State, Society, and Minorities in South and Southeast Asia 9780739188903, 9780739188910

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
South and Southeast Asia
Chapter One: Memory, History, and Landscape
Chapter Two: Sri Lanka after the War
Chapter Three: Internal Displacement of Kashmiri Pandits
Chapter Four: Ethnic Cleansing
Chapter Five: Orientation and Citizenship Status of the Indonesian Chinese and Political Implications
Chapter Six: The Politics of Ethnic Marginalization and Foreign Policy in Malaysia
Chapter Seven: The Ethnic Chinese in Cambodia’s Pre-War Economy
Chapter Eight: Justice and Rights in the Malay-Muslim South of Thailand
Index
Contributors

Citation preview

State, Society, and Minorities in South and Southeast Asia

State, Society, and Minorities in South and Southeast Asia Edited by Sunil Kukreja

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-0-7391-8890-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7391-8891-0 (electronic) TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction Sunil Kukreja South and Southeast Asia 1

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Memory, History, and Landscape: Ethnic Hazaras’ Understanding of Marginality in Bamyan, Afghanistan Melissa Kerr Chiovenda Sri Lanka after the War: Reconciliation vs Marginalization Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam Internal Displacement of Kashmiri Pandits Sudha Rajput Ethnic Cleansing: The Neglected Case of the Hindus of Bangladesh Richard L. Benkin Orientation and Citizenship Status of the Indonesian Chinese and Political Implications Taufiq Tanasaldy The Politics of Ethnic Marginalization and Foreign Policy in Malaysia Amy L. Freedman The Ethnic Chinese in Cambodia’s Pre-War Economy Peter J. Hammer Justice and Rights in the Malay-Muslim South of Thailand Thanet Aphornsuvan

Index Contributors

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Introduction Sunil Kukreja

This volume presents a selected collection of specially commissioned essays and case studies (on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia) focusing on the subject of dominant-minority relations in South and Southeast Asia. South and Southeast Asia continue to be extremely critical regions, deeply intertwined and bound in many ways by centuries of intersecting histories. As the recent experiences of rapid and transformative political and economic changes in several countries in these two regions illustrate, these vicissitudes have significant bearing on, and are simultaneously also affected by, the legacy and continued dynamic of dominant-minority group relations. To be sure, while the dynamics of dominant-minority relations in each country is distinct and often mitigated by specific historical conditions in each case, the phenomena of dominant-minority relations across several countries in South and Southeast Asia no doubt intersect and provide insights by which these cases can also be understood in relation to each other. By bringing together a select number of case studies and analyses of various countries in these two closely linked regions, this volume provides a compelling examination of the challenges that these societies confront in integrating and/or responding to the state of specific ethno-religious minorities. It is difficult to overstate the complexity of the ethno-religious tapestry that spans across the many countries that make up South and Southeast Asia. The extensive history of migration, economics, exploration, colonialism, conquest, racism, and warfare, to name just a few factors, have shaped and reshaped the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes in the various countries across these two regions. At one level, the histories of each of the countries in these regions provide a distinct and unique narrative about the process by which relations between dominant and minority groups as conceptualized through ethno-religious lines have unfolded. On another level, certain commonalities and themes can also be discerned from the distinct and varied histories that characterize relations between minorities and dominant groups in the countries profiled in the ensuing chapters. vii

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In many respects, the countries profiled in this volume have undergone tremendous economic, social, and political changes since the end of the twentieth century. These changes have no doubt played out in fundamentally distinct ways for each case. Some of these countries have been deeply transformed by civil wars (e.g., Sri Lanka and Afghanistan), while others have remained relatively peaceful (e.g., Thailand and Malaysia), but they all tend to be susceptible to periodic and even chronic flare-ups in ethnic strife or violence. Indeed, as the chapters in this volume will illuminate, there is no doubt that the ethno-religious fault lines in these countries have been—and remain—salient and consequential at multiple levels. Before we turn to a brief overview of the individual case studies in the ensuing chapters, a few words about the notion of “minorities” and “marginalization” is necessary. CONCEPTUALIZING MINORITIES Kumaraswamy (2003) has aptly noted that: discussions on minorities have often been controversial and politically loaded. States by their very nature are sensitive towards any outside criticisms over their treatment of their minority population and consider it to be a sovereign and inviolable subject. . . . It is undeniable that substantial gaps exist between the official positions vis-à-vis minorities and the perceptions of the latter concerning their status. . . . Even liberal democratic societies in the West are not immune to xenophobic tendencies against minorities.

There is no doubt that a number of South and Southeast Asian nations— and certainly those profiled in this volume—continue to struggle with the process of integrating their minorities into a wider, mutually agreeable notion of nationality and belonging. Indeed, over the last few decades many of these countries has been marked by internal strife and conflict that, in one manner or another, intersect with ethno-religious tensions. Some years ago, Bose and Manchanda (1997) noted that “the history of South Asia has been one of consolidating majoritarian elites and producing persecuted minorities of citizenship, giving rise to statelessness, of borders, resulting in illegal but not unnatural cross border movements [that have uprooted millions]” (quoted in Bannerjee 1999). To some extent, the same may be said about the situation in various parts of Southeast Asia. In Sri Lanka, for instance, we have seen the consolidation of Sinhalese-centered national power as expressed through their domination (and more recent military defeat) of the ethnic Tamils in the country. In a less visible but nevertheless palpable sense is the continued and systematic discrimination of the Hazaras in Afghanistan and the not so

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tacit state-sanctioning of persecution of the minority Hindus in Bangladesh. But how do Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Muslims in Thailand come to be regarded as minorities in their homelands? Scholars have noted that there is the lack of a universally agreed upon definition of the concept of “minority” (cf. Okporie 2013; Capotorti 1991). Okporie posits that the following definition of a minority by Capotorti is one that is widely regarded, and we find that it is well-suited for capturing the situation of the cases studies presented here: a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a State, in a non-dominant position, whose members—being nationals of the state—posses ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population and show, if only implicitly, maintain a sense of solidarity, directed towards preserving their culture, traditions, religion or language” (Capotorti 1991, 98 as quoted in Okporie 2013).

Marginalization is a state of being often closely associated with minorities. One definition we find especially noteworthy is presented by Ojukwu (2005, 141), who describes marginalization as “a state of relative deprivation, a deliberate disempowerment of a people by a group or groups that, during a relevant time frame, wields political power and control the allocation of material and other resources at the center (quoted in Oshewolo 2011, 5). Sudha Rajput notes in her chapter in this volume, there are some twenty-five million people globally—and a large number of them being in South and Southeast Asia—that are displaced from their homes. It should come as no surprise that these displaced populations are most likely members of a particular ethnic or religious minority that has been marginalized in their homeland. While not all the cases here relate to displaced populations, for our purposes, the aforementioned conceptualization of the terms “minorities” and “marginalization” do apply quite appropriately across the various case studies presented. A BRIEF SKETCH In chapter 1, Melissa Kerr Chiovenda takes up the case of ethnic Hazaras in Afghanistan and examines their marginalization and liminality in an acutely fragmented Afghan society. Aside from their ethnic markers, which has led to the Hazaras being discriminated against by the dominant Pashtun, their adherence to the Shia sect of Islam further compounds their marginalization in a society that is over 80 percent Sunni Muslims. Chiovenda’s chapter profiles the fact that the Hazaras’ multilayered ethno-religious identity is very much grounded and rooted in the Bamyan landscape, which serves as powerful means by which the Haza-

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ras come to interpret their ethnic history and their sense of association and location within the Afghan state. The Bamyan Valley, located in central Afghanistan, became especially renowned internationally in 2001 when the Taliban destroyed the famous Buddha statues known to date back to the fifth century. As much as the destruction of the statues was symbolic of the rise of an intense form intolerance, exclusivism, and parochialism, it is also illustrative of the erasure of a critical aspect of Afghanistan’s historically rich entho-religious diversity. But especially critical is to appreciate the fact that the Hazaras acknowledge the pre-Islamic influences that inform their sense of connection to the region and their identity. Yet, their stigmatization by others as “outsides,” renders them marginal to Afghan society. Hellmann-Rajanayagam examines another major case study of ethnic marginalization and displacement in South Asia in chapter 2. In 2009, the civil that had inflicted Sri Lankan society for the good part of a quartercentury came to an end with the military defeat of the minority Tamilbased force known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In this discussion, Hellmann-Rajanayagam profiles some of the critical developments in Sinhalese-Tamil relations in the country since the end of the war and documents some of the continued marginalization of what has essentially become a shattered Tamil minority population in Sri Lanka. While the armed struggle of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is no longer a ubiquitous feature of the political landscape in the country, reconciliation and certainly the reintegration of Tamils into the society does not seem an especially high priority of the government. In chapter 3, Rajput takes up the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits who experienced a spike in targeted attacks against them in the Kashmir Valley region in India during the late 1980s. Caught in the midst of a Muslim-based resistance against the Indian government in Kashmir, the (Hindu) Kashmiri Pandits—a minority in the Muslim-majority Indian state were targeted and attacked, and in large numbers, fled the region. Their exodus from the Valley has been a contentious subject, but there is general consensus that their flight to the Jammu region and to other parts of India can be linked to the violence and intimidation they were subjected to, especially during the 1980s and 1990s. Constituting a robust one-fifth of the population of the Kashmir Valley in the earlier part of the twentieth century, and having co-existed alongside the Muslim majority population in the region, the Pundit population dwindled to a negligible number of a couple of thousand at the turn of the century (cf. Bukhari 2010). In her discussion, Rajput goes on to examine several dimensions of the consequences of that trauma for Pandit families that were resettled in Delhi and Jammu. In the next chapter, Richard Benkin takes up the plight and persecution of the Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. It is telling that at the time of Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, Hindus com-

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prised approximately 30 percent of the population of the eastern part of Pakistan, which eventually became Bangladesh; now Hindus make up about 9 percent of the population in the country (Ghosh 2014). There is ample evidence that for a number of years now, there has been a systematic exodus of Hindus from Bangladesh—in large part precipitated by the increasingly hostile conditions and treatment meted against them in the country by the Muslim extremists. Benkin’s discussion is especially critical as it raises serious concerns and questions about the Bangladeshi government’s commitment to addressing the violence, religious bigotry and discrimination, illegal seizure of properties, forced conversions, and rapes and abductions of Hindus in the country. In chapter 5, Taufiq Tanasaldy takes up the complex relationship that had unfolded between Indonesia and its ethnic Chinese population. Although comprising less than 2 percent of the Indonesian population, Indonesia’s relationship with its ethnic Chinese remains a dominant marker of the country’s struggles with coming to terms with itself as a modern nation. During the 1960s (in the early years of Indonesia’s status as an independent nation), some prominent anti-Chinese measures and policies were put into place, although there was also some emphasis in subsequent years to assimilate the ethnic Chinese. While the Chinese were permitted to pursue economic interests, their engagement in Indonesian politics was very much controlled and circumscribed. Indonesian politics has seen the country vacillate between attempting to assimilate and encouraging its ethnic Chinese population to retain its distinct cultural heritage. Their economic prowess and “foreignness” have made the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia a convenient target for discrimination and the violence that has been directed at them. Tanasaldy’s analysis of the citizenship status of the Chinese in the country untangles Indonesia’s efforts to reconcile its conflicted relations with this particular population. In chapter 6, we turn to neighboring Malaysia and Amy Freedman’s analysis of how ethnic relations in the country have come to affect its foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis China. Malaysia is a deeply ethnically (and increasingly religiously) stratified society. Since becoming independent in 1957, but especially so since the early 1970s, its dominant-minority group relations have centered around the political supremacy of the majority Malays, who have pursued a systemic race-based preferential system to augment its political (and to an extent its socio-economic) domination of the other ethnic minorities—especially the Chinese and Indians. Along with examining how ethnic politics and marginalization shapes Malaysian society, Freedman explores the influence of the Malaysian government’s motivations and international aspirations and competing domestic ethnically based political dynamics in shaping its foreign policy. Peter Hammer sheds light on the case of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia’s pre-war economy in the penultimate chapter. Specifically, Hammer

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examines the role played by the Chinese in the development and functioning of the rice economy, where they were especially instrumental. This analysis then provides the framework from which Hammer explores the “equilibrium” that characterized the relations between the ethnic Chinese and Khmer peasants and finally how economic role played by the Chinese in the functioning of the rice economy shaped its subsequent relations with the state in Cambodian society. In the final chapter, Thanet Aphornsuvan presents an examination of the struggles of the Malay Muslims in Thailand. Muslim-Malays, concentrated especially in the southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, and Patani, have lived under the shadow and domination of the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand). The latter part of the twentieth century witnessed a particularly prominent separatist insurgency in southern Thailand aimed at dislodging the Buddhist dominated Thai state’s control of these MuslimMalay populated provinces. Aphornsuvan’s chapter profiles the rise and fall of of Haji Sulong (prior to the uptick in the aforementioned insurgency), a revered teacher and leader of the Malays, as a window into the relations between the Thai state’s efforts to force the assimilation of the Malays and its detractors in the Malay provinces. The range of issues and foci on the interactions between the state and various minority groups presented in these chapters ultimately reflects the lenses through which this issue of the marginalization of minorities in South and Southeast Asia may be examined. As we have noted, while the ethno-religious fault-lines in these countries are consequential at multiple levels, they also provide a glimpse into the complexity of the struggles of minorities in these societies. REFERENCES Bannerjee, Paula. 1999. “Refugees Without Borders.” HIMAL South Asian (January). http://old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/2191-Refugees-without-borders.html. Bose, Tapan K. and Rita Manchanda. 1997. States, Citizens and Outsiders: The Uprooted Peoples of South Asia. Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights. Bukhari, Shujaat. 2010. “219 Kashmiri Pandits Killed by Militants Since 1989.” The Hindu. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article734089.ece. Capotorti, Francesco. 1991. Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. New York: United Nations. Ghosh, Palash. 2014. “Banglastan: Do Hindus Have a Future in Bangladesh?” International Business Times. http://www.ibtimes.com/banglastan-do-hindus-have-futurebangladesh-1556463. Kumaraswamy, PR. 2003. “Problems of Studying Minorities in the Middle East.” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations Vol 2, No. 2. http://www. alternativesjournal.net/volume2/number2/kumar.htm. Ojukwu. C.C. 2005. “The Politics of Integration and Marginalization in Nation-Building.” UNILAG Journal of Politics Vol 2 No. 1: 130–153. Okpori, Samuel Agwa. 2013. “Protections of the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous People.” Unpublished Paper. Ebonyi State University. http://www.academia.edu/ 7508804/PROTECTIONS_OF_THE_RIGHTS_OF_MINORITIES_AND_INDI

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GENOUS_PEOPLE. Oshewolo, Segun. 2011. “Politics of Integration and Marginalization in a Federation: The South-South Question of Nigerian Politics.” International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Vol 2 No. 2.1: 1–15. http://www.onlineresearchjournals.com/ ijopagg/art/66.pdf.

South and Southeast Asia

Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2000. Figure 0.1. D.C.).

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (Washington,

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ONE Memory, History, and Landscape Ethnic Hazaras’ Understanding of Marginality in Bamyan, Afghanistan Melissa Kerr Chiovenda

During my eighteen months of fieldwork in Markaz Bamyan, Afghanistan, I would often stand, not far from the village, Sarasyob, where I lived. On one of my last ventures there before leaving my field site, I was accompanied by my friend and long-time informant, Jawad. We were reflective, sometimes commenting and sometimes looking on in silence, as we viewed many of the heritage sites and landscape features of this relatively small bazaar town. As the center of Bamyan province, the Markaz is now promoted by many as the cultural and historical center of the ethnic Hazara homeland (see Figure 1.1). Across the valley I saw a cliff face that contains two huge niches, roughly human-shaped, that once housed two giant Buddha statues from approximately the fifth and sixth centuries, famously destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001 as un-Islamic idols. I remembered Jawad telling me “the Buddhas are our biography, we have the same faces, so they prove we belong here” months earlier. The cliff face, high mountains rising and extending behind it, also houses at least a thousand caves which were once cells of Buddhist monks living in the monastery that thrived in the valley during the time that the statues were built. Today, people continue to live in the caves, sometimes building additions so that houses seem to emerge from the holes in the cliff face. Life in the caves is hard, but they provide a warmer space in winter and cooler space in summer to people who would be left out to the 1

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Figure 1.1. Afghanistan. Washington, DC: Congressional Cartography Program, 2009.

elements. Jawad mentioned that the history of the land shelters the people who live there. To my right I made out a huge mound, ancient structures and towers reaching from its heights, rising from potato fields. This is Gholghola City, or the City of Screams, whose construction began in the sixth century and is said to have been destroyed by the armies of Chinggis Khan in the thirteenth century. I knew that further in this direction, as one follows the main road out of Bamyan, is a similar cliff-top fortress, Zuhak City, built sometime between the fifth and ninth centuries. Jawad and I looked straight down, to the main street of the bazaar, one- and two-story mud shops stretching in a line between the river and the potato fields. The bazaar is pressed in between inhospitable foothills and mountains that rise on either side of it. Hardly anyone builds houses in the actual valley—besides the bazaar, structures that make up surrounding villages cling to hillsides, so that every bit of arable land is in use during the short growing season. This bazaar is relatively new. The ruins of the old bazaar, deteriorating, roofless mud walls that now look almost as ancient as Gholghola or Zuhak City are closer to the Buddha cliffs. They stretched to our left along the road that leads out of town in the other direction. This bazaar was destroyed in the fierce fighting that took place during the civil war of 1992–1996 and during the resistance against the Taliban. Behind us, extending from the cliff on which I stand, more potato fields and Sarasyob

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village are located on a plain that was also home to the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT, a military base that provided security and did development activities, until withdrawing in early 2013. The local airport—really a gravel runway—is also located here. This high plain was therefore home to many international NGOs and development organizations, as well as government institutions, including the governor’s house. Directly behind us, however, is a huge billboard with a picture of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader who united the Hazaras under the Hizb-e-Wahdat political party during the later years of resistance to the Soviet invasion and the civil war. Baba Mazari was killed by the Taliban in 1995, but he remains a sort of ideological leader for many, and from this vantage point he looks down protectively upon his people. Bamyan has long attracted outsiders to visit its remarkable sites. In the seventh century the Chinese monk Xuan Zang traveled to the area and left behind a diary detailing the kingdom, including the Buddha statues. European, mainly British, explorers in the nineteenth century also left travel accounts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Western tourists following the “hippy trail” including Afghanistan and enjoyed the natural and heritage sights of Bamyan. Today, Bamyan is one of the safest provinces in Afghanistan and because of this and its many unique sites, tourists of a different type visit. The provinces surrounding Bamyan are dangerous and travel by road into the province is risky, but for internationals working for NGOs that allow them access to humanitarian flights, Bamyan becomes a place for a sort of “R and R” in Afghanistan. For Hazaras, however, the landscape of Bamyan holds deeper meanings, and the landscape features I described can bring to mind the pain of a violent past, the reminder that within Afghanistan, they have long been a marginalized group, as well as hope for a better future. Hazaras have a long history of oppression by the Afghan state, a history that they work to overcome today as the presence of the international community in Afghanistan provides opportunities for education and work formerly closed to most Hazaras. Keith Basso, who has written extensively about landscape among the Western Apache of Arizona, says that “place-making is a way of constructing history itself, of inventing it, of fashioning novel versions of ‘what happened here’” (Basso 1996, 6). Many Hazaras believe that much of their history has been lost, or has been written for them, by their oppressors, who they define interchangeably as the Afghan state and ethnic Pashtuns. In part relying upon the Bamyan landscape, Hazaras construct a history that gives them indigenous claims to the land on which they live, as well as to land that they believe was taken from them unjustly by the Afghan state. Hazaras see their reflection in the heritage sites that surround them and constitute rights to the land and to self-determination that they feel they have been denied—in this way “landscape becomes a codification of history itself” (Stewart and Strathern 2003, 1), and along with this codification of history a codifica-

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tion of a new national identity is constructed. At the same time, the landscape is riddled with reminders of war and conflict that help to remind everyone here, foreign and Hazara, that much has been lost in the past thirty years of war, and that the future may, in fact, be a continuation of the history of conflict. This chapter will show both how Hazaras’ interactions with and viewing of the land can be used to assert themselves, to both anchor themselves to the land for their own sake as they seek to build an self-identity based on belonging and to assert themselves to other groups who might also seek a claim to the land. MARGINALIZING HAZARAS An important facet of Hazara identity is tied to the idea that they have been victimized and oppressed almost without respite until international involvement began post-2001. In the late 1800s, Shah Abdur Rahman set out to bring under firm state control those areas of Afghanistan which until that point maintained some degree of autonomy (Barfield 2010). The Hazarajat, the central, mountainous region of Afghanistan, was one of these areas. The war waged against the Hazaras was particularly brutal. The majority of Hazaras are Shi’a Muslims, in addition to being somatically and culturally different. Therefore many Sunni mullahs branded them heretics, allowing the army of Abdur Rahman to be particularly ruthless. The Hazarajat was severely depopulated, both by lives lost in the fighting and outmigration of refugees. The end result was that Hazaras were essentially turned into a servant class when migrating to cities like Kabul, and many were sold into slavery, a practice that was not outlawed in Afghanistan until the 1920s (Mousavi 1997). Hazara lands were confiscated, land rights were given to others, particularly nomadic Pashtun kuchis who used them for grazing. Kuchi traders also sold goods at a premium price, pushing Hazaras further and further into a cycle of debt that was often only broken when their land was given in compensation (Ibrahimi 2012). Exorbitantly high taxes were levied on Hazaras (Mousavi 1997). Hazaras were generally excluded from achieving higher education, excluded from civil and government jobs, and in all but a very few cases were unable to achieve any sort of upward social mobility. Although some small gains were made during the communist period, the Sunni Taliban was also brutal in treatment of the Shi’a Hazaras. For most Hazaras, the present is seen as a golden period, with international involvement ensuring greater access to education and greater equality, as well as security. Markaz Bamyan, the important economic center of the province, was controlled by Sunni Tajiks who had more political ties to the central government up until the fighting of the civil war (1992–1996) and Taliban (1996–2001) periods. Generally, previous to this time, Hazaras lived in

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the regions surrounding the center, but not in it, and so were isolated economically (Canfield 1973). Hazara animosity toward these Tajiks, which grew after shelling of the Hazara districts of Kabul during the civil war and the Afshar Incident in which at least 700 Hazaras are estimated to have been killed by Ahmad Shah Massoud’s and Abdul Rassul Sayyaf’s forces, the defense minister and leader of one of the many mujahedin groups, respectively, resulted in the expulsion of most Tajiks from the Markaz area during the civil war and Taliban period. The old Tajik bazaar of Bamyan was ruined and the new, Hazara-controlled bazaar built a slight distance away. As most Tajiks were forced to leave (those who intermarried or converted to Shi’ism seem to have been the ones most likely to be allowed to stay), Hazaras came to control Markaz Bamyan. An influx of returned refugees settled in the area after 2001, many who originated from different districts and provinces before they fled during the years of fighting. The presence of a university, government structures, and many international and local NGO and development organizations also draw Hazaras from different districts and provinces to Markaz Bamyan. An educated, professional class of people have hence developed in the area. This was the group that made up the majority of my informants, many of whom were civil society activists working to create a new Hazara national identity based on open-mindedness and in accordance with so called “universal” Western ideals such as democracy, civil society and human rights. 1 THE CONTESTED (IDENTITY) TERRAIN An oft-repeated version (even by Afghans themselves and which has been adopted by the West) of the origins of the Hazaras, in news media and in scholarly works (see, for example, Bacon 1951) maintains that they are the descendants of Mongol soldiers left behind by Chinggis Khan when he invaded the valley. While there is surely some truth to this, when taken too literally this version of history has the effect of cutting off Hazaras from the previous civilizations in the valley—in particular, those that created the statues and the monastery cave complex. In fact, some Western media sources that reported on the Buddha statues’ destruction accept this version wholesale, maintaining that the Hazaras are “recent” arrivals with no connection to the ancient Buddhist inhabitants. From the point of view of many Hazaras, 2 this version cuts them off from a glorious, advanced civilization, and instead labels them as descendants of a group that invaded the valley and, according to local legend, killed every living thing that could be found, down to the wildlife, as the legend concerning the invasion of the Mongols goes. Some also believe that this history was intentionally spread by their Pashtun oppressors, to further justify their marginalization.

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Feld and Basso write that landscapes often play a role in “struggles by indigenous peoples and cultural minorities for ancestral homelands, land rights, and retention of sacred places” (1996, 4). Hazaras are a cultural minority who are struggling for the status of indigeneity, not through official channels such as the United Nations First Nations Convention, but simply for recognition of this first within their own communities and other ethnic groups in Afghanistan. They are using the history of their ancestral homeland in the struggle, with certain physical heritage sites serving as physical symbols of this history. By claiming to be the descendants of the Kushans, the second-century empire responsible for the flourishing of Buddhist religion, culture, art, and architecture in the area, they attempt to establish themselves as one of the first, if not the earliest, inhabitants of Afghanistan. The Buddha statues themselves are used to assist them in achieving this goal, although they were built later, in the fifth and sixth century. “The faces of the Buddhas tell of my past biography,” one informant told me, indicating that the Buddha statues looked like Hazaras. He repeated this statement often, but sometimes it became clear that he did so with the express purpose of establishing himself as part of a more ancient ethnic group than rival ethnic groups. In what was a telling experience, we visited the bank one fall day, and the bank teller told my friend he did not have the correct identification to make the transaction he wished to. My friend insisted he did, and the teller was just trying to assert power over him. My friend became angry. “Do you see my face? It is the face of the Buddhas, proof we have been here for 4,000 years. What more identification is needed?” Walking out, he said, “How dare a Tajik, who has been here for less than a couple hundred years at most, bully me in this way, on my land.” This sentiment is often repeated. The Buddha statues, according to local Hazaras, have the same Asiatic features as they do. Therefore, these features are not something inherited from invading Mongol armies but rather are the features of those who lived in the valley centuries before. And, in claiming descent from the Buddhists, Hazaras are also claiming descent from a grand civilization that created the massive statues, the cave complexes, and even invented oil painting (Highfield 2008). Hazaras cease to be the uneducated, oppressed people living in mountain highlands in simple, mud houses, eking out subsistence under the most difficult conditions, at the mercy of a state that does not respect them. Hazaras are aware of and use a “vision of time and space that accords priority to antiquity and the monumental” (Caftanzoglou 2001, 22) to appeal to the world and show that they are not backward but the remnants of a great civilization. They are aware that the biggest story to have come out of Bamyan in recent times is the destruction of the Buddha statues of the Taliban in 2001, not the mass killings of Hazaras that also took place during this period. But rather than rail against what might be seen as a

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wrong, a mixing of priorities, Hazaras use the Buddhas to form attachments to the land on which they now live. Paradoxically, the fact that the Kushans and their descendants were mixed with different ethnicities also further the Hazaras’ claims to exceptionalism among the ethnic groups of Afghanistan, as this mixing is cited as one of the reasons that Hazaras today are so open-minded when compared with others. This is particularly contrasted with the “closeminded” Taliban who destroyed the Buddhas, evidence of past Hazara greatness, while also killing numerous Hazaras as well. Gholghola City and Zuhak City’s towers were built after the region became Islamic. However, the bases of these ruins are, point out my Hazara informants, Buddhist—much as they themselves, having been mixed with many other peoples, can claim the advanced Buddhist society as their base identity as well. This is not to say that Hazaras do not consider themselves Muslim, or have any desire to explore Buddhism as a faith. However, the relationship of many of my informants with Islam is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are strong believers, while on the other, Islam is believed to be, at least in part, responsible for the end of a great past era that included Buddhist monuments and the Silk Road. The Islamic towers of these cities are impressive, but they do not compete with the beauty created by the Buddhists. Rather, for most of my informants, the Mongols are those most responsible for the final blows that ended the great civilization, even though the entire region had already converted to Islam by this time. Here, time becomes mixed as my informants tell their stories. Haliq, well acquainted with the monumental and historical sites of Bamyan, told me as he explored these cities with me, that at heart they were Buddhist, and Islam destroyed the positive aspects of this civilization, even as Hazaras today maintain some remnants of this civilization in their culture and in their character. This idea, that Mogols laid ruin to Hazara heritage sites, is particularly difficult for many Hazaras as one of the derogatory terms for them, in Iran where they worked as labor migrants as well as by other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, is “sons of Chinggis.” Chinggis Khan and the Mongols are looked down upon as bloodthirsty murderers by many, and Gholghola City, or the City of Screams, is said to be called so because Chinggis ordered every living thing, right down to the birds, of the valley slaughtered after his grandson was killed in battle. This event is used by some Hazaras to draw comparisons with the Taliban, who also killed, or caused to flee, most of the valley’s inhabitants. Most Hazaras I interviewed in Markaz Bamyan, in establishing a specific Hazara identity, reject comparisons to the Mongols, rather pointing to the Taliban for similarities, as they also brought war and destruction to the valley of Markaz Bamyan.

