/debat/kroniker/article1394112.ece

Kyrø, Øjvind (2010) ”Ministerens ikke-viden”, Weekendavisen, Samfund, p. 2.

Kyrø, Øjvind (2011), ”Skæbnedage”, Weekendavisen, Samfund, April 17, p. 2, 23. september

Kriminalforsorgen 2009, Statistik, Direktoratet for Kriminalforsorgen.

Misra, Savvy Soumya, “CBI can seek Anderson’s extradition”, Down to Earth, April 30, 2011, www.downtoearth.org.in

Liang, Lawrence, 2011, “A beacon of light in the heart of darkness: SC holds Salwa Judum unconstitutional”, Kafila, July 6, http://kafila.org/2011/07/06/a-beacon-of-light-in-the-heart-of-darkness-sc-holds-salwa-juddam-unconstitutional/#more-8334

LOV nr 378, Lov om ændring af straffeloven, retsplejeloven, lov om konkurrence- og forbrugerforhold på telemarkedet, våbenloven, udleveringsloven samt lov om udlevering af lovovertrædere til Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige (Gennemførelse af FN-konventionen til bekæmpelse af finansiering af terrorisme, gennemførelse af FN s Sikkerhedsråds resolution nr. 1373 (2001) samt øvrige initiativer til bekæmpelse af terrorisme m.v.), www.retsinformation.dk/forms/r0710.aspx?id=1344

Madsen, Stig Toft (2010) “The Path of Bliss”, Focus Blog, NIAS, http://infocus.asiaportal.info/2010/04/29/the-path-of-bliss/

Madsen, Stig Toft (1996) State, Society and Human Rights in South Asia, New Delhi: Manohar.

Oskarsson, Patrik (2010) The law of the land contested: Bauxite mining in tribal, central India in an age of economic reform, PhD dissertation, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, accessed at http://zweland.net/ on September 2, 2011.

PRS Research (2010) “The Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010”, http://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-prevention-of-torture-bill-2010-1129/

Rediff.com, 2000, “Fernandes’s flirtation with LTE is ominous for Sri Lanka”, December 7, http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/dec/07spec.htm

Robinson, Nick (2010) “The Judiciary: Hard to reach”, Frontline 27: 3, January 30, http://flonnet.com/fl2703/stories/20100212270304600.htm

Roy, Biren (1996) ”Archana Guha’s Fight for Justice”, Economic and Political Weekly XXXI, 31: 2069, , August 3.

Sasikumar, Karthika (2010) “State Agency in the time of the global war on terror: India and the counter-terrorism regime”, Review of International Studies 36: 615-38.

Scarborough Evening News, “Scarborough’s Peter Bleach tells us his story”, August 31, 2011, http://www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk/community/local-focus/scarborough_s_peter_bleach_tells_us_his_story_1_3501499

SECURITY COUNCIL, ANTI-TERRORISM RESOLUTION; Resolution 1373, Dated 28/09/2001, see e.g. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3c4e94552a.html

Shankar, Shylashri (2009) Scaling Justice. India’s Supreme Court, Anti-Terror Law, and Social Rights, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Singh, Prabhakar (2010) “Indian International Law: From a Colonized Apologist to a Subaltern Protagonist”, Leiden Journal of International Law 23: 79-103

Supreme Court of India, Nandini Sundar and others (petitioners) vs State of Chhattishgarh (respondents), ITEM NO.44 COURT NO.9 SECTION PIL, WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO(s). 250 OF 2007,  http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/wc25007.pdf

The Hindu (2011) “Kim Davy extradition: time sought to file affidavits”, The Hindu, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2453673.ece

The Independent (2000),  “Mission Improbable”, February 1, www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/mission-improbable-726033.html

Wikipedia “Charles Sobhraj”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sobhraj

Udskrift af Østre Landsrets Dombog, Kendelse, Afsagt den 30. Juni 2011 af Østre Landsrets 11. Afdeling, kære nr. S-3321-10, pp. 18.

Venkatesan, V (2011) “A proven case”, Frontline, August 12,  pp. 43-46.

Walzer, Michael, (1977) Just and Unjust Wars …

Wikipedia, “George Fernandes”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fernandes#cite_note-66

Wikipedia, Simon Mann, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Mann.

www.parliament.uk, 27 Nov 2002: Column 114WH-121WH, Mr. Peter Bleach.

Zeenews, 2011, “Why was Anderson not questioned, CIC asks CBI”, June 20, http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/why-was-anderson-not-questioned-cic-asks-cbi_714072.html

The Danish translation of book 1 is released on September 29 and for the first time Danish readers will get their Murakami fix before the English translation hits bookstores across the world at the end of October.

PhD candidate at University of Cambridge and associated PhD candidate at NIAS, Gitte Marianne Hansen shows how Murakami’s latest novel relates to a group of largely ignored Murakami works that portray female protagonists, main characters and narrators.

Photographed by John Kyle Dorton, March 2009 onboard Tokyo metro line Tozai-sen.

SPOILER ALERT: this text reveals a few details from Murakami Haruki’s latest novel1Q84, book 1, chapter 1.

A female serial killer’s literary roots: Murakami Haruki, 1Q84 and Aomame

With sale-records in Japan and immense interest across the world, Murakami Haruki’s literary world needs little introduction. In 2010, tickets to the literary event Verdenslitteratur på Møn immediately sold out when the small literary society, based on a remote island in southern Denmark, welcomed the Japanese author as its guest of honor. Although Murakami had insisted on rules that almost seemed paranoid in a Danish context, we can expect an equally high level of interest when the Danish translation of book 1 of Murakami latest novel 1Q84 is released next week.

From 1982 to 1Q84
After reading only a few lines into 1Q84 it soon becomes evident that this is going to be a different reading experience than Murakami’s other long novels. Aomame, the first of two protagonists we meet, is female and not only very confident, but a cold-blooded serial killer as well. Interesting, right? Especially considering that Murakami’s works have been called a mirror of Japanese patriarchy and that his female characters have irritated some of Japan’s leading feminists who claim Murakami portrays women as objects for male subjectivities. These previous critiques of Murakami’s works may make a necessary point regarding some of his gender representations, perhaps especially those where an older male protagonist has relationships with very young girls, as in Supūtoniku no koibito (1999) [translated as Sputnik sweetheart] and Hitsuji wo meguru bōken (1982) [translated as A wild sheep chase]. However, such criticisms are incomplete because they do not take into account often-overlooked works in his authorship that portray female subjectivities. With the presence of Aomame, these works can no longer be ignored.

Although Murakami is best known for his first person male narrations, 1Q84 is not the first of his works to portray a female main character or question issues regarding women. Beginning with Bāto Bakarakku wa osuki? (1982) [not officially translated], later renamed Mado (2005) [translated as Window], where the male narrator recalls an encounter with a lonely housewife, Murakami has consistently authored a group of works that depicts the reality many women in Japan face. This group creates awareness of women’s issues and portrays protagonists, main characters, and narrators that are female. We can categorize these works into four literary styles: watashi-stories, boku-stories, third person-stories and watashi-tachi-stories.

Four literary styles
Watashi-stories – a female protagonist uses her own voice to narrate her own story via the first person pronoun, watashi (I), as in Nemuri (1989) [translated as Sleep], Kanō Kureta (1990) [not officially translated], Koori otoko (1991) [translated as The ice man] and Midori iro no kemono (1991) [translated as The little green monster]. In the Japanese language, watashi is used both by men and women, but men’s usage is typically limited to formal or polite speech whereas women use watashi in both informal and formal situations. Although some exceptions exist, male protagonists in Murakami’s works usually use boku (I) and not watashi (I) when they reveal their personal stories, and breaking this ‘rule’ often adds an interesting nuance of uncertainty or mystery to the characters.

Boku-stories – using the exclusive male first person pronoun, boku (I), a male narrator retells a female main character’s story as it was told to him, as in Bāto Bakarakku wa osuki?/Mado (1982/2005) [translated as Window], Takushii ni notta otoko (1984) [not officially translated], and Rēdāhōzen (1985) [Lederhosen].

Third person-stories – a third-person narrator narrates the story of a main female character, as in Tairando (1999) [Thailand], Hanarei bei (2005) [translated as Hanalei bay], Shinagawa-saru (2005) [translated as A shinagawa monkey], and most recently in 1Q84 (2009; 2010) [translated as 1Q84, forthcoming October 2011].

Watashi-tachi-stories – the unusual use of the plural pronoun watashi-tachi (we) in Afutādāku (2004) [translated as After dark].

Aomame’s predecessors – Murakami Haruki’s female narrative-works
Consisting of both short stories and novels, this diverse group of Murakami works is not confined to a particular literary style and addresses various political, social and personal issues that women in contemporary Japanese society face. In an article I wrote shortly after book 1 and 2 of 1Q84 was released in Japan, I therefore suggested using the term ‘Murakami Haruki’s female narratives’ to broadly categorize this group of works. The aim was to show that this group of works exists and to demonstrate how the works connect to the ‘female experience’ in contemporary Japan via three distinct themes: ‘housewife isolation’, ‘contemporary femininity’ (contradictive femininity) and ‘women and violence’ (both violence towards the self and towards others).

Aomame’s predecessors are not feminist empowered female characters who stand up for themselves and demand freedom from their female roles. For example, watashi in Nemuri gives up trying to free herself from her family, watashi in Midori iro no kemono re-suppresses her own ‘other self’ through self-harm and Kureta in Kanō Kureta narrates her own murder. But the majority of contemporary (Japanese) women are also not feminist empowered individuals and it is this reality Murakami delicately captures in his female narrative-works.

Against this backdrop of physical violence towards women and female character’s inability to stand up for themselves, 1Q84 is a strange breath of fresh air. Aomame’s organized slaughter of abusive husbands suggests an opposition to the silent witnessing of female victimization. Murakami’s latest female protagonist is different from the main characters in his other female narrative-works. This is evident in the beginning of this complicated story when she symbolically frees herself from the social norms for women by rolling up her tight mini skirt and taking off her high-heeled shoes – two essential contemporary female clothing items that, at least symbolically, restrict women’s mobility.

The mission
Aomame’s mission begins with her crawling down the emergency exit away from a jammed highway where traffic is not moving. The scene where a mother firmly ignores her young daughter’s plea to go outside after witnessing Aomame’s escapade from her car window, suggests that Aomame is the much-needed heroine that can inspire the next generation of girls to find their own “emergency exits”. However, as the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that Aomame herself may be unaware of her own importance.

Although Aomame is Murakami’s first female character to fight in an aggressive way, 1Q84 is not the first work that deals with issues such as violence, isolation and fragmentation that women face in Japanese society. On the contrary, Aomame has evolved from a consistent group of largely ignored female narrative-works that expose the raw realities of female lives. Murakami’s decision to create this determined, strong and violent female character shows an intense frustration over how women are trapped by their female roles. As a group, his female narrative-works delicately express how the conscious recognition of ‘I want out’ is often not enough to induce real change to female lives in contemporary Japan – and in many other societies.

Without revealing any further details about book 1, 2 and 3, I can say this much: I will be among the many queuing to get their hands on book 4 if and when it reaches Japanese bookstores. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing how Danish and English readers receive Aomame and her mission in the peculiar world of 1Q84.

Gitte Marianne Hansen
PhD Student, Japanese Studies,
Department of East Asian Studies,
Faculty of ASian and Middle Eastern Studies,
Cambridge University
Associated PhD Student, NIAS

………………………….

Part of this text was first presented at the annual Japan Studies Association held at Tokai University, Honolulu, Hawaii and later published in:
Gitte Marianne Hansen. 2010. Murakami Haruki’s Female Narratives – Ignored works show awareness of women’s issues. Japan Studies Association Journal Vol. 8.

A series of lectures (in Danish) on Murakami Haruki’s authorship are scheduled this autumn at Københavns Folkeuniversitet in Copenhagen.

Why did Kan resign as prime minister?
The short answer is that Kan made a political deal with the leaders of the two opposition parties, LDP and Komeito, to resign in exchange for quick passage of new laws. This only leaves us with more questions and the longer answer is that LDP and Komeito control the Upper House in the Japanese Diet and are thus able to delay the passage of bills for at least 60 days. After 60 days the Lower House can overrule the Upper House’s decision, but only with a two thirds majority (which DPJ with a bit of help from a few other parties are able to). 60 days is a long time in the current situation, where Japan is faced with a tremendous task of rebuilding after the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima. Waiting more than 60 days for passage of new budget for rebuilding and a new energy law would have put a lot of pressure on DPJ from the Japanese people. The voters would understand the DPJ as irresponsible, if nothing happened.

Popular support for Kan and his government was low to begin with due to other political failures, so it was easy for the LDP and Komeito to put Kan under pressure.

But in Japan, you don’t have to be prime minister to have influence over government policies. There are many examples of prime ministers as mere puppets – or mikoshi as the Japanese say referring to the portable shrine used during festivals. The shrine is steered through the streets by the people carrying it. Kan may not be prime minister now, but is still influential as one of those backing Noda.

Kan has left the scene, but only to go back stage. In the eyes of the Japanese, he played the role of the hero – and in Japan the hero often dies fighting to very end to fulfil a greater purpose. Kan argued many times, that the important thing was to pass the extra budget to begin rebuilding and to pass a new bill changing the energy system moving toward renewable energy and separating the authorities regulating the nuclear power plant and the authorities checking the plants.

Why did Noda become prime minister?
In Japan there are two archetypical prime minister. The first is the strong and charismatic leader who is at centre stage clearly articulating politics and direction. The prime ministers of the economic miracle period are usually associated with this type. Only Koizumi from 2001-2006 is a current example. Then there is the weak prime minister controlled by a shadow shogun or at least controlled by the shifting powers of intraparty interests – the infamous factions (or habatsu).

Both types of prime minister share some characteristics. Their strength and duration of time as prime minister depends on first of all, the level of support from the elected incumbents within own party, the level of support from all members of the party, and finally, the level of support from the voters (often filtered through the media).

The DPJ is split between two camps; those behind Ozawa, the former leader of DPJ, grand old man in Japanese politics and founder of several parties. And those not behind Ozawa. When the DPJ incumbents voted for new party president five candidates ran. In the first round no one won majority, but Ozawa’s candidate, Kaieda, was the strongest. In the second round, only Noda and Kaieda ran, and Noda only won, because a majority of incumbents would not like Ozawa to become the next strong shadow shogun, because his politics are too conservative to many. Noda, 54, is young (in Japanese terms) and represents the large group of younger politicians who wants politics to have content and vision – in stead of being about intraparty fighting and tactics.

Noda gained the support of Kan’s faction and also from the popular former foreign minister, Maehara who was one of the five candidates, and Noda was quick to say that he would follow in the footsteps of Kan and continue Kan’s politics – and also pay honour to the deal Kan made with LDP and Komeito to revise DPJ’s political manifesto. Noda has also chosen to give different factions within the DPJ a place in his government.

Will Noda continue the trend of short-lived prime ministers?
So it seems that Noda is already in place firmly tied to the mikoshi with very little manoeuvrability. However, several factors suggest that he might step out of the shadows of Kan and other intraparty and opposition party interests. If he can gain strong support from party members he will be able to win the formal election of party president to be held September 2012. How could he do this? He has already shown himself to be able to create alliances and is currently the best candidate in the eyes of the anti-Ozawa factions. Noda also possesses strong rhetorical skills. He has been training these almost every for the past 24 years by speaking in public at train stations explaining his politics to ordinary Japanese people. He has already demonstrated his ability to speak clearly and using images easy to understand in his inauguration speech. Prime Minister Koizumi was an expert in public speaking and understood how to translate this into political power. Maybe Noda can do the same?

But even though Noda understands intraparty tactics and has remarkable rhetorical skills, he still needs to be able to solve the massive problems Japan face. These include credible and effective rebuilding after the earthquake and tsunami – and control of and long term clean-up after the Fukushima nuclear disaster; the stagnant economy; the fast growing number of elders and smaller and smaller workforce to support paying for pensions and health care; various unsolved international challenges such as an agreement with the USA over Futenma Air Base in Okinawa, Northern islands dispute with Russia, and relations with China just to mention a few. But the biggest challenge by far is the people’s lack of trust in government. And Noda only has one year to convince his own party that he is the best leader to represent the DPJ in the elections for the Lower House to be held in August 2013 at the latest.

The first task is to kick start the Japanese economy through massive rebuilding of the disaster hit region. To finance this, Noda will try to implement a temporary tax and also gradually increase the consumption tax. Whether or not these moves will be seen as unpopular depends on how soon the people will experience real and positive change – and how well they will perceive Noda’s public appearances. We must remember that the low support rates for the past five prime ministers was due to the failure of solving Japan’s problems.

What is the role of political blogs in China?
This case study introduces the phenomenon of political blogs through one particular example, namely the blogger Han Han2. His blog has been the most debated political blog in China, and it serves as an extreme case which in the clearest possible way
brings out the new political dynamics. The blogpost printed below can serve as a basis for
discussing the role of political blogging in politics and more specifically if it can be used for
lobbying.
In the “blogosphere” one of the superstars is the mentioned blogger Han Han (韩寒) who was born in 1982. He is first and foremost an author and also a race car driver. He dropped out of high school to pursue a career as writer, and before he started blogging he had already gained fame through his books. His blog is called Twocold and can be found on the Sina-website in the Culture section. It is an extremely popular blog with more than 481 million visits (as of June 2011). The name of the blog refers to his name Han which means “cold”. As the sound is repeated in his name (Hán Hán) it sounds like cold pronounced twice – hence Twocold. Normally, for any single of his blog entries there will be around one million hits and 10-20,000 comments. It is possible for other blogs to present such numbers at special occasions but not for every posting, and so the blog has further
fuelled his celebrity status in China. Even so, he has chosen not to participate in public or media events apart from writing his own blog. Still, this does not stop the tabloid newspapers and magazines from writing about him much in the same way as about any pop-star. In addition to the blog, Han Han has opened his own web-shop, where he sells signed copies of his books. He also edited a magazine called Soloist Ensemble (独唱团) which was only published in one volume and then then authorities put so much pressure on him that the second volume was cancelled.

On the blog he debates many different things such as literature, movies, car racing, and the list continues. There is no topic too big or small to be discussed, but they have a thing in common namely that they somehow address social issues of China today. His initial debates were on the role of literature in society in which he launched fierce and sometimes personal attacks against other writers. In the last few years he has been commenting on just about each and every major social topic. His language resembles spoken language, and often it is ripe with imagery such as when he likens government buildings to prostitutes because of their instantly recognisable style. This brings up another reason for its popularity: There is a strong element of criticism of the political system in his writing.

Han Han’s blog makes political statements which go further than is usually accepted by the
authorities. He questions the fundamental principles of the Communist party-state, the legitimacy of their rule, and the role of citizens. The authorities have a hard time, because the number of followers makes it very difficult to shut his blog down. The fear is that it would create large protests, an unpleasant thing for a government which is generally very concerned with its public image. Han Han’s posts are sometimes initially posted with very critical content, and will hence be ordered removed. In spite of that, before the police orders the original post removed it has already been copied to several other locations and multiply in a way that makes it practically impossible for the censors to do anything about it.

Often, bloggers’ importance are measured by the number of visits or comments, and in Han Han’s case it is obvious that a lot of people regularly read his blog posts. Even so, as is well-known from user produced content websites, the quality of the comments is varying. Let us take the Shame on  Baidu blogpost as a concrete example. This blogpost has 10,127 responses (12 June 2011). The first comments read like this:
Sina Mobile User 2011-03-25 15:28:12:
Go Han Han!!!!!!
56606632 2011-03-25 15:28:19:
No. 1?
Estrella 2011-03-25 15:28:25:
hahaha
Political blogs in China: the case of Han Han
2
Han Han’s Bodyguard From Dongbei 2011-03-25 15:28:25:
haha
If Not Clean Don’t Disturb 2011-03-25 15:28:33:
Invasion of red fruit
Musangma Yeye 2011-03-25 15:28:42:
(A cartoon image of a rabbit)
Estrella 2011-03-25 15:28:47:
So fast, wow!
Radius_Ukiyo 2011-03-25 15:28:47:
Wow
Han Han’s Bodyguard From Dongbei 2011-03-25 15:28:53:
Couch

The first many pages of comments continue in this vein with a number of people commenting on the feeling of being close to Han Han, simply because they post their comment shortly after the original posting. After some time a number of comments get more substantial in relation to the discussion, but the quality of the “debate in the public sphere” can be questioned. Nevertheless, the impact of the blog is only partly to be found in the comments on the blog itself. Equally important is that people read it and take up some of the points in other connections, e.g. on their own blogs. They are inspired by Han Han’s clear and easily understandable statements. Copying, posting links to his blog, using his phrases are all examples of ways his ideas are taken up by “netizens” and through them shape the public discourse. And this is important to notice, because government is to
an increasing extent using netizens’ opinions as a gauge on public opinion.
In conclusion, Han Han’s blog is an illustration of how the Internet has facilitated pluralism in society. This also includes a broadening of the scope and depth of political issues which can be discussed. Through the Internet, bloggers like Han Han gain a medium which can provide them with a very broad base of followers who can make it difficult for government to entirely shut them down. On the other hand, even though Han Han’s blog is often edited by authorities, it is not censored beforehand which means that some of his critical messages and ideas escape to cyberspace before the censors manage to react.
1 The term “blog” comes from web-log and refers to an online chronological publication of thoughts and web-links.
2 Biographical information based on: http://baike.baidu.com/view/5972.htm
Han Han’s blog: blog.sina.com.cn/twocold

In a stadium in the outskirts of Bangkok on Friday, she yelled her message in a high pitched and indignate voice, and the response from the crowd was ear deafening. “PUEA THAI! PUEA THAI!”

The fact that she has had to do absolutely nothing – not even speak to her voters – says more about the Thai political situation than anything else.

In Thailand, a young woman running for Prime Minister would have exactly those two things against her. In a country where age equals experience, obviously a young candidate has much to prove. And she is going to be the first female Prime Minister Thailand has ever had. In a patriarchic society like Thailand that would constitute as a major concern. Logically, Yingluck Shinawatra would have spent every waking minute of her campaign assuring that those two things are not issues.

She didn’t and she didn’t have to. Because Yingluck Shinawatra is not running for PM in Thailand; Her big brother is.

Thaksin Shinawatra was couped from power in 2006. Having been in office for five years, and winning four elections in a row – a record in Thailand – the former “CEO” of Thailand has spend the years since then falling out with the elite, the monarchy and the army, and thus, today, he is a fugitive with an arrest order hanging over his head, if he ever returns.

That is, however, not as unfortunate as it sounds. Thaksin’s opposition to the power elite and their continued attempts to keep him out of politics, spotlights his agenda of breaking up the tight grip those three groups – army, rich elite and monarchy – has on the Thai democracy.

They run the country with little attention to the voice of the voters and the everyday problems, the citizens of Thailand struggle with. They run the country, not because they are elected to, but because with their good education, high ranks and superior social statuses, they are naturally entitled to. It is nobody’s place to tell them differently, and particularly it is not common people’s place, be it in vote form or otherwise. Despite the obstruction of rights and equality for the people in this construction, this is not an uncommon view for Thai people, particularly in the older generation.

In that respect, Thaksin Shinawatra stands for democracy in a Western definition – his leadership will be one, where the voice of the people will be heard and where politics to better the situation for the citizens of Thailand will be a priority. He has proven that already, and for that, he has almost endless support. There is just one catch:

He is a complete crook. Voting for Little Sis will also be voting for a man, who has much focus on making himself richer in such a scale that it cannot be defended in any way.

While he was Prime Minister, he made numerous state funded contributions to companies owned by friends and family, several of his relatives were elevated in rank, and the premiership had a direct positive effect on Thaksin Shinawatra’s personal bank account.

Voting for a sincere, democratic candidate, whose sole interest is to be as good a Prime Minister as he or she can be, is not an option in Thailand.

So really, while celebrating Yingluck’s victory, Thai people need to start asking themselves:

How big of a crook is Thaksin Shinawatra really? Because the way the dice landed, Thai democracy is in large part dependant on the answer.

Anya Palm,
freelance journalist based in Bangkok, NIAS associate
www.palmwritings.com
http://www.facebook.com/PalmWritings

While many scholars have already been investigating Japanese consumption and consumers, little is still known how foreign designers and design companies can penetrate the Japanese market, which is why in the summer of 2010 we initiated a project to study Finnish designers and design companies entering the Japanese market. Our findings are based on an empirical study dealing with Hirameki Design x Finland – the biggest Finnish design export initiative to date.

Below, I will briefly introduce our research group, after which I discuss some of our main findings. Finally, I will offer my take on how design-related research in the Scandinavian-Japanese context should develop.