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THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANDSCAPE AND HERITAGE SITES Hazaras use landscape and heritage sites to attempt to establish connections with a great past civilization that was located on the land on which they now live and to establish indigeneity in Afghanistan, in the process banishing the idea that they are marginal or “outsiders.” And yet, their marginality continues to be read in the landscape and continues to form a core part of their identity. City of Screams brings to mind the death of an entire city, while the destruction of the Buddhas can be understood both as the destruction of a world heritage site and the destruction of the Hazaras’ link to a glorious past. The landscape also acts as witness to more recent conflict. Soviet tanks lie abandoned in a potato field. The old bazaar’s shape is still clear as the mud-wall dividers of the stalls remain along the road, but no effort is made to rebuild. Here it becomes clear that places, or landscapes, can be “sites of power struggles” and displacement a history of annexation, absorption, and resistance” (Feld and Basso 1996, 5). The ruined bazaar is testament to the Tajiks who were driven out of the valley, and their persecution is part of a larger story of revenge for repression and for the violence Tajiks exacted on Hazaras, both in Bamyan and in Kabul by Massoud. At the other end of the valley, at the far end of the new bazaar, a village, Zargaron, climbs up the side of a barren hill. This village consists almost entirely of returned refugees. They claim they have the right to live on the hillside and that theirs is a legal settlement. The displaced Tajiks say they are waiting the chance to return, to reclaim the bazaar and the hillside above it, and displace in turn those who currently live there. The old ruins and the new village remind all of past violence and potential future violence. And, while the Hazaras claim the status of the most oppressed people in the history of Afghanistan, they have exacted their revenge on others through acts of violence. The landscape of the valley tells the story of violence committed by all— Tajiks, Pashtuns (Taliban), Hazaras, as well as in the more distant past, when the Mongols destroyed the city. All of Afghanistan contains such sites, and all surely have their own particular context which differentiates them from each other. In nearby Yakawlang District, a one-and-a-half to two-hour drive from Bamyan, a town called Beitamoshkin is located in the lush river valley just past the district center, Nayak. Beitamoshkin and several adjoining villages were the site of one of the worst instances of Taliban brutality in Bamyan Province. Taliban and Hizb-e-Wahdat forces fought for control of the district in 2000, and the Taliban was victorious. Around three hundred men were massacred in the aftermath. The victims of the massacre were Sayeds, thought to be descendants of the Prophet Mohammad who do not consider themselves to be ethnically Hazara. Rather, my Sayed acquaintances in Bamyan all described themselves as Arab. Some claim that the Sayeds sought to join the Taliban, to save themselves, and were, as

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they approached the Taliban forces, easily cut down. Today, a small memorial to those killed stands on top of a wind-swept hill, listing the names of those killed. This incident further shows the intricacies of the conflict, as much of the outside world, and the Taliban themselves, did not differentiate the Shi’a Sayeds from the Shi’a Hazaras. I was taken to the site by a local woman, Hakima, who lost several family members in the massacre. We, and several other people around us, went from one marker to another, paying our respects in silence. Like the ruined bazaar in Markaz Bamyan, ruined houses serve as a daily reminder of past violence in Beitamoshkin, except in this case the victims continue to inhabit the ruins. Visiting Beitamoshkin, before I viewed the memorial, I was surprised by the construction of the houses, which are built into a small cliff face. The living areas as built on top of older houses, now used for livestock or simply abandoned. In these old houses one sees broken dishes, water carriers, old clothes—as if a former life was rapidly left behind. To get to the new living areas one must scramble up the steep cliff face. Why were the houses built like this, I asked Hakima? She told me a brief version of the story. “After the Taliban massacred the people, they went from one house to another, burning them. Every family lost at least several male relatives, fathers, uncles, sons, nephews, brothers, husbands.” She quickly fell silent. It became clear that they don’t seem to like to talk about the details of the event very much, but it cannot be forgotten as one peers from the veranda of the current house, viewing the ghosts of the ruins below. Kathleen Stewart writes of tensions felt in West Virginia beautifully: “the hills find themselves reeling in the dizzying, diacritical sensibilities of the local and the transnational, the past and the present, the all-to-realeffects of history.” (1996:137). This passage could just as easily relate to the Hazaras, dealing with everyday, local problems while inundated with foreign institutions—military, aid, development, and so on. While most Hazaras believe that they are experiencing unprecedented opportunities today, they also believe that they are not benefitting to the same degree as other ethnic groups. It is a common complaint that areas, particularly Pashtun areas, with more insurgent presence receive more aid and development assistance than Hazara areas, which are the safest in Afghanistan. The civil society community in Bamyan tries to bring attention to this, staging protests concerning lack of good water and lack of electricity. At the head of the bazaar is Lantern Square, where activists have crafted a large lantern sculpture. The lantern “sheds light on the reality of life in Bamyan,” I was told. Part of what it sheds light on is the fact that there is no light, at least at night. Each household provides its own electricity, usually by solar panels or community generators, most often provided by the means of the users, which is limited to two to three hours a night. My first full summer in Bamyan I lived in the village Zargaron, across the valley from the plain on which the PRT (Provincial

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Reconstruction Team) is located. I remember standing on the veranda (actually the rooftop of the house below) and commenting with my host family that it looked as if the sun was shining upward from that area. This sentiment has been echoed by other Bamyan residents in discussions with me. One, my friend Jawad who stood with me overlooking Bamyan valley, showed me a photograph he had taken and posted to Facebook, expressing exactly that sentiment, that light is for the wealthy or the outsiders, not for average Hazaras. People wonder why the PRT, which was supposed to provide development in conjunction with the government, is the only place lit up once darkness falls, and the brightness of the lights is a shocking contrast to the inky blackness around. While the lights of the PRT blindingly serve as a nightly reminder of problems Hazaras face, and their ongoing belief in their extreme marginality when compared with other peoples of Afghanistan, and ruined bazaars and houses are clear testaments to years of conflict, sometimes landscape is not so obvious in what it means for the people who live in it. Mines still litter the countryside. While much clearing has been done, I was discussing the possibility of climbing the Zuhak City ruins with a friend, Gul. He replied that this was a good climb, but if one went off the trail, mines were a danger. While a problem in any warzone, for the Hazaras mines may have particular meaning. The land they are trying to develop and create deep connections with as a homeland could turn on them at any time, should their luck be bad and they encounter a mine or even an IED. This sort of spatial marginality is not unique to Hazaras, but it is important as Hazaras are the group that feels the most tenuous ties to their land. These “landmines of memory” have the possibility to not only recall violence but to physically sever Hazaras from the land they desperately strive to claim, either by making the land inaccessible or permanently, through death. Bamyan itself, if viewed from above, as if looking from a map, further affirms Hazaras’ feelings that they have been left with little help from the central government. Bamyan is often referred to as the safest of all Afghanistan’s provinces, and this may very well be the case. However, the province, as well as nearby Hazara-majority province Daikundi and other adjoining Hazara-majority districts in other provinces, seem to be cut off from the rest of the country. Many Hazaras feel as if they are trapped in a tiny zone of safety, and beyond this, insurgency rages. Worse, the island of safety in which Hazaras feel sheltered is shrinking. Conflict is increasing in districts of Shibar, Kahmard, and Sayghan, due to their borders with other unstable provinces and because a worsening economic situation attracts some locals to assist the Taliban. Both of the routes from Bamyan to Kabul are considered unsafe, and this belief grows each day as new reports of Taliban roadblocks, some which result in murder of passengers, grow. Sometimes political figures or those working with international organizations are targeted, and sometimes Hazaras have

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been killed simply because they are Hazara. With no commercial flights into the province, the people feel trapped. There is a widespread belief that with the exit of international troops, the situation will only grow worse. The borders of the Hazarajat are indeterminate, not following the lines of existing provinces, but the borders of Bamyan have always signaled entry to a safe zone. This belief is quickly eroding. CONCLUDING REMARKS The landscape of Bamyan serves many different functions to the longmarginalized Hazaras. In some cases, it provides the possibility to leave behind marginality, as heritage sites are used in efforts to establish indigeneity that might, from the Hazara point of view, restore rights that were lost during the time of Abdur Rahman. The landscape reminds all who move through it of the past conflict, involving complex alignments, betrayals, and realignments of different groups, ensuring these conflicts, and in some cases the grudges that emerged are not forgotten. The landscape brings to light Hazaras’ ambiguous relationship with the international community, with which they want to firmly align themselves, seeking protection from a long history of oppression from which they experienced a short break after 2001. All the same, Hazaras still believe that other groups receive preferential treatment, while they are left, metaphorically and literally, in the dark. And finally, the shape of Bamyan, viewed from above, foretells the potential for future conflict, and Hazaras are already experiencing heightened insecurity when they travel as well as in particular districts of Bamyan. Barabara Bender wrote that if we acknowledge that people “understand and engage in the material world around them, and if we recognize that people’s being-in-the-world is always historically and spatially contingent, it becomes clear that landscapes are always in progress, potentially conflicted, untidy and uneasy” (Bender 1993). Bamyan and the Hazaras, with past outflows of refugees, inflows of returnees and professionals seeking to establish a strong Hazara nation, ambiguous relationships with the international community, and a valid belief that their haven of safety is shrinking illustrates this perfectly. Hazaras understand their place in Bamyan within a particular historical context, that illustrates creativity, nationalism, conflict, and varying interpretations of a land that has seen little peace for many years. NOTES 1. While the civil society activists who I worked with for the main part of my research did serve a sort of vanguard promoting a particular type of ethno-national activism, the use of landscape, and landscape’s impact on people, certainly extended beyond these activists into the greater population of Bamyan.

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2. Hazaras in Bamyan and Kabul who accept and promote this version are usually well educated, and may often be linked to civil society activists. It is worth noting that among the large Hazara population in Quetta, Pakistan, the idea that Hazaras are Mongol is still widely accepted, and something that is a source of pride. In Afghanistan, Hazaras have taken a different point of view concerning their roots.

REFERENCES Bacon, Elizabeth. 1951. “The Inquiry into the History of the Hazara Mongols of Afghanistan.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 7(3): 230–247. Barfield, Thomas. 2010. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Legend Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Bender, Barbara. 1993. Introduction in Bender, Barbara and Margot Winder, eds. Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile, and Place. Oxford: Berg. Caftanzoglou, Roxane. 2001. The Shadow of the Sacred Rock: Contrasting Discourses of Place Under the Acropolis in Bender, Barbara and Margot Winder, eds. Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile, and Place. Oxford: Berg. Canfield, Robert. 1973. The Ecology of Rural Ethnic Groups and the Spatial Dimensions of Power. American Anthropologist 75(5): 1511–1528. Feld, Stephan, and Keith Basso, eds. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Highfield, Roger. 2008. Oil Painting ‘Invented in Asia, Not Europe.’ The Telegraph, April 22. Accessed July 15, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/ 3340400/Oil-painting-invented-in-Asia-not-Europe.html. Ibrahimi, Niamatullah. 2012. “Shift and Drift in Hazara Ethnic Conciousness: The Impact of Conflict and Migration. Crossroads Asia Working Paper 5. Mousavi, Sayed Askar. 1997. The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, and Political Study. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Stewart, Kathleen C. 1996. An Occupied Place in Feld, Stephan and Keith Basso, eds. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Stewart, Pamela, and Andrew Strathern, eds. 2003. Landscape, Memory, and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.

TWO Sri Lanka after the War Reconciliation vs Marginalization Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1

PROLOGUE Colombo Airport, September 2009: We had cleared immigration for our night flight to Chennai and were waiting for the boarding announcement. Suddenly two men in khaki uniform accosted us: Excuse me, are you Mr. So-and-so? We have to ask you to come out with us to the public area and check your luggage.

On May 19, 2009 the government of President Rajapakse pronounced the defeat of the LTTE, thus officially marking the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. He subsequently announced a restructuring and reform program for the North and East, Uthuru Vasanthaya (a Sinhala term meaning Northern Spring). While the horrifying final phase of the war is now well documented (see Weiss 2011; Manivannan 2014), comparatively little has been published about the post-war situation in the North and East. It is notable that five years after the war, we still speak of a post-war and not of a peace situation. It is also remarkable that unlike other conflict situations, interest in the situation in Sri Lanka declined rapidly (cf. Weerawardhana 2013). Some studies (Weiberg-Salzmann 2011; Thiranagama 2011; Walker 2013a, b) published after 2009 deal with the topic, albeit rather cursorily. This chapter consists of three parts. First, it will discuss the immediate post-war situation in Sri Lanka, followed by a discussion of the situation of the ethnic Tamils in the internment camps shortly after

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the cessation of hostilities, and then an assessment of the current conditions of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, particularly in the North and East. A few recent studies on Sri Lanka have focused to some extent on the post-war situation. Sharika Thiranagama’s study (2011) concentrates on the Muslims who are presented as the worst violated minority in the country. The suffering of, as well as the violence and discrimination against, the Tamils by the government are addressed comparatively shortly as a kind of lesser evil (Thiranagama 2011, 42; 105). Rebecca Walker’s study (2013, 18 and 154) deals mainly with with the effects of everyday violence on women and describes their attempts to snatch a “normal” life from permanent disruption and the importance of being able to mourn in words or actions. Weiberg-Salzmann’s (2011) comprehensive study describes primarily the situation before and during the war. Eva Gerharz (2014) has just published an account of economic development in the Tamil areas during the ceasefire and after 2009. INTERMISSION Colombo Airport September 2009: I categorically refused to leave the international area and immediately called my embassy. When they arrived the man in khaki showed them a letter in Sinhala (which neither of us understood) allegedly from Defence Minister Gotabhaya and accusing us of‚ “terrorist activities” and smuggling‚ LTTE documents.

THE IMMEDIATE POST-WAR SITUATION Hopes for a continuation of the cease-fire and a durable state of at least non-war diminished dramatically after former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was elected president in November 2005 and the subsequent victory of the UPFA in the parliamentary elections in early 2006 (Goodhand and Klem 2005, 89). It became obvious very soon that Rajapakse would not support the principle of a federal system for Sri Lanka and was not interested in a peaceful solution. All parties reverted to the idea of Sri Lanka as an indissoluble unity, a unitary and centralized state. After the conclusion of hostilities, triumphalism reigned supreme. General Fonseka only confirmed engrained Sinhalese policies when in September 2008 he stated: I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people. We being the majority of the country, 75 percent, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country. We are also a strong nation ... They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things. (Bell 2008)

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A retired lieutenant-colonel claimed in 2009 that the Tamil IDPs were Tamils from India, who had been living in the country illegally and should have been deported years ago. They should be treated like those in Myanmar that had shown to the Indian minority who was the lord of the manor (Amarasekera 2009a, b). Sri Lanka, so he went on, was exclusively the country of the Sinhalese and had to protect itself from attacks like the ones that had taken place during the time of the Colas (twelfth century). The now deserted Tamil areas in the North and East should be settled with army veterans, so that the Tamils could never again raise demands for special rights and autonomy (Silva 2009). Unfortunately, these were not the ravings of an extreme fringe: A reputed Sri Lankan academic (residing in Australia) compared the last days of the war to those of WWII, when the allied forces tolerated considerable civilian German casualties for the greater good. The cease-fire demanded by some western governments was thus only an emotional aberration of a few (Roberts 2009). Quite apart from the extremely dubious Nazi comparison (about which more later) the author then denounced the continuing financial and aid deliveries to “Tigerland” (sic), forgetting to mention that here we deal with a civil war and that the government never gave up its claim to control of the whole of the Tamil areas. President Rajapakse allowed himself to be celebrated as a second Dutthagamani, the king who allegedly routed the Tamils in historical time. In a victory speech on May 20, 2009 he announced his intention to lead the country according to Buddhist principles and to turn the island into an island of dharma (Dhammadipa). 2 In the same speech he claimed that it was these Buddhist principles that had led to the victory over the Tamils: According to the tradition established by kings such as Dutugemunu 3, we should respect even the enemy that has surrendered or been killed in combat. That is a quality of greatness that is found not only with the government, but also with the people of this country. . . . We who are schooled in the Buddhist tradition of loving kindness and compassion . . . do not need to be taught how we should treat and care for the innocent and helpless. We shall resettle all those who have been freed from being hostages in very welcome surroundings. People who have not had electricity and not seen modern roads will be resettled in environments complete with all facilities. I ask you to compare the living conditions of the people in the East three years ago with what it is today. (Rajapakse 2009)

The victory over the LTTE was sanctified by a ritual in the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy where Rajapakse was addressed as the new dharmaraja (Weiss 2011; 9-10; 226-28). Rajapakse claimed that his government had undertaken one of the “hugest humanitarian operations” in “rescuing LTTE hostages” and stated further that henceforth he would not acknowledge any ethnicities in Sri Lanka but aspired to reconciliation for all “sons and daughters” of

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Lanka. In an interview with the Times of India, he said that he would like to settle many Sinhalese in the North and vowed to destroy the remnants of the LTTE wherever they surfaced. Shortly after he declared the thirteenth amendment (which gave a measure of autonomy to the Tamil areas) not implementable because the Sinhalese majority would not allow it and that devolution plans for the Tamil areas had been abandoned. Reconciliation was envisaged as economic development within the framework of a unitary state. What part was envisaged for the Tamils in this scheme became clear only too soon. Their exclusion was apparently pre-planned even before the war ended. INTERMISSION Colombo 2009: The embassy staff pointed out that the ambassador would not be pleased to learn that two foreign academics had been prevented from leaving the country. Under their watchful eyes our luggage, hand luggage, and laptop were searched, without result. We got stand-by seats on an Air India Express flight that looked as though it had done duty during WWII and had not been serviced since.

NATIONAL REACTIONS Sinhala Triumphalism After the euphoria of victory, the Sinhala public was not so much hostile toward the Tamils as totally uninterested. For them, the matter was finished, further discussion or considerations unnecessary. Till today, victory celebrations are held every year on May 19 while the Tamil population is prevented, sometimes violently, from commemorating their war dead (Perera 2012; cf. also Manivannan 2014, 460). The Sinhalese reaction seemed only logical, if one looks at developments over the last century. Scholars see a deep-seated Sinhalese fear of Tamils as a group, even though maybe not as individuals (cf. Kapferer 2012; Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988): the prevailing perception is that they came from India—thus they do not belong—and always oppressed them. It is an enduring perception that has entered the Sinhala psyche. Textbooks and readers for religious instruction from primary school onward present Sinhala-nationalist images based on Buddhism as the “good” or “right way of life” in contrast to other, lesser systems of belief and thus furnish a justification for attacks against Tamils. A textbook from 1999 advocates unquestioning acceptance of Sinhala-Buddhist teachings rather than thinking and analysis (Fischer 2009, 187–95; 211–12). While in earlier editions Tamils are still given considerable space, albeit within the context of the mythical Dutthagamani episode,

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recent textbooks barely mention them: they have become invisible, metaphorically and literally (Ponni 2011). Sri Lankan society is portrayed as exclusively Sinhala-Buddhist (Fischer 2009, 255–56). This worldview is based to a large extent on a distorted reading of an ancient chronicle, the Mahavamsa (MV). The MV narrates King Dutthagamani’s territorial unification of the country by ousting the Tamils as a form of religious achievement. It conflates religious, territorial, and political unity, simultaneously transferring antagonism onto the “infidel Tamils.” This perception furnishes religious legitimation for violence. It is read as a religious narrative and thought to establish Buddhism as a Sinhalese (read ethnic) religion. Scholars consider it to be nothing more than a drawing of territorial boundaries (see Obeyesekere 1979, 281). 4 Tessa Bartholomeusz (2002) discussed the significance of the MV for the justification and even sacralization of the war against the Tamils. Her argument that religious arguments are drawn from non-religious texts to sanctify a war for political aims as a religious and “just” one remains eminently valid. In other words: the Sinhalese consider it their sacred right to ill-treat the “Other” that is considered racially and culturally inferior (Kapferer 2012). The aggressively secular LTTE was, according to this line of thought, dangerous: striking fear precisely in a middle class that already suffered from economic and social insecurity. A retreat into private religion and religious consumerism may offset this insecurity for a short while, but ultimately, the religionization of politics is perceived as a panacea that allows the ill-treatment of “demonic” minorities and infidels with impunity (Seneviratne 1999, 90; Helbardt et. al 2013). Buddhism is used to establish and retain political and special privilege. The objective of religious unity is therefore considered justification for claims of ethnic dominance and for the exclusion of minorities, both of which are fuelled by party propaganda and the press; any challenge to ethnic dominance leads to fears about religious survival and vice versa. In this conflation of ethnicity and religion, the Tamils may indeed constitute a threat to the ideology of Sinhala Buddhism. In other words, religion and politics reinforce each other. The Sinhalese thus celebrated the end of the war not because the war was over, but because they considered the Tamils defeated. People who assisted them in the camps or in general were attacked and insulted by Sinhalese as LTTE sympathisers (Manivannan 2014, 871–72). Rajapakse portraying himself as a Buddhist king and a second Dutthagamani therefore met with raging success. The Sinhalese saw him as a liberator (both from the Tamils and from international paternalism and domination). Therefore they put up with the more disagreeable features of his rule: a continuing state of emergency with repressive laws, surveillance, security controls, and even economic decline. The consequences, or so they thought, would only affect the Tamils, anyway. Even liberal intel-

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lectuals supported Rajapakse because they perceived him as a determined leader. In sum, Sri Lanka suffers from an island syndrome that distorts its perception of the wider reality: we do as we please—and Rajapakse is the king. International Reactions International reactions have remained equivocal. After the videos showing callous killings of unarmed persons surfaced, the congratulatory attitude of the international community changed, and voices criticizing Sri Lanka became more audible. Two sessions of a People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka were held under the auspices of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (Russell Tribunal) in Dublin and Bremen. Their conclusions stated that the evidence for government-committed war crimes and violations of human rights during the “war without witnesses” was overwhelming. 5 In 2010 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon appointed an advisory panel under the leadership of former Indonesian Minister for Justice, Marzuki Darusman, concurrently UN special envoy for human rights in North Korea, tasked with investigating accusations against both parties in the conflict concerning “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law” and to decide whether war crimes proceedings should be initiated. The EU in August 2010 suspended the Generalized System of Preferences until the human rights situation in the country improved. While in 2009 a UN resolution had commended Sri Lanka’s victory over “terrorism,” (Human Rights Watch 2009) in subsequent resolutions from 2012, 2013, and March 2014 the Human Rights Council called for an inquiry into war crimes allegations against Sri Lanka (Human Rights Watch 2014). High Commissioner for Human Rights Navaneetha Pillay at the end of 2013 decisively demanded an investigation (United Nations 2014; Weerawardhana 2013a, 3–4). In retaliation Sri Lanka denied entry to the members of the UN panel and accused them of a “hidden UN agenda.” It introduced new and tightened visa regulations for Indian, UK, US and EU citizens. Further it established its own “Lessons Learnt Commission” to look exclusively into alleged war crimes by the LTTE (TamilNet 2010). It was criticized severely for this by the UN panel and also for preventing victims with threats and incentive to give evidence (cf. Manivannan 2014, 362). As long as it had the support of China and India the government’s attitude did not change. It was hardened by the fact that the CHOGM was held in Sri Lanka in November 2013, international protests notwithstanding. What was less publicized was that only twenty-seven out of fifty-two heads of state took part and that British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded comprehensive and conclusive inquiries into human rights

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violations. Some heads of state paid their respects to the Tamils who had died in the conflict, and the opposition did not take part in the proceedings due to threats and attacks on them (Perera 2013). POST-WAR IMPRESSIONS Many observers claimed that whatever would happen, the Tamils were glad that the war was over and the LTTE defeated (Thiranagama 2011; Weiberg-Salzmann 2011). The claim of the LTTE to be the thin red line between survival and annihilation of the Tamils had been proved horrifyingly right. The dominant opinion was that however bad the LTTE might have been, it provided a measure of security for the people. And compared to the current situation life under the LTTE was a paradise. At the same time a feeling prevailed that the LTTE had betrayed the people, when it surrendered or fled. 6 Tamils were fearful and downcast. They appeared defeatist and pessimistic, depressed, and most of all exhausted by twenty-five years of suffering. Tamils lived in constant fear. Many did not dare to speak Tamil any more and did not openly show that they were Tamils (e.g., women did not put the pottu on their forehead and refrained from wearing the sari). In 2007 Tamils staying in Colombo had been arbitrarily arrested and expelled from the town if they could not prove “a legitimate reason to stay there” or if they could not produce identifying documents. All Tamils living in Colombo had periodically to register with the police and report their visitors (Maunaguru 2008). Relations asked their foreign visitors not to come to their houses because it would be dangerous: ”There have been raids recently.” Tamils dared not go out after dark for fear of being stopped, checked, and arrested. And locals and foreigners did not dare or did not want to give shelter to Tamils, because “. . . Tamils are being persecuted, and we do not want to endanger ourselves.” 7 This was just a foretaste of what was to come after the war (Coomaraswamy 2014). Police searched houses arbitrarily without having to give reasons or authorisation beyond being on the look-out for LTTE supporters. This justification sufficed for every breach of law. 8 They confiscated credit cards and smartphones, devastated the interior of houses, and destroyed the furniture without the Tamils having the right to protest. Riding a taxi became hazardous for foreign visitors: they had radio communication and transmitted passenger characteristics and destinations to the relevant authorities. Warnings had been pronounced about this even during the war. Tamil media persons were hardest hit. A number of them were murdered during and after the war. The editor of the Tamil paper Uthayan (who had been a mediator during the peace talks) and its sister paper

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Sutar Oli had not stirred outside his office since an attack on him and his staff in 2006. Between 2007 and 2009, eight of his employees were murdered. When in 2011 he took up residence outside his office again, he was attacked and critically injured (National Peace Council 2011). Discrimination became more pronounced and more visible the further north one went. This was particularly poignant regarding health-related concerns. In the hospital in the Tamil-majority town of Vavuniya, for example, Tamil patients had to shift from their beds to the floor if Sinhalese patients arrived and there were not enough beds available. The general view was that the hospital functioned like an internment camp. Special diagnoses had to be done outside on private account. 9 Women and girls fared worse: Right after the war it was alleged that by order of the Army, Muslim doctors in Vavuniya performed abortions (which is illegal in Sri Lanka) on Tamil women and girls they had raped or used as sexual slaves. Besides that, many Tamil girls were married off and became pregnant very young in order not to be recruited into the LTTE. The Internment Camps What follows is an account of conditions in the camps in September 2009 partly from information gathered and partly from personal observation. Immediately before and after the end of the war the Sri Lankan government established so-called Relief and Transition Centres in Menik Farm near Vavuniya. Civilians who had “surrendered” 10 were interned in these, which were actually internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and controlled by the army. Between 280 and 300 thousand Tamil IDPs were eventually held in these camps. Conditions were chaotic for several reasons, not the least of which was that the camps were overcrowded. The government had consistently claimed that only 100,000 people lived in the LTTE areas. In the no-fire zone there were allegedly only 20,000; yet at the end of hostilities, 85,000 came from the “no-fire zone,” finally making up a total of approximately 300,000, the majority of them women and children. 11 According to the LTTE, 400,000 people lived in the Vanni by 2005/2006. It is now considered as certain that 40,000, maybe up to 70,000 civilians were killed by government action during the last phase of the war in the “no-fire zones,” over 10,000 are still unaccounted for (Guruparan and Rajamanoharan 2013). The camp inmates were treated not as refugees but as hostile aliens: The hidden agenda of the Sri Lankan government is to terrorise the Tamil people into subordination and bring the traditional Tamil areas under military control (Sarvan 2014).