Our research group – titled JaBuPro – consisted of eight researchers (one coordinator, three PhD students, and four Master’s students from Aalto University, Finland) who – for various reasons – had fallen in love with Japan and Japanese aesthetics.. Before this project, our coordinator – Virpi Serita – had already coordinated two student-driven Japan-related projects (first about business communication, second focusing on marketing Finnish design in Japan), so against this backdrop our recently finished project was a natural continuation to the previous two projects.

The book we released – Doing Design Business in Japan: Experiences from Hirameki – was mainly practical in focus; aimed at giving hand-on guidance to designers. In this publication we touched Japanese business etiquette and culture, storytelling, network models to name few examples. In terms of academic contributions, members of our team have worked on various topics.  Some have written conference papers on the internationalization motives of Finnish design companies, one is currently working on questions dealing with the Japanese mobile market and accessible design, while others are working on PechaKucha presentations as visual knowledge communication tools in multicultural settings. Thus, the academic and practical contributions of our guerrilla project (we all worked on it in addition to our PhD and Master’s studies) varied from internationalization strategies and accessible design to visual knowledge creation and storytelling as a communicative icebreaker in Japan.

As we saw it, the challenge related to managerial books on Japan is that they always seem to focus on stereotypes and heavy industry. The problem with these kinds of books is that they over-simplify Japan and the Japanese, and leaves out some of the “softer” elements of conducting business.

Focusing on the generally accepted stereotypes does not bring us closer to each other culturally simply because stereotypes often do not apply in practice. Furthermore, there are also great variations between different industries and professions – particular rituals and norms being held as more important in certain fields than in others. We found, for example, that the Japanese business etiquette it not followed as strictly within the creative industries as it might be within heavy/traditional industry. The tendency to ignore internal diversity has had a strong hold on cultural analysis within business disciplines (e.g. management, international business, marketing), and cultural research has taken major steps, these disciplins still rely heavily on Hofstede’s notion of culture. We found, however, that equating culture with nationality has a tendency of leading to empty constructs since within a nation, it can be argued that there is cultural deviation between professions, cities, educations and so forth. In fact, during our project we found that often the Finnish designers felt they could easily relate to their Japanese counterparts. Thus, with our project it was our ambition to contribute to making a shift the focus of cultural studies in business, from explaining to describing. The ambition was to give our reader rich and detailed accounts of a specific context rather than attempt making reductionist generalization.

We also found, during our data collection phase that storytelling (something we would characterize as a rather “soft” business practice) plays an extremely important role in Japan as a means to convey not only knowledge, but also emotions. Indeed, in terms of storytelling, it would seem that Japan is one of the most fertile contexts to collect empirical material. Japan has a very long history of storytelling, and the power of stories has endured or even become stronger in the 21^st century and today stories are an essential aspect in consumption, and business negotiations, for example. Our focus was on the intersection between stories and business negotiations and one of our findings was that stories can be used to connect with one’s client or to break the ice in business negotiations. What makes business negotiations interesting in Japan is that things have a tendency of progressing slowly and matters are usually dealt with indirectly. In this light, approaching your potential customer or agent indirectly with stories  (behind your product or company, for example) seems to be a path worth investigating.

To conclude, we launched the project because we felt the companies required tools to expand to the Japanese market and because our theoretical understanding of Finnish (or Scandinavian) design companies entering the Japanese market is still rather limited.

In terms of further research, the intersection between Scandinavia, Japan, and design is interesting not only because it hasn’t been studied extensively, but also because we still don’t know much about the actual processes related to internationalizing design products and services, and how meanings and symbols embedded in a design product are carried from culture to another (or from a market to another). Thus, cultural studies have a lot to offer to design-related investigations.

Miikka Lehtonen

miikka.j.lehtonen@aalto.fi

+35840 353 8451

References:

JaBuPro research group (you can download the book from the web site): http://www.jabupro.fi

Hirameki – Finnish design export initiative by Design Forum Finland: http://www.hiramekidesign.com

Aalto University: http://www.aalto.fi/en/

Elections tend to receive a lot of media attention these days—Laos being an obvious exception. Still, in recent months two elections have taken place in Laos, one to the National Assembly (NA) and one to the Party Congress. Even if they by nature do not deliver any major surprises, they still say something about politics in Laos.

The election to the Lao National Assembly was held on April 30. Out of 190 candidates 132 members were elected—all were pre-selected by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party except five independent candidates. Of the elected members 31.8% were from the government and 68.18% from local authorities (75% were male and 25% female, a bit short of the goal to have 30% women in the Assembly). According to the newspaper Vientiane Times, the election results were quite impressive—99.6% of the eligible voters cast their ballots (!), and the “voters showed great enthusiasm in exercising their political rights to ensure qualified personnel elected to the NA”. In June the National Assembly will formally adopt the new government.

But those being familiar with Lao politics know that the real policymakers were elected already in March at the 9^th Party Congress. At the congress 576 delegates represented 191,780 party members nationwide (out of a 6 million population), and they re-elected the 75-year old Choummaly Sayasone—also president of the country—as party secretary general. Members to the Politburo (11) and the Central Committee (61) were also elected. Interestingly, an increasing number of the elected members hold doctoral degrees.

It is quite obvious that the elections, which take place every five years, will not lead to any radical changes in politics or in power dynamics. However, it is expected that a new and younger generation of party technocrats gradually will take over the leadership of the ruling party, which probably will allow for more open discussions. Already now corruption and complaints of inefficient implementation of laws are being publicly discussed. But of course political opposition is still not allowed and media is under state control.

Economic circle in Indochina. Click here for larger picture. Picture by Kristina Jönsson.

A perhaps more significant dimension of Lao politics is the relationship with China and Vietnam. In December 2010, the previous Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh unexpectedly resigned, and Thongsing Thammavong, previously National Assembly president, assumed the post. Some analysts say the change indicated a shift from China towards Vietnam—while others say that would be to miss nuances of Lao politics. There could be some truth in it though, as the presence of China in Laos has increased in recent years through business collaboration and large infrastructure projects but also in other fields, such as education and training. The Lao population has voiced their concern about the “invasion” from the big neighbour in the north, and it is possible that the leadership wanted to address this in some way.

The biggest challenge facing Lao policymakers today is how to develop the country economically. Laos is one of the least developed countries in Southeast Asia, and the aim of the government is to lift Laos from the least-developed nation status by 2020—primarily through selling off natural resources, such as timber, mining and hydropower. At the party congress in March, the party approved measures to “boost” the development (further). Laos has experienced a high economic growth the last few years and is expected to continue this year (7%- 8% GDP growth rate). But many worry about the management of the big influx of foreign investments and about environmental consequences. Take the Xayaburi dam building for example. Laos wants to become “the battery of the region” through the exploitation of hydropower—primarily by selling electricity to Thailand and Vietnam. However, the neighbouring countries, and environmentalists alike, have increasingly challenged this strategy. There are already four dams in China (and four more are planned), but Xayabury would be the first dam to affect the lower Mekong and the consequences are feared to be devastating.  A report by the Mekong River Commission, of which Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand are members, states that 23-100 fish species are endangered and consequently also the livelihood and food security of the people in the region, as fish migration will be disrupt. In addition, soil will not reach the presently very fertile Vietnamese Mekong delta. Laos has reluctantly agreed to postpone the construction of the Xayaburi dam after the criticism, but for how long is not clear. The plan is to develop 70 hydro projects, 10 are already in operation and five are under construction—only in Laos!

The pressure on the government is mounting. Economic development is a top priority, but the road towards a higher income level is bumpy. Inequalities are increasing in Laos, even if poverty reduction has been successful at an aggregate level, and the government eventually needs to cater for all people not to loose legitimacy. In other words, the government needs to balance between economic development of the country and the development of its people—and to keep up good relations with the neighbouring countries at the same time. We may not expect any “flower revolution” in a foreseeable future, but that does not mean that there are no (political) changes in Laos. They are just expressed in a more subtle way than in many other places.

Sources:

http://www.vientianetimes.org.la
http://www.voanews.com
http://www.bangkokpost.com
http://www.nwasiaweekly.com

Journalist, Politiken og Associate Senior Fellow ved NIAS

For 60 år siden sendte Danmark et hospitalsskib til Den Koreanske Halvø for at hjælpe krigsofre. Her i 2011 kvitterer Korea med at gøre Danmark til partner i et visionært samarbejde om grøn vækst. Det kan betyde nye muligheder for en lang række danske virksomheder med speciale i grønne teknologier og bedre energiudnyttelse.

Med anledning i et netop overstået statsbesøg, hvor den sydkoreanske præsident Lee Myung-bak har været to dage i Danmark, har flere koreanske og danske virksomheder og forskningsinstitutioner benyttet lejligheden til at underskrive samarbejdsaftaler.

Brancheorganisationen Vindmølleindustrien har høje forventninger til et kommende samarbejde med den koreanske søsterorganisation.

‘Danmark har en førerposition inden for vindkraft, og Sydkorea satser rigtig meget på grøn økonomi, så vi vil gerne have så mange danske virksomheder som muligt med til Sydkorea. Det kan betyde, at det er danske virksomheder, der leverer kompetencer og komponenter til koreanske vindprojekter, siger den administrerende direktør i Vindmølleindustrien, Jan Hylleberg.

Det var også de helt store lovord, der kom i brug, da statsminister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (V) og den koreanske præsident, Lee Myung-bak, afsluttede det koreanske statsbesøg 12. maj.

‘Det er en alliance, som vil gavne hele menneskeheden. Det handler om at skabe en lysere, grønnere fremtid sammen’, sagde den koreanske præsident.

Organisationen Dansk Industri ser optimistisk på den nye grønne alliance, der lover jobskabelse i millionstørrelse. En tredobling af dansk eksport til Sydkorea kan være inden for rækkevidde, vurderer afsætningspolitisk chef i Dansk Industri Peter Thagesen.

Frihandelsaftale med EU

De optimistiske fremtidsudsigter  skyldes ikke mindst indgåelsen af en frihandelsaftale mellem EU og Sydkorea sidste efterår. Dansk erhvervsliv har med sine styrkepositioner inden for de grønne teknologier, som koreanerne efterspørger, et stærkt udgangspunkt. Kombinationen af en frihandelsaftale og en række klima-og miljøpolitiske satsninger er derfor særlig interessante for betydelige danske virksomheder.

For EU’s aftale med Sydkorea er den mest omfattende aftale, EU nogensinde har forhandlet. Allerede ved ikrafttrædelsen blev der fjernet importtold på europæiske varer for omkring én milliard euro. Norges eksport til Sydkorea blev tredoblet i de tre år efter indgåelse af en norsk-koreansk frihandelsaftale.

Republikken Korea og Danmark deler en ambition om at være frontløbere i et europæisk-asiatisk samarbejde om miljø-og klimapolitik og dermed udviklingen af de grønne arbejdspladser, der spås at blive spydspidsen i det 21. århundredes økonomiske udvikling. Korea vil inden 2020 skabe 1,8 millioner grønne job og næsten 1.000 milliarder kroner i omsætning inden for den teknologi, der populært kaldes cleantech. Det har tænketanken Mandag Morgen opgjort.

Præsident Lee og statsminister Lars Løkke Rasmussen præsenterede under statsbesøget den nye grønne vækstalliance. Nyskabelserne i alliancen er dels et dansk initiativ, Global Green Growth Forum ( 3GF), dels det koreanske Global Green Growth Institute ( GGI). Begge har til formål at inddrage private og offentlige virksomheder og myndigheder i partnerskaber, der fremmer grøn vækst.

Vækstforum

3GF vil blive en årligt tilbagevendende begivenhed i Danmark, og det første Forum afholdes to dage i oktober med deltagelse af 200 af verdens ledende beslutningstagere, der arbejder med udfordringer relateret til grøn vækst – politikere, direktører, investorer og meningsdannere.

Da det ikke lykkedes at indgå bindende klimapolitiske aftaler ud af COP15-topmødet i København i december 2009, gik miljø- og klimapolitikken i stå rent politisk. Men det koreansk-danske initiativ betyder, at private aktører tager over og viser vejen for politiske ledere og erhvervsledere på mange niveauer, kort sagt direktører, forskere, folkevalgte og borgmestre.

Grøn vækst er blevet en national satsning i Korea og nyder støtte i alle dele af samfundet. Hvad enten man taler global klimadagsorden, internationalt samarbejde eller forskning og innovation, markerer Korea sig med en klar grøn profil. Koreansk erhvervsliv har høje ambitioner, når det gælder klima-, miljø-og energirelateret teknologi. Ambitionerne næres af massiv politisk støtte, økonomiske realiteter og en klar overbevisning om, at fremtidens økonomiske vækst er grøn.

Regeringen i Seoul har afsat 700 milliarder dollar over 10 år til en omstilling af landets energi-og miljøinfrastruktur samt til forskning og udvikling, der skal medvirke til at udvikle Koreas grønne konkurrenceevne. Det historisk tætte bånd mellem stat og erhvervsliv sikrer, at alle dele af samfundet bidrager til målet.

Formålet med 3GF er at identificere mulighederne i den grønne industrielle revolution og at bidrage til at accelerere den industrielle omstilling til en miljø-og klimavenlig økonomi. 3GF skal slå bro mellem politik, kapital, virksomheder og teknologi med henblik på at udnytte vækstpotentialet i den grønne revolution. Drivkraften skal være globale privat-offentlige partnerskaber.

3GF vil være en årligt tilbagevendende begivenhed. Første Forum finder sted 11.-12. oktober i København og forventes at få 200 deltagere fra hele verden.

Inden for rammerne af 3GF vil Danmark og Korea invitere internationale virksomheder, investorer, tænketanke og internationale organisationer. 3GF vil i 2011 fokusere på energieffektivitet og vedvarende energi, transport og vand.

Bilateralt samarbejde

Som en del af den nye koreanskdanske vækstalliance er oprettet GGGI, Global Green Growth Institute, der er placeret i den sydkoreanske hovedstad, Seoul. Instituttet er fortsat under opbygning, og den danske regering yder et bidrag på 30 millioner kroner årlig i tre år.

På det bilaterale område vil den koreansk-danske vækstalliance styrke det statslige, kommercielle og institutionelle samarbejde inden for fjernvarme, vindsektoren, sol-og bølgeenergi, biobrændstof og brændselsceller, intelligente energinetværk, vand, hybrid-og elbiler og grøn shipping.

Koreanske industrivirksomheder har sat fokus på forskning og udvikling i områder som vedvarende energi (sol-, bølge- og vind), grønne biler, brændselsceller, energilagring, nanoteknologi LED teknologi, energieffektivitet og intelligente netværk (’smart grids’). I takt med udviklingen kommer en gryende interesse i alle dele af samfundet for energieffektivitet og energibesparelser.

Som eksempler på udviklingen kan nævnes vindindustrien, der er et af områderne hvor sydkoreansk erhvervsliv er på vej frem med hastige skridt. En lang række af de største industrivirksomheder (Samsung, Hyundai, STX, Daewoo, Doosan m.fl.) har investeret betydeligt på området og har udviklet turbiner til hjemme- og eksportmarkedet. Særligt inden for off-shore teknologi er Korea fortsat i en udviklingsfase, hvor danske underleverandører kan byde ind med viden og teknologi.

Indførelsen af en Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) ordning i 2010 giver incitamenter til at udvikle markedet for vedvarende energi i Korea lige så vel som teknologien til at realisere målsætningen. Det gælder primært inden for de prioriterede områder vind- og tidevandsenergi samt brændselsceller, men også biomasse og solenergi. Korea skønnes at være et af de lande, der vil have det hurtigst voksende marked for solenergi.

Korea arbejder på at blive det første land med et fuldt integreret nationalt intelligent netværk og eksperimenterer med etableringen af verdens største smart grid pilotprojekt på øen Jeju. Det statsejede koreanske energiselskab har annonceret investeringer i størrelsesordenen 7,2 milliarder dollar i smart grids frem til 2030. Projektet har indtil videre tiltrukket 10 konsortier, 168 virksomheder, der forventes at investere omkring USD 6 milliarder i projektet i de kommende år.

Af andre prioriterede satsninger i Korea kan nævnes grøn IT, der fokuserer på at minimere energiforbruget forbundet med produktionen og anvendelsen af IT produkter. Dertil kommer hybrid-, elektricitets- og hydrogenbaserede automobiler samt tilknyttet teknologi (batterier etc.), værftsindustrien (grøn shipping), nanoteknologi samt CO2-binding og lagring. Perspektiverne for samarbejde er enorme mellem Danmark og Korea, der kan betegnes som henholdsvis ”first mover” og ”fast mover” når det gælder grøn teknologi.

Det begyndte med Jutlandia…

Relationerne mellem Danmark og Korea begyndte med noget, der havde meget lidt med økonomi at gøre. Børnebørnene efter den generation, der husker erfaringerne fra Koreakrigej og hosåpitalsskibet Jutlandia, vokser i dag op i et land, der er blandt verdens førende inden for uddannelse, fladskærme, mobiltelefoner, skibsbyggeri og biler.

Med en gennemsnitlig årlig vækst på 9 procent er Sydkoreas nationalprodukt nu på højde med Italiens og New Zealands. Så sent som i 1970′ erne var landet modtager af dansk udviklingsbistand, sidste år blev landet medlem af donorernes klub i OECD.

Hvordan har det kunnet lade sig gøre? Uddannelse, uddannelse og uddannelse, men er det bare pisken, der er blevet brugt i klasseværelserne?

Det er en udfordring for vor egen måde at tænke udvikling på, men forklaringen er primært civilisatorisk: Den koreanske dreng eller piges fundamentale æresbegreb er kungfutsiansk: Du ærer kun dine forældre ved at vise din flid, dygtighed, evne og vilje til at forberede din og andres fremtid til noget bedre end det, de kom fra.

Flemming Ytzen (f. 1952) har arbejdet som journalist siden 1976, fra 1994 på Politiken. Han kommenterer asiatisk udvikling og politik på TV2 News og er en hyppigt anvendt foredragsholder. Læs mere på: http://flemmingytzen.wordpress.com

Fælles for disse to terrorister er, at de har opholdt sig meget længe uden for deres hjemlande. Osama bin Ladens spin på dette faktum er en sammenligning af hans eget liv med profetens. Ligesom Muhammad pendulerede mellem Mekka og Medina under sit hijra, har bin Laden været i eksil i Afghanistan (Bergen s. 161). Profeten endte med at opnå politisk kontrol over sin hjemegn. Bin Laden har endnu ikke opnået dette, men han har forsøgt at gøre Muhammad kunststykket efter.

Med moderne øjne ligner bin Ladens og al-Zawahiris rejsevirksomhed turistens eller globetrotterens i og med at de frivilligt har rejst til fremmede lande på flere længere rejser. Ligesom nogle turister tillægger deres rejser et altruistisk formål kan bin Ladens og al-Zawahiris tidlige ophold i Pakistan blandt afghanske flygtninge karakteriseres som en solidaritetsrejse. Det var gennem deres udviklings- og rehabiliteringsarbejde, hvor bin Laden bidrog som organisator og pengemand og Dr. Al-Zawahiri arbejdede som anæstesi læge, at de opbyggede den hird af kamptropper, som senere blev al Qaida. Deres altruistiske rejse til et sted i det fremmede udmøntede sig altså til en verdensomspændende kamp. Fra 2001 har de prominente arabiske gæster udgjort en stadig større risiko for deres værter i Afghanistan og Pakistan. Bin Laden og al-Zawahiri har hver en FBI dusør på 25 millioner dollar på deres hoved.

At yde statsligt eller ”privat asyl” til eftersøgte personer er ikke uproblematisk. ”Asyl til alle” stod der malet på nogle mindre installationer foran DR byen i København, da jeg cyklede forbi den 6. September. Nogle gæster på længerevarende tålt ophold – som Karl Marx i London – er måske fredelige i deres daglige færden på kort sigt. Opfordringen til at give ”asyl til alle” er måske endnu mere problematisk når princippet udstrækkes til personer som Bin Laden og Zawahiri er fordring er måske mindre klog i tilfældet bin Laden og Zawahiri.

I dette paper forsøger jeg at  angribe disse spørgsmål i klassiske Simmelske termer gennem et studie af forholdet mellem gæster og værter, som opstår, når de indfødte i et eller omfang inkorporerer fremmede, der kommer som turister, solidaritetsarbejdere, hellige krigere, guruer eller asylsøgere med henvisning til forfølgelse. Naturligvis er hverken Bin Laden og Zawahiri den gængse type turist eller udviklingsarbejder.  Alligevel vil jeg her gøre et forsøg på at anskue deres liv og levned i mere universelle og samtidigt ganske hverdagsagtige termer. Vi lever i standardiserings tidsalder, hvor teknologiske produkter og økonomiske processer vurderes ud fra fælles homogeniserede målestokke.^[i] Hele kulturer og livsverdener holdes op imod hinanden og sammenlignes som man sammenligner æbler og pærer. Jellingestenen, Tingvellir, Geirangerfjorden, og det sydlige Öland er alle kulturhistoriske og naturhistoriske perler opført på Unesco’s standardiserede World Heritage liste. Så hvorfor ikke se på bin Ladens og Zawahiris liv og levned i skæret af turisternes eller udviklingsarbejdernes eller antropologernes? Ligesom antropologer forlod bin Laden og Zawahiri deres relativt sikre liv i storbyen for at slå sig ned i yderkanten af civilisationen for at bære vidne om forholdene dér og hermed lade omverdenen forstå dialektikken mellem center og periferi.

Kilder

Osama bin Laden og al-Zawahiri har i de sidste mange år været utilgængelige for vestlige journalister og forskere. I marts 1997 interviewede journalisterne Peter Bergen og Peter Arnett og fotografen Peter Jouvenal Osama bin Laden i Afghanistan. Et foto af denne begivenhed findes i Peter Bergen’s The Osama bin Laden I Know med undertitlen An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader. I denne bog samler Bergen egne og andres indtryk af mennesket bin Laden til et kalejdoskopisk livsforløb. Det er bemærkelsesværdigt at meget få afghanere har bidraget til bogen. Den pakistanske journalist Hamid Mir giver sit besyv med. Han er den eneste fritstående journalist, der har interviewet bin Laden efter 11. September. Derudover stammer de repræsentationer af bin Laden, som Bergen viderebringer, mest fra saudier, egyptere og andre arabere, samt fra enkelte vesterlændinge. Billedet af bin Laden tegnes således ikke af de folk, som han har boet iblandt i mange år nemlig afghanerne og pakistanerne. Disse subalterne folk, hvis liv er påvirket af deres arabiske gæster, høres næppe i Bergens bog.

Lawrence Wrights monumentale bog Al Qaida. Vejen til 11. September er ligesom Bergens journalistisk, men Wright formår på en sjælden måde at flette de utallige oplysninger, som han baserer sin bog på, sammen til én lang fortælling om de skæbner, der krydsedes 11. September 2001. Desuden har Wright i et par artikler i The New Yorker formået at give et interessant indblik i Zawahiris liv og levned.

Til trods for at Osama bin Laden og al-Zawahiri har været utilgængelige i en årrække har de ikke været tavse. Deres foretrukne kommunikationsmåde har været videoer produceret af al Qaidas eget propagandaapparat al-Sahab (Skyerne.)^[ii] Jeg vil kun i begrænset omfang henvise direkte til disse produktioner. I det følgende vil jeg især benytte Bergen og Wright som kilder.

Fremmede på længerevarende feltarbejde

Antropologiens adelsmærke siges at være det længerevarende feltarbejde. Nu omstunder har antropologer ikke længer tid til unødigt at forlænge afstanden mellem tanke og faktura, men idealet blandt rigtige antropologer er stadig at bo i mindst ét år blandt de fremmede i det fremmede. Det har Zawahiri og bin Laden også gjort. Ligesom antropologer og andre på længevarende feltarbejde har de dermed fået den rolle, som den tyske sociolog Georg Simmel benævnte ”strangers”:

The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself (Simmel).

Den fremmede var i Simmels analyse en ”objektiv” person, fordi vedkommende kunne bevare en vis distance. Den fremmede har ofte vundet folks tillid, men han er også blevet udsat for mistænksomhed: ”In uprisings of all sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the beginning of things, that provocation has come from the outside, through emissaries and instigators” (Simmel).