In fact, all Tamils were considered as either Tigers or Tiger suspects, not citizens of Sri Lanka. That was given as the reason for their internment.

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The government of the Federal Republic of Germany considered the humanitarian situation of the IDPs “extremely precarious” in October 2009. Some local UN employees as well as a considerable number of Tamils with foreign citizenship were unlawfully kept in the camps and in some cases ill-treated (Manivannan 2014, 485). International organizations and NGOs had been asked to help construct temporary camps with a life span of at most 180 days. But it became increasingly clear that the government intended to keep people in the camps much longer (Somasundaram 2010). 12 The tents provided by the UN were emergency structures sleeping five to seven persons. In reality, they housed seven to twelve persons at a minimum. The location of the camps presented severe problems. The area was completely level, made up of loam and sand, which became a problem as soon as the rainy season started. It flooded immediately washing up dirt and excrement from the provisional shallow toilets. The weak or sick often fell in and drowned. The government blamed the NGOs for the unhealthy conditions because of insufficient and impermanent sanitary structures. Health conditions were abysmal. Morbidity was ten a day per 40,000 people. Only forty-seven doctors and twenty-one nurses (all Sinhalese) were responsible for the whole camp. Food and water in the camps were provided exclusively by international organizations and NGOs; the government only furnished infrastructure and electricity. For the first few months, severe shortages and bad quality of food and water were the rule. Water ran to 20 liters/person/day = two buckets for bathing, toilet, washing, cooking, drinking. Inmates received clothing from aid organizations, but this was inefficient: males often received women’s clothing and vice versa. During their flight from the violence they had to leave behind not only their possessions, their houses and farms, and thus lost nearly all means of livelihood. They became and remained dependent on handouts by aid organizations, because they were not allowed to leave the camps and return to their villages to reconstruct their lives belying government claims of economic reconstruction. Only those who had relatives outside the camps or abroad or those who had saved some jewelry and money could get funds to buy medicine and provisions beyond the rations provided. Government servants even continued to receive their salary in the camps. There were mobile banks where money was remitted and where people could withdraw funds to buy rations from mobile shops run by Sinhalese. Pawnshops were opened for pawning gold and jewelry. Some informants said that before the final battle the LTTE had distributed money and jewelry to the people who were crossing over into government areas. With these some people were able to bribe their way out of the camps, the going rates being between Rs. 100,000 and 400,000, depending on whether one was a “normal” person or a cadre. Many people left in

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this way, enabling the government to claim the number of inmates was reducing because people were relocated. The main problem was accessibility to the camps. Though a large number of NGOs worked for the camps, their access into the camps was severely restricted. Foreign NGO staff were often prevented from entering the camps and, if permitted, not allowed to communicate with the inmates. Even diplomats and opposition MPs were prevented from entering the camps: the German chargé d’affaires was allowed in after long negotiations, but only under military supervision. Five opposition MPs sued against not being permitted to visit the camps. Their argument was that they should be able to visit their constituencies and constituents any time, and they were prevented from doing that. One MP justified this policy with the argument that opposition politicians could not be admitted to the camps because they would only spread lies, as did the UN, NGOs, and foreign human rights organizations, etc. He also claimed that only the government delivered provisions to the camps, not NGOs or other organizations. To the question why the camps could not be closed and the people sent home, he said that one first had to find the mines in the Vanni. This was a popular but unconvincing argument: the mines had been located, documented, and removed by the relevant organizations since 2002. People had learned to live and work with the mines and had survived. The argument was clearly a pretext. Tamil staff were rarely allowed to work in the camps despite volunteering. Overseas Tamils who knew about conditions in the camps tried to help: they collected donations and sent them through specified NGOs such as Ramakrishna, Hindu Cultural Association, Sai Baba. ICRC left Sri Lanka during 2009 because the working conditions deteriorated dramatically. Visit to the Camps Travel to Vavuniya was strongly discouraged because officially, foreigners were not allowed to travel to Vavuniya, but we managed by sheer chuzpah to go there by night train. In Anuradhapura all Sinhalese alighted. We simply stayed put, expecting to be checked in Medawachi, the station “from hell,” but nothing happened. Vavuniya looked decrepit and neglected. Sinhalese triumphalism was particularly noticeable here: an overwhelming presence of security forces that checked people randomly as well as flags, statues of victorius Sinhalese generals at the crossroads and victory announcements everywhere. In the evenings the male youth got drunk in Vanni Inn due to the lack of any other entertainment. The government elections posters were tarred.

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Menik Farm, Zone 2, So-Called Arunachalam Transitional Relief Village Through the barbed wire fence of the huge camp we could see the closely packed tents. Because it was a Sunday, the aid organizations did not work, so entry was not possible. We therefore joined the long queue of very ordinary people who wanted to visit their relations. They arrived by three-wheeler, bus, van, loaded with stuff, mostly food and clothing they had brought for their loved ones. From the car park we walked through a barbed wire enclosure to a shed where we were instructed to hand over our smartphones and cameras. After that came a body check. A young female soldier rather lacking in brains rummaged through my back pack handbag. She pulled out everything, continuously complaining softly in Sinhala that to me sounded like: “Oh the rubbish this woman keeps in her bag!” She took my USBstick, iPod, connecting cord etc. and hung it all on a bamboo wall. I preferred to give them into our friends’ safe-keeping. What made me really angry and aggressive was the fact that the woman talked exclusively in Sinhala, not only to me but also to other visitors. In the end I got so worked up that I started yelling at her in German . . . 13 We proceeded between barbed wire to the street where we had to wait in front of a wooden barrier before crossing the fenced-off road in batches. If the crush was great, this took time. When we could enter the visitors’ enclosure we could not meet the man we had come to see because we had neglected to ask for his “house number,” i.e., the tent number This we should have announced to the security staff earlier, so that he could be called by loudspeaker. The other visitors went up to the barbed wire, in between was a space of about one meter, then again barbed wire on the other side. Behind this fencing the internees stood trying to talk to their visitors. With a bit of effort one could hand over gifts. But nobody was allowed to tarry more than ten minutes. On the other side of the road we saw a family—adults, children, babies—at the barbed-wire fence waving to their relatives on the other side. It was a déjà vue moment: like standing at the Berlin Wall of sad memory . . . The return journey to Colombo was spent by sitting up the whole night in a severely overcrowded train full of police in mufti. INTERMISSION November 2010: For a conference in Colombo by a German-sponsored NGO I was given a seven-day visa for which I had to attend an interview at the embassy in Berlin with Deputy Ambassador Jagath Dias. I was not allowed to leave Colombo and was constantly chaperoned. My in-laws begged me not to get in contact and not to visit, because that could create problems for them.

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CURRENT CONDITIONS IN THE NORTH AND EAST Five years after the war the tight control of people and movement in the North and East through heavy militarization and military control continues: “There is one member of the armed forces for approximately every ten civilians in the Jaffna peninsula” (Mannivannan 2014, 363; 461-2; Sumanthiran 2011b). Tamils in Jaffna have to report to the military who and how many people live in each house; they have to register visitors (Mannivannan 2014). Private and family ceremonies like weddings, puberty ceremonies, memorial services, and so on need permission from the security services. Churches and temples have to obtain army permission as well to conduct major festivals, religious events, and fairs (Sumanthiran 2011a). This extends even to events and functions by civil society organizations, like the NPC, where recently security personnel intruded in some of their seminars (National Peace Council 2014). Insecurity is created by the collaboration of some former militants with the government and the criminal machinations of the ruling EPDP. In the East, rival factions of former militants, especially the Karuna faction, collaborate with and are financed by the government, thus splitting the opposition (cf. Sarvanathan 2010). Access to the North is still tightly controlled. The Omantai checkpoint continues, and controls have recently been tightened by introducing another one at Elephant Pass (Perera 2013). Foreigners and journalists need special permission from the MoD to travel to the North. Moreover, people are encouraged to take expensive flights to Jaffna rather than the overland route, which has recently been opened again. Recently, questionnaires have been distributed in Jaffna and Colombo to ascertain who lives in the houses and of which ethnicity. This worried not only the Tamils, but also the Muslims, because the anti-Tamil riots 1983 had begun with similar questionnaires (Hussein 2014). Let us now look at some specific sectors. Education Education in the Tamil areas during the war and the cease-fire encountered a number of obstacles. While in Jaffna schools and university continued to function, albeit with difficulties, nearly throughout, in the LTTE-controlled areas this was more problematic: many schools had been destroyed in fighting, and it was difficult to get teachers. Still, the LTTE administration managed to keep education going and allowed government-controlled and ‑financed educational institutions to function alongside its own private institutions (like Vanni Tech), and colleges twinned with overseas institutions, often private ones in the US. 14 As the PDS put it, structures were not doubled but complemented. It was not

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intended to dissolve educational institutions and boards, since Tamil officers were employed there working for the welfare of the Tamil population. 15 The real reason, however, was most probably that the LTTE would not have been able to organize and finance proper education on its own and—most importantly—to get exams and degrees from its own institutions recognized anywhere. 16 A common complaint was that not enough teachers were sent to the Vanni: when teachers retired in the North, their positions would be refilled in the South. The overall number of teachers would thus remain the same, but in the North 25 percent of teachers were lacking. Finance for the universities was also only rudimentary. Because of the emigration especially of intellectuals and academics, academic standards were difficult to maintain. Especially the universities in the Eastern Province and the Vanni suffered. 17 The end of the war ironically disrupted educational continuity, access, and quality for large groups of pupils in the North and East worse than ever. Initially no proper education facilities were provided for the large number of children in the camps. Only very slowly, rudimentary facilities were introduced so that children could at least sit their exams, but the pass rate was extremely low (TamilNet 2009). During the last phase of the war, many pupils had been unable to attend school because they were fleeing from place to place or had been kept out of school deliberately by their parents, who were afraid of their children being forcibly conscripted if they ventured out of the house. Many were not able to attend school or to pay attention to classes because of severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) and would first need counseling before they would be able to study again (cf. Somasundaram 2010). Many children and young people are unable or unwilling to continue their education, because they do not see the benefit of educational achievement when there are no jobs to be had. The parents, who are also psychologically vulnerable, are unable to exert control and guidance. Sometimes they are too poor to afford the cost for schooling and keep their children out of school. This in a region that had always prided itself on its educational achievements. The core problem of education in Sri Lanka in general might be stated to be one of content and deteriorating quality. This applies with even more severity to the Tamil areas. Levels and quality of education here have fallen considerably. Instruction in English and IT competence are deficient. Though the number of teachers in Jaffna and also the Vanni is still sufficient, teachers do not stay in the places where they teach but commute once or twice a week from Vavuniya or Jaffna. Supervision, help and guidance therefore remain deficient. Besides, even if the quality and level of education should improve, job openings in the Vanni are scarce (see below). School leavers would be compelled to look for jobs in the South, which for a number of reasons is neither feasible nor really desirable. Vacant government positions are filled by Sinhalese, and the Tamils are passed over or transferred to the South. 18 One informant stat-

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ed that in Tamil-majority Vavuniya in a normal year twenty-eight Tamils would be admitted to the law college. In 2009 this had dwindled to two, depriving many Tamils of higher education. Alternative education opportunities are scarce not least because the government permitted these only within strict limits after the nationalization of schools in 1961. 19 The Education Sector Development Framework and Programme (ESDFP) of the Ministry of Education and related boards for the “creation of social cohesion and peace” would have to be scrutinized to ensure that this cohesion does not merely imply Tamil compliance with government stipulations but equity and equal life chances. Education only for economic needs is not sufficient to achieve these objectives, as long as there is no comprehensive political program envisaging equity for all groups of the population. The Economy Immediately after the war the economy suffered considerably. The growth prognosis for 2010 was 1.5 percent, less than any time during the war. Though 990 million USD in government bonds had been signed at the end of 2009, they showed less confidence in the Sri Lankan economy than short-term financial expectations from bank houses and financial institutions mainly from Malaysia, Iran, China, India, perhaps also the US. An IMF-loan was applied for with the reasoning that money was needed for the development of the North, but it was used mainly for debt servicing. In the following years the economy picked up again, and growth stands now at 7 percent. However, as Weiberg states, this growth is largely fuelled by unproductive investments in real estate, services, and tourism (Weiberg-Salzmann 2011, 197). Arguably considerable investment now reaches the North and Northeast. Under the “Northern Spring” program, road and building construction, especially hotels, in Jaffna boomed. The Yal Devi train service from Colombo to Jaffna was resumed in January 2014. Industrial projects like cement construction, sugar mills, and salterns were initiated as well. However, these did not benefit the Tamils because the projects were awarded to Sinhalese entrepreneurs, though Tamil applicants would have been available (Sumanthiran 2011a). Jobs in these projects were similarly given to Sinhalese. In Sampoor an Indian-developed coal plant is under construction. Again, it does not benefit the Tamils because those who had lived in the area were driven from their land. They either continue to live in IDP camps or were given land in recompensation that was of insufficient size and quality and not irrigated (Sumanthiran 2011b; Hoole 2014). Tamil fishermen are prevented from or hindered in fishing whereas Sinhalese boats freely fish in Northern waters (Sumanthiran 2011a). Moreover, in many of these investments and projects, especially hotels, residencies, and golf courses, the army is heavily involved. It also operates retail business enterprises

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like souvenir shops, food canteens, and tourist offices, thereby preventing the Tamils from engaging in these. Even more serious is the fact that an impression is created that the areas inhabited by Tamils were not at all developed before (which would confirm Tamil complaints that Tamil areas were neglected under Sinhala government). Yet this impression would be wrong. Though Jaffna is dry and can be made fertile only with lots of work and irrigation efforts, the Vanni is agriculturally fertile and used to operate an extensive dairy economy. At independence Jaffna was the second-most important city with regard to infrastructural development and human development as well as educational achievement, but in the following decades neglected by government policies. Even so, Jaffna could maintain its standards more or less before the war and even during lulls in the fighting (Gerharz 2014a, 145). The Vanni under LTTE administration strove hard and largely successfully to become economically self-sufficient: it supported agriculture, cattle rearing, and fishing and had experimental and model farms for organic products and bio-engineering. All these enterprises were stamped out after the war. The current enterprises therefore benefit Tamils only indirectly, if at all. It would be more helpful to support agriculture and gardening enterprise (tobacco) in the North and Northeast (Batticaloa was once the rice bowl of the country), so that they could become self-sufficient again. The main problem is, however, the lack of decentralization. All economic planning and licencing is conducted in Colombo and is done largely by Sinhalese. Tamils who need permission for economic enterprises have to get this from Colombo (Perera 2012). This characterizes a top-down approach to economic development that leaves out the interests and requirements of the population concerned (Gerharz 2014a, 160–62). One of the basic assumptions of the cease-fire was that peace will come automatically, if economic, neo-liberal reform and development are secured. This assumption was dismissed by some authors (Goodhand and Klem 2005). However, in my opinion the argument holds under certain conditions: economic development and incentives created a dynamic stagnation in Europe during the Cold War and finally led to the dissolution of the two blocks. In Sri Lanka the failure lay in the way economic development and financial flows were tried to be controlled and channelled by the government: during the cease-fire sections of the Sinhalese political establishment endeavored to deprive the Tamils of precisely the economic development and autonomous control of financial and economic resources that would have blunted ethnic grievances. In other words, there was no social, political, or economic peace dividend that the government was willing to concede: “Development is used as a counter-terrorism strategy and as a means for consolidating military presence in the north-east on a long-term basis” (Gerharz 2014a, 163).

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Land Ownership and Changing Demographics A recurring process for the last fifty years has been government attempts to change the demographic profile of the east of the country (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1990). This is now being extended to the Vanni and the Jaffna peninsula. Vacant land and buildings or those deserted by Tamils are sold or awarded to Sinhalese newcomers or army veterans instead of their former owners. In 2013, thousands of acres of land in the Jaffna peninsular, and the East were acquired for military purposes and enterprises, and the public prevented from entering these sites. Three thousand Sinhalese were settled in Valikamam on land acquired for this purpose by the government. Land owners must since 2011 reapply for ownership of land, furnishing comprehensive documentation or losing their rights, which for the Tamils is nearly impossible to secure (Sumanthiran 2011b). Tamils who have been released from the camps and try to resettle in the North and East are pushed onto infertile and unirrigated land without any help or funding. In the East returnees do not dare to construct proper houses but live in wooden or mud huts because of fear that they might have to move again. Neighboring Sinhalese are building stone and brick houses, because the government supports their settlement and secures them access to irrigation facilities (Sumathiran 2011a). 20 The military HSZs (High Security Zones; eighteen in Jaffna alone on 190 km2) that were established randomly during the war and in some cases comprised whole villages remain and are made permanent by being converted into military cantonments, preventing people from resettling and/or reclaiming their land (Perera 2014b). Outside the HSZs, increasingly land and buildings are claimed and acquired by the security forces randomly and without recompensation as a recent documentary called “This Land Belongs to the Army” showed (Kumaran 2014; Tamil Guardian 2014). The property is not only used for military purposes but more often for creating special economic zones, business enterprises undertaken by the army and further settlement of Sinhalese (Sen 2014). Once this is done, former owners of these areas have no way of reclaiming their land and property or even to demand recompensation. Army structures or business enterprises are preferably erected over former LTTE cemeteries that have been invariably destroyed, just depriving people from grieving for their loved ones (Weerasingham 2013). Religion and Culture Sinhala and Tamil are enshrined in the constitution as national languages, with Sinhala as the official language. In 2009, however, the government forbade the national anthem to be sung in Tamil even in the Tamil areas (National Peace Council 2010a). This totally unnecessary measure antagonized the population considerably (National Peace Coun-

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cil 2010b). The order was not revoked until today. A similar insensitivity to language sensibilities can be seen all over the North and East: the army gives orders and talks in Sinhala regardless whether people understand what is being said or not (Hoole 2014). In other words: the constitutionally enshrined right to the mother tongue and to be addressed in it is being violated constantly by the security forces. While Tamil recruitment to the police in the North has reportedly picked up (Sarvananthan 2010), the army is still overwhelmingly Sinhala. Moreover, place and street names in the North and East are arbitrarily changed from Tamil to Sinhala to erase the Tamil character of the region (Sumanthiran 2011a, b; Kumaran 2014). There is more to land grabs and Sinhala settlement than changing the demographic profile: attempts are undertaken to claim the whole North and East as an ancient Buddhist area and thus deny Tamils the right to live and settle there. In 2005, a Buddha statue was clandestinely erected on a busy crossroads in Trincomalee without permission (Wickremasinghe 2005; TamilNet 2005). Subsequent protests led to an order to remove the statue, which was then revoked by the army and police in order “not to incite the public further.” After the end of the war Rajapakse lauded the protection of an “ancient Buddhist statue” in Trincomalee (Hoole 2014). Government-appointed archaeologists have long been in the habit of discovering alleged Buddhist remains in areas sacred to Tamils and Hindus and subsequently excluding Tamils and Muslims from settling there. Again, this is but an extension of the politics of sacred space pursued in Sri Lanka since the 1950s, for example in Anuradhapura and Trincomalee (Nissan 1988). The big Koneswara temple in Trincomalee has been a bone of contention for decades and more so after the war (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 2007, 396-398). Its grounds were decimated over several decades to build defence structures and to claim parts of it as originally Buddhist. This process has picked up now to such an extent that not only the temple but also the hot springs (the wells of Ravana) are taken over by Buddhists and claimed as ancient Buddhist sacred spots. The access to the wells is filled with Sinhala souvenir shops, whereas the road to the nearby Sivan temple is overgrown, filled with rubbish and neglected. The A9 is dotted with newly erected Buddha statues especially in places with established Hindu temples (Sumanthiran 2011b). Destroyed Hindu places of worship are not allowed to be rebuilt. Places of worship constitute an important means of establishing and maintaining individual and social identity and status in Jaffna; thus this process aggravates the loss of identity and heightens insecurity among Tamils (Gerharz 2014b). Twenty percent of Tamils are Christian, mostly Catholics. The Bishop of Jaffna has repeatedly raised his voice against discrimination and oppression, though to little avail. The catholic Madhu church and the shrine of the Virgin which are located near Mannar and had been closed for a

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long time due to fighting were opened again on the demand of the pope and the annual festival for the Virgin held. But only 5 percent of the devotees coming after the war were Tamils; most were Sinhalese. Tamils were not allowed or did not dare to take part. Hymns are sung overwhelmingly in Sinhala. Societal Decline Most worrying is the decline of social cohesion. Tamils, both in Sri Lanka and abroad, seemed to be shocked into frozen immobility after the military defeat. After having believed in the military option for so long, they had no political means to deal with the situation. The defeat reduced a people proud of their professional and educational achievements to a deprived backward minority. In the years since old society structures that had been thought to have been eradicated by the LTTE reasserted themselves, a development that was predicted in the 1990s (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 1993). This applied first and foremost to the caste system. The Vellala began to dominate society again. This was not least due to the fact that many LTTE cadres came from non-Vellala, mainly Karaiya backgrounds (Karaiya were traditionally the ones to do the Vellalas’ “dirty work”). These young men, if they are released at all and not kept in detention indefinitely (Valkyrie 2010) are closely supervised and often harassed by the security forces and isolated socially. Their reputation and standing in society have been irrevocably damaged, often they are ostracised, and their family and social contacts are severely curtailed. The solution for many is emigration or going underground (Amarasingham 2014). Alongside caste, male dominance of society and the public sphere has strengthened. Whereas before, men were professionally active and breadwinners, now this role frequently falls on women. As shown above, jobs are scarce to non-existent, and children refuse education. Unemployment in the North and East stands at around 30 percent. Quite a number of families rely on remittances from relatives abroad. This has been a feature of Jaffna society since the beginning of the last century, but now, it has increased to such an extent that for many families, it is the only source of income (Sarvananthan 2014). So, unless they can go abroad for work males are driven to idleness, alcoholism, and drugs. All are frowned upon by Jaffna society but are increasing currently not least because the army provides them and encourages consumption (TamilNet 2014). The bulk of this burden is borne by women and girls. Girls are exhorted to be “virtuous” and not to overstep the bounds of modesty, to dress properly and not leave the house because rape and sexual harassment are rampant (AlJazerra 2014). For many women, however, this is simply not an option. Women are responsible for the survival of the family if men are unable or unwilling to secure this (Hellmann-Rajanaya-

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gam 2008). This applies particularly to the 90,000 war widows and women-headed households in the North and East for whom hardly any assistance is available. In their search for means of subsistence, they often have to rely on the security forces to be able find jobs, secure a place to live, and provide for their children. Their insecure situation makes them especially vulnerable to sexual and other exploitation by the army and the male population in general. They are driven into prostitution, sexual favors, or unwilling sexual relationships. Widows’ social standing in Hindu society is precarious at the best of times; the current unsettled conditions aggravate the moral opprobrium. Because of the necessity to work outside the house, often in jobs not deemed “suitable” for women, they are despised and ostracized. The difference to the earlier situation of these women is stark: As Rajasingham-Senanayake pointed out, during the war these women often felt liberated from the control of men and able to lead an autonomous life, its difficulties notwithstanding (RajasinghamSenanayake 2001). The situation of former female cadres is particularly precarious. Added to the difficulties former cadre face in general, they are penalised for being female. Thiranagama has interviewed some of them and highlights the shame felt by them about their past and the atrocities of the LTTE as well as their desire to hide their past (Thiranagama 2010). It does not occur to her, however, that this urge may be due to fear of prosecution and/or ostracisation by their own society (Thiranagama 2011, 217–19). Many former female cadres are apparently quickly married off to hide their past and to protect them. CONCLUSION While it is obvious that reconciliation and reintegration have not happened and that the Tamils in Sri Lanka remain marginalized, one might ask whether this is incidental or a planned policy. There is no doubt that deep antagonism against Tamils in general (and other minorities, like Muslims and Christians) is rampant among large sections of Sinhalese. The strengthening of the BBS (Bodu Bala Sena), a radical Sinhala Buddhist organization that distinguished itself recently by violence against Tamils and Muslims is symptomatic for this. It is reportedly financed and supported by government agencies, especially the Ministry of Defence (Weerawardhana 2013b). But whether this antagonism is driven by the political elite or drives them in turn is less easy to determine. Some of the incidents described in the North and East may be put down to insensitivity and ignorance. Rajapakse took pains to include a few words in Tamil in some of his speeches and announced special development program for the North.