Hvis lange ophold er mistænkelige i de lokales øjne, er lange fravær mistænksomme i hjemlandets øjne. Antropologer med lange fravær bag sig er ofte blevet beskyldt for at have ”gone native”, at have mistet deres oprindelige identitet. Længerevarende ophold i det fremmede sætter den fremmedes loyalitet over for sit oprindelige hjemland på en prøve. Både bin Laden og Zawahiri er kommet på kant med deres hjemlande. Zawahiri havde allerede været involveret i statsfjendtlige aktiviteter, før han kom til Pakistan for første gang. Bin Laden fik meget lang snor fra Saudi Arabien, som støttede hans projekter, men den Saudiske kongefamilie (som havde gjort bin Ladens far hovedrig) endte med at fratage Osama hans statsborgerskab i 1994 ligesom hans familie samme år (eller først efter 11. September?) slog hånden af ham. På trods af at den fremmede med års udlændighed bag sig kan opnå en privilegeret ”objektiv” position, ses vedkommende ofte på med blandede følelser i både sine gamle og sine nye omgivelser.

Efter Sovjetunionens invasion i Afghanistan i 1979 øgedes antallet af signifikante udlændinge i Afghanistan. Afghanerne blev stillet over for et valg mellem de fremmede. Nogle afghanere allierede sig med Sovjetunionen; andre førte modstandskamp i samarbejde med både Vesten, Pakistan og den øvrige muslimske verden. Ifølge Bergen var en af årsagerne til at bin Laden besluttede at danne egne arabiske enheder i stedet for at lade frivillige indsluse i afghanske enheder, at bin Laden ville forhindre, at de arabiske frivillige blev inddraget i indre afghanske stridigheder eller ”political games” (Bergen, s. 29). Strategien må siges at være mislykkedes: Saudierne og de fleste andre arabere bibeholdt ganske vist en grad af etnisk og social eksklusivitet, men de mistede deres ”objektivitet” og blev inddraget i afghanske modsætninger i den grad, at der opstod et ”Great Game” om loyalitet og indflydelse. Bergen fremhæver to akser: Palæstinenseren Abdullah Azzam, som blev bin Ladens guru, da han først kom til Pakistan, opnåede tidligt en forståelse med den afghanske krigsherre Ahmad Shah Massoud. Zawahiri derimod skabte en tæt forbindelse til krigsherren Gulbuddin Hekhmatyar. Azzam blev myrdet i 1989. Bergen er tilbøjelig til at tro, at Hekhmatyar og Zawahiri lå bag mordet på Azzam (Bergen, s. 93). Hekhmatyar og Massoud forblev fjender indtil Massoud blev dræbt af al Qaida udsendinge 9. September 2001. Forløbet viser at The Great Game om magten over Afghanistan startede allerede kort tid efter at de fremmede var ankommet til regionen, og at spillet delte såvel de lokale som de fremmede. De fremmede kunne ikke oparbejde den neutralitet, som udefrakommende, ifølge Simmel, kan erhverve sig.

Deltager-observation: Deltagelse

Antropologers foretrukne arbejdsmetode er kendt under navnet deltager-observation og bygger på idéen om at man bedst lærer at forstå et samfund ved at indlogere sig tæt på de lokale for at kunne deltage i dagligdagen. De færreste antropologer er vant til at arbejde i marken og det er derfor ofte begrænset hvad de i praksis får udrettet som deltagere (Ovesen 1988: 93). Som terrorist og guerilla-soldat er der desuden naturlige grænser for i hvor høj grad man kan tillade sig at deltage i omgivelsernes daglige aktiviteter. På den anden side er det ifølge Mao kendetegnende for den effektive guerillaenhed, at den oppebærer en høj grad af kontakt med det omgivende værtssamfund: ”the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea” eller i en anden oversættelse ”The people are like water and the army is like fish” (Mao i Aspects of China’s Anti-Japanese Struggle fra 1948).

Bin Laden var blandt de første arabere, som kom til Pakistan for at hjælpe afghanske flygtninge efter Sovjetunionen gik ind i Afghanistan i julen 1979. Flere tusinde arabere fulgte efter, men på et givet tidspunkt var det kun nogle få hundrede til stede. De fleste arbejdede som nødhjælpsarbejdere (Bergen s 63). Kun et mindretal var soldater. Nogle var på meget korte ophold, hvad en saudisk journalist kaldte ”Jihad vacation” (Bergen s. 41), hvor mere eller mindre velbemidlede entreprenante arabere valgte at tilbringe en kortere periode i farlige omgivelser ligesom turister, der gerne vil være de første på et eftertragtet sted før stedet bliver ødelagt af masseturisme (jf. Damm 1995).

Moderne hensynsfuld eller bæredygtig turisme søger at regulere tilstrømningen og afstrømningen, så den er i overensstemmelse med de lokale forhold. Indtil han blev dræbt i 1989 gjorde Abdullah Azzam et stort arbejde med at kanalisere arabere og andre ind i systemet via et kontor i Peshawar kaldet Services Offices (Bergen s. 92). Som helhed må man dog nok sige, at trods Azzams og bin Ladens organisatoriske evner har mujahideen-markedet været et ret dårligt reguleret marked. Jeg husker selv en dag i begyndelsen af 1992, hvor jeg skulle lave et opkald fra hovedpostkontoret i Peshawar i Pakistan. Postkontoret var fuldt af radikale ”brødre”, der ringede hid og did for at få kontakt med andre ”brødre”, som ofte ikke anede hvem de talte med – et problem der forstærkedes af at alle dengang som nu opererede under en række pseudonymer. Der var allokerings-problemer i mujahideen-sektoren. Det er måske ikke usædvanligt, når folk bevæger sig langt væk hjemmefra. Når studerende tager på feltarbejde ender de oftest et sted, hvor de kan skaffe kontakter gennem deres netværker (deres lærere eller deres medstuderende eller deres arbejdspladser) snarere end et sted tilsagt af faglige overvejelser.

Det har oftest været eksterne faktorer, som har nedjusteret antallet af frivillige og hellige krigere. Iran har aldrig været opmarchland for hellige krigere på samme måde som Pakistan. I lang tid var der stort set fri passage i Pakistan, men efter 11. September begyndte Pakistan at tynde ud i antallet af fremmede krigere. I FATA ledte Pakistans øgede pres på al Qaida efter 2001 til sammenstød mellem pashtuner indbyrdes om hvor lange veksler usbekere og andre skulle kunne trække på gæstevenskabet og den fælles kamp mod de vantro.

Indkvartering

Hvad angår indkvarteringsforhold for de fremmede lader der til at have været tre hovedformer:

Gæstehuse i byer for de nyligt ankomne eller etablerede islamister under udnyttelse af byernes relative anonymitet^[iii]

Pensionatslignende former hvor lokale stormænd og krigsherrer – tilskyndet af en kulturel fordring om grænseløs gæstfrihed – tillader udenlandske krigere at bo, arbejde og måske endog at indgå ægteskab lokalt under deres beskyttelse, ofte formodentlig mod pekuniære eller militære modydelser

Befæstede militærlejre i mere eller mindre afsidesliggende områder ofte udelukkende beboet af arabiske krigere

De tre typer kan kombineres: For så vidt som privatpersoner tilbyder hellige krigere  gratis logi, således som Zawahiri har opfordret til, sparer organisationen penge, der ellers skulle have brugt på at leje eller købe egnede opholdssteder.^[iv] Hvorom alt er muliggør to af disse bosættelsesformer en grad af deltagelse i det omgivende samfund: Gæstehus-logerende og stormands-gæster kan i visse tilfælde bevæge sig omkring og dermed deltage i det omgivende samfundsliv. Alligevel har de færreste fremmede krigere lært sig pakistanske eller afghanske sprog. Dette gælder også al Qaidas ledere. I sin tale til de pakistanske folk i august 2008 medgiver Zawahiri, at han ikke har lært det charmerende sprog Urdu trods sine mange års ophold i området. Det må have gjort det svært for ham at kommunikere med afghanere og pakistanere, som i reglen ikke forstår hverken talt eller skrevet arabisk. For at nå ud til pakistanerne talte Zawahiri engelsk, hvilket han beklagede. Man må dog lade Zawahiri, at han allerede tidligt nærmere sig afghanerne ved at bære afghansk klædedragt. De udenlandske krigere, som har været flittigst ti at lær lokale sprog er måske usbekerne i FATA, hvoraf mange siges at have lært sig pashtoo. Dette kan hænge sammen med at de har haft tættere relationer til deres værter igennem længere tid.

Udenlandske krigere i lejre kan beskrives som rene ”ex-pat kolonier”. Disse lejre har formodentlig været ydmyge på trods af at bin Laden i tråd med sin entreprenør-baggrund har brugt mange penge på at udbygge infrastrukturen. I kapitel 3 ”From Donor to Holy Warrior” nævner Bergen lejren nær landsbyen Jaji, som var bin Ladens første base i det østlige Afghanistan oprettet 1986-7 (altså et par år før al Qaida blev dannet) kun ti mil fra grænsen til Pakistan. Lejren kaldtes al Masada, Løvernes Hule. Sammenlignet med de ca. 170.000-250.00 afghaneres, som selv bekæmpede Sovjetunionens soldater, var de arabiske soldaters indsats symbolsk, men eftersom bin Laden regnede de arabiske soldater for mere modige, fordi de bevidst søgte martyriet, regnede han en araber for mere værd på slagmarken end en afghaner. Løvernes Hule var således et tidligt eksempel på en ren arabisk lejr.

Hvor Azzam, ifølge Bergen, ville sprede araberne, ville bin Laden at de skulle danne egne enheder. Allerede i 1984-85 var (nogle i) Services Office bevidst om at etablere særskilte gæstehuse for arabere. Bergen citerer algiereren Boudejema Bounoua for at have sagt:

”We have founded this bureau to gather the Arabs and to send them inside Afghanistan instead of going to the guesthouse of [someone like Afghan leader Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar. It’s better to save them from the political games of Afghans. So we need to stay in separate guesthouses. We are here as servants. We are proud to serve the boots of the mujahideen inside Afghanistan. We are not here to guide them, to tell them what to do. We are here to serve them, to liberale their land”. (Bergen p. 29).

I tiden omkring det amerikanske angreb på Tohra Bohra cirkulerede i blandt andet den danske presse historier om befæstede luksuriøse hulebyggerier dybt i bjergets indre. Bergens portræt af Jaji og senere lejre underbygger ikke disse rapporter om luksus. I den årrække, hvor Taliban var ved magten i det meste af Afghanistan, levede bin Laden og hans nærmeste dog et noget mere komfortabelt og sikkert liv som Mullah Omars gæster i Kandahar. Bergen (?) refererer således et besøg aflagt af en gæst, som var i stand til at gå helt ind i bin Ladens gemakker, fordi der ikke var nogen hjemme. Mens han boede i Kandahar var Bin Laden i stand til at tage på udflugter for at skyde fugle eller han kunne tage familien med på picnic, hvor konerne og børnene fik mulighed for at lave lidt ”simple physical exercises” (Bergen, s. 266). Hvilken form for gymnastik de lavede melder Bergen ikke noget om, men eftersom bin Laden havde gået i en fin skole kan man formode, at han havde lært almindelig gymnastik dér. Dertil kom at bin Laden på udflugterne oplærte sine koner i brugen af skydevåben.

Bergens beskrivelser tegner et billede af en ret så kedelig hverdag udlevet i afsondring fra det omgivende samfund. De TV-billedsekvenser vi alle har set, hvor bin Laden ses omgivet af sine skydegale mænd, er i virkeligheden undtagelser. Interviews med vestlige journalister har været få og kortvarige og mit nedtryk er, at bin Laden og Zawahiri heller ikke har frekventeret al-Sahah studiet særligt ofte. Bergen kalkulerer, at bin Laden og Zawahiri har produceret et lydbånd eller videotape hver 6. uge efter 11. September (Bergen, s. 377). Mit gæt er, at de to topterrorister oftest har haft en ret indholdsløs dagligdag med ret få møder, men dog afbrudt af relativt hyppige besøg af beundrere. De to ledere har i hvert fald ikke været gjort til genstand for en større offentlig daglig kult med lange taler og parader. Lederne er i stedet blevet projiceret enten via de trykte og elektroniske medier eller gennem personlige møder. En undtagelse var Osamas søns bryllup, hvor 4-500 gæster (de fleste fra al Qaida og ikke fra Taliban) var inviteret til Kandahar i begyndelsen af 2001. Bin Ladens bidrag til festen for sønnen Muhammad var et lille digt, som næppe vil sikre ham en plads i den orientalske poesis annaler (Bergen, s. 256). Man kan indvende mod denne argumentation, at bin Laden nødvendigvis afstår fra offentlige fremtrædener af sikkerhedshensyn. Det medgiver jeg, men Tv-produktioner er i sig selv også en sikkerhedsrisiko. Bergen er af den opfattelse, at det bedste spor til bin Laden er al-Jazeeras kontor i Pakistan (Bergen, s. 377).

Observation og teori

Flere af de ”tidligt-moderne” muslimske erobrere af al-Hind var gode observatører. Mest berømte var stormogulerne. Dynastiets fremtrædende mænd førte detaljerede dagbøger, hvori de beskrev flora og fauna og meget andet i deres nye omgivelser. Senere britiske erobrere og koloniembedsmænd var banebrydende etnografer, historikere og naturhistorikere. Nutidens arabiske gæster i regionen har indtil videre ikke udvist et lignende talent. Jeg vil hævde, at den stive form for Islam, de har bragt med sig, står i vejen for både observation af og teoridannelse om omgivelserne. Dertil kan man indvende at det eneste form for observation og teori, som militære ledere kan forventes at befatte sig med, er viden direkte relateret til krig og terror og at de arabiske gæster har været innovative på dette område.^[v] Ikke desto mindre vil jeg argumentere for, at de teorier eller verdensbilleder, som bin Laden og Zawahiri tog med sig i felten, har bidraget til at befæste deres teoretisk fattigdom selv i de sydasiatiske omgivelser, som kunne give anledning til eftertanke.

Rationaliseringen (forstået i Webers forstand forstået som de måder systematisk tænkning i får samfundet til at rykke fremad) af Islam er ikke særlig vellykket på trods af en stor indsats for at udforme religionen til en konsistent samling påbud og forbud. Zawahiri og bin Laden har af og til forsøgt at underbygge deres aktioner med fatwaer udstedt af religiøse autoriteter for derved at skabe et konsistent handlingsgrundlag, men sådanne blåstemplinger oftest har de udstedt deres egne fatwaer. At gængse autoriteter inden for religionen ofte ikke støtter al Qaida, fortolkes af al Qaida som et udtryk for at disse autoriteter er korrupte. Som det ofte er tilfældet i Islam ender intern debat derfor ofte i gensidige beskyldninger om at modparten ikke er muslim, men en fredløs frafalden (Bergen, s. 74). Denne teoretiske dead-end har medvirket til at isolere al Qaida.

Zawahiri er ellers rundet af en veluddannet familie. Hans slægt tæller en lang række læger og flere skolede teologer. Zawahiri begyndte sin revolutionære karriere i sit hjemland, men tog ligesom bin Laden tidligt til Pakistan. Zawahiri og hans bror Mohammad var tilknyttet gruppen Al Jihad. Da de begyndte at rekruttere deres landsmænd til den afghanske jihad kom de hurtigt på kollisionskurs med ægyptere fra den Islamiske Gruppe (Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya):

Before long, representatives of the Islamic Group appeared on the scene, and once again the old rivalry flared up. Osama Rushdi, who had known Zawahiri in prison, told me that he was shocked by the changes he found in him. In Egypt, Zawahiri had struck him as polite and modest. “Now he was very antagonistic toward others,” Rushdi recalled. “He talked badly about the other groups and wrote books against them. In discussions, he started to take things in a weird way. He would have strong opinions without any sense of logic.” (Wright 2002)

Zawahiri har som nævnt skrevet to bøger. Disse er begge nedslag i den standende debat om den hellige krigs principper. Hans anden bog blev skrevet for at gendrive den dybdeborende kritik af Zawahiri og af al Qaida, som Dr Fadl (egentlig Imam al-Sharif) havde fremført. De to kendte hinanden fra medicin-studiet i Cairo og de havde arbejdet sammen i Peshawar i Røde Halvmåne efter begge at have været involveret i terrorisme i Ægypten. Wright skriver:

Fadl held a low opinion of Zawahiri’s abilities as a surgeon. “He asked me to stand with him and teach him how to perform operations,” Fadl told Al Hayat. “I taught him until he could perform them on his own. Were it not for that, he would have been exposed, as he had contracted for a job for which he was unqualified.”

In the mid-eighties, Fadl became Al Jihad’s emir, or chief. (Fadl told Al Hayat that this was untrue, saying that his role was merely one of offering “Sharia guidance.”) Zawahiri, whose reputation had been stained by his prison confessions [efter mordet på Sadat havde Zawahiri under tortur og manipulation forrådt en af de eftersøgt], was left to handle tactical operations. He had to defer to Fadl’s superior learning in Islamic jurisprudence. The jihadis who came to Peshawar revered Fadl for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Koran and the Hadith—the sayings of the Prophet (Wright 2008a).

I 1988 udgav Fadl The Essential Guide for Preparation en håndbog i jihad, som blev flittigt brugt af al Qaida. Argumentet heri lød:

”The “Guide” begins with the premise that jihad is the natural state of Islam. Muslims must always be in conflict with nonbelievers, Fadl asserts, resorting to peace only in moments of abject weakness. Because jihad is, above all, a religious exercise, there are divine rewards to be gained. He who gives money for jihad will be compensated in Heaven, but not as much as the person who acts. The greatest prize goes to the martyr. Every able-bodied believer is obligated to engage in jihad, since most Muslim countries are ruled by infidels who must be forcibly removed, in order to bring about an Islamic state. “The way to bring an end to the rulers’ unbelief is armed rebellion,” the “Guide” states” (Wright 2008a).

I 1994 begik Fadl The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge, som også er en opfordring til jihad mod snart sagt alle afvigere, herunder muslimer som ekskommunikeres af andre muslimer med henvisning til doktrinen om takfir (Wright 2008a). Zawahiri var yderst tilfreds med denne bog, men han redigerede i den uden forfatterens tilladelse. Blandt andet ændrede han titlen til Guide to the Path of Righteousness for Jihad and Belief og fjernede Fadls kritik af den Islamiske Gruppe, fordi Zawahiri på det tidspunkt var ved at tilnærme sig gruppen. Fadl afslørede Zawahiris manipulationer og fjendskabet mod dem forøgedes til højder, som er akademikere værdigt: ”Zawahiri and Fadl have not spoken since, but their war of words was only beginning”.

I de følgende år tog stadig flere gamle ægyptiske jihadister afstand fra jihad, dels af pragmatiske runde – de ville alligevel ikke vinde – dels af ud fra mere etiske overvejelser. Lange fængselsstraffe og lange debatter i fængslerne bidrog til denne proces. 11. September satte yderligere skub i disse overvejelser, som udmundede i bekendelser, hvor jihadister (som e.g. Karam Zuhdy, en Islamic Group leder) tog afstand fra deres fortid: ”Zuhdy publicly apologized to the Egyptian people for the Islamic Group’s violent deeds, beginning with the murder of Sadat, whom he called a martyr” (Wright 2002).

Fadl selv blev efter 11. September anholdt i Yemen og overflyttet til et ægyptisk fængsel, hvor han stadig befinder sig. Herfra har han fra 2007 udgivet en række revisionistiske artikler startende med “Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World” som udkom på 10-års dagen for massakren på turister i Luxor. Hermed følger Wrights lange opsummering af Fadls argument:

The premise that opens “Rationalizing Jihad” is “There is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.” Fadl then establishes a new set of rules for jihad, which essentially define most forms of terrorism as illegal under Islamic law and restrict the possibility of holy war to extremely rare circumstances. His argument may seem arcane, even to most Muslims, but to men who had risked their lives in order to carry out what they saw as the authentic precepts of their religion, every word assaulted their world view and brought into question their own chances for salvation.

In order to declare jihad, Fadl writes, certain requirements must be observed. One must have a place of refuge. There should be adequate financial resources to wage the campaign. Fadl castigates Muslims who resort to theft or kidnapping to finance jihad: “There is no such thing in Islam as ends justifying the means.” Family members must be provided for. “There are those who strike and then escape, leaving their families, dependents, and other Muslims to suffer the consequences,” Fadl points out. “This is in no way religion or jihad. It is not manliness.” Finally, the enemy should be properly identified in order to prevent harm to innocents. “Those who have not followed these principles have committed the gravest of sins,” Fadl writes.

To wage jihad, one must first gain permission from one’s parents and creditors. The potential warrior also needs the blessing of a qualified imam or sheikh; he can’t simply respond to the summons of a charismatic leader acting in the name of Islam. “Oh, you young people, do not be deceived by the heroes of the Internet, the leaders of the microphones, who are launching statements inciting the youth while living under the protection of intelligence services, or of a tribe, or in a distant cave or under political asylum in an infidel country,” Fadl warns. “They have thrown many others before you into the infernos, graves, and prisons.”

Even if a person is fit and capable, jihad may not be required of him, Fadl says, pointing out that God also praises those who choose to isolate themselves from unbelievers rather than fight them. Nor is jihad required if the enemy is twice as powerful as the Muslims; in such an unequal contest, Fadl writes, “God permitted peace treaties and cease-fires with the infidels, either in exchange for money or without it—all of this in order to protect the Muslims, in contrast with those who push them into peril.” In what sounds like a deliberate swipe at Zawahiri, he remarks, “Those who have triggered clashes and pressed their brothers into unequal military confrontations are specialists neither in fatwas nor in military affairs. . . . Just as those who practice medicine without background should provide compensation for the damage they have done, the same goes for those who issue fatwas without being qualified to do so.”

Despite his previous call for jihad against unjust Muslim rulers, Fadl now says that such rulers can be fought only if they are unbelievers, and even then only to the extent that the battle will improve the situation of Muslims. Obviously, that has not been the case in Egypt or most other Islamic countries, where increased repression has been the usual result of armed insurgency. Fadl quotes the Prophet Muhammad advising Muslims to be patient with their flawed leaders: “Those who rebel against the Sultan shall die a pagan death.”

Fadl repeatedly emphasizes that it is forbidden to kill civilians—including Christians and Jews—unless they are actively attacking Muslims. “There is nothing in the Sharia about killing Jews and the Nazarenes, referred to by some as the Crusaders,” Fadl observes. “They are the neighbors of the Muslims . . . and being kind to one’s neighbors is a religious duty.” Indiscriminate bombing—“such as blowing up of hotels, buildings, and public transportation”—is not permitted, because innocents will surely die. “If vice is mixed with virtue, all becomes sinful,” he writes. “There is no legal reason for harming people in any way.” The prohibition against killing applies even to foreigners inside Muslim countries, since many of them may be Muslims. “You cannot decide who is a Muslim or who is an unbeliever or who should be killed based on the color of his skin or hair or the language he speaks or because he wears Western fashion,” Fadl writes. “These are not proper indications for who is a Muslim and who is not.” As for foreigners who are non-Muslims, they may have been invited into the country for work, which is a kind of treaty. What’s more, there are many Muslims living in foreign lands considered inimical to Islam, and yet those Muslims are treated fairly; therefore, Muslims should reciprocate in their own countries. To Muslims living in non-Islamic countries, Fadl sternly writes, “I say it is not honorable to reside with people—even if they were nonbelievers and not part of a treaty, if they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum with a decent life and other acts of kindness—and then betray them, through killing and destruction. This was not in the manners and practices of the Prophet.” ….

The most original argument in the book and the interview is Fadl’s assertion that the hijackers of 9/11 “betrayed the enemy,” because they had been given U.S. visas, which are a contract of protection. “The followers of bin Laden entered the United States with his knowledge, and on his orders double-crossed its population, killing and destroying,” Fadl continues. “The Prophet—God’s prayer and peace be upon him—said, ‘On the Day of Judgment, every double-crosser will have a banner up his anus proportionate to his treachery.’ ” (Wright 2008a)

Zahwahiris svar kom i form af et 200-sider langt ”brev” med titlen The Exoneration, Frikendelsen. Heri fremturer Zawahiri mod Islams mange indre og ydre fjender, men han kommer også ind på de argumenter Fadl rejser punkt for punkt:

To dispute Fadl’s assertion that Muslims living in non-Islamic countries are treated fairly, Zawahiri points out that in some Western countries Muslim girls are forbidden to wear hijab to school. Muslim men are prevented from marrying more than one wife, and from beating their wives, as allowed by some interpretations of Sharia. Muslims are barred from donating money to certain Islamic causes, although money is freely and openly raised for Israel. He cites the 2005 cartoon controversy in Denmark and the celebrity of the author Salman Rushdie as examples of Western countries exalting those who denigrate Islam. He says that some Western laws prohibiting anti-Semitic remarks would forbid Muslims to recite certain passages in the Koran dealing with the treachery of the Jews (Wright 2008).