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But this seems to be merely playing to the (international?) gallery and cannot offset more ominous developments. These are empty gestures that cannot obscure the continuous and systematic marginalization of the Tamils. Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council, Wigneswaran, highlighted this when he refused to accompany Rajapakse to Indian Prime Minister Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Delhi in order not to give a false impression of unity. The described actions cannot happen without government direction and support. In fact, as was hinted at above, the policies currently implemented are just a more stringent continuation of policies that went on and have been documented for at least five decades (Hellmann-Rajanayagam 2007; Weiberg-Salzmann 2011, 198): starting with the disenfranchisement of the Indian Tamils, the colonization of Tamil lands by Sinhalese, the “Sinhala-only”-policy that denied Tamil language rights, designation of Hindu places of worship as Buddhist, purported Buddhist archaeological finds in Tamil areas, exclusion from education, government service, and job opportunities through standardization as well as recurring violent attacks on the Tamils. Some observers put it succinctly: The Tamils as an ethnic group is finished. The denial of the existence of ethnic groups by Rajapakse in the last consequence meant the extinction of the Tamils as Tamils. They would be reduced to a tiny, picturesque, backward, folklore minority tolerated for its tourism value with no relevance or say in Sri Lanka. Reconciliation in this context means that the Tamils should forget and deny whatever injustice they have suffered (Gerharz 2014a, 162). For the government, victory means that they can now implement a long-standing blueprint to exclude and marginalize the Tamils without any let or hindrance. Though few and far between, there are some civil society voices that can and do protest against the treatment of the Tamils: CPA (which publishes Groundviews), NPC, and individuals like lawyers and human rights activities as well as the Tamil party coalition, TNA. These voices are aware that the unlimited power enjoyed by the government does not stop at the Tamils but is already affecting the whole society. They also know that LTTE conspiracies are mostly chimeras to justify continued government repression. The rule of law has been subverted into its opposite. Politicians and journalists, who do not toe the government line are threatened, arrested, imprisoned, or, quite frequently, killed. NGOs, individuals, and international organizations that work for peace and understanding among ethnic groups are attacked as “terrorist sympathisers” both by government agencies and by the public in general. The NPC was repeatedly investigated, and regulations for NGOs have recently been tightened. Foreign embassy personnel were recently warned not to take part in media freedom or human rights events (Perera 2014a). The climate of lawlessness even spilt over into the international sphere: After the setting-up of the UN panel, the UN-compound in Colombo was besieged

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by demonstrators who prevented people entering or leaving, and UN staff was harassed for days. In the run-up to the UN resolutions, Tamils, international human rights experts, and witnesses were intimidated and persecuted by the Sinhala secret service even in Geneva, photographed, followed to their hotels and imprisoned in their offices (Manivannan 2014, 563–65). Again, these developments are not sudden without warning (cf. Weiberg-Salzmann 2011, 371 and 392). Violence and lawlessness tolerated and enacted by the government have been the political norm since at least 1971, starting with emergency measures against the JVP revolt, followed by the PTA 1979, to the extension of emergency laws since 1983 and pressure on local and international NGOs, like the government vendetta against Sarvodaya in the 1990s (Perera 2014a). The war enabled the government to persecute its enemies without impunity. The end of the war has not changed this: the militarization of society continues. It created a climate of represson and fear in which violence is normal—one gets away with murder, literally. The war is over, its causes live on. This gives rise to the question why the LTTE could not, like other resistance movements, retain the sympathy of world opinion after the 1990s. Internationally, the Tamils in Sri Lanka seem to be a quantité négligeable. POST SCRIPT I have not returned to Sri Lanka since 2010. EPILOGUE As any historian knows, the impossible never happens, but always the unexpected. This truism was confirmed again in the presidential elections in Sri Lanka on January 8, 2015. Contrary to most expectations, the incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse lost by a few percentage points (47 percent against 51 percent) to his challenger Maithripala Sirisena. It was surprising, but on the other hand, it was not. “Straws-in-thewind” polls on several Internet websites had already shown overwhelming support for Sirisena from mid-November, though these were not taken very seriously. Knowledgeable voices in the country itself mostly did not commit either way or insinuated that a vote by the Tamils against Rajapakse might hamper the international tribunal calling to account of human rights violations during the war. Why this should follow, was, however, not quite clear (Perera 2014c). Voices claiming that a vote for Sirisena would not really benefit the Tamils and that they would therefore refrain from voting for either candidate like that of Gajendra Ponnambalam were more convincing but proved in the end wrong, since it

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was indeed the votes of the minorities—Tamils, Muslims, Christians— that secured the final outcome. Rajapakse was obviously aware of the fact that his remaining in power depended on the minorities and followed a two-pronged, carrot-andstick strategy: on the one hand he tried (and failed in the end) to suppress the Tamil vote, while simultaneously warning the Sinhalese constituency that renewed violence and security concerns might break out if Sirisena wins; on the other he employed the carrot of suddenly returning gold and jewelry confiscated from alleged LTTE members after the war to their rightful owners and made material and political promises to Sinhalese politicians to draw them into the party’s fold without promising any change in policy (Perera 2014d). Why these valuables had been confiscated in the first place has never been satisfactorily been justified. Moreover, Perera (2014d) has noted that while returning valuables might be a good beginning, this did not solve the far more severe problem of expropriated land and real estate that has not been returned but remains under army control or is given over for industrial development. As mentioned, these measures were to no avail. Rajapakse obviously refrained from indulging in more violent measures because that would have looked bad with the national and international observers but also because the Election Commissioner at last took a stand and disallowed violations of election rules. Even so, the election campaign was marred by violence, though fortunately no deaths occurred. Election Day itself was more or less peaceful, and Rajapakse astonishingly acknowledged his defeat early on. Whatever the reasons for Rajapakse’s tame exit, more interesting are the reasons for Sirisena’s victory. From 2010 until late 2014, he had been Minister of Health of Rajapakse’s cabinet and was indeed Acting Defence Secretary at the bloody end of the civil war. Only in November 2014 he broke away from Rajapakse, one day after dining with him. Again, this is nothing new in Sri Lankan politics, floor-crossing is a mass sport; what is surprising is that it succeeded and that the coalition Sirisena/Wickremesinghe won. With a bit of delay, Rajapakse experienced what many victorious wartime leaders and presidents had to come to terms with: the electorate’s ungratefulness. He won them the war, but for peace times, they now want somebody else. Churchill, Truman, Indira Gandhi had to deal with this phenomenon. Winning the war and winning the peace are two pairs of shoes, and in Sri Lanka even the Sinhalese have realized this, albeit with a time lag of ten years. The Tamils, of course, have never forgiven Rajapakse for the way he treated them during the last phase of the war and after, especially that no attempts at reconciliation and equity were undertaken. Belatedly, the Sinhalese woke up as well. For one, there was the increasing militarization of the public sphere, which affected not only the Tamils but eventually also the Sinhalese. This

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went hand in hand with restrictions on free speech, the media, the work of NGOs, and civil society in general. People began to ask uncomfortable questions why these restrictive measures had to continue when the war had officially ended! More journalists, both Sinhalese and Tamil have died during Rajapakse’s rule than at any time during the war (Kumarendran 2015). Another point was the scale of corruption and nepotism in a country that had no dearth of both before. But this was on a different level of magnitude (Perera 2015b): Sri Lanka had been called Rajapakse Inc. in recent years, because the family ruled supreme both in politics and business: Rajapakse’s brothers were ministers, and his son was pushed into business enterprises. Moreover, the family and politicians and ministers allied to them could act with virtual impunity against law and order and indulge in crime of all descriptions (2014e). There was clearly a limit reached to what people were prepared to tolerate; as Jehan Perera stated: “President Rajapaksa is no longer the hero of the cast” (Perera 2015b). Last but not least was the state of the economy. Though growth rates were encouraging, the economic benefits did not reach the mass of the population. Grand business schemes were initiated, mostly with Chinese money, that benefited primarily the family and the foreign investors as well as mainly infrastructure projects (roads, harbors, airports; some admittedly badly needed, others of questionable value) that brought little added benefit. Prices increased, and the poor had to struggle to survive. Corruption and centralization of power had become so severe that even the decidedly Buddhist Sinhalese JHU (Jathika Hela Urumaya) invited the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) to join the coalition and work together. The economic benefits did not reach the Tamils, of course, who eked out their existence under adverse circumstances. It was pretty obvious to knowledgeable observers that they would not vote for Rajapakse. But neither did the Muslims. The Muslim parties are pretty notorious for floor-crossing in a grand style to whoever promises them the most. But this time they severed their alliance with Rajapakse whom they had supported against the Tamils. The reason was not least the increasing attacks by Buddhist fundamentalists from the Bodu Bala Sena on Muslims and Christians. Mosques and churches were burned and destroyed, and nuns and priests attacked and sometimes killed. Seemingly, once the Tamils had been subdued, new enemies had to be found. The Rajapakse government did nothing to stop this development. While these can be called tentative reasons for Sirisena’s victory, what will be the national implications, especially for the Tamils? Sirisena’s 100 points say little to nothing about the ethnic issue, which according to Jehan Perera, is not astonishing, since this would not go down well with the Sinhalese majority that, much as it wants to push out Rajapakse, is not prepared to give concessions of any kind to the Tamils (Perera 2015c).

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One cannot help but take a pessimistic view, since it was always so in Sri Lankan politics from 1948 onward. Why Sirisena, who had pursued the war with as much fervor as Rajapakse, should do anything to give the Tamils their due is a question that remains unanswered. Ranil Wickremesinghe, to be sure, has promised to implement the thirteenth amendment that provides a degree of autonomy for the Tamils, but whether this comes to pass remains to be seen. One will have to wait to see whether anything decisive changes for the Tamils and, if so, whether it will be for the better. Certainly, much as one would like it, one cannot endorse the fond impression of one author in Groundviews that the elections results indicated that Sri Lankans voted for Sirisena, not any race or ethnicity (Laksundara 2015). If only that were the case. On the contrary, the elections of 2015 proved that voting still, like in the past, is very much decided by identity politics. NOTES 1. Additional input by my student Asja Priester. 2. This concept refers to Sri Lanka being “ennobled to preserve and propagate Buddhism” (DeVotta 2007, 6). 3. Dutthagamani and Dutugemunu denote the same mythical king. 4. Interview Prof. Asoka de Zoysa, Lecturer, University of Kelaniya, August 31, 2006. 5. People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka January 14 to 16, 2010 Dublin, and December 7 to 10, 2013 Bremen. 6. Personal information Vavuniya August 30, 2009. 7. Original Quote from a foreign NGO Worker In Colombo. 8. Personal information. 9. Personal information Vavuniya, August 30, 2009. 10. This is the expression the Tamils themselves used though surrendered would not be quite the right term: one interviewee described his flight from Mullaitivu by boat and the military checks he had to undergo on the way to the camp. He and his family stayed there for two weeks before he managed to escape. Personal information August 30, 2009. 11. Personal information Anandasagaree MP for the Tamil United Liberation Front, 1st September 2009. 12. The following description is based partly on oral reports, partly on personal experience in early September 2009 and on Somasundaram (2010). 13. Friends in Colombo later put the episode in perspective: I had of course blamed the wrong person: a young village girl, who just wanted to earn some money. She was probably not so much stupid and malicious as naïve and curious: She just wanted to see what these foreigners carry around: papers, medicine, electronics . . . I have experienced similar behavior from male soldiers in Colombo some years ago as well with very feminine equipment . . . 14. Interview Prof. Mohan Das, VC University of Jaffna, February 2004. 15. Interview with Puleedevan, Director, Peace Secretariat Killinochi, September 7, 2005. 16. Interview Ilankumaran, Education Officer of the LTTE, Killinochi April 2003 and September 2005. 17. Interview with Prof. Mukiah, Vice Chancellor, Eastern University Batticaloa, March 2004.

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18. Personal information technical employee, road works, Vavuniya, August 30, 2009. 19. Interview Jehan Perera, Media Director NPC, August 24, 2009. The logical sequence to this argument would be that all Tamils are Tigers and must be re-educated. If, however, one accepts that, the government implicitly admits the considerable measure of support the Tigers enjoyed contrary to published propaganda. And this support must have had a reason that justified militant struggle. Perera admitted the justice of this line of argument. 20. Lacking access to irrigation and drinking water facilities was already a reason why the LTTE closed the Mavil Aru sluice in the East in 2006.

REFERENCES AlJazeera. 2014. Beyond the Beach: Rape as a Weapon of Peace - Sri Lanka 5 Years On. Accessed August 25, 2014. http://ajinteractive.businesscatalyst.com/srilanka/rape_ txt.html. Amarasekera, Anil. 2009a. “Who Are Internally Displaced Tamils?” Asian Tribune (May 26). http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/17903 Amarasekera, Anil. 2009b. “The Resettlement issues in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.” Lankaweb (June 8). http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2009/06/08/theresettlement-issues-in-the-northern-and-eastern-provinces/ Amarasingham, Amarnath. 2014. “Life in the Open-Air Panopticon: Surveillance and the Social Isolation of Ex-LTTE Combatants in Sri Lanka.” Groundviews (May 20, 2014). http://groundviews.org/2014/05/20/life-in-the-open-air-panopticonsurveillance-and-the-social-isolation-of-ex-ltte-combatants-in-sri-lanka/ Bartholomeusz, Tessa J. 2002. In Defense of Dharma. Just-war Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka. London: Routledge Curzon. Bell, Stewart. 2008. Inside Sri Lanka: A Life Given Over to War, Part 5. National Post September 23, 2008. Accessed June 21, 2009. http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=832374. Coomaraswamy, Radhika. 2014. “Head in My Hands.” Groundviews. http:// groundviews.org/2014/05/14/head-in-my-hands/. DeVotta, Neil. 2007. Sinhalese Buddhist National Ideology: Implications for Politics and Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka. Washington DC: East-West Center Washington. http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/ps040.pdf Fischer, Silke Yasmin. 2009. Überlieferung Buddhistischer Erzählstoffe als Interpretationsprozess. Eine diachrone Analyse von zwei staatlichen Buddhismus-Religionsbüchern aus Sri Lanka. Unveröffentlichte Dissertation im Fach Indologie, Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften (überarbeitetes Manuskript zur Drucklegung), Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München. Gerharz, Eva. 2014a. The Politics of Reconstruction and Development in Sri Lanka: Transnational Commitments to Social Change: London: Routledge. Gerharz, Eva. 2014b (in press). “‘Wem nützen nur all diese neuen Tempel?’ Religion, Entwicklung und transnationale soziale Räume im Norden Sri Lankas” Peripherie 134/135 (August): 239–264. Gombrich, Richard and Gananath Obeyesekere. 1988. Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goodhand, Jonathan and Bart Klem. 2005. Aid, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka, 2000-2005. The Asia Foundation Colombo. Guruparan, Kumaravadivel and Sivakami Rajamanoharan. 2013. “Four Years On, Genocide Continues off the Battlefield.” Open Democracy. https:// www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/ Helbardt, Sascha, Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam and Rüdiger Korff. 2013. “Religionization of Politics in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar” Religion, Politics and Ideology 14, 1: 36–58.

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Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar. 2008. “The State, Religion and Women: A Contradictory Relationship.” In Goddesses, Heroes, Sacrifices, edited by Andrea Fleschenberg and Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, 74-110. Berlin: LIT-Verlag. Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar. 2007. Von Jaffna nach Kilinocchi: Wandel des politischen Bewusstseins der Tamilen in Sri Lanka. Wurzburg: Ergon. Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar. 1993. “The Jaffna Social System: Continuity and Change Under Conditions of War.” Internationales Asienforum 24: 251–281. Hellmann-Rajanayagam, Dagmar. 1990. “The Concept of a ‘Tamil Homeland’ in Sri Lanka—Its Meaning and Development.” South N.S. XIII, 2: 79-110. Hoole, Elijah. 2014. “Erasing Identities: Tracing Sri Lankaʼs Post-war Journey Through the Changing Realities of Trincomalee.” Groundviews. http://groundviews.org/2014/ 05/13/erasing-identities-tracing-sri-lankas-post-war-journey-through-the-changingrealities-of-trincomalee/ Human Rights Watch. 2009. “Sri Lanka: UN Rights Council Fails Victims.” Accessed August 19, 2014. http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/05/27/sri-lanka-un-rights-councilfails-victims Hussein, Ameena. 2014. “That Which Shall Not Be Named.” Groundviews. http:// groundviews.org/2014/08/05/that-which-shall-not-be-named/ Kapferer, Bruce. 2012. Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. New York: Berghahn Books. Kumaran, Arani. 2014. Review: “This Land Belongs to the Army.” Tamil Guardian (28th June). http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=11334 Kumarendran, Kumar (2015). “Al Jazeera: Inside Story.” Accessed January 12, 2015. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes /insidestory/2015/01/new-era-sri-lanka201519233528490735.html Laksundara. 2015. “Sri Lankans Voted for Sirisena: Not Tamils, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians or Sinhalese.” Groundviews. Accessed January 12, 2015. http:// groundviews.org/2015/01/10/sri-lankans-voted-for-sirisena-not-tamils-muslimsbuddhists-christians-or-sinhalese/, accessed January 12, 2015. Manivannan, Ramu. 2014. Sri Lanka: Hiding the Elephant: Documenting Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes angainst Humanity. Chennai: University of Madras. Maunaguru, Sidhartan. 2008. “Human/Non-Human: Work of Doubt in Everyday Life in the Time of War.” Unpublished paper presented at the Tamil Studies Conference (14-17 May Toronto. National Peace Council. 2011. “Freedom Of Media Continues to Be Under Threat Despite End of War.” NPC Media Release July 31. National Peace Council. 2010a. “Discriminatory Practices Are Detrimental to Reconciliation.” Accessed August 27, 2010. http://www.peace-srilanka.org/tamil/index.php/ 2012-07-25-05-48-15/press-releases/272-discriminatory-practices-are-detrimental-toreconciliation National Peace Council. 2010b. “Have National Anthem in Both Sinhala and Tamil Languages.” http://peace-srilanka.org/sinhala/index.php/2012-07-25-05-48-15/ press-releases/336-have-national-anthem-in-both-sinhala-and-tamil-languages National Peace Council. 2014c. “The Continuing Surveillance of Civil Society Events.” Accessed August 19, 2014. http://www.peace-srilanka.org/media-centre/press-releases/848-19-08-14-media-release Nissan, Elizabeth. 1988. “Polity and Pilgrimage Centres in Sri Lanka.” Man (N.S.) 23: 253–274. Obeyesekere, G. 1979. “Vicissitudes of the Sinhala-Buddhist Identity through Time and Change.” In Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern, edited by Michael Roberts. Colombo: Marga. Perera, Jehan. 2015a. “Sharing Credit for the Peaceful Transition.” National Peace Council (January 12). Perera, Jehan. 2015b. “Keeping Misgovernance at Bay After the Elections.” National Peace Council (January 5).

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Perera, Jehan. 2015c. “Al Jazeera: Inside Story.” Accessed January 12, 2015. http:// www.aljazeera.com/programmes /insidestory/2015/01/new-era-sri-lanka-2015192 33528490735.html Perera, Jehan. 2014a. “Government Actions Need to Be Consistent Locally and Internationally.” National Peace Council (August 11). Perera, Jehan. 2014b. “The State Is Being Over-Represented by Its Security Arm.” The Island (March 17). http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page= article-details&code_title=99930 Perera, Jehan. 2014c. “Dealing with the Tamil Concern of Broken Promises.” National Peace Council (December 8). Perera, Jehan. 2014d. “Offering Material Inducements Without Policy Change to Win Vote.” National Peace Council (December 15). Perera, Jehan. 2014e. “President Needs to Be Mindful of His Main Strengths.” National Peace Council (December 29). Perera, Jehan. 2013. “The Challenge After the Success of CHOGM.” The Island Online (November 18). http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page= article-details&code_title=92344. Perera, Jehan. 2013b. “Omanthai Checkpoint’s Challenge to National Unity and LLRC Implementation.” The Island. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=86662 Perera, Jehan. 2012. “A Picture of the North Three Years After War’s End.” http:// www.humanitarian-srilanka.org/CKC/DailyInfo/A%20PICTURE%20OF %20THE%20NORTH%20THREE%20YEARS%20AFTER%20WAR.pdf Perera, Jehan. 2012. “Dispelling Perceptions of Uncaring Government in the North.” The Island (June 25, 2012). http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=55287 Ponni. 2011. Issues in Sri Lanka Today: A Primer for Activists in India. Accessed August 25, 2014. http://kafila.org/2011/08/11/issues-in-sri-lanka-today-a-primer-for-activists-inindia/. Rajapakse, Mahinda. 2009. Our Aim Was to Liberate Our Tamil People from the Clutches of the LTTE. May 19, 2009. Accessed July 1, 2009. https://www.blogger. com/comment.g?blogID=2468613367801394261&postID=426476371260572996 http:// www.srilankaguardian.org/2009/05/address-by-president-mahinda-rajapaksa.html. Rajasingham-Senanayake, Darini. 2001. “Ambivalent Empowerment Midst Tragedy of Tamil Women in Conflict.” In Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, edited by Rita Manchanda, 102–130. New Delhi: Sage. Roberts, Michael. 2009. Dilemmas at War’s End: Thoughts on Hard Realities. Accessed June 21, 2009. http://www.groundviews.org/2009/02/10/dilemmas-at-wars-endthoughts-on-hard-realities/. Sarvan, Charles. 2014. “Sri Lanka: The Tamil Experience of Being Alienated at Home.” South Asia Analysis Group. http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1572 Sarvananthan, Muttukrishna. 2014. “Elusive Economic Peace Dividend in Sri Lanka: All That Glitters Is Not Gold.” Groundviews. http://groundviews.org/2014/06/24/ elusive-economic-peace-dividend-in-sri-lanka-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold/. Sarvananthan, Muttukrishna. 2010. “Sri Lanka After the Civil War: Interview with Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan~By Sergei DeSilva Ranasinghe.” transCurrents_(November 8). http://transcurrents.com/tc/2010/11/sri_lanka_after_the_civil _war.html Sen, Gautam. 2014. “The Issue of De-Militarisation of Northern Province of Sri Lanka.” Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Accessed August 25, 2014. http://idsa. in/idsacomments/TheissueofdemilitarisationofNorthernProvinceofSriLanka_gsen_ 130314 Seneviratne, H.L. 1999. The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Silva, Ben. 2009. “Open Letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.” Lankaweb. http:/ /www.lankaweb.com/news/items09/200309-7.html

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Somasundaram, Daya. 2010. “Collective Trauma in the Vanni—A Qualitative Inquiry into the Mental Health of the Internally Displaced Due to the Civil War in Sri Lanka.” International Journal of Mental Health Systems 28, 4: 22. Accessed August 29, 2010. Sumanthiran, M.A. 2011a. “Issues and Problems Facing People of Northern and Eastern Provinces.” http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/2529 Sumanthiran, M.A. 2011b. “Situation in North-Eastern Sri Lanka: A Series of Serious Concerns.” http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/2759 Tamil Guardian. 2014. “Land Grabs Part of Structural Genocide—Interview with Tamil Nadu Journalist Maga Tamizh Prabhagaran.” Tamil Guardian (10th February). http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=9912 TamilNet. 2014. “Alcohol Becomes Genocide Weapon Deployed by Occupying Sinhala State.” TamilNet. http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=37340. TamilNet. 2010. “Sri Lanka’s ‘Lessons Learnt’ Commission to Start Sittings.” TamilNet. Accessed August 29, 2010. http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=32354. TamilNet. 2009. “Abysmal 90 Percent Fail Rate of Internee Tamil Children in Year-5 Exam.” TamilNet. Accessed 29 August, 2010. http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html? catid=13&artid=30539. TamilNet. 2005. “Sri Lanka Blames ‘Outside Forces, Extremists’ for Trinco Tension.” TamilNet. Accessed August 22, 2014. http://www.tamilnet.com/ art.html?artid=14987&catid=13 Thiranagama, Sharika. 2010. “In Praise of Traitors: Intimacy, Betrayal, and the Sri Lankan Tamil Community.” In Traitors, Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of StateBuilding, edited by Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Thiranagama, Sharika. 2011. In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. United Nations. 2014. “UN Rights Council Approves Inquiry into Alleged Abuses on Sri Lanka War.” UN News Centre. Accessed August 19, 2014. http://www.un.org/ apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47447#.U_MB0_E0z7s Valkyrie. 2010. “Reconciliation through ‘Rehabilitation’ & ‘Reintegration’ of Ex-LTTE members in Sri Lanka: Separating Fact from Fiction.” Groundviews. Accessed August 25, 2014. http://groundviews.org/2010/10/19/reconciliation-through percentE2 percent80 percent98rehabilitation percentE2 percent80 percent99-percentE2 percent80 percent98reintegration percentE2 percent80 percent99-of-ex-lttemembers-in-sri-lanka-separating-fact-from-fiction/ Walker, Rebecca. 2013. Enduring Violence: Everyday Life and Conflict in Eastern Sri Lanka. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Weiberg-Salzmann, Mirjam. 2011. Die Dekonstruktion der Demokratie durch die Kultur: Der Bürgerkrieg in Sri Lanka. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Weerasingham, Ramanan. 2013. “Lankan Army Destroys Remaining LTTE Graveyards a Month Ahead of ‘Heroes Week’” Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka. http://www.jdslanka.org/index.php/news-features/human-rights/401-lankan-armydestroys-remaining-ltte-graveyards-a-month-ahead-of-heroes-week Weerawardhana, Chiminda. 2013a. Forgotten Woes: Sri Lanka’s Neoliberal Politics. Open Democracy (27th September), https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/ chaminda-weerawardhana/ Weerawardhana, Chiminda. 2013b. Sri Lanka’s BBS: An Old Spectre in New Garb? Open Democracy (21st May 2013). https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/ chaminda-weerawardhana/sri-lankas-bbs-old-spectre-in-new-garb. Weiss, Gordon. 2011. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. London: Bodley Head. Wickremasinghe, Nanda. 2005. “Erection of Buddha Statue Produces Communal Tensions in Sri Lanka.” World Socialist Web Site. Accessed August 22, 2014. http://www. wsws.org/en/articles/2005/06/sril-j09.html

THREE Internal Displacement of Kashmiri Pandits Sudha Rajput

I left on March 6, 1990, when they began targeted killings. They killed our leaders, and killed my neighbor. We got scared. I thought I will go back, but on January 26, 1994, on my Republic Day, they [militants] burnt my house in celebration of our eviction. Here [in Delhi] we live in our own community. I am alright but my kids do not understand where I am from. I have no identity here. Policies are useless; we are not a vote bank. I will go back if I can have my own Kashmir but they grabbed my property, where will I go (KP Mother in Delhi’s Migrant Camp, August 14, 2011).

Grounded in my multi-pronged field research, conducted through semistructured interviews and oral histories, this chapter presents a portrait of the socio-political and socio-economic consequences of the past policies and the continued predicament of a minority community displaced from Kashmir Valley in 1989. In addition to addressing the impact on those who find themselves in this protracted displacement after three decades, the discussion of the policy framework provides an important lens into the policymakers’ worldviews, while illustrating the challenge of measuring the social costs of unintended consequences. A presentation of the challenges, framed around Maire Dugan’s Nested Model (Dugan 1996), provides a crucial understanding of the interconnectivity and the overlapping nature of the Kashmiri Pandit challenges. This understanding is key to community building, societal reforms, and policy formulation for similarly displaced and divided communities around the world. 41

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The magnitude of the social phenomenon of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is a daunting humanitarian challenge with upward of twenty-eight million people around the world currently in displacement. Per the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, this is the “highest level of those displaced in more than two decades” (UNHCR 2013). However, an understanding of the IDPs remains less examined vis-à-vis other displaced populations, such as refugees or asylum seekers, owing to the internal or the sovereign nature of the IDP crisis. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UNHCR 1998) defines IDPs as those who have “not crossed an internationally recognized border and who remain displaced within their own national boundaries.” This internal feature, applied to the phenomena of displacement, has important implications for the IDP policy-making, which bears heavily on the socio-political sphere of those displaced. Among the myriad reasons that force people to flee are: forced eviction of one group by another, triggered by differences in racial, ethnic, religious, social, or political persuasions, and fleeing from threats of persecution (conflict-induced displacements). Other reasons for displacement are triggered by the onset of natural disasters and development projects that require the inhabitants to vacate their properties to allow for new development to take place. These reasons account for the displacement of large groups of people across the globe. The most troubling of these displacements is the conflict-induced displacement, which is an indicator of a problem in a society (Fager 2011) often resulting from “deeper structural problems, embedded in the laws and the institutions that govern a society” (Galtung 1996). These laws and institutions of a society serve as benchmarks for discipline and punishment of its people (Foucault 1977). Such displacement results in psychological, cultural, social, economic, and political transformation of those displaced, touching every dimension of their lives and the lives of the succeeding generations. Conflict-induced displacement not only brings the hardships generally encountered by all displaced groups associated with the challenge of starting over, it additionally instills a perpetual psychological stigma and shame among those displaced, spurred by the trauma of having been forcefully evicted or threatened by members of one’s own society. This often brings about a sense of calamity and worthlessness among the displaced, spilling into all spheres of their being. In addition, conflict-induced displaced groups continue to be victimized by their perpetrators, administrators, and legislators as well as by the members of their host or the receiving communities. In many instances, the host communities as well as the authorities come to perceive this group as “cowardly and weak, in having failed to protect themselves from their aggressors, which necessitates them to abandon their homes instead of protecting them” (Rajput 2012). In many displaced communities around the world, such as in Sri Lanka (Brun 2010), Uganda (Obaa

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and Mazur 2009) and elsewhere, the local communities perceive the IDPs as, encroaching on their limited resources (Ferris 2011) and go to great lengths to push them out of the mainstream communities, often resulting in two parallel societies. Ironically, given the hostilities and the misperceptions developed in the local communities with the IDP arrivals, policymakers come to perceive these issues as urgent, leaving the crucial issues that affect the long-term needs of the IDPs, unaddressed. These unaddressed issues relate to attempts for reconciliation with the hometown community, zeroing-in on the root cause of their displacement, holding those responsible for displacement accountable and issues of people’s right to return. In addition, as the international aid agencies are often barred from intervening in matters of an internal or sovereign nature, many cases of internal displacement remain hidden from the public eye. Such was the displacement of the 250,000 Kashmiri Pandits (Saha 2000) of India-administered Kashmir Valley, which in 1989 had “ruptured the social fabric of this once close-knit Pandit community, with strong intra-community linkages” (Sekhawat 2009, 35). Similar to other displaced communities, such as the Kachin IDPs of Burma or the Kurdish IDPs of Turkey, challenges of this displaced community are multifaceted but have largely remained unexplored. Consequently, even after twentythree years, this community continues to urge the national government to “constitute a Commission of Enquiry to . . . probe into the circumstances that led to the ethnic cleansing of the entire Kashmiri Pandit Religious Minority Community . . . and fix responsibility accordingly” (AIKS 2013, 10). Based on my 2012 multi-dimensional field study (Rajput 2012) this chapter presents the political, social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of this displacement as well as the enduring dilemmas of this community, in the context of the socio-political impact of the past policies. HISTORICAL CONTEXT Situating the displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits in its appropriate context is critical to understanding the forces that compelled this community to flee. Kashmir is located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent in the Himalayas and holds a strategic position in Asia, being surrounded by Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan. At the end of the British Raj (reign) in India, in 1947, the British divided India into India and the newly created country of Pakistan, leaving the fate of the 500 princely states within India, including Kashmir, in the hands of their kings, to either accede to India or to Pakistan. The accession issue posed a dilemma in the case of Kashmir, as three-fourths of its four million people were Muslims, but its king (Maharaja Hari Singh) was a Hindu (Wolpert 1982, 2011).