Wright ender med at påpege hvad ham kalder Islams ”rotten intellectual bits and pieces”:

Zawahiri’s argument demonstrates why Islam is so vulnerable to radicalization. It is a religion that was born in conflict, and in its long history it has developed a reservoir of opinions and precedents that are supposed to govern the behavior of Muslims toward their enemies. Some of Zawahiri’s commentary may seem comically academic, as in this citation in support of the need for Muslims to prepare for jihad: “Imam Ahmad said: ‘We heard from Harun bin Ma’ruf, citing Abu Wahab, who quoted Amru bin al-Harith citing Abu Ali Tamamah bin Shafi that he heard Uqbah bin Amir saying, “I heard the Prophet say from the pulpit: ‘Against them make ready your strength.’ ” ’ Strength refers to shooting arrows and other projectiles from instruments of war.” And yet such proofs of the rightfulness of jihad, or taking captives, or slaughtering the enemy are easily found in the commentaries of scholars, the rulings of Sharia courts, the volumes of the Prophet’s sayings, and the Koran itself. Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Egyptian Grand Mufti, has pointed out that literalism is often the prelude to extremism. “We must not oversimplify,” he told me. Crude interpretations of Islamic texts can lead men like Zawahiri to conclude that murder should be celebrated. They come to believe that religion is science.”

The War on Terror er måske ved at være slut i dens nuværende fase. The War on Error er ikke slut. Hvis Zawahiri er en teoretisk forarmet stivstikker kan det samme så siges om bin Laden eller har bin Laden nogle formidlende karaktertræk?

Bin Ladens formidlende karaktertræk?: Ydmyghed

Bin Ladens far var en meget succesfuld entreprenør. Han fik ca. 54 børn, hvoraf flere er veluddannede. Osama fuldførte ikke selv en længerevarende boglig uddannelse. I sine yngre år i Peshawar var han ret så tavs. Til gengæld giver Bergens kilder indtryk af, at bin Laden var i stand til at lytte. Han var ikke anmassende og han forsøgte ikke at overdøve andre: ”… he carried himself in a very low-key kind of way; he wasn’t a fire-breathing terrorist, he comported himself like a cleric”, bevidner Bergen baseret på sit møde med bin Laden i 1997 (Bergen s. 182). Netop derfor, mener jeg, har arabiske frivillige, som ønskede at indrullere sig i al Qaida, opsøgt ham i stort tal. En tunesisk ex-foldboldstjerne ved navn Nizar Trabelsi husker således, hvordan bin Laden småsnakkede med ham om hans familie og sine problemer, da Trabelsi fik foretræde (Bergen, s. 269-70). Bin Laden var tillige gavmild og afviste aldrig nogle selv når hans pengepung var ved at være tom, hvilket faktisk hændte (Bergen, s. 267, 56).^[vi] Abdul Jandal ræsonnerede: ”I believe that God raised Osama bin Laden to a high status because despite his great wealth, he was very modest, and attached only to what rewards God would give him” (Bergen, s. 267). Bin Laden overbeviste eller forførte med andre ord potentielle rekrutter gennem sine talegaver og sit vindende væsen (Bergen, s. 265). Efter potentielle rekrutter var gået i nettet allokerede bin Laden dem så til de sine operationelt aktive underordnede.

Bin Ladens families levestandard beskrives som jævn og på ingen måde prangende. Da Mullah Omar tilbød bin Laden et valg mellem to steder at bo i Kandahar valgte bin Laden stedet med færrest faciliteter og uden rindende vand (Bergen, s. 194). Bin Ladens børn lignede alle andre: ”You wouldn’t believe it – they’re kids running around in old clothes”, husker Noman Benotman, en libisk kriger (Bergen, s. 175). Den datter, som på et tidspunkt rapporteredes at gå rundt i stramme jeans i selve lejren, melder Bergens bog ikke noget om.

Er denne type leder genkendelig? Mig minder disse beskrivelser af bin Laden om indiske gurus, som ofte sætter en ære i ”simple living” samtidig med at de ikke lægger skjul på, at de fra deres plads på periferiens Archimedes-punkt er i stand til uden de store armbevægelser at bevæge hele verden (jf. Nanda 2009, s. 80?). Indere opsøger ofte sådanne personer for at ”få deres darshan”, i.e. for at få del i deres spirituelle kraft ved at se på dem og ved at dvæle i deres nærvær. Bin Laden lader til at have noget af den samme karismatiske tiltrækningskraft. Bin Ladens evne til at lytte, small-talke og bedåre ændrede imidlertid ikke hans grundlæggende teori. Hans sociale kompetencer lader ikke til at have forøget hans intellektuelle kapital ret meget. Problemet i den måde bin Laden fremtræder – som en ydmyg uskyldig other-wordly asket der har forsaget sin fædrene rigdom – er, vil jeg hævde, at denne fremtrædelsesform ikke rimer med, at han samtidig stræber efter noget der nærmer sig verdensherredømme gennem brug af terror. Al Qaedas storhedstid hvad angår terroraktioner internationalt ligger i årene og til 11. September 2001. Efter den tid har al Qaida ikke kunnet gennemføre lignende aktioner uden for Afghanistan og Pakistan, men de har kunnet sprede frygt og rædsel over den ganske jord. At sprede frygt og rædsel og at ville herske over andre gennem terror rimer ikke med at være en ydmyg asket uden personlige ambitioner.

Dobbeltheden i bin Ladens karakter kom frem i en video, der viser ham modtage en gæst i Jalalabad i november 2001 (Bergen, s. 282-3). Bin Laden beretter for gæsten, at han havde forventet mindre ødelæggelse i New Yorks tvillingetårne end der faktisk skete. På videoen er selskabet meget fornøjede over, at det gik bedre end bin Laden havde regnet med. En dansk kommentar til synet af dette selskab var: ”Cykeltyve i jakkesæt”. Jeg mener det er en rammende kommentar: ”Jakkesæt” fordi selskabet bestod af disse pæne lidt ældre herrer. ”Cykeltyve” fordi det de havde gang i var kriminelt.

 Symbiose eller snylteri?

Ifølge Bente Wollfs studie af turisme på den indonesiske ø Nias forsøger værter at inkorporere gæster i deres samfund ved at indbyde dem til at bo og spise i deres store huse, som dermed omdannes til hoteller. Derved overfører de velbeslåede turister en del af deres rigdom til værterne, og samtidig opnår de lokale familier kontrol med de fremmede, som ellers kan virke farlige: “the enemy on the road is the guest in the house“ (Wolff 1999, kapitel 4). Gæster kan imidlertid være vanskelige at håndtere. I Afghanistan og Pakistan kan det være svært at afgøre, om al Qaida har levet i symbiose med sine værter eller om de fremmede har været en form for parasitter.

En god gæst bringer ikke sin vært i unødig fare, men skønt Mullah Omar flere gange bad/forbød bin Laden om ikke at foretage terroraktioner rundt om i verden ud fra sin base in Afghanistan fortsatte bin Laden sine aktioner uden at koordinere med Mullah Omar (Bergen, s. 161). Således indviede han tilsyneladende ikke Mullah Omar om 11. September på forhånd. Resultatet af aktionen var at Taliban blev væltet og Mullah Omar mistede sit emirat. I den forstand har al Qaida været en parasit, som har sat sig på sin vært.

Et lignende billede tegner fotografen Steve McCurry, som tog det berømte National Geographic billede af en afghansk pige med lysende grønne øjne. Idet han modstillede sit eget forhold til afghanerne med arabernes, gav McCurry sine værter og de andre gæster følgende skudsmål:

”The Afghans are really friendly people, and I could basically just kind of walk around with one person, even unarmed. For the [Arabs] to come in and act as though it was their war, their country, and they were treating the Afghans like they were just these sort of uneducated, uncouth, illiterate sort of bumpkins [who] didn’t really get it. These guys, they’re really, really nasty and very aggressive and very condescending, and just hateful. And the Afghans, actually it was their country being basically slowly destroyed, and they were often very good-humored” (Bergen, s. 89).

Bergens bog leverer andre eksempler på ødelæggende arabisk fremfærd. For eksempel betalte bin Laden på et tidspunkt i 1980erne pakistanske folkevalgte store bestikkelser for at de skulle afgive et mistillidsvotum mod Benazir Bhutto i Pakistans lovgivende forsamling. Benazir Bhutto reagerede på denne uhørte fornærmelse af en gæst på tålt ophold med at smide bin Laden ud af landet.

Bin Laden var tilbage i Afghanistan i 1996 og indgik et samarbejde med Mullah Omar, hvor bin Laden leverer penge og krigere mod til gengæld at få frie hænder som ”honored guest” (Bergen, s. 160-1). Mullah Omar lovede, ifølge Bergen, måske bin Laden at han aldrig ville udlevere ham (Bergen s. 164). I den forstand var Mullah Omar sin egen kulturs fange bundet af gæstevenskabet bud. Ifølge den pakistanske journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai sagde Mullah Omar:

”I know I can’t fight the Americans, but if God helps me I will survive. I don’t want to go down in history as someone who betrayed his guest. I am willing to give my life, my regime; since we have given him refuge, I cannot throw him out now” (Bergen, s. 315).

I dette udsagn fremtræder Mullah Omar nærmest som fritaget for strafskyldighed pga sine pashtunske æresbegreber. Indespærret i sin kultur kan han ikke andet end holde hånden over bin Laden. Men havde Mullah Omar ingen brikker at rykke med? Mullah Omar taler arabisk. Skønt han kender meget lidt til verden som helhed er han dermed bekendt med i det mindste én kultur udover sin egen afghanske. Det skulle vel sætte ham i stand til at se sagen fra flere sider (som han i øvrigt også blev opfordret til af sin Udenrigsminister Wakil Ahmeh Muttawakil). Men hvad hvis de brikker, som Mullah Omar havde at rykke med, bestyrkede ham i hans adfærd? Problemet her er, at de arabiske og de afghanske samfund ligner hinanden ikke blot hvad angår religion som sådan, men også hvad angår social struktur og psykologi. Som ”soulmates” (Bergen, s??) indgår de let i et symbiotisk forhold.

Mange afghanere og arabere deler således en vis dødsforagtende fandenivoldsk antiautoritær oprørskhed. Afghanistan eller Pashtunernes land er blevet betegnet som Land of Insolence. “Insolence” betyder “uforskammethed“, eller ifølge The Concise Oxford Dictionary “ offensively contemptuous, insulting“. Afghanistan er i denne udlægning Yaghestan, The land of Rebels, eller med Louis Dupres ord ”Land of the Unruly, the Land of the Free and the Land of Insolence” (Dupres 1997). Det er samme egenskab, som Wright finder hos Zawahiri, der som dreng blev tilbudt et lift på vej hjem fra skolen af Egyptens vicepræsident og efter sigende afslog med ordene, “Vi vil ikke have et lift af en mand, der tog del i de domstole, der dræbte muslimer” (Wright, 2002, s. 55). Wright ser her et tidligt eksempel på Zawahiris hårdnakkede trodsighed, personlige frygtløshed og totale selvretfærdighed. De samme egenskaber genfindes blandt pashtunske ledere. For eksempel fremhæver Muhammad Ilyas Khan den nu afdøde Taliban-leder Nek Muhammad’s karaktertræk i en artikel indledt med ordene:

With his Byronic good looks and proud tribal mien, Nek Mohammad fearlessly cruises the rugged South Waziristan landscape in the company of his infamous guests as the hapless administration looks on. Just how does he do that?
Nek Muhammad ”proud tribal mien” viste sig også allerede i skolealderen, hvor han kom på kant med læreren og forlod klassen med en mine som om han ville vende tilbage for at dræbe læreren.^[vii]

Så er Mullah Omar culpabel, hvis man medgiver at vært og gæst langt hen ad vejen bestyrker hinanden i deres reaktionsmønstre? At gæsten bragte værten Mullah Omar til fald tyder på gæsten var parasit og værten inculpabel. Omvendt er fælles kultur et godt moralsk og juridisk dække for kriminelle handlinger udført i gensidig forståelse.

Bibliografi

Bergen, Peter 2006 The Osama bin Laden I Know. An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader, New York, Free Press.

Damm, Inge,1995, De nye turister. Eventyrere eller vandaler?, Fremad.

Muhammad Ilyas Khan, Nek Muhammad Wazir, Monthly Herald

Nanda, Meera, 2009, The God Market: How Globalization is making India more Hindu.