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Maharaja Hari Singh remained ambivalent and hoped that his mountainous state might be permitted to remain independent. Not long after that, the province of Poonch, a southwest corner of Kashmir, flared in revolt, as Muslim peasants revolted against the Hindu landowners. This led armed fighters from Pakistan to enter Kashmir; however, this move was viewed by the king to be a plot by Pakistan to depose him. Given such fears, the king turned to New Delhi and appealed for military support to defend his state, and formally acceded to India through an Instrument of Accession, signed by him in October 1947 (Anand 2007). However, the nature of that accession has often been the subject of debate (Vernon 1999). Nevertheless, the tribal presence in Kashmir continued, with 30,000 tribal raiders, who became the regular army of the government of Azad (Free) Kashmir, holding small western portion of the state. Azad Kashmir, with its capital at Muzaffarabad, subsequently acceded to Pakistan (Wolpert 1982). A line of control (LOC) enforced by the United Nations in 1949, now separates the “India-administered Kashmir” from the “Pakistan-administered Kashmir” (see Figure 3.1). India’s portion, known as the Jammu and Kashmir State (J and K), is home to the followers of multiple faiths. However, Hindus in the east and Muslims in the west account for a large part of the state’s population, with the predominantly Muslim area known as the Kashmir Valley serving as one of the administrative divisions of the state. The five-hundred years of Muslim rule in Kashmir led to conversion of the majority of its population to Islam, leaving a small population of non-Islamic population (Kaw 2004, 183). Among the ethnic mosaic of the minority groups of the Valley are the Gujjars, Hanjiis, Sikhs, and the Kashmiri Pandits (KPs). The KPs, who had stably constituted approximately 5 percent of the population of the Valley since the Dogra rule (1846–1947), were residents of the Valley at the time of the 1989 insurgency. This exodus marked the fourth time in history that this minority community had suffered in the hands of those who had ruled Kashmir through the ages, namely, the Afghans, Dogras, Mughals, and the Sikhs. DISPLACEMENT OF KASHMIRI PANDITS 1 An up-close understanding of the events that triggered the displacement of this community and the meaning of future as gleaned from the personal stories and cultural expressions of those leaving the Valley provides subtle yet important clues into the impact of the policies. A former director of the Indian police, K.S. Gill, known on the Indian subcontinent as a “supercop who crushed terrorism in Punjab” (Chandan n.d.) and a recognized writer on issues of terrorism and governance, opines that “since late 1989, Jammu and Kashmir has been in the grip of a vicious movement of Islamist extremist terrorism” (Gill 2003, 1–2). The

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Figure 3.1. Kashmir Region. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2002.

Indian authorities claim that in the 1980s, the presence of the Islamic guerillas in the Valley, trained and funded by Pakistan, waged a separatist war and insurgency. Full-fledged protests and an anti-India campaign by the Muslim majority took hold of the Valley in 1989, followed by police firings and curfews ordered by the Indian army. Gill (2003) explains that “while the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) claimed a ‘secular’ agenda of liberation from Indian rule, the terrorist intent was clearly to drive non-Muslim ‘infidels’ out of the State and establish the Order of the Prophet (the Shariah)” (Gill 2003, 1–2). The year 1989 is recalled by those displaced as a time after which “the guns are never silenced . . . every day, news pours in of attacks on military convoys, Srinagar city turns into a war zone” (Pandita 2013, 73). This was the

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time when the “militants issued a dictate to newsreaders to quit their jobs in radio and television so that the government information mechanism would collapse” (Pandita 2013, 75). Those voicing any pro-India position became the target of the militants. Kashmiri Pandits, the Hindu minority community of the Kashmir Valley, were “specifically targeted as they were perceived to be symbolizing Indian presence in the Valley, as they professed a different faith” (Rai 2011) and had been reluctant to conform to the Islamic ways as other minorities had done in earlier periods of Kashmir’s history (Satyawali 2012). From 1989 onward, large numbers of KPs fled to Jammu, Delhi, and other parts of India to escape the targeted killings and abductions (Sekhawat 2009). Those who fled currently form the pool of approximately 250,000 displaced KPs (IDMC 2010) officially dubbed as “migrants.” Added to these numbers is a full generation born and brought up in these migrant communities outside of Kashmir. The displacement of this community is generally recognized to be the harshest reality of the overarching Kashmir issue, often linked to the 1947 division of India. Having lived in Kashmir their entire lives, the ancestral roots and emotional ties for those who fled resided in the Kashmir Valley. Among those displaced were school teachers, professors, doctors, singers, landowners, farmers, and businessmen, males and females, young and old. These KPs were “serving their state and the nation from their respective stations of duty, loved their motherland and were committed to uphold the Indian sovereignty in Kashmir . . .” (Kaul 2013, 4). Kashmiri Pandits practiced the joint family system and the pre-militancy environment of the Valley is described by the families as “very comfortable”, infused with “brotherly love” and “respect.” Family Voices Based on interviews with the families of the Jammu and Delhi camps, the majority (72 percent) point to “lack of security amid militant threats,” “forced out,” “placed on the hit list,” “targeted killings,” and ‘increased Islamization” as the reasons that forced them to flee. The death threats relayed via the mosque’s audio systems are described as having become an “all-day phenomenon” as the “slogans and the war cries from the mosque did not stop” (Pandita 2013, 80). For some, as the community members “started disappearing,” and the safety from numbers began to erode, this triggered their own existential fear. Some described the environment as “genocidal” as also echoed in the Pandita testimony. Pandits are picked up selectively and put to death; they are killed because Kashmir needs to be cleansed of them. If the one chosen is not to be found, a proxy suffices. It is all about numbers. It is all about how many are killed. It is known that if one among them is killed, a thousand will flee (Pandita 2013, 72).

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For some, it was the economic survival that drove them to flee, as their shops remained closed amid the threats. As this minority community had occupied the bottom rung of their society, their safety and security were generally compromised even during stable and peaceful times, making them the victims of systemic and structural violence (Galtung 1996). As the everyday policies disproportionally neglected and excluded these families, it became even more difficult for them to protect themselves amidst grave hostilities. The families explain that in the absence of repercussions for the denigration of their community, public chanting of death threats and celebrations of their killings continued to be carried out with fanfare by the majority community. The families remark that they left their ancestral homes “only to escape suffering, to protect their children and to save the honor of their women.” Whereas most families fled as a unit, some had sent their youth ahead while they stayed behind to care for their elders, the farms, and their animals. Regardless of the personal stories triggering their departure, the exact date and time of that traumatic day now carries a permanent scar in their psyche, which has played out several times during their time in exile and will continue to play out whether they remain outside of the Valley or make an eventual return to their ancestral home land. All families have a story to tell, their voices shed important light on how they had assessed their future on the day of departure from their homeland. Some “basing their trust in God,” hoped that they will return when the Valley “regains its civility,” and could not fathom a future outside of the Valley. Others interviewed were convinced that their departure signaled a “denial of their last rights to die in homeland.” These families now saw their community as permanently damaged. They envisioned their future as “dark,” “uncertain,” “hollow,” and as “turned upside down.” For many, having witnessed their homes and shops burned signaled an end of life as they knew it. Many were just as frightened of their future outside of the Valley as they were of the “madness on the streets” (Pandita 2003, 98). Their exodus from the Valley exposed them to a high level of acculturation stress (Berry et al. 1987). The natural consequence of exposure to unknown places, carried an “unavoidable psychological and material costs,” as most had left unprepared and “without opting to do so” (Berry et al. 1987). Most had lost what had taken them generations to build. The families marked their departure as a lifetime of suffering where “everything had changed . . . we were leaving for good” (Pandita 2013, 98). After twenty-three years, those who dream of returning admit that the social fabric of their society has changed forever, the seeds of mistrust have been sown, and that society can never be trusted again.

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CHALLENGES OF DISPLACED FAMILIES Having partially overcome the initial hurdles of displacement, this community remains challenged after twenty-three years of their exile as they continue to make meaning of their lives, rebuilding from their spiritual past, amid an undecided future. A methodical understanding of the challenges surmounted by this community as well as their continued predicament is key to understanding the socio-political and socio-economic impacts of the state-level policies. Similar to the challenges of other displaced communities around the world, such as Colombia (Meertens 2003), Mexico (Shinnar 2008), and Myanmar (Fuller 2009), the challenges for this exiled community have been overwhelming. The unplanned move was a daunting challenge for all, particularly for those who had never left the Valley before. This “forced eviction” had broken up families, cut social and cultural ties, and had interrupted employment, education, and marriage opportunities for many. As a proud people, having never been exposed to camp life, the families were traumatized by the series of unprecedented events. The metamorphosis of having become anonymous migrants from being the respectable traders and Pandits of the Valley was humiliating. At a minimum, the specific challenges of this community can be understood as the issues of a psychological, environmental, institutional, and technical nature. The psychological trauma of being uprooted from ancestral homes by militants humiliated this community, and carries a permanent scar for the families. The experience of the day of their departure from the Valley, shared by all those who fled, now forms this community’s “collective memory” (Kagee and Del Soto 2003, 27). This “chosen trauma” (Volkan 1997) is marked by the loss of identity, “belonging and the shattered selfesteem” (Korostelina 2007), among all members. Arrival into new cities suddenly exposed the families to the changed social milieu. For some, the most troubling loss was not their displacement per se but the exposure to societies with “diluted” moral values, such as the embracing of the nuclear families structure and “inter-caste marriages.” This social dislocation continues to trouble many KPs even after three decades (Rajput 2012). Coping with the metropolis that is Delhi and the demands of a new society also required navigating the bureaucracies of the big cities in order to receive various public services, such as registering with the government, filing for compensation, and locating various sevices in the city. Reflecting on such challenges, one Delhi-based family remarked: No one helped, we did not know where to go, my children were small. It was not like in Jammu, with one Commissioner who helps them a lot [the families that settled in Jammu] . . . even now when we ask for

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something; they [officials] send us from one agency to another . . . we waste too much time, no one listens here, we are not a vote bank, they like to forget us (research participant).

Those with properties left behind in the Valley also faced technical challenges, finding themselves obligated to care for their homes and property from which they had been forcibly removed. Their prolonged physical absence from the Valley deprived them of their many rights and continues to pose dilemma on the prospect of return. One member of the Kashmiri-based NGO, remarked, “back in the Valley, when census people come and knock on your door, and month after month no one answers the door, your name gets removed from the vote register, you lose all rights,” illustrating the spillovers of displacement. ADDRESSING DISPLACEMENT: OFFICIAL STANCE Whether the ouster of this community may have been part of an official strategy to eradicate militancy with minimum collateral damage, or part of the terror design aimed to terrorize and annihilate the non-Islamic community of the Valley (Gill 2003), the consequences of this devastating crisis have percolated to all spheres of those affected. Explaining the ouster of this community, Raina (2013, 4) remarks that “that time constitutes the moments of crucial importance to us all in our existential battle for survival because it subsequently altered the internal political dynamics of that place.” Policies made in response to the crisis and those that evolved reflect the “positions and perspectives of the policymakers,” in how they had addressed and acknowledged this crisis (Rajput 2012). Based on interviews with the Delhi-based government, even after twenty-three years, the officials position this displacement as an outcome of a “temporary disturbance” in the Valley, insisting that the “families must go back” (MoHA 2012 pers. comm.). Accordingly, the officials suggest that the families are being “taken care of until they are ready to return.” A spectrum of policies has evolved to support this narrative, serving the “transitional needs of the migrants.” Contrary to this view are the families’ own accounts that position their “forced displacement,” as an “irreversible crisis,” having permanently damaged their community. Consequently, without any chance of return, the families assess these transitional policies as “useless,” “irrelevant,” and “humiliating.” The divergence in how the key actors of this displacement perceive this crisis has rendered what may have been the well-intended policies, to be ineffective and meaningless. Given the protracted nature of this displacement, now in its third decade, policies have undoubtedly evolved in response to the changing needs of this community and advo-

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cacy by the KP supporters. However, the policy portfolio has yielded mixed outcome, for both the beneficiaries as well as the policymakers, with some policies falling short of the intended outcome and some in direct contradiction to the officials’ own stance on displacement. SOCIO-POLITICAL IMPACT AND CONTINUED PREDICAMENT Failure to appreciate the holistic and the embedded nature of the KP challenges has been dangerous, as it has led to a half-hearted understanding of this protracted displacement, which has impacted the formulation as well as the implementation of policies. A meaningful understanding of the KP challenges is best gained by engaging Maire Dugan’s Nested Model (Dugan 1996). This model is used in social sciences to analyze conflicts as “something dynamic and organic, and as products of events occurring at various interactive levels.” In this framework, a conflict is explained as comprising a specific issue, embedded in elements of a relational nature; the latter entrenched within the sub-system issues, themselves embedded into the structural issues. This interconnectivity of issues creates a complex web, pointing to the importance of addressing the underlying issues of a given crisis, such as this displacement. Given that the policy portfolio addressing the KP crisis remains woven around a singular “migrant” identity, this model has been uniquely employed by Rajput (2012, 2013) as an analytical framework to systematically unfold the intertwining nature of the psychological, environmental, institutional, and technical issues of the KP community, catalogued above. In addition, this framework provides a clear understanding of the socio-political and socio-economic impact of policies, the continued predicament of the KP community, with subtle hints into the mindset of the policymakers. The challenges of this community framed around the four key components of this model are explained here. As displacement of this community is perceived by the families to have resulted from the “forced” and threatened eviction of the families, for many, the specific challenge was moving out of their homes and villages for the first time, reflecting a loss of home, belonging, and identity. The psychological trauma of homelessness continues to weigh heavily on this community. The loss of dwellings for the families extends beyond the loss of the physical structure of their homes and into the loss of their cultural, social, economic, and political fabric. For this community, their lost homes represent a metaphorical space of personal attachment, exemplar of “how things used to be” (Achieng 2003). This trauma of homelessness was experienced by all those who fled, including those who initially stayed with relatives. Ironically, for this later group, it manifested as even deeper loss of dignity and humiliation. What seemed to be the relatives’ unconditional hospitality in the beginning, unfortunately

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also came to an end, sending the families back to the task of securing accommodations in the “migrant” camps, which by this time, had “maxed out.” Having bypassed the bureaucracies of the registration process, the fate of these families now lay in limbo, as by this time, they had lost their right for accommodations and future provisions. The national response to provide this community with “township”like settlements has done very little to reduce their stigma of homelessness and isolation even after twenty-three years. As residents of tworoom tenements, in multi-story complexes in Jammu, the families continue to lament the loss of their ancestral homes and feel deprived of a shelter to call their own. This policy response through “transitional accommodations” has left the deeper concerns of this community unaddressed, namely, restoring their sense of permanence and security. Related to these challenges is the relational issue, the “fit of the people” (Dugan 1996) into their societies. Subsequent to displacement, finding one’s place and making meaning in a new society involves an intricate and a complex IDP/host dynamic, which with sustained group effort, can produce strong inter-community bonds. However, establishing such bonds requires that members of both societies have opportunity as well as willingness to reach out to each other (Allport 1954). Research, on other displaced communities suggests that the “pressure from the local population, which typically must shelter a large number of outsiders with limited resources,” poses additional challenges for IDPs, impacting their fit into the society (Calderon 2010). Such pressures often result in resentment, hostility, and mistreatment of IDPs (Duncan 2005, Ferris 2011). As the locals of Delhi and Jammu realized that the stay of the KPs was more than temporary, they too “developed an antipathy towards this community” (Pandita 2013, 134), which came to reflect in the local landlords trying to “control every aspect of their lives, and ridiculing them for their language and pronunciations.” The psychological and the environmental challenges severely impacted the social dynamics for this community. The host communities that had initially sympathized and welcomed the KP families, such as the Delhi’s Hauz Rani Camp, eventually began to reassert control over their resources, such as the wedding halls (barat ghar), which were being used to house the KP families. The locals made a case to push these families out of their community and asked them to vacate those halls. Their appeal to the state ministry led to the relocating of the KP families in the outskirts of Delhi, depriving them of the needed opportunities. The seemingly well-intended government response to house this community in the “migrant quarters” to address the IDP/host rift, however, led to the stifling of the IDP/host dynamic. The government arranged self-sustaining townships, have created a cultural divide, with both groups limiting their social interactions to members of own in-groups. This has exaggerated the “IDP/host differences” (Korostelina 2007) thus

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reinforcing the stereotypical image each has of the other. Such images reflect in the KP community’s characterization of the locals as “materialistic,” “proud,” and “uncaring,” and the simultaneous characterization of the KP community by the locals as “greedy,” “lazy,” and as “troublemakers.” These townships meant to provide a safe haven and a close-to-home like experience have resulted in the moral hazard of robbing this community of the needed resources and hinders the IDP/host relations. Ironically, adding to the failure of this “township” policy is the fact that despite being surrounded by own group members in these close-knit communities, with own temples, schools, and shops, the KP families resent “living in a vacuum without political space and rights” and talk of missing the “brotherly love of their neighbors” of the Valley (per research participants). However, a handful of Delhi-based families that could afford and had opted to live in the mainstream found opportunities to reach out to their wider community, which has paid off for these families. The policy that has to date protected the salaries of those who were serving in the government prior to their displacement has allowed those families to dedicate their time and talent to reach out, through volunteering and teaching in their local communities. Their visibility among the locals has helped them to boost their self-esteem, helping them to reclaim some of their lost social capital. While forging new friendships, these families also preserved their own culture (Berry et al. 1987), consequently faring better, socially and economically, in comparison to their Jammu counterparts, whose community orientations have remained dictated and limited by the housing policy. The relational aspects of the KPs, that is, their ability to communicate and integrate into the local community, was initially hampered given the differences in language, education and the social values of the two groups. Zea (2011) explains that “social upbringing impacts how people identify themselves and others in their society,” which impacts intergroup behavior. In the framework of the Nested Model (Dugan 1996), such sub-system issues reside below the surface but impact issues at other levels. For some, the most traumatic event of their displacement was the subsequent changes in their family functioning and their inability to cope. An exposure to a “mixed society” diluted with “inter-caste marriages” represents a dilution of own ethos for many KPs and remains problematic, discouraging their community-wide participation. Non-participation in the wider community has reduced their mobility which has come to be perceived as the anti-social behavior of the “migrants.” These perceptions reflect in the host families’ statements, when they refer to the KP as those who “stay to themselves” or as those who “do not know how to mix.” Consequently, the policy design which continues to reinforce

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this cultural divide has, intentionally or unintentionally, triggered the formation of parallel societies. STRUCTURAL CHALLENGES Overarching economic, legal, and political framework accessible to the KP community also contributes to the institutional challenges confronted by the Pandits. Depending on “how these structures are set up, they can either facilitate the lives of those displaced or oppress them further” (Galtung 1969). Although these issues reside at the deepest layer of the Nested Model, they percolate and become the breeding ground for people’s grievances. Structural policies and systems have impacted the KP community’s access to economic opportunities, community interaction, and their right to return, thus impacting all aspects of their socio-economic and political standing as detailed below. Securing adequate means of livelihood and access to services is challenging for any displaced community, and the added pressure that spills into the host communities manifests as heightened social tensions between the two groups. To alleviate such pressures, the policy package for the KP families has included the “temporary use” of the shops made available for their use in the local communities. This policy has allowed the families to sustain a living, partially regaining their sense of dignity and economic well-being. However, the use of these shops poses a predicament for the families, as the regulatory compliance placed on these shops stifles their business growth. The policy of the temporary use of the shops is aligned with the official “position” (Harré et al. 1999) of dubbing this eviction as a “temporary disturbance.” This fixated stance has allowed the officials to maintain an ad hoc mix of temporal policies in lieu of more durable solutions. Accordingly, the government retains the ownership of the shops, prohibiting the shopkeepers from making any changes, including extending the shops or purchasing insurance to protect the shops from theft and damage. Access to services, by the KP community, has been further obstructed, given the official “migrant” label. Such labeling was likely considered to be a legitimate tool to identify this community for the purpose of allocating housing, shops, and the subsidies. However, such labeling has led to the most enduring of the socio-economic ills for these families. The locals of Delhi and Jammu use such labels as tools to exert “power relations,” “draw boundaries” and “dictate rules for inclusion/exclusion” (Tilly 2005, 6–7). Even after twenty-three years, social inclusion remains an issue for this community, as the locals are reluctant to accept “outsiders” as their own. The identity descriptions that refer to the KPs as “temporaries” and “outsiders” have also made them easy targets of local police harassment. In addition, as the “migrant” label suggests a voluntary de-

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parture from the Valley, such labeling has offended the KP community as disguised under this label; their perpetrators, including the state administrators have been allowed to remain unaccountable for the eviction of this community. Such policies, flowing from the top-down structures have inflicted inequalities on this community, making them victims of structural violence (Galtung 1969). ISSUE OF RETURN The most enduring of the predicament for the families has been the issue of return which is entrenched in national policies, or absence thereof, as well as in the families’ own personal and moral stance. The families remain conflicted, some with unwavering desire for return, and others repelled by that very idea, and still others in cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) reluctant to whole-heartedly commit to a “mixed society” and equally reluctant to return to a society that “humiliated their identity” (research participant). Embedded in this psychological tension is their moral dilemma of choosing between the two less-favored options. The families ponder whether embracing of a new society will show disloyalty to the “homeland” or whether returning to the beloved “homeland” will expose their families to even bigger dangers. Those who have ruled out their return point to the lack of security, destruction of religious symbols, lack of jobs, and “increased Islamization” as reasons that discourage their return. The parents of young children fear that their kids “will be forced to go to Islamic schools”; shopkeepers fear being “tormented by the militants” and are convinced that the “conditions will never change enough for them to want to return” (research participants). However, others “unceasingly yearn to return to the Valley. They cling onto memories with the hope that someday, peace will prevail and they will be able to return home” (Dhingra 2013). Given the time and space features of this displacement, the government’s own stance on the issue of return remains ambiguous with many initiatives contradicting its own position. On the one hand, the officials view this community as “migrants” who they claim left the Valley “of own volition” accordingly the right and the timing of their return becomes a non-policy issue as it rests with the families’ own decisions. The reasoning being that those who had chosen to leave the Valley cannot be forced to return. Alternatively, positioning the crisis as a “temporary disturbance,” reinforces the official return argument, that the “families are to go back when normalcy happens.” Rajput’s (2012) research suggests that the embracing of this dual narrative has protected the elite on two counts, namely, from formulating a well-embraced return policy and from providing full rehabilitation in new communities. Capitalizing on

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these mixed signals, the KP families find themselves empowered and hold the officials accountable on both counts. Based on the official “migrant” argument, the families feel rightly positioned to demand full rehabilitation in new communities, and based on the official “temporary disturbance” argument, they press the officials for their return and demand concessions for doing so, thus keeping the elite perpetually on the defensive. These conflicting positions have yielded unpredictable outcomes for the policymakers themselves, with several initiatives inflicting moral hazard on the families. The building of the Jammu townships, in contradiction to the “temporary disturbance” argument, has backfired, as the many families perceive this gesture to be a “denial of their right to return” and, as one interviewee put it, robbing them of the wish to “die in [the] homeland.” It is clear, that similar to protracted displacements around the world, such as in Sri Lanka (Wassel 2009, 6–8), Ethiopia (Demo 2009, 12–14), and Georgia (Golda 2009, 55–56), the dilemma of return for this community is driven by more than a simple cost-benefit or the generation-gap consideration. The issue of return is deeply entrenched in the “moral and cultural stance of this community as well as the positions of the key actors” (Rajput 2012), which go beyond assigning any cost implications for this predicament. OVERALL POLICY IMPACT In contrast to the policies that have likely inflicted indirect or institutional violence (Galtung 1969), some policies are reported to have made positive impact in the lives of the Pandits and are touted by the families as well as by the policymakers. The KP children have been provided with access to education, extended by the Delhi-based government under the “Special Allocation for Children of Kashmiri Migrants” (GoI, Ministry of Home Affairs 2013). This provision has not only kept the KP children from becoming victims of the streets and child labor, prevalent in many displaced communities around the world (Aker et al. 2006), but it has also empowered the community with survival tools, instilling a sense of resilience and confidence. This contrasts with the survival strategies of other displaced peoples, such as in Tarlabasi (Turkey), where the displaced have had to resort to child labor for survival (Yilmaz 2003, 36). In these cases, street vending by the children forms the bulk of employment among the displaced. Education policies for the KPs have been fittingly recognized by the beneficiaries as well as by the host communities, earning visible rewards for the policymakers. This is reflected in sentiments such as: “I have no land or trees anymore, but even while living in these

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quarters [Jammu Township], I was able to educate my children, so all was not lost.” However, there is consensus among the families that the piece-meal policies are not wide enough, often premature, involve complex procedures, and are humiliating. In addition, some policies are rendered inapplicable and “meaningless,” having adversely impacted the families’ socio-economically and politically. The Secretary of the Delhi-based NGOs for the Kashmiris has recently brought up the need for a “holistic policy for the rehabilitation of displaced Kashmiri Pandits” requesting the government to “prepare a clear road-map based on the hopes and expectations of the displaced community” (Raina 2013, 7). The KP policy formulation has remained a function of how the elite had initially chosen to position this crisis and the consequent narratives they now feel obliged to uphold. Positioning the crisis as a “temporary disturbance” has for long justified an array of short-term, transitional policies, thus liberating the officials from crafting long-term or durable solutions for those displaced. Reflections after Three Decades The prolonged absence from their homes, combined with the impact of past policies has brought about a shift in how these families reflect on the changes that have taken place over the years. These changes manifest as change in lifestyle, behavior, preferences, and even in how they assess values of their own as well as of their host community. For some, the changes over the years are embraced as positive gains, marked by personal growth and professional achievements, expressed as an “appreciation for open society” and the psychological space to “think for oneself”. These reflections stem from an “acquired identity” (Korostelina 2007, 79–81), resulting from their own individual ability, merit, and the choices that the families have made. Families’ community orientation has yielded new set of in-groups, enhancing their socio/economic standing in new communities, leading some to come to terms with their displacement as a “blessing in disguise that brought them to new horizons” (research participant). However, the families living in Jammu’s Kashmiri Migrant Townships largely reflect on changes, in terms of losses, such as the loss of mental and social skills, cultural and social identity, and loss of language and talent. The families also regret that their children are clueless of their ancestral heritage. The relational issues for the KPs extend beyond the complexities of IDP/host dynamics as captured by Siddhartha Gigoo, the filmmaker of the movie, The Last Day. The movie touches on the subtle aspect of relationship and intimacy among the married KP couples which “fades away while living in inhuman camps” (Sharma 2013). The worst sufferers of the displacement are described as the old Pandits who had

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not imagined that their last days were to be in exile. The filmmaker presents the story of an old Pandit who longs for his home in Kashmir Valley every day before he passes away in the camp. The trauma of being uprooted has effectively robbed the families of peace of mind, requisite for a balanced life. Their shattered self-esteem not only spills into aspects of their lives but also impacts their evaluation of others within own in-group. Some remark that given the length of their exile, group members have become “impatient,” “bitter,” and “dishonest” and some have “adopted vices which were unknown in the Valley.” Similar to the experience of displacement in Turkey (Aker et al. 2006), the experience of the KP displacement has facilitated the entrenchment of negative feelings toward the future, manifesting as hopelessness, uncertainty and doubt. These families remark of missing the “brotherly love” and the local friendships of the Valley. Gurr (1970) explains that such constant comparison of the past with the present, causing “relative deprivation,” keeps people feeling anxious and unsettled in their present surroundings. Similarly the KP families, entrenched in their “perceived discrepancy between what they expect, as measured by what they used to have” feel uneasy and perceive an uncomfortable identity shift, as expressed by a grandfather of Jammu’s Township: I was a well-known Pandit in a society in which the ratio of Pandits was one-tenth, people knew me and saluted me as Pandit Ji, the respected owner of the walnut orchard. Now I am nothing, a migrant of Flat # X, now I am one among 2,500 others in my camp. I have lost my uniqueness and who knows the government may ask me to vacate this township, I am clueless of my new identity (resident of Jammu Township).

These shifts are of major concern for this small community eager to preserve its identity and cohesiveness. Embedded in the loss of identity is their loss of permanence and managing this loss has been troublesome given the “transitory” nature of policies. Being consistently told that they are in “transition accommodations” keeps the KPs fearful of being uprooted again. This loss of permanence extends beyond their mental states and reflects into their everyday expressions, such as “for now,” “who knows,” and “if God wants.” MOVING FORWARD It is clear that the multi-dimensional experience of the KP displacement has meant severe hardships, suffering, and humiliation for this community. Although the physical act of KP displacement had occurred at one time, however, it set off a spiral of social and economic repercussions, triggering a perpetual psychological toll for the community. This is evidenced by the fact that even after twenty-three years, the families are

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primarily engaged in rebuilding their lives and continue to hold in memory the date and the precise time of their “shameful departure” from the Valley. Confirming Dugan’s Model (Dugan 1996), the policy solutions exclusively focused on the immediate issue, namely, addressing the rift between the KP community and the host communities by building the “migrant townships,” have missed the larger structural context needed to restore the long-term aspirations of the families. The day-to-day displeasures from the KP community should be understood as symptomatic of a larger problem that requires structural reform. Failure to appreciate the embedded nature of the KP issues has been dangerous, as it has led to marginally applicable policies, keeping this community in the shadows. The KP issues and challenges are enmeshed and intertwined within many spheres, thus defying the cataloguing of their issues as solely political, social, economic, religious, or psychological in nature. These issues, mistakenly understood to be stand-alone issues, have shown the capacity to germinate, spread, multiply, complicate, and even transform the issue of this eviction into an ongoing protracted displacement. With the stand-alone policy responses, the deeper structural problems of the Kashmir Valley that had triggered this community’s exodus have remained beyond the policy agenda, such as confronting the perpetrators, reconciliation, and peace-making with the Valley community. As of today, India-administered Kashmir continues to face internal clashes among factions about the future of the state with the fate of the Valley in limbo. At the same time, evicted from their homes since 1989, the KP families, officially dubbed as “migrants,” continue to remain in exile, with the vision of returning, becoming more blurry, with each passing year. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the most troubling of the outcomes from the eviction of this community is the sentiment expressed by Satyawali that “the idea of Kashmiriyat, all communities living peacefully in Kashmir, may have been lost forever” (Satyawali 2012, 1). Undoubtedly, the landscape for both societies has changed for those growing up outside of the Valley and equally for those who remained in the Valley. In agreement with Oberoi (2004, 171–192), the youth growing up outside of Kashmir are clueless of the origins of their ancestral homelands. This youth is only furnished with the knowledge that their elders were driven out by militants and forced to live in the “migrant” camps (Oberoi 2004). This generation is being shaped by a different culture and bears no allegiance to Kashmir. Similarly, the Muslim youth of the Valley is growing up in a much more homogeneous context, clueless about the KPs that had formed an integral part of their community. This changed landscape will continue to impact not only those who were displaced but also those responsible for having displaced them, their perpetrators. This humanitarian crisis having been misdiagnosed and intentionally or unintentionally labeled as “voluntary migration” or a “temporary dis-

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turbance” and consequently prescribed the wrong medication through “transitory policies” resembles the case of a patient complaining of a blurred vision but who continues to be prescribed a medicine for a headache. Three decades of this misguided approach continues to render the measures taken to assist KPs as largely ineffective. Holistic policies, whether aimed to provide full rehabilitation to the KP families or to ensure their dignified return will need to secure the economic restructuring, rehabilitation, revival of social life, and reconciliation with key actors in the Valley (Aker et al. 2006). This includes addressing the issues of those who never left the Valley, who some suggest are “living a miserable life with constant fear of gun and economic hardships” (Raina 2003, 10). Global Meet, an initiative under the umbrella of All India Kashmir Samaj opines that “providing [those who never left] with the necessary social and economic security is essential to infuse confidence in the displaced KPs to return to Kashmir” (Raina 2003, 10). In the absence of such a holistic approach, the officials will continue to face their own predicament of sending the families back to the Valley, returning them to the same dangerous place (Serralvo 2011), or holding them hostage to the temporal relief packages indefinitely. The advent of the displacement of this community has loudly signaled deeper problems that need to be addressed. If peace building with the Muslim community in the Valley is to be the envisioned goal, then such effort would require stepping out of the administrative comfort zone to take a leap into moral imagination (Lederach 1997) where the current Valley residents as well as those who were ousted are brought together to envision their interconnectedness and mutuality. Such an exercise may be a difficult and a painful journey but perhaps not more painful than the one that takes away a family’s options to return to its beloved home or its option to become valued members in its new community. ACRONYMS KPs: Kashmiri Pandits IDPs: Internally Displaced Persons UNHCR: United Nations High Commission for Refugees NOTES 1. A well-grounded comparative study, using a triangulated qualitative research methodology, forms the basis of data for this chapter. The study titled Displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits: Dynamics of Policies and Perspectives of Policymakers, Host Communities and the Internally Displaced Persons (Rajput 2012) was conducted, by the author, as part of the doctoral dissertation, for the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, of George Mason University. During this study, ninety-four interviews were conducted in Delhi, Jammu, and Srinagar, with participants from fourteen IDP camps, “Migrant

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Markets,” Delhi and Kashmir-based Ministries, NGOs, members of media, academia, charitable organizations, and the host communities. State-level policies were investigated through semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Oral histories, constructed by living with the families, in “Migrant Townships” convey the voices and the cultural expressions of the participants mentioned in this article. Subject-matter experts, interviewed, were those with a direct role in policymaking, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs and the National Minority Commission. The selection criteria included only those who were displaced due to the 1989 militancy. The participants interviewed from the local communities represent a spectrum of ethnicities, such as Dogra, Hindu, Muslim, and Punjabi. The challenges and issues discussed in this article reflect the views of a range of research participants.

REFERENCES Achieng, Roseline. 2003. “Home Here and Home There: Janus-Faced IDPs in Kenya.” Conference report presented at Researching Internal Displacement: State of the Art, Trondheim, Norway, February. AIKS. 2013. “Highlights of AIKS General Secretary’s Report for the Year September 2012 to Sept. 2013.” All India Kashmiri Samaj, NAAD November 2013:10. Aker, T., B. Celik., D. Kurban, T. Unalan, and H. Yukseker. 2006. “The Problem of Internal Displacement in Turkey: Assessment and Policy Proposals.” Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). Allport, Gordon. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Anand, Adarsh Sein . 2007. The Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir: Its Development and Comments. Universal Law Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd: Delhi, India. Berry, J., Kim, U., Minde,T., and Mok, D. 1987. “Comparative Studies of Acculturative Stress.” International Migration Review 21:3 49–511. Brun, Cathrine. 2010. “Hospitality: Becoming ‘IDPs’ and ‘Hosts’ in Protracted Displacement.” Journal of Refugee Studies 23:3 337–355. Calderon, Mayela. 2010. “Internal Displacement: Recent History, Visions for the Action Ahead.” ISP Collection. Paper 838, SIT Graduate Institute. Accessed January 2011.http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/838. Chandan, Rahul. (n.a.) Review of KPS Gill: The Paramount Cop. Maple Press: India. Demo, Adebe. 2009 “Riding on the Back of a Tortoise.” Forced Migration Review 33: 12–14. Accessed November 14, 2013. http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR33/ FMR33.pdf. Dhingra, Vinay. 2013. “Leaving Past Behind, Kashmiris Adopt Pathankot As New Home.” Hindustan Times, November 2013: Accessed December 9, 2013.http://www. hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/1150798.aspx?s=p. Dugan, Maire. 1996. “A Nested Theory of Conflict.” Women in Leadership 1:1 Summer 1996. Duncan, Christopher. 2005. “Unwelcome Guests: Relations between Internally Displaced Persons and Their Hosts in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.” Journal of Refugee Studies,18:1 25. Fager, J. 2011. “Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced People: A Comparative Study of Reintegration Strategies.” Uppsala University: Sweden. Ferris, Elizabeth. 2011. Resolving Internal Displacement: Prospects for Local Integration. Editor. The Brookings Institution: Washington, D.C. Festinger, Leon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Fuller, Thomas. 2009. “Fleeing Battle, Myanmar Refugees Head to China.” New York Times, August 29. Accessed December 1, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/ world/asia/29myanmar.html?_r=1 and ref=world and pagewanted=print.

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Galtung, Johan. 1969. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, 6:3167-191. Galtung, Johan. 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. London: Sage Publications. Gill, Kanwar. 2003. “The Kashmiri Pandits: An Ethnic Cleansing the World Forgot.” Accessed March 17, 2012.http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/kpsgill/2003/chapter9.htm. GoI. 2013. “Ministry of Home Affairs.” Accessed December 12, 2010.http://mha.nic.in/ more3 Golda, Andrew. 2009. “Use of Housing Vouchers in Georgia.” Forced Migration Review 33: 55–56. Accessed November 14, 2013. http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/ FMR33/FMR33.pdf. Gurr, Ted. 1970. Why Men Rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harré, Rom., and van Langenhove, Luk. 1999. Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of Iintentional Action. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. IDMC. 2010. “Livelihoods. Displaced Kashmiri Pandits.” Source: GoI-MHA, 2 March 2010, p.1 0). Accessed January 1, 201.http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/ website/countries.nsf/ percent28httpEnvelopes percent29/ 76DFF3EF1763FF44C1257790005CB4DE?OpenDocument. Kagee, A., and Del Soto, A. 2003. “Taking Issue with Trauma.” Conference report presented at Researching Internal Displacement: State of the Art, Trondheim, Norway, February. Kaul, A.N. 2013. “The Balidaan Divas.” NAAD, September 2013. Kaw, M. 2004. Kashmir and Its People: Studies in the Evolution of Kashmir Society. APH Publishing House. Korostelina, Karina. 2007. Social Identity and Conflict: Structures, Dynamics, and Implications. Palgrave Macmillan. Lederach, John Paul. 1997. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace Press: Washington, D.C. Meertens, Donny. 2003. “Forced Displacement in Colombia: Public Policy, Gender and Initiatives for Reconstruction.” Paper presented at Conference on African Migration in Comparative Perspective, National University of Colombia, Johannesburg, South Africa, June 4–7. MoHA. 2012. “Ministry of Home Affairs, Indian government.” Accessed August 20, 2012.http://mha.nic.in/more3. Obaa, Bernard. 2009. “Social Network Dynamics and Food Security Among Formerly Displaced People in Lira, N. Uganda.” Department of Sociology, The Butler Travel Grant for International Studies in Sustainable Agriculture, The Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (LEAP). Oberoi, Surinder. 2004. “Ethnic Separatism and Insurgency in Kashmir.” In Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia, 20. Honolulu: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. Pandita, Rahul. 2013. Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. India: Random House. Pandita, Rahul, e-mail message to author, November 18, 2013. Rai, Mridu. 2011. “Kashmir: The Pandit Question.” Al Jazeera, August 1. Al Jazeera speaks to author Mridu Rai about how the minority Hindu community fits into the Kashmir dispute. Reader comment. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/ kashmirtheforgottenconflict/2011/07/2011724204546645823.html. Raina, Romesh. 2013. “General Secretary’s Column”. All India Kashmiri Samaj, NAAD, November 2013: 4. Rajput, Sudha. 2012. “The Displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits: Dynamics of Policies and Perspectives of Policymakers, Host Communities and the Internally Displaced Persons.” PhD diss., Mason University. Rajput, Sudha. 2013. “Internal Displacement: Simplifying a Complex Social Phenomenon.” Beyond Intractability. Accessed October 30, 2013.http://www. beyondintractability.org/rajput-internal-displacement.

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Saha, K.C. 2000. “Rethinking the Guiding Principles: The Case of the Kashmiri Pandits.” Forced Migration Review 8:26. Satyawali, Akash. 2012. “The History of Kashmir.” Akash Satyawali Blog, February 10. http://akashsatyawali.blogspot.com/2012/02/history-of-kashmir.html. Sekhawat, Seema. 2009. “Conflict-Induced Displacement: The Pandits of Kashmir.” Conflict Trends 4:31–37. Serralvo, Jose. 2011. “Internal Displacement, Land Restoration, and the Ongoing Conflict in Colombia.” The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, June 14, 2011. Sharma, Varad. 2013. “Reel Life Exile.” Discussion of Siddhartha Gigoo’s movie The Last Day. Accessed December 2013. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/ nxg/reel-life-exile/article5240135.ece. Shinnar, Rachel. 2008. “Coping with Negative Social Identity: the Case of Mexican Immigrants.” The Journal of Social Psychology 148(5):553–75. Tilly, Charles. 2005. Identities, Boundaries and Social Ties. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers. UNHCR. 1998. “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.” Accessed January 5, 2011. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/7/b/principles.htm. UNHCR. 2013. Accessed October 8, 2013. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/ 49c3646c146.html. Vernon, Hewitt. 1999. “Kashmir: the unanswered question.” History Today 47:9. Volkan, Vamik. 1997. “Blood Lines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism.” Second Edition,Colorado: Westview Press. Wassel, Todd. 2009. “Protecting Housing Rights for IDPs in Sri Lanka.” Forced Migration Review 33: 6–8. Accessed November 14, 2013. http://www.fmreview.org/ FMRpdfs/FMR33/FMR33.pdf. Wolpert, Stanley. 1982. “A New History of India.” Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolpert, Stanley. 2011. “India and Pakistan. Continued Conflict or Cooperation?” California: University of California Press. Yilmaz, Bediz. (2003). “Forced Migrants in Istanbul.” Conference report presented at Researching Internal Displacement: State of the Art, Trondheim, Norway, February. Zea, Juan. (2011). “Internal Displacement: Violence, Public and Socioeconomic Policy in Colombia.” The Michigan Journal of Public Affairs, 2011:8. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

FOUR Ethnic Cleansing The Neglected Case of the Hindus of Bangladesh Richard L. Benkin

Bangladesh’s Hindu population is dying. This is not opinion or the ravings of an ideologue. It is a fact. After the population transfers that accompanied the Indian subcontinent’s 1947 partition, the Hindus made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan’s population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Hindu minorities were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the more recent Hindu population at less than 8 percent (Bangladesh Census 1974 and 2001). Professor Sachi Dastidar (2008) estimates that about forty-nine million Hindus are missing from the Bangladeshi census. Those who still cannot fathom where this trend is likely to lead need only look at other areas in South Asia: In Pakistan, the Hindu minorities are down to 1 percent and in Kashmir where they are almost gone; while Afghanistan, once a great Hindu cultural center, is now almost bereft of its Hindu population. They foreshadow the future of Bangladesh’s Hindus if no action is taken to stop the ongoing atrocities against them (Benkin 2012, 30). While the plight of Bangladeshi Hindus continues, there is relatively no international attention brought to address their situation. This, too, is not opinion but fact. It is the reality that millions live with but only a few others seem to care about. There are efforts currently underway in the United States Congress and among India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to take on this issue, and several US lawmakers and BJP leaders and the current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have pledged ac63

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tion on the matter. In July 2011, former Congressman Robert Dold raised the issue in the US Congress, and in March 2013, the entire BJP leadership raised it in India’s Lok Sabha. Aside from that, however, the matter has not been addressed by any government, the United Nations Human Rights Council, or any other international body. The internationally cited human rights NGOs also have ignored atrocities against Bangladesh’s Hindus and Bangladesh’s refusal to prosecute the wrongdoers. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN, the United States and the leading international news and media establishments have all largely turned the other way on this matter. It would be one thing if they denied the problem and one could crawl into a cocoon and yell, “Conspiracy!” But we do not even get that—all we do get is silence (Benkin 2013).

This chapter presents validated evidence of some of the atrocities and also debunks the mistaken notion that things are any better for Hindus under the current, left-center Awami League government. AN UNBROKEN STRING OF ANTI-HINDU ATROCITIES According to Samir Kalra, Director and Senior Human Rights Fellow of the Hindu American Foundation, there were “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011” (Benkin 2013). The Hindu American Foundation (2005; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2013), Bangladesh Minority Watch (BDMW), and Global Human Rights Defence (2007; 2009; 2010; 2011a,b,c) have compiled evidence of ongoing anti-Hindu actions in Bangladesh for years. My own research has been to document anti-Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh under the current Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, which took office in January 2009 after a stunning electoral victory on December 29, 2008. While as a lone party, the Awami League won 49 percent of the total popular vote, it also captured 230 of the 300 seats in the Bangladeshi parliament (Jatiya Sangsad), compared to only thirty seats for its bitter rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Thus, the Awami League has been able to rule without dependence on coalition partners who might object to implementing program promised to the people of Bangladesh in advance of the elections. The Awami League has always postured as “pro-minority” in contrast to its rival BNP, which has included the Islamist Jamaat e-Islami party in its coalitions. In “Charter of Change: Awami League’s Vision 2021,” it put before the people “election promises, work schedule and declaration in the light of its Vision 2021.” Among the document’s identified “top five priorities,” were:

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Figure 4.1. Bangladesh. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2011

Use of religion and communalism in politics will be banned. Security and rights of religious and ethnic minorities will be ensured. Courtesy and tolerance will be inculcated in the political culture of the country. Militancy and extortion will be banned. Awami League will take initiative to formulate a consensual and unanimous charter of political behavior.

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Further, the document included: Terrorism, discriminatory treatment and human rights violations against religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous people must come to an end permanently. Security of their life, wealth and honor will be guaranteed. Their entitlement to equal opportunity in all spheres of state and social life will be ensured. Special measures will be taken to secure their original ownership on land, water bodies, and their age-old rights on forest areas. In addition, a land commission will be formed. All laws and other arrangements discriminatory to minorities, indigenous people and ethnic groups will be repealed. (Awami League 2011)

In January 2009, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhists Christian Unity Council (chapters inside and outside Bangladesh) asked me to advise them on an effective reaction to the Awami League’s victory. I urged them to press their case for stopping the ethnic cleansing of Hindus “or we will see that their words are nothing more than words.” Unfortunately, for the 1,200 or more victims to whom Kalra referred above, they decided to put their trust in the new government rather than in themselves (Daily Khabor 2009). Tragically, anti-minority attacks occur pretty much everywhere in Bangladesh. International intervention is warranted when there is a lack of government action on such matters. When, for instance, Indian students were attacked in Australia in 2009, the government declared the crimes racist in nature and prosecuted the criminals. When a gay man was beaten to death in the United States in 1998, his murderers were sent to prison for life. In Bangladesh, crimes perpetrated against Hindus and other minorities go unpunished. In 2009, I presented a case against Bangladesh to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). At the end of the session, a staff person who has since left the Commission pulled me aside and told me that the USCIRF staff believed me. The key that would enable them to act, however, would be my ability to document government complicity in the matter. In this case, complicity would include government inaction when it had a responsibility to its citizens to act. In 2012, I published A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus (Benkin 2012), which contained the evidence the USCIRF staff person said was needed. I received reports of many more atrocities than those named in the book and included incidents only if they met all of the following criteria: • They took place during the tenure of the Awami League. • They were specifically anti-Hindu. • They were confirmed by at least two independent sources or my own firsthand confirmation. • The government did not take action against the perpetrators.

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I interviewed victims, family members, Bangladeshi and Indian police and other officials, perpetrators, and human rights activists. The venues included the locations inside Bangladesh where the atrocities occurred, Bangladeshi cities and remote villages, ersatz refugee colonies for Bangladeshi Hindus in India, and Indian cities and remote villages. I collected the evidence in multiple visits to South Asia from 2007 through 2011 and have continued doing so since then. During the interviews, I was accompanied by bi-lingual Bangladeshi Hindus, including human rights activists and my close associate Bikash Halder. I gathered the evidence on video and in writing. It was not uncommon for us to be accosted by police and other officials hostile to our efforts. In undertaking this research, I have established a wide and intricate network of informants in South Asia who personally investigate allegations when I am unable to be there. Using the most stringent of criteria, we confirmed the following: • Major anti-Hindu incidents occurred at the rate of almost one per week during 2009, the Awami League’s first year in office. They included murder, rape, child abduction, forced conversion, physical attacks, land seizures, religious desecration, and at least one three-day pogrom that occurred immediately behind a Dhaka police station (Benkin 2012, 311-328). • Things were no better the second year. The number and intensity of anti-Hindu atrocities did not drop. This included a twenty-six day period (March 12 through April 6, 2010) when there were seven major anti-Hindu actions or almost one every three days (Benkin 2012, 329-331). • HAF, BDMW, and others document a similar level of atrocities in the third year, 2011; and my associates inside Bangladesh have confirmed a large number of them. None of the allegations that sparked a full investigation on our part lacked the needed evidence noted above (Hindu American Foundation 2012; Global Human Rights Defence 2011a; 2011b; 2011c; Ghosh 2011). • As the Awami League’s fourth year in office (2012) began, we confirmed at least fifteen similar incidents in the first quarter alone, almost 1.25 every single week. As the year was ending, we confirmed almost one major incident a week during the fourth quarter. In at least two cases, Bangladeshi officials warned human rights activists to stop investigating the matter or face serious consequences. The primary data confirming these incidents came from Bangladeshi human rights activist Rabindra Ghosh and through on-site investigations and interviews by my own network of associates. Mr. Ghosh’s evidence came from firsthand investigation and included witness statements, photographs, and local (Bangla language) newspaper articles (Ghosh 2012).