Ovesen, Ja, 1988, ”Gæsten og storpolitikken: Dialog med Pashai-folket i Afghanistan”, s. 87-110 i Kirsten Hastrrup og Kirsten Ramløv (red.), Feltarbejde. Oplevelse og metode i etnografien, Akademisk forlag.

Simmel, Georg, From Kurt Wolff (Trans.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950, s. 402 – 408, snuppet fra http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/courses/STRANGER.HTML

South Asia News, ”Al-Zawahiri urges Pakistanis to support Taliban”, July 15, 2009.

Wolff, Bente, 1999, Extending the Self: Otherness in Cosmology adn Consumption, PhD, National Museum of Denmark and Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.

Worth, Robert F, “Al-Qaeda’s Inner Circle”, anmeldelse af Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, i New York Review of Books, October 19, 2006, s. 12-6.

Wright, Lawrence, 2008a ”The Rebellion Within, An Al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism”, The New Yorker, 2. June 2008.

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all

Wright, Lawrence 2008b Al-Qaida. Vejen til 11. September, København, People’s Press.

Wright, Lawrence, ”The Man Behind Bin Laden: How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror.” New Yorker, September 16, 2002,

www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/09/16/020916fa_fact2?currentPage=all

The ‘Yellow Shirts’ (or süa lüang in Thai) is a social movement named People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) supporting the monarchy, the present pro-royalist government led by Democrat Party leader, Aphisit Vejjajiva, and the present political regime. The ‘Red Shirt’ (süa daeng in Thai) movement including the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) and the smaller Daeng Sayam (“Red Siam”) factions are in opposition to both the government and the regime and support the ‘pro-Red’ Phak Phüa Thai (“Thai People’s Party”) opposition party – a successor party to Thaksin’s popular TRT party. The PAD consists mainly of middle class ‘Bangkokians’ and pro-royalist elite groups. The ‘Red Shirts’ are predominantly farmers and workers from the North and the North-eastern Isaan region, a region culturally distinct from Central Thailand and the metropolitan culture of Bangkok. Many migrant workers from this region working in Bangkok also support the ‘Red Shirts’.

The roots of the political conflict in Thailand can be traced back to the 1997 economic crisis and its impact on Thai society. The Democrat government at the time failed to deal with the crisis and this in turn provided a momentum for the TRT party to turn crisis sentiment into electoral support within the framework of the recently promulgated 1997 “people’s” constitution. Opposing the Democrat’s decision to follow the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), the TRT presented itself as a party saving the nation’s independence from ‘neo-colonisation’ by these Western institutions. By offering a policy programme including healthcare and village loans to those worst affected by the crisis – a program that critics labelled as “populist” owing to its appeal to the rural electorate – the party secured two electoral victories in 2001 and 2005. The TRT government was the first in Thai political history to serve a full term and enjoy re-election to serve a second term. It was also the first government to respond to its constituency and implement the policies it had promised prior to election. Thaksin’s charismatic personality and ability to steer the country out of the economic crisis in turn boosted the image of the TRT government as the party most suitable to lead Thailand into the new millennium.

By 2006, however, the popularly elected government had turned increasingly authoritarian. Declaring ‘war on drugs’ the eradication program resulted in more than 3.000 extra-judicial killings. Human rights abuse were also committed in the massacres at Tak Bai and Krue Sa mosque where Thai Muslims were brutally killed for protesting against government policies prohibiting teaching the local language yawi. Journalists criticising the government were harassed and intimidated. But it was the sale of Thaksin’s telecommunications company, Shin Corp – a company built on generous government concessions – to Singaporean Temasek that ignited strong opposition to Thaksin and the TRT government. Avoiding taxation on the profits made from the sale by means of legislation that had recently been passed, the Shin Corp sale not only proved Thaksin to be corrupt, the sale also contradicted the nationalist rhetoric and policies of economic nationalism that was the basis of Thaksin and the TRT’s popular appeal.

In opposition to Thaksin and the TRT, Sondhi Limthongkul, a media-mogul and former ally of Thaksin, formed the PAD and staged anti-government protests, accusing Thaksin of corruption and treason. Further, the PAD protested against Thaksin’s purported disrespect for the monarch and his interference with the ‘royal prerogative’ of appointments and promotions in the military. Thaksin’s refusal to respond to the PAD’s demands to dissolve the TRT government led the PAD to ask for a ‘royal intervention’ to solve the political crisis that the king according to Article 7 of the 1997 constitution was legally entitled to. The king, however, refused and urged the conflicting parties to find a solution. On 19 September, 2006, the military ousted Thaksin in a “bloodless” coup while he was attending a UN meeting in New York. The TRT government was replaced by a military interim government including members of the coup group. The 1997 constitution that had brought the TRT government to power was scrapped and later replaced by the 2007 constitution.

The coup did not solve the political crisis. Disaffected Thaksin supporters and TRT voters formed the ‘Red Shirt’ opposition movement, protesting against the military government and its failure to recognise the electoral mandate they had given to Thaksin. In response to the Constitutional Court’s decision to dissolve the TRT party, a new political party, the Phak Phalang Prachachon (“People’s power Party”, PPP) was formed and ran for election. The PPP won and formed government, putting pro-Thaksin politicians back in office. The PAD staged demonstrations in protests. When the Constitutional Court later dissolved the PPP, it led to violent confrontations between the ‘Red Shirts’ and the PAD. In late 2008, the Democrat Party managed to form a coalition government with support from minor parties “defecting” from the ‘pro-Red Shirt’ side. The incident deepened the political crisis.

The March-May protests in 2010 were the largest popular uprising in Thai political history since the 1992 demonstrations against the military coup of General Suchinda. Although demanding the dissolution of the Aphisit government, the political discourse of class struggle voiced by the ‘Red Shirt’ leaders suggested that the regime and the socio-political order needed to be reformed. The ‘Red Shirts’ were initially promised an election in November 2010, but the escalation of the conflict and the eruption of violent confrontations in turn provided the government with justification for the bloody crack-down of the remaining protesters that had fortified in down-town Bangkok on 19 May. The promise of an election in November was later withdrawn. Many ‘Red Shirt’ leaders were subsequently imprisoned under the Terrorist Act. Martial law and state-of-emergency decrees were enacted to paralyze opposition. The law protecting the monarchy from insults, the lèse-majesté, was used to legally prosecute ‘Red Shirt’ leaders considered to have anti-royalist and republican inclinations.

The first thing that is noteworthy in the Thai context is the ideological nature of the conflict reflected in the struggle to define the nature of the country’s political system. The fact that both political movements use ‘democracy’ in their names suggests that the conflict is ideological and revolves around the question how to define its meaning and application in the Thai context. The PAD support a ‘Royal Democracy’ where the reigning monarch, Bhumipol Adulyadej, is considered the moral authority of Thai society – a political system that in the 2007 constitution is referred to as a “Democratic Regime of Government with the King as Head of State”. This political ideology or political philosophy has been in the making for the past fifty years of Bhumipol’s reign and is presented as reflecting the ‘traditional’ cultural values of Thai society and appropriate to the socio-political order. In turn, the images of Bhumipol as a modern thammaracha (“God King”) and the “Father of all Thais” have been constructed on the king’s purported self-sacrifice and dedication to his people, based on his commitment to ‘royal projects’ promoting agricultural developments. The king’s moral authority has also been “confirmed” by royal interventions in the political process in the past to stop bloodshed among conflicting parties, most notably in 1973 and 1992. The rise of ‘money politics’ – the use of corruption and vote-buying to control the electoral and parliamentary systems manipulated by elite groups to lay claim to state power in turn has provided the king with the duty of “overseeing” the political process. Official royalist historiography has successfully facilitated the (re)interpretation of the past and the “failures” of the democratic system to promote the image of Bhumipol as a “democratic king”. This in turn has elevated the monarchy to become the most important political institution in the country today. The corruption and ‘parliamentary dictatorship’ of the TRT government thus provided the justification for the ‘royally endorsed’ 2006 coup that successfully “saved” Thailand’s democracy and protected the institution of monarchy.

The Red Shirts, however, support a political system based on the principles of ‘liberal democracy’. After the dissolution of the TRT and PPP parties and the removal of elected politicians following the 2006 coup, the ‘democratic image’ of both the Aphisit-government and the regime is fading and its commitment to democracy questionable. The use of ‘democracy’ in the political discourse of the ‘Red Shirt’ leaders has therefore become an effective channel for contesting the legitimacy of both the government and the political regime. The government and its supporters, however, fear and claim that it is a political instrument used by the ‘Red Shirts’ to bring Thaksin back to power. While Thaksin has been in exile since the 2006 coup, he is assisting the ‘Red Shirts’ with moral and financial support. Thaksin has therefore been considered to fund the mass mobilisation of ‘Red Shirts’ from the countryside to Bangkok during the March-May protests. The image of the ‘Red Shirt’ movement as “ignorant cows and buffalos” herded by Thaksin to fulfil his personal political ambitions used by pro-government/pro-royalist media to delegitimize the protest movement has turned the question of Thaksin’s role into a debated issue that has split the Daeng Sayam faction from the major UDD wing of the ‘Red Shirts’. They continue to discuss the role of Thaksin and the direction of the struggle for the future.

Besides the ideological dimension of the conflict and the conflicting interpretations of democracy the present political crisis is also a conflict between two power centres in Thai politics, the ‘old elite’ representing pro-royalist elite groups in the civilian and military bureaucracy, rich business families, and the royal family. The other centre, the ‘new elite’, constitutes Thaksin and his network in the police force, military, and business elite. The political crisis prior to the 2006 coup thus provided a momentum for the ‘traditional elite’ to eliminate the threat posed by the TRT government, Thaksin, and his expanding network. The coup in turn restored power to the ‘traditional’ power-holders and eliminated the threat to the ‘old regime’ posed by Thaksin’s strong electoral mandate.

The other thing that appears to separate the Thai case from those of the Middle East concerns the question of popular support. Whereas the revolutions in the Middle East enjoy strong popular support and appear to be genuine mass uprisings by the people united against the oppressive regimes of the power-holders, in Thailand the population is split into two colour-coded social movements. Both the PAD and the ‘Red Shirts’ represent significant proportions of the Thai electorate and therefore, while the government and the regime is contested by the ‘Red Shirt’ opposition, the support from the PAD still provide both government and regime with legitimacy.

As long as the present monarch remains widely respected and revered – even among the ‘Red Shirts’, despite attempts to present them as anti-royalists – it is unlikely that the important role of the monarchy in the legitimation of the present regime can be questioned. However, Bhumipol’s poor health condition and the inability of the prospective heir to the throne to sustain its role as a source of legitimation has turned the royal succession question into an issue of major concern for the ‘old elite’. Once the monarchy fails to provide legitimacy for the present regime, it will be difficult for the military to maintain its present influential role in Thai politics and another military coup may be impossible. The 2006 coup was therefore also a reaction to the problem of royal succession on behalf of the military. In the face of failing royal legitimacy new bases of legitimation of the regime must be found. The alternative is to maintain power by force. But as the lesson from the Middle East has shown this may provoke further mobilisation against the regime. Rule by force alone may cause factions within the military to “defect” while others may still support the existing regime. It is the prospect of the former that may eventually split the military into opposing camps, risking an escalation of the conflict into armed struggle. The important question is therefore whether the conflict can be resolved through political reform within the existing framework of the electoral and parliamentary systems.

The forthcoming election in July 2011 becomes a decisive moment with the potential to escalate the conflict, depending whether the present government and those in power will acknowledge the formation of a pro-‘Red Shirt’ coalition government including the Phüa Thai party in the event of an electoral victory. Surachai (leader of the Daeng Sayam faction) has recently commented that if the present government denies to respond to the demands of the ‘Red Shirt’ opposition, the situation “will end up as in the Middle East”.

The March-May protests in 2010 never turned into the ‘Spring Revolution’ that the ‘Red Shirt’ protesters and their leaders had hoped for. But depending on the outcome of the forthcoming election and how the question of royal succession is resolved, the revolutions in the Middle East may inspire to the formation of a broader revolutionary movement against the present regime that can pave the way for Thailand to have a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ of its own in the future.

Christian is affiliated MA Student at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) currently writing his thesis on the political conflict and crisis in Thai society and its discursive presentation as a class struggle.

Tel: (+45) 35329546
E-mail: christian.stampe.jensen@nias.ku.dk