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• In between, there was a nine-day period in May 2012 that saw an abduction, a murder in broad daylight, and two gang rapes, one of a child on her way to a Hindu festival: four horrific incidents within a nine day period and no police actions against the known perpetrators (Ghosh 2012). In this discussion, I provide further detail on the following incidents that my associates and I investigated extensively. My confirmation of the final two incidents on the list included an on-site visit and extensive interviews with the victims and others in a remote corner of Bangladesh: • The 2009 anti-Hindu pogrom in the Sutrapur neighborhood of Dhaka • The 2009 abduction of Koli Goswami • The 2012 rape of Laksmi Rani Roy • The 2012 pogrom in the village of Balai Bazaar, Chirir Bandar Upazilla, Dinajpur SUTRAPUR POGROM Reports began trickling out of Bangladesh in the spring of 2009 about what can be described only as an anti-Hindu pogrom in the heart of its capital. It was carried out in three stages on March 30, April 17, and April 29. A community of approximately 400 Hindus was reportedly going about its business when, as described to human rights investigators “hundreds of Muslims [and] Awami League operatives” suddenly descended on them and demanded they quit the homes where they and their families had lived for the past 150 years. Witnesses report that almost immediately, the mob set about attacking the residents and destroying their property. Aside from engaging in extensive looting of the residents’ meager personal property, the attackers also torched dozens of homes and destroyed a Hindu temple. They also stated that police were present during the attacks and stood by passively while they occurred (Benkin 2009). The police captain for the area Tofazzal Hossain, however, declared, “No demolition of [a Hindu] temple occurred. There was no temple there, only a few idols.” Yet, sources for the charge—Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD) and the Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC), as well as several local human rights groups and newspapers—are highly credible. The loose grouping of supporters and informants I developed in South Asia, InterfaithStrength, carried out a two-month investigation, under the immediate direction of Bikash Halder. It confirmed that while the events in Sutrapur likely deviated in their specifics from the initial, sometimes hyperbolic reports, organized attacks did occur with devastating consequences for the poor families of

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the area, the police were complicit, and the implications were chilling. It moreover reflected a systematic, organized, and ongoing effort sanctioned (tacitly or otherwise) by the Bangladeshi government; and it provides more evidence that government protestations to the contrary, normal legal protections are, for all practical purposes, suspended for Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh. Contrary to the initial reports, not all of the 400 Hindus in that community were made homeless, but a significant number were. That certainly is tragic enough, especially since dozens remained so at least two years later, after which it was difficult to continue following the individual families. Nor did the Bangladeshi government even bother to deny that Hindus were beaten or some religious desecration occurred in the presence of the police. Its representatives simply denied that what occurred was criminal. Of course, such a response raises the obvious question: has this Bangladeshi government de-criminalized attacks on Hindus? Our investigation also confirmed that the area attacked was located directly behind the Sutrapur Police Station in Dhaka. The Hindu temple that the attackers destroyed—a Shiva Mandir—was located a mere eighteen meters from it. It would have been easy for police to detect what was about to happen and intervene to prevent it. Their presence during the attacks makes clear that they could have intervened once the violence started but did not. The proximity of the police station combined with most descriptions of police behavior during the pogrom suggests that it is not unlikely that the Awami League government—or at least numerous members of it—had a role in planning and abetting the pogrom and perhaps even colluding with those who organized it to grab the Hindu-owned land (Benkin 2012, 67–68; 112–118). Bangladesh’s discriminatory laws, especially the Vested Property Act (VPA), along with police and government complicity enabled the events in Sutrapur to take place. It provided the legal justification that allowed police to condone the actions and the existing power structure to support them. Passed in 1974 (under the supposedly pro-minority Sheikh Mujibar Rahman, considered the “father of the nation” by Bangladeshis and the biological father of its current prime minister), the VPA gives the Bangladeshi government the power to declare any land “vested,” based on even the flimsiest case that its owner has left the country, and distribute it to whomever it wants. The VPA is explored further below. Jogesh Chando and Tarkanath Das, both of them Hindu, were the original owners of the land in this area of Old Town Dhaka. Around the time of the subcontinent’s partition, Chando and Das migrated to India, but before doing so, they gifted the Sutrapur land to the Hindus living there—most of them their former servants—who decided to remain in that neighborhood of what was soon to become East Pakistan. Although it was a perfectly legal transaction, a local Muslim in Sutrapur, Mahbubur Rahman, tried for years to seize the Hindu-owned property but was

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never able to produce the legal evidence that he needed to pull it off under Bangladeshi law. After Rahman’s death, however, his brother and nephews remained determined to do what he could not do. Even though nothing had changed in the way of objective circumstances, they were confident of success because of their position as major supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, which now held power. Although evicted Hindus claim that the property was registered in their names and that they had been paying taxes on it, Awami League leaders supported Rahman’s younger relatives’ attempt to obtain the land (Iva 2009). They colluded with local officials to demand that Sutrapur residents produce written proof of their ownership of the land. While that might seem reasonable and easily resolved in a nation that adheres to the rule of law and maintains official records at local and regional offices, the request was a transparent ruse in Bangladesh. All of the parties knew the poor Sutrapur residents could not provide written proof of ownership, given their impoverished state and the chaotic nature of Partition-era transactions. Nevertheless, with the Awami League in power it was all that the late Rahman’s young relatives needed to do. Soon after, the government secretly voided the Hindus’ title to the land using Bangladesh’s Vested Property Act. Thus, when the attackers stormed the community they were not alone. The police did not stop them as they went from house to house, beating residents and destroying property. Instead, several uniformed officers accompanied the attackers into the community and announced that the land was being seized under the VPA. The attackers rampaged through the community on the three days in question, assured by this that they would not be called to account for their crimes, and they asserted their new title to the land with impunity. Once the crime itself ended, the police compounded the outrage by refusing to pursue any prosecution in the matter, even though at least three separate sets of crimes were committed: land seizure, beatings, and destruction of a religious site. GHRD and other groups lodged formal protests and brought the matter to Dhaka’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, but he also “refused to take any action against the perpetrators of crime,” according to GHRD’s Jenny Lundstrom. Nor did the cover-up stop there. Zakir Hossain, chief executive of local human rights group Nagorik Uddyog, told me that his organization appealed to the Bangladeshi Parliament and specifically to an Awami League MP, Shuranjit Sengupta, but neither he nor his party have taken any action (Benkin 2012, 116–118). All of the Bangladeshi officials I contacted refused to comment on the incident or even acknowledge that a crime occurred. They never took any action in this case. After my article about the Sutrapur pogrom appeared in The Daily Pioneer of India, Zakir Hossain cited above contacted me very upset. He did not believe the attack in Sutrapur was due to anti-Hindu or anti-

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minority bias, but rather that it was rooted in class struggle, that the victims were Dalits and therefore poverty stricken. While the VPA provides one clear basis for attributing the attacks to anti-Hindu discrimination, Hossain is not alone in viewing the attacks through a class struggle perspective. My focus on the anti-Hindu nature of the Sutrapur attacks is not to suggest that Hossain or Nagorik Uddyog does not work hard to defend these victims. Nor is it to suggest that Dalits do not face a special form of discrimination—they do. Our ideological differences, however, amount to little when compared with the Sutrapur victims’ suffering. As one of them put it, “We are now passing a miserable life with no home and very little to eat” (Daily Star 2009a). THE ABDUCTION OF KOLI GOSWAMI In the summer of 2009, BHBCUC reported the abduction and forced conversion of Koli Goswami. According to the BHBCUC report, at least five Muslim perpetrators including a government official broke into Koli’s home at 12:45 am on June 13, 2009. They engaged in some petty vandalism in the home, but their real target was the twenty-one-year-old college student. They snatched Koli from her bed, and when she tried to alert others by screaming, they threw a cover over her head. The commotion roused several of her family members and others in the area who ran to the woman’s rescue. The home invaders, however, drove off by brandishing their arms and firing pistols to scare them away. Koli’s uncle and guardian, Professor Beraj Goswami, filed a complaint with the Nandail District Police that identified the alleged perpetrators. One of them, Touhidul Islam Bhuiya (Sumon), has a history of trouble with the law and was facing murder charges in a separate case. Under humane circumstances, the very fact of a family complaining about a home invasion and abduction that involved a known felon would prompt police action and at the very least a serious investigation. Yet, the police have refused to investigate the complaint or even acknowledge that any crime was committed. They also have allowed Sumon and the other perpetrators to remain free and to continue committing crimes with impunity. When GHRD and BDMW representatives visited the site, police told them, “It is not kidnapping. It is a love affair between kidnapper and victim.” Even though the violent abduction hardly sounds like a love affair, Bangladeshi police continue to maintain that position despite the following: • extensive physical evidence of a break-in at the family home; • the videotaped testimony of the family; • the lodging of a formal complaint with the authorities by the girl’s uncle; and

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• repeated requests by the family for the police to help locate and produce Koli. Moreover, the police do not even dispute the basic facts in this case, namely that a group of Muslim men entered the Goswami home and took Koli Goswami with them. They also admit recovering physical evidence of a struggle when they came to the family home immediately after the crime was reported, evidence including broken light bulbs and other destroyed household items. Yet, they never stopped denying that a crime was committed, never acknowledged an obligation to investigate the incident further, and only disputed the motives of the perpetrators behind the event, asserting a prior relationship between Koli and her kidnappers. GHRD did investigate the matter on July 3–4, 2009, and confirmed the crime while InterfaithStrength conducted an independent investigation of its own. Bikash Halder led the investigation. He dispatched four men to the family home where they spoke with Professor Goswami. He said that his attempts to recover his niece met with nothing but corruption, duplicity, and collusion in the crime from the police. When he filed a complaint immediately after the kidnapping, he told our investigators he expected that the police would take quick action given the serious nature of the crime. It is also an accepted principle in police work that the longer we are from the crime itself, the less likely it is that a missing person will be recovered safely; and Goswami’s niece was missing. If the police wanted to recover Koli, they would have insisted on taking immediate action. Instead the police actually obstructed rescue efforts and treated Goswami as a nuisance if not the criminal. He continued going to the police insisting that they act in accordance with their responsibilities. Rather than justice, they offered palliatives with no action, inexplicable delays, and repeated denials that a crime occurred. Still, Goswami persisted, and began demanding that they produce Koli to clarify what happened that night. At the very least, they owed him that much since there certainly was ample evidence of unlawful entry into the family home, vandalism, and the discharge of a firearm. Goswami told InterfaithStrength that sometime in July the police called him to the station and told him to sit and wait in a room while they recovered his niece. As he waited for the police to return, he came to believe that his persistence had paid off. When the authorities finally got back to him several hours later, however, Koli was not with them. Instead, they came with suspect “affidavits and other so-called marriage of conversion documents.” Goswami objected that there was no way to verify their authenticity. He said that as the documents’ dates corresponded to times after her abduction when she was presumably being held captive, even if Koli signed them, she likely did so under duress. The only way to determine their veracity, he insisted, would be for Koli Goswami

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herself to testify in a safe environment that she signed the documents of her own free will. On August 17, 2009, Goswami spoke with Halder and made several accusations against the Nandail police, accusations which the police have yet to deny. He said that the investigating officer agreed to help him in exchange for 25,000 Taka. Once Goswami paid the bribe, the officer told him he would now arrange to produce the young woman and put an end to the controversy. He ordered him to return to the Naindal police station on August 21 and wait while the police would retrieve his niece. Goswami did as he was told and returned to the station. He again waited an inordinately long time, after which they returned; but it was not with Koli Goswami or any young woman. Instead, they produced an older woman wearing a full Muslim burqa that concealed her identity. She claimed to be Koli Goswami’s mother and that her daughter converted to Islam because of a love affair—something Koli’s real mother disputed numerous times. Goswami strenuously denies that the woman was his sister-in-law and cannot even fathom the logic behind the attempted deception, since he could learn the truth by speaking to the woman he knew to be Koli Goswami’s mother. There is a final, rather chilling element to that meeting: the local Awami League MP, retired General Abdus Salam, was present during this episode and threatened Goswami with “dire consequences” should he proceed with the case any further or dispute the conversion. The General’s unexplained presence at this sort of informal session raises all sorts of justified suspicions that there was something more here than the immediate crime. What was he doing there, and how much did he know? How high up does the complicity go? A partial answer to the last question comes from the fact that several people worldwide asked that the Bangladeshi government look into the General’s role in this incident only to have the requests go unanswered. While the police did not produce Koli that day, they subsequently claimed that she was present at a secret hearing held the next day. No one from the police or any other arm of the government informed the family about the hearing until after it allegedly occurred. So it is impossible for the family to confirm that their daughter was there or that it even took place. In response to this news, Professor Goswami “protested vehemently” to Naindal officials and told Halder that as a result, “we are afraid we may further be attacked and our adult daughters abducted.” Several days later, he again spoke with Halder by phone and reiterated his fears for his own minor daughters’ safety as well. He ceased pursuing the matter, and Koli Goswami has neither been seen nor heard from since her abduction. While the government continues to deny that Koli Goswami was forced into apostasy or that she was abducted against her will, certain things are not in dispute: there was a home invasion that involved illegal entry into the Hindu home by several young Muslims; a family’s daugh-

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ter was taken during that illegal action and has not been seen since; the alleged perpetrators have been identified and at least one is a known criminal, and the police refuse to pursue a case. We also know that a magistrate and the police have said that Koli converted to Islam. While it is as yet just Goswami’s claim that a government official from the ruling Awami League warned the family to stop fighting it, the government has not denied the allegation. Finally, if there was any court involvement in the case, it was held in secret and left no record. Any documents that might be produced in the future must be considered suspect and likely were generated after the duplicity was revealed (Benkin 2012, 102–113; Benkin 2009a; Benkin 2009b; Global Human Rights Defence 2009d; Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council 2009). THE RAPE OF LAKSMI RANI ROY Laksmi Rani Roy is a petite twenty-two-year-old wife and mother of two children. She lives with her family in a tiny hovel in the small village of Khaizapur in far northern Bangladesh. At about 2:00 a.m. on May 29, 2012, the twenty-five-year-old son of a local notable showed up at her home, threw her down, and raped her. The matter was investigated at the time by Bangladesh Minority Watch and Rabindra Ghosh. He and his associates were able to confirm the attack through local newspapers and several witnesses (including the victim), which they have on tape. He contacted the police superintendent who said he had no knowledge of the incident, and the local officer in charge said he had no jurisdiction in the matter because the victim had not filed an FIR (or First Information Report). Advocate Ghosh came to know that Ms. Roy had been intimidated not to do so, at which point he and his colleagues encouraged her to file and FIR, but as he noted: Mohammad Azizur Rahman- U.P. Member of the locality was trying to suppress the facts and intercepted the victim [on her way] to lodge any FIR against the perpetrator. I being a Human rights activist instructed our BDMW –Dinajpur Chapter to enquire into the matter and accordingly our Human rights activist—Shymol Banarjee—Secretary of BDMW-Dinajpur visited the spot, met with the victim, interrogated her and local witnesses who candidly admitted that Mohammad Wasim Ali most illegally broke the door of victim, opened and tied up the mouth of the victim and raped her brutally and after rape while the perpetrator was about to leave the place of occurrence then some witnesses chased him on the way and informed the local U.P. Member for taking necessary steps against the perpetrator, but the U.P. Member neglected to register the case and tried to suppress the incident of rape on Hindu women, rather he was intimidating the victim’s family not to lodge any allegations of such nature. Our representative Shymol Banarjee also interrogated the U.P. Member responsible for suppressing the

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facts, but the U.P. Member was quite insisting not to lodge any first information report at the police station and he also tried to compromise the matter amicably. (Ghosh 2012)

It is hard to see any amicable solution that does not involve justice for the victim and punishment for the perpetrator, and the BDMW filed the needed FIR. Contrary to the police’s original rationale for inaction, this has not led to any action on their part. In February 2012, I visited the village and interviewed Ms. Roy, along with Rabindra Ghosh. With her husband at her side and two children standing behind them, she recounted the terror of that night with facts that matched exactly her previous descriptions. She said the perpetrator broke into the home when everyone knew her husband was not present. Most Bangladeshi Hindu families I have spoken with in villages throughout South Asia cannot survive on their meager crops or cottage industries, so the man of the house regularly travels to nearby and distant localities for work that will supplement their income. On the night of May 29, 2012, Jowtish Chandra Roy was away, and Mohammad Wasim Ali knew he would not encounter any real resistance when he raped Laksmi Rani Roy. While the Roy family lives in a modest, thatched hovel, the rapist lives in a brick and stone “palace.” The family is well-connected locally, including with Awami League officials. Thus, while the rape was terrible in itself, the Bangladeshi government has compounded the terror by colluding with the victims and local strongmen to indemnify the perpetrator. More than a year after the rape Laksmi Rani Roy still has not gotten justice. THE BALAI BAZAAR POGROM On August 4, 2012, an angry Muslim mob invaded the tiny Hindu village of Balai Bazaar in the far north Bangladeshi state of Dinajpur (Chirir Bandor Upazilla). According to reports in three local dailies, and the testimony of victims, the number of attackers numbered in the thousands. (I could not confirm that number but can confirm that it was greater than the number of families in the village.) The attack came after local officials and at least two Muslim preachers incited the mob to riot because a local Hindu filed a case to stop the illegal mosque construction on his land and against his wishes. BDMW specifically accused the local Upazilla Nirbahi Officer of instigating “peaceful Muslims to attack those unarmed and peaceful Hindus.” As the villagers told me when I visited them six months later, the attackers moved from home to home and from farm to farm, taking some possessions and destroying the rest, stealing livestock and destroying crops. They torched the homes, burning many to the ground, and they abused many of the women (an all-too-common feature of such attacks).

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By the time human rights attorney Rabindra Ghosh and I arrived, the villagers had largely rebuilt, but charred remnants were there too, which we were able to examine. More chilling, the attackers are threatening to return and finish the job if the people do not leave Bangladesh. Five days after the attack, BDMW investigated it. Rabindra Ghosh led a fact-finding team of over twenty investigators, including a former Bangladeshi Minister, Mr. Satish Chandra Roy, who is also a member of the Awami League Presidium. They spoke with the victims and documented atrocities. They also tried to tabulate looted and destroyed belongings, including livestock, based on their interviews with the victims. They counted “72 cows, 105 goats belonging to Hindus have been looted, 16 dwelling houses set on fire, belongings, utensils broken, looted.” During BDMW’s investigation and again when I was in Balai Bazaar, multiple women testified that they had been sexually assaulted and witnessed other Hindu villages being sexually assaulted. Several villagers testified to seeing five women rounded up by the rioters, forcefully disrobed and left publicly naked, their clothing thrown in a large bonfire (Ghosh 2012; 2013). Although the police brought three cases against individual rioters, those who incited it have not been charged, and the arrested have not been punished. Dinajpur’s Deputy Commissioner refused to meet or even communicate with human rights activists. BREAKING NEWS While in the process of writing this article, I was sent an “urgent” request for action by Rabindra Ghosh. He had been meeting with Bangladeshi Member of Parliament, Abdullah Al-Islam Jacob, to address the general repression of Hindus in his district and a specific case when the MP verbally assaulted Advocate Ghosh and threatened him with consequences should he continue his human rights advocacy. He tried to address “desecration of temple, land grabbings, rape on women and children,” and raised the case of Sawpan Kumar Das, who has been subjected to long term “religious repression” and rebuffed by numerous officials to whom he pleaded for relief. Instead of offering some help, the MP burst into a rage and tried to grab the camera that was recording the incident. In the presence of several witnesses, he declared: “There is no human rights in the world, we don’t bother about any human rights activism, get out from my room.” The incident took place on July 15, 2013 in an official Bangladeshi government building (Ghosh 2013).

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THE DEAFENING SILENCE None of these events received any major media coverage; nor were they the subject of international protests or government inquiries. If anything, the lack of any reaction by nations and NGOs reinforced Bangladesh’s ability to commit atrocities against its Hindu citizens and face no repercussions. That is very similar to the message Bangladeshi officialdom sends to those who carry out these dastardly deeds. We must wonder why Rabindra Ghosh and I can confirm these terrible events with our meager resources, and why small human rights groups like BDMW and GHRD can, while major media and giant NGOs cannot. A review of Amnesty International’s annual reports for the past five years would have one questioning if Bangladesh even has a significant Hindu population. Its 2013 report devotes sections to “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights” and “Workers’ Rights,” but none to the persecution of Hindus. The section labeled “Communal Violence” notes only one incident for the year, stating that that “20 Buddhist temples and monasteries [and] one Hindu temple” were set ablaze. It is the only mention of the word Hindu in the entire report, which does not record a single act of violence against Hindu persons (Amnesty International 2013). Its 2012 report mentioned Hindus once in connection with the conviction of the Islamist guilty in the 1971 genocide; and a second time with regard to the (admittedly toothless) Vested Property Return Act, which more than anything else, displayed Amnesty International’s ignorance of realities in Bangladesh. Hindus are not mentioned at all in the 2011, 2010, and 2009 reports (Amnesty International 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012). The last time Human Rights Watch gave the Bangladeshi Hindus even passing mention was in 2006. Oxfam never has (Benkin 2012, 33). With the exception of a few high-profile events, major media have not reported the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus. The BBC, for example, ran stories about the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, 2001 election violence, and 2013 riots that followed the conviction of a radical Islamist leader for war crimes, but not one on Bangladesh’s ongoing war against Hindus that has been raging unabated for decades. GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO CHANGE On April 30, 2009, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told visiting Vice Admiral of the French Navy and Commander of Joint Forces in the Indian Ocean Gerard Valin that her government would repeal all of the country’s “anti-minority” laws—openly admitting for the first time that the nation she presides over in fact has anti-minority laws (Daily Star 2009a). But she has not been true to her word more than four years hence.

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Her government had at least two opportunities to repeal anti-minority laws with little or no political repercussions and passed on them both. On November 6, 2008, the High Court division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh issued a “rule nisi” with regard to “instructions issued in the contents of presidential order 29 of 1972, act 45 and 46 of 1974, ordinance No. 92, 93 of 1976 [that is, the Vested Property Act and subsequent clarifications], and Arpita Sampatty Protapyan Ain 2001 and circulars [that is, the Vested Property Return Act].” It declared those laws and their enhancements “in contradiction with the fundamental rights and the charter of declaration of Independence of Bangladesh, 10 April 1971,” and ordered the government to show cause why they should not be declared contrary to the constitution of Bangladesh and further why “the properties so far incorporated in the list as Enemy [Vested] property should not be returned to the title holder/successor/legal possession holders.” It ordered the government to respond within four weeks of October 28, 2008 (Trivedi 2008). The military government chose not to provide that justification and let the deadline pass. Its representatives told me that because it was incorporated as an interim government, doing so would “exceed its charter,” and besides, an elected government would soon have the ability to respond. In countries that have an independent and relevant judiciary, the passing of that date would have automatically meant that the court would declare the laws in question unconstitutional. As is standard operating procedure in Bangladesh, when the due date for a response came and went, the court did not take any action. Soon after, Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League took office and had the option of addressing the rule nisi and agreeing to let the Vested Property Act die; but it did not thereby allowing the Vested Property Act to continue in force (Benkin 2012, 183–185). In the spring of 2011, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court tried again, this time issuing its final rulings on a number of constitutional amendments passed under the military dictatorships of General Ziaur Rahman and General Hussain Muhammad Ershad in the 1970s and 1980s. The Fifth and Eighth Amendments were the basis for Bangladesh’s caretaker system of government (which serves during a transition period after the ruling party relinquishes power as mandated), Islam becoming the official state religion (contrary to the original principles of Bangladeshi independence, which included secularism), and, as it relates to this section, religion-based political parties. The Eighth Amendment is also the rationale for funds and other benefits being given to Islamic institutions and not others and for homage to Allah being part of Bangladeshi law. The court asked the Awami League government to submit replacements for ratification in the Awami-dominated Constituent Assembly. So, essentially, the Awami League had a blank check to submit and assure the ratification of whatever replacements it wanted to pass. On June 30, the

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Bangladesh Parliament passed new laws that voided the caretaker system, a move that the opposition BNP called political. The status of religious-based parties like Jamaat e-Islami is unclear, but as of yet, they have not ceased operations. There is no sign that they intend to do so, and no credible observer believes that they will quit the political scene, especially given their growing power and bipartisan support. Significantly, the Awami League refused to address the issue of Islam as the state religion (Benkin 2012, 22; Jagran Post 2011). WHY THE LACK OF ACTION Why, then, is there no focus on this human rights tragedy? Why in fact is there so much attention on other human rights issues that involve fewer victims? Several reasons can be adduced. It would be inaccurate to assume that the media and NGO giants get it right. The ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus is not the only current human rights tragedy going unnoticed. Since the 1980s, Hindus of Nepalese origin and descent have been systematically expelled from the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. As early as the nineteenth century, Bhutanese rulers (who like their people are Buddhist) encouraged Hindus from nearby Nepal to immigrate and help build the nation’s middle class and commercial infrastructure. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a new ruler ascended the throne and expressed fears that the now numerous Hindus might join with an enemy against Bhutan, at which point, his nation started a still ongoing process of ridding Bhutan of Hindus. Many live in squalid refugee camps in eastern Nepal, others have been brought to Chicago, Los Angeles, and other US cities by Hindu communities there. Major media and NGOs still refer to Bhutan almost exclusively as a Himalayan paradise, which it is unless you are a Hindu of Nepalese origin or descent (Benkin 2012, 123–125; South Asia People’s Forum 2007; Human Rights Without Frontiers 2007; News Blaze 2007; Hindu American Foundation 2013, 87–100). Frequently, the recognition comes too late for most of the victims. Former US President Bill Clinton has stated on multiple occasions that his greatest failing was not taking action quickly enough to stop the Rwanda genocide that claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis (Reuters 2005). Many people attribute the lack of attention on anti-Hindu actions to “Hindu passivity.” It could be that Bangladesh receives little attention because it is sandwiched between giants India and China, or because of the three nations to emerge from India’s 1947 partition (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), it seems to be the forgotten stepchild. As a Wall Street Journal foreign-affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor, Bret Stephens has written that embassy personnel like those in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, often see their role as maintaining smooth relations be-

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tween their nation and the one in which they are posted. Stephens and I worked together on behalf of Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was arrested and tortured and later harassed for exposing the growing strength of radical Islam in Bangladesh and urging relations with Israel. During that struggle, I uncovered one local informant feeding US embassy staff false information about the case and with ties to Islamist organizations (Benkin 2006a). I have postulated, however, that one overwhelming reason for the resistance to identifying Bangladesh’s ethnic cleansing of Hindus is that it would undermine the otherwise widely held notion that Bangladesh is a “moderate Muslim nation,” a notion I have characterized as a “cornerstone myth.” As applied to individuals, the term “moderate Muslim” certainly can be appropriate, and then only in contrast with the term “radical Muslim,” not because Islam or any other faith requires such a modifier. Our Muslim friends and colleagues are no different than our other associates, and we find it difficult to hear blanket statements categorizing all Muslims as open or closet jihadis, which accounts in part for the distortions in the use of the term “moderate”: our values make us uncomfortable condemning any religious tradition or large group of people because of their adherence to it. Moreover, Muslims have been with me in the West Bengal villages and colonies where many Hindu refugees settled. I have met young Muslims in Dhaka who have been beaten by the Bangladeshi police and Islamists for trying to stop the ethnic cleansing of Hindus. In one tiny far northern Hindu village that an angry Muslim mob recently attacked, the only thing that was preventing further attacks was the effort of four Muslim policemen who guarded the village on their own volition. The ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus, however, is not about individuals. The UN formally recognized Bangladesh as a “moderate Muslim democracy” and a recent CNN report began: “Muslim and moderate. Two words that describe Bangladesh.” The Bangladeshi government invokes the “moderate” card every chance it gets and trumpets its nation as “a model of religious harmony and tolerance.” This perspective is widely accepted as in a recent Congressional Research Paper, which characterized Bangladesh as the “partner of choice for the United States in many of the foreign policy priorities of President Obama” (Benkin 2012a; Basu 2012). We have seen, however, that Bangladesh not only gives tacit support to the ethnic cleansing of non-Muslim populations (plural because indigenous peoples like the Chakmas face the same actions as do Hindus in Bangladesh) but admittedly supports a system of anti-minority laws. One of them, the Vested Property Act, has allowed successive Bangladeshi governments to seize 2.5 million acres so far or about 75 percent of all Hindu-owned land and distributes it to its cronies.

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Sources on the ground in South Asia have told me that the Awami League has recently made common cause with the nation’s Islamists, agreeing to allow the latter to implement elements of their radical agenda in return for support in the 2014 election, much as it did in advance of the aborted 2007 elections. In addition, elements in the Awami League party recently approached me as well with their concerns about the next election, which leaves little doubt that the party is not so surreptitious about its association with the Islamists. Yet, press reports about then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit there were effusive with her positive comments and pledges of more aid and cooperation. Less than a month after Clinton’s departure, a Bangladeshi court issued an arrest warrant against author Salam Azad, charging him with blasphemy for a book he published in 2003. All it took was a general allegation, according to the petitioner’s attorney: “We told the court that the book contained slanderous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam. The judge accepted the petition and issued a warrant of arrest.” According to Salam Azad, a senior official of that supposedly moderate party was behind it. According to Salam Azad he became a “target once I protested his getting of Hindu property via the Vested Property Act.” Azad told me that while he is out on bail, he receives regular death threats over the phone and faces a public campaign by Islamists calling for him to be hanged. The government has not tried to look into these threats or provide Azad with protection. Azad is not the first Bangladeshi writer to face that charge. My experience with the journalist noted above is only one more case for which I have direct evidence. It begs the question: does arresting writers for blasphemy sound like something that happens in a moderate Muslim country? Recognizing that Bangladesh is no longer a moderate Muslim nation would force a re-assessment of the very concept as applied to nations. Turkey, for instance, has long been considered the epitome of a moderate Muslim nation. Yet, recently, its own Muslim citizens have rebelled against the creeping Islamism and support for sharia by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party. In “moderate” Jordan, Jews are barred by law from becoming citizens. We have uncovered extensive networks from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates supporting radical Islam in Bangladesh (Robinson 2009; Benkin 2006a). When he took office as president, Barack Obama extended the definition to include “moderate” Taliban, and has since found it difficult to negotiate with them. Obama is also facing backlash for trying to define Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as moderate (Benkin 2009c; 2009d). So while it is foolhardy to condemn Islam itself as extremist, in several cases, removing the myth of the moderate Muslim nation would force international pundits and diplomats to confront realities that they have been willing to ignore: in the case of Bangladesh, the radical ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims.

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POTENTIAL FOR PROGRESS The numerous Bangladeshi officials, including those noted above, have made it clear that barring outside intervention, their government has no intention of taking any action to stop the ethnic cleansing of Hindus or even acknowledge that Hindus are discriminated against in Bangladesh. If they take any action, it will come because outsiders have made it in Bangladesh’s material interests to do so; and in that regard, Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable. Its economy is overly dependent on the sale of readymade garments on the international market, and it is dependent on the receipts of about 10,000 UN peacekeeping troops per month. From fiscal 2004–05 to fiscal 2009–10, Bangladesh received between 1.43 billion dollars and 2.16 billion dollars annually in foreign aid (Byron 2011). The one serious lobbying group in Bangladesh is the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturing and Exporting Association. In 2008, the United States imported 3.74 billion dollars worth of goods from Bangladesh—or 26.5 percent of all of that country’s exports. That same year, Bangladesh had a 3.25 billion dollars trade surplus with the United States an amount equal to 30 percent of its entire national budget. For years, Bangladesh’s Holy Grail has been a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, something that other nations have been able to secure. Not only has that not yet happen for Bangladesh, thanks to those committed to human rights and free expression, but they also have been able to help stop several legislative attempts to give Bangladesh some sort of tariff reduction to increase its exports to the United States. In 2008, Bangladesh sent the Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunis to the US Senate in a vain attempt to secure passage of one bill that was proposed to ease tariffs on Bangladesh. Imagine what it would mean if Bangladesh’s commercial ties with the United States was more directly dependent on it stopping the ethnic cleansing in the country (US Department of State 2010; Benkin 2012a, 292). The United States provides over 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget plus uncounted additional support—multiple times greater than any other country. The only other country whose contribution is in double digits is Japan (United Nations 2012). Would they continue to do so if they knew it supported gang rapes, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing? I was in Bangladesh during its 2007 military coup. There was violence in the streets as the major parties were locked in conflict over charges of election fraud. Western democracies were urging Bangladesh not to hold the elections until they can guarantee that the elections would be fair. The military gave the government an ultimatum to fix the situation within twenty-four hours or it would. Shortly thereafter, the government resigned, the military took over, and the elections were canceled. Why did the military act? Sources within the military told me at the time that they acted because they thought the UN would join the Western democracies

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and then pull their peacekeeping troops. Besides losing the money, they had to face the prospect of having thousands of angry, unemployed, and armed young men flooding their already volatile country. Can you blame them (Benkin 2012, 302–304)? CONCLUSION Based on firsthand observation and extensive information confirmed by multiple independent witnesses, it is evident that Bangladesh’s Hindu population faces ongoing atrocities that the Bangladeshi government refuses to stop or punish. The current government, despite its “pro-minority” pose and image across the international political establishment, is no different from previous governments. International bodies often decide whether or not to intervene to stop human rights atrocities based on a country’s own actions to try and stop them. Yet, they have been universally inactive with regard to the Hindus of Bangladesh. There is no evidence that the Bangladeshi government intends to acknowledge the persecution of Hindus or take action on their own. The population trajectory and parallel trends in countries like Pakistan, strongly points to the eradication of Bangladesh’s Hindus if more comprehensive human rights efforts do not force Bangladesh’s hand. REFERENCES Amnesty International. 2009. “Bangladesh—Amnesty International Report 2009.” Human Rights in People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Amnesty International. 2010. “Bangladesh—Amnesty International Report 2010.” Human Rights in People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Amnesty International. 2011. “Annual Report 2011: State of the World’s Human Rights.” Bangladesh. Amnesty International. 2012. “Annual Report 2012: State of the World’s Human Rights.” Bangladesh. Amnesty International. 2013. “Annual Report 2013: State of the World’s Human Rights.” Bangladesh. Awami League. 2011. “Charter of Change: Awami League’s Vision 2021.” Bangladesh Awami League: A Blog of Moktel Hossain Mukthi, November 4. http:// bangladeshawamileague.blog.com/2011/11/04/awami-league percentE2 percent80 percent99s-vision-2021/. Bangladesh Government Census. 1974. Bangladesh Government Census. 2001. Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council. 2009. July newsletter. 1:7 (July 31, 2009). Basu, Moni. 2012. “Clinton Leaves Drama in China for Turmoil in Bangladesh.” CNN, May 5, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/05/world/asia/bangladesh-clinton/index.html Benkin, Richard L. 2006a. “Questionable Information Sources at US Embassy in Bangladesh.” Weekly Blitz, October. http://www.interfaithstrength.com/images/Ahmed.htm

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Benkin, Richard. 2006b. “Smelling the Stink of Islamist Radicals.” Weekly Blitz, November 22. http://www.freechoudhury.com/images/Stink.htm.imhbak.2010-02-02 Benkin, Richard L. 2009a. “A Terrifying Existence.” The Sunday Pioneer, July 21. http:// www.freechoudhury.com/images/Pogrom.html Benkin, Richard L. 2009b. “Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam.” Weekly Blitz, October 7. http://www.interfaithstrength.com/images/Abducted.htm Benkin, Richard L. 2009c. “Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam: Update.” Canada Free Press, September 11. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14606 Benkin, Richard. 2009d. “Obama’s Futile Search for ‘Moderate Radicals.’” American Thinker, March 14. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obamas_futile_search_for_moder.html Benkin, Richard. 2009e. “Obama Afghan-Pakistan Policy Already Unraveling.” American Thinker, March 28, 2009. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/ obama_afghanpakistan_policy_al.html Benkin, Richard L. 2012a. A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus. New Delhi, India: Akshaya Prakashan. Benkin, Richard. 2012b. “Is ‘Moderate Muslim’ an Oxymoron?” New English Review, July 2012. http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/117808/sec_id/ 117808 Benkin, Richard L. 2013. “Bangladesh’s Hindus Are Dying. Are We Okay with Letting It Happen?” Speech to Human Rights Center for Bangladesh, Dallas, Texas. Benkin, Richard L. 2013. “Time Is Running Out for Bangladesh’s Hindus—and for us.” Address to Bharatiya Vichar Manch. Indo-American Intellectual Forum. Cerritos, CA. July 14. Byron, Rejaul Karim. 2011. “Foreign Aid Declines 45pc.” The Daily Star [Dhaka]. February 2. Census of East Pakistan. 1951. Daily Khabor, 2009. “Repeal Enemy Property Act & Show the Support: Dr. Benkin.” Daily Khabor, January 11. Daily Star. 2009a. “Eviction of Dalits Protested.” Daily Star (Dhaka), April 10. Daily Star. 2009b. “Govt to Ensure Minority Rights, CHT Peace Treaty: PM.” Daily Star [Dhaka], April 30. Dastidar, Sachi G. 2008. Empire’s Last Casualty: Indian Subcontinent’s Vanishing Hindu and other Minorities. Kolkata, India: Firma KLM Private Limited. Ghosh, Rabindra, miscellaneous email messages with evidence of specific anti-Hindu atrocities. 2011. Ghosh, Rabindra, miscellaneous email messages with evidence of specific anti-Hindu atrocities. 2012. Ghosh, Rabindra, miscellaneous email messages with evidence of specific anti-Hindu atrocities. 2013. Global Human Rights Defence. 2007. Human Rights Annual Report: Bangladesh 2006. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Global Human Rights Defence. 2009a. Bangladesh Human Rights Report 2008. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Global Human Rights Defence. 2009b. “URGENT APPEAL: Bangladesh: Impunity for Abduction, Forced Marriage and Conversion of Minority Girls.” [UA-BA2009.16.10]. October 16. Global Human Rights Defence. 2010. Annual Report Bangladesh 2009. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Global Human Rights Defence. 2011a. Human Rights Report 2010: Minorities in Bangladesh. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Global Human Rights Defence. 2011b. Bangladesh Quarterly human rights report January – March 2011. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Global Human Rights Defence. 2011c. Bangladesh Quarterly human rights report April – June 2011. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence.

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Global Human Rights Defence. 2011d. Bangladesh Quarterly human rights report July September 2011. The Hague, Netherlands: Global Human Rights Defence. Hindu American Foundation. 2005. Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kashmir: A Survey of Human Rights, 2004. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2006. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2005. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2007. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2006. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2008. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2007. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2009. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2008. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2010. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2009. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2011. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2010. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2012. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2011. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Hindu American Foundation. 2013. Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights, 2012. Washington, DC: Hindu American Foundation. Human Rights without Frontiers. 2007. “HRWF—Bhutan.” Human Rights without Frontiers, Monthly Trend Analysis, May. Iva, Irfath Ara. 2009. “Status of Minorities in Bangladesh in 2009.” Annual Report, SAHR. Jagran Post. 2011. “Bangladesh Scraps Caretaker System, BNP Vows to Protest Amendments.” Jagran Post, June 30. http://post.jagran.com/bangladesh-scraps-caretaker-system-bnp-vows-to-protest-amendments-1309455191 News Blaze. 2007. “Human Rights Organization of Bhutan Update.” News Blaze, May 31. http://bhutannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/journalists-reveal-human-rights.html OMB. 2010. “Annual Report on United States Contributions to the United Nations.” Executive Office of the President. Office of Management and Budget, June 7. Reuters. 2005. “Clinton Regrets Personal Failure on Rwanda Genocide.” RedOrbit. July 23. http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/184135/clinton_regrets_personal _failure_on_rwanda_genocide/ Robinson, Heather. 2009. “Abandoned under Obama.” American Spectator, November 10. http://spectator.org/articles/40574/abandoned-under-obama South Asia People’s Forum, 2007. “Program at Mechi Bridge.” South Asia People’s Forum, June 6. Trivedi, Rabindranath. 2008. “Bangladesh High Court Delivered Rule Nisi on Government Hearing HRCBM’s writ on Vested Property Act.” Asian Tribune, November 11. United Nations. 2012. “Scale of Assessments for the Apportionment of the Expenses of the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.” United Nations General Assembly, 67:145. December 27. United Nations Peacekeeping. 2012. “Monthly Summary of Contributors of Military and Civilian Police Personnel.” Multiple Months. US Department of State. 2010. “Background Note: Bangladesh.” Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, US Department of State, May 24.

FIVE Orientation and Citizenship Status of the Indonesian Chinese and Political Implications Taufiq Tanasaldy

Significant numbers of studies of the Indonesian Chinese in modern times revolved around the official discriminatory policies. These policies usually targeted the Chinese’s disproportionate economic dominance as well as concerned their loyalty and distinctive cultural identity. The main basis for such policies was their citizenship and orientation. This chapter will examine the status of the Indonesian Chinese citizenship and their political/cultural orientation, and how they have changed over time and the determinant of such changes. But first, I present an overview of the official policies toward the Indonesian Chinese over time. GOVERNMENT POLICIES TOWARD THE CHINESE Chinese contact with the region came long before the Europeans, reaching back to the Hindu kingdoms in the archipelago. The majority of the contact was in the form of trading and other economic activities; although political and religious contacts were also made (Cribb and Kahin 2004, 74, 76; Setiono 2003, chapter 2). These Chinese traders became the main competitors of the European merchants when the latter came to the archipelago. It was not surprising that the Dutch, who finally established their stronghold in the Netherland East Indies (former name of Indonesia), wanted to protect their commercial interests from the growing influence of the Chinese traders (Claver 2008, 193–04). Ways to control the 87

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Chinese were then introduced: the zoning system (wijkenstelsel) required the Chinese to reside in designated quarters, and the pass system (passenstelsel) regulated the movement of the Chinese (Susanto 2008, 32; Setiono 2003, 116, Adam 2003). The Chinese, being grouped into a different social group, accessed different social or education facilities and were subjected to different legal systems. 1 Other than these measures and a few violent incidents in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, 2 relations between the Dutch and the Chinese were peaceful, and the Chinese were allowed to carry on their business and commercial activities relatively unhindered and their interests were respected. Approaching the end of nineteenth century the Dutch started to pay more attention to the interests of the Chinese. The zoning and pass systems were relaxed gradually and eventually abolished by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. The Dutch-Chinese schools were established to attract the Chinese away from the growing influence of the pro-China schools. A few Chinese were also appointed to the national advisory council—the volksraad (on the changes, see Willmott 1961, 22–23; but also Suryadinata 1972, 53–54; Claver 2008, 114). One of the catalysts for such accommodations was moves from the Qing government to secure allegiance from overseas Chinese (Willmott 1961, 18–22). Such accommodation was also a result of the growing importance of the role of the Chinese in the Indies. By this time the Chinese had extended their influence beyond the economy. Their role in the press (Budianta 2007, 53; Hill 2007, 26), for example, would shape public opinion in the colony. This positive trend was abruptly stopped when World War II (WWII) came to the region. Significant numbers of Chinese commercial interests and properties were destroyed as the Dutch forces retreated at the beginning of the war. They then faced waves of looting and killing by the Indonesians (Touwen-Bouwsma 2002, 57–58). The new master, the Japanese, distrusted the Indies Chinese, due to their long-run anti-Japanese campaigns (Willmott 1961, 21–22; Dijk 2007, 24–23). The Japanese occupation was harsh for all inhabitants of the colonies, the Chinese included. 3 Conditions remained bleak after the end of the WWII, as the Chinese became caught between two warring parties: the Dutch forces, which aimed to reoccupy their former colony, and the nationalists under the leadership of Sukarno, who had proclaimed Indonesia’s independence. It was during this transition period that serious anti-Chinese riots broke out in various places in Java and Sumatra (Setiono 2003, chapter 31). Realizing the potential support and wealth of the Chinese, the leaders of both sides were sympathetic toward the Chinese. With regard to the antiChinese riots, the Indonesian leaders not only issued apologies to the Chinese and condemned the acts but also offered compensation (Willmott 1961, 40–41). So that the Chinese could protect themselves, as well as support the Dutch, the Dutch were supportive of the establishment of Chinese security forces, generally known as Baoandui (保安队). Both the

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Dutch and the Indonesian leaders also “embedded” the Chinese into their governments. Several Chinese were included in the Indonesian semi-parliamentary body known as KNIP (Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat, Central Indonesian National Committee). On the other side, the Dutch also supported the recruitment of the Chinese into the civil service and military. In pro-Dutch West Kalimantan State (known as DIKB, Daerah Istimewa Kalimantan Barat), the Chinese had been represented quite significantly in the executive board (Tanasaldy 2012, 82–84). The subsequent years after the departure of the Dutch in 1949 were relative peaceful for the Chinese. The hope for long-term stability was, however, dashed when the Indonesian government started to tighten control over non-citizens and their interests, aiming mostly at the Chinese (although Dutch interests were also affected). Citing security concerns, the government started to regulate foreign (i.e., Chinese) schools, scrutinizing their textbooks and interfering with the recruitment of teachers and principals. The majority of Chinese schools were closed in 1958 and 1959. This was followed by the ban of all Chinese newspapers in 1960. In order to empower indigenous entrepreneurship, a series of economic policies was introduced to restrict Chinese economic role and influence. The well-known policies were the Fortress Program (Program Benteng), Assaat movement, and regulations to indigenize rice mills and harbor facilities. By far the most damaging policy was President Decree 10/1959 (famously known as PP10) that banned the Chinese from the retailing business in villages or townships below the level of district capital from January 1, 1960 (Suryadinata 2005, 118–25; Thee 2009, 31–36; Willmott 1961, 115–19; Siauw 1999, chapter 8, 316–19). The start of the 1960s was bitter for many Chinese due to PP10. However, conditions had improved significantly in the last years of Sukarno’s period in power. Underpinning such a shift was stronger Sino-Indonesia relations as a result of left-leaning Indonesian foreign policy. It was not in the interests of Indonesia to upset China, its closest ally, through issuing hostile policies toward the Chinese population, the majority of who were citizens of China. Besides, Indonesian domestic politics during this period was favorable to the Chinese. With Sukarno’s support, the leftist organizations gained prominence. They, particularly Baperki and Partindo, 4 were known to be friendly toward the Indonesian Chinese. On the contrary some right-wing and Islamic organizations, which were usually unsympathetic toward the Chinese, were outlawed or had lost influence (Heidhues 2006, 83). With such conditions, it was not surprising that, despite extreme domestic economic difficulties in this era which could have been easily used to fan anti-Chinese violence, only one significant riot took place (Setiono 2003, chapter 44; Coppel 1983, 46–47). The abortive 1965 coup reversed the trend. The new anti-Communist regime was highly suspicious of the Chinese due to their association with the leftist organizations and their affinity toward Communist China. By

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the middle of 1966 all Chinese schools were either closed down or converted to national schools. 5 All Chinese newspapers were once again closed down. 6 All Chinese organizations including the most influential Baperki and its sub-organizations and affiliates were dissolved. Besides those repressive measures above, another feature of the New Order policy toward the Chinese was that they were not to be involved in politics. The regime was satisfied that the Chinese focus only on the economy, education, and other low-risk fields such as sports. Unlike the previous regime, the New Order allowed only a few handpicked Chinese in the national and regional parliaments. Some who were appointed were also close cronies of the regime. Those who were appointed in the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, MPR) were cronies of the regime. None were appointed as ministers or to other high offices. 7 To solve the Chinese problems, the New Order enforced an assimilationist approach that demanded that the Chinese discard their ethnic identity and disappear into the indigenous community. It therefore abandoned the path taken by its predecessor which supported the integrationist approach championed by Baperki where the Chinese were encouraged to maintain their cultural identity. To help to achieve this goal, the government supported assimilation drives, such as changing Chinese names to Indonesian-sounding names, converting their Confucian religion to a religion of the majority of the native Indonesians, such as Islam or Christian. At the same time, the government issued policies to weaken Chinese culture. Public performances of Chinese culture, such as the lion dance and the Chinese puppet shadow play (Wayang Potehi), were banned. 8 Confucianism was derecognized as one of the nation’s official religions. No new temples were allowed to be built, while the old and dilapidated ones were not to be restored. Chinese characters and the publication of them were made illegal. Unlike the previous period where such discriminatory policies were openly debated and surely received opposition, these policies were put forward and implemented without challenges. The lack of genuine opposition, the complete disappearance of the Chinese role, in politics, and most importantly, the authoritarian nature of the regime made querying the policies impossible. Those who questioned the government’s ethnic policies or those who tried to disrupt ethnic or religious harmony risked prosecution. 9 With the exception in the earlier period of the regime in 1966 and 1967 where the violence was seen as necessary, the New Order regime was swift and firm in dealing with the anti-Chinese riots. Riots, particularly against the Chinese who controlled a significant portion of the country’s economy, would hurt development and investment. Despite economic growth and stern warnings from the regime, numerous small and regional anti-Chinese incidents occurred (for some of the more significant inci-

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dents refer to Setiono 2003, chapter 51 and 55; Purdey 2006, 220). The most commonly cited reasons behind the riots were Chinese exclusivity, their economic domination, and the growing economic gap between the rich (i.e., Chinese) and the poor (i.e., the indigenous). Those factors did contribute to the violence, but often, the contribution of the government’s discriminatory policies to the violence was overlooked. The official open discrimination toward the Chinese had fostered the perception among the community that the Chinese were second-class citizens, easy targets, and always at fault. It was also the government policies that resulted in the fact that no institutions would stand up to firmly defend the Chinese in the event of riots. The culmination of the anti-Chinese riots was in May 1998. This massive riot in Jakarta and several other cities and the subsequent resignation of Suharto had again changed the direction of official policies relating to the Chinese. Realizing the policy mistakes, the mishaps of the Chinese, domestic and international pressure to redress the issue, as well as globally accepted consensus on multiculturalism, all post–New Order governments have moved away from the assimilationist discriminatory approach. Scores of discriminatory regulations have been repealed, starting with President Habibie through his order to end the use of the terms pribumi (native) and non-pribumi (non-native) in all official programs and policies. Chinese newspapers, Chinese schools and Mandarin courses were allowed to operate once more. Confucianism’s previous status was reinstated, and the Lunar New Year was made a national public holiday. The constitution was revised, and the updated version gives rights to most Chinese to contest for the president’s position. Regulations were introduced to incorporate financial punishments and jail terms for discriminatory acts. At the beginning of 2014, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, better known as SBY, reinstated the use of the more respectable terms Tionghoa and Tiongkok to refer to the Chinese and China (Supratiwi 2014). 10 The Chinese have been reintroduced into politics. Every cabinet since that of Wahid has always had at least one Chinese minister. Kwik Kian Gie served under both Presidents Wahid and Megawati; Marie Pangestu and Amir Syamsuddin are both currently ministers under President SBY. Several Chinese have been appointed as district heads or mayors (Thung 2009). The latest win was in May 2013 in Malang (East Java), where Muhammad Anton won the mayoral election (Purnomo 2013). Previously, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, was elected as the Deputy Governor of Jakarta in September 2012 (Afifah 2012). There are still several other cases in West Kalimantan and Sumatera. The number of people of Chinese ethnicity who participate in and are elected to the parliament, local or national, is growing. In the election in 2009, at least thirteen of them were elected to the National Legislative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR) and Regional Representative

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Council (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah, DPD). 11 Within the political parties, the Chinese have reached the top position of the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, PKB). Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a media mogul, is the chief patron of Hanura and has been nominated as its vice-presidential candidate (Gatra 2013). Rusdi Kirana, the owner of the largest private airline in Indonesia, Lion Air, has become the Deputy General Chairman of PKB (Prabowo 2014). CITIZENSHIP STATUS OF THE INDONESIAN CHINESE There are two issues concerning the citizenship status of the Chinese in Indonesia: first is the large number of those with alien status (this will be discussed in the next section), and second is their dual nationality status. As hinted previously, the dual nationality matter is rooted in the Qing government’s policy in the early twentieth century, which claimed the overseas Chinese as its nationals. Prior to this there was no problem with the status of the Chinese in the colony. The Chinese and the Chinese government accepted that they were the subjects of the Dutch government. In fact, the overseas Chinese were deemed undesirable by the Chinese government, and it offered no protection to them. 12 Despite this overlapping claim, both governments seemed to navigate these intricate issues well (Willmott 1961, 29–34; Suryadinata 2005, 109). After WWII, the citizenship issue of the overseas Chinese became more complex. First, the post-war Chinese government continued to regard the overseas Chinese as their nationals. 13 Meanwhile, the new Indonesian government recognized almost all Chinese in the former Netherlands Indies as its citizens. The Indonesian Citizenship Law of 1946 granted Indonesian citizenship for those who were born in Indonesia, or those who were born overseas but had been living in Indonesia continuously for a minimum of five years before the regulation came to effect (Willmott 1961, 149–51). Dual nationality was not a norm at this time, and neither of these two governments would like to maintain the practice. Making it more complicated was the changing attitude of the Indies Chinese toward China. Returning to China had never before been attractive to the Indies Chinese. China had regained its past greatness. It was one of the winners of the World War II and became a permanent member of the prestigious Security Council of the United Nation. This desire of the overseas Chinese to return to China was further elevated with the proclamation of the New China in 1949. Waves of Chinese, particularly the young generation, returned to China in the 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them aspired to continue their study and eventually help to rebuild the motherland. 14 Those who left understood well that they were not allowed to return once they left Indonesia as they were given “exit

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permit only” by the Indonesian government. It was estimated that at least 30,000 Chinese students from Indonesia were already in China by the end of 1950s (Godley 1989, 334). Many others returned to China as they did not see prospects for them by staying on in Indonesia. It was estimated that more than one hundred thousand returned to China because of the excesses of PP10 (Godley 1989, 335; Mozingo 2007, 175; Mackie 1976, 95). The emigration tide to China dissipated only as the extreme hardship of the returnees, due to increasing hostile political conditions in China towards overseas Chinese, became more evident. 15 The lack of capacity of China to bear the additional burden from these new returnees was another reason (Godley 1989, 335–6). Despite the immigration waves, the majority of Chinese still chose to stay on in Indonesia, at least on a temporary basis. Many of them had dual nationality status, a concern that led to the negotiation of the Dual Nationality Treaty in 1955 between the two countries. The treaty was ratified in 1958 to take effect in 1960. For the first time, the affected Chinese were require to actively decided on their ultimate citizenship between January 20, 1961 and January 20, 1962. They had to renounce their Chinese citizenship if they wanted to keep their Indonesian citizenship, and vice versa (for the details of implementation and procedures see Kansil 1992, 72–102). Significant numbers, as will be shown in the next section, chose to renounce Indonesian citizenship. It can be said that by the end of 1962, the Chinese in Indonesia were either Indonesian or Chinese nationals. There was a small percentage of stateless Chinese, those from Taiwan (Republic of China), which was not recognized by Indonesia. After this period, individuals who wanted to become Indonesian citizens had to go through the normal naturalization process prescribed by the relevant regulations. The citizen law was not changed until 2006, a time when the official attitude towards the Chinese and perception of citizenship had changed. Some rulings in the new law are significantly important for the Indonesian Chinese. For the first time, Chinese who were born with Indonesian citizenship and who have never received any other citizenship are regarded as native of Indonesia. The law also prevents subsequent stateless status of Indonesian Chinese, meaning, children of the stateless parents will be automatically afforded Indonesian citizenship. CHANGING ORIENTATION OF THE CHINESE As mentioned previously, citizenship laws and their implementation in Indonesian have changed a few times since 1946. The complete statistics on Chinese who chose to become Indonesian citizens or otherwise at those important junctures is not available. In the early 1950s, it was esti-

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mated that 1.5 million of the total 2.5 million Chinese in Indonesia were considered aliens. One third of those 2.5 million were dual nationals (Mozingo 1961, 25). About 200,000 of the 700,000 to 900,000 Chinese with dual nationality had made an effort to choose Indonesian citizenship. However, only 32,000 applicants were successful by September 1961, less than four months before the deadline (Mozingo 1961, 30–31). 16 By 1967, it was estimated that half of the three million Chinese population were aliens (Suryadinata 2005, 112). By 1971, of the 3.29 million Chinese, about one million were aliens. By 1980 the numbers of Chinese had grown to 3.5 million, and the numbers of aliens remained high, about 916,029 (Suryadinata 1998, 97). The size of the alien Chinese population was only drastically reduced to 462,314 in 1980, when the government decided to fast-track the naturalization process. A series of regulations was introduced in the subsequent years further reducing the numbers of alien Chinese. These government policies will be revisited below. In 2000 the number of alien Chinese was a little more than 93,717, and in 2010 it was further decreased to 76,860. These numbers somewhat reflect the orientation of the Chinese who, up to the 1960s, were influenced by both domestic conditions in Indonesia and China. Many Chinese found affiliating with the stronger China more attractive up to the 1960s. This influence was very strong; even the worsening Indonesian policies toward alien Chinese in the 1950s and the grim reports coming from China did not sway more to drop their Chinese citizenship and opt for Indonesian citizenship. Why? Observing the positive development in the Sino-Indonesian relations and their encouraging effects on domestic politics, the Chinese in Indonesia believed that their prospects in Indonesia, despite their aliens status, would not be negatively affected (Mozingo 1961, 29). Many of them believed that economically the worst storm had passed. The implementation of the PP10 had dissipated, and there were no future calls in the first part of the 1960s to strengthen its implementation. The government probably learned that the sudden disappearance of the Chinese in the regional cities and villages because of the PP10 had seriously disrupted the economy of the region and brought hardship to the local population (Siauw 1999, 319–20). It had also resulted in unnecessary movements of large numbers of the population who were not necessarily capable of supporting themselves. This therefore created social problems in the bigger cities. There were also reports of undesirable excesses of the policies (Setiono 2003, 671). Furthermore, the Chinese seemed to have found ways around the restrictions. As the majority of the retail shops in the smaller cities were traditionally run and owned by the family, it was not uncommon for a Chinese family to nominate a dependable adult son to assume Indonesian citizenship. Having an Indonesian citizen in the family running the business solved many of the problems. Another strategy was to employ a

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trusted indigenous friend to “run” the shop for the Chinese. This strategy at a greater scale was known as the Ali Baba system, where the indigenous Indonesians became the “frontmen” for the Chinese businesses (Suryadinata 2005, 120). The regional and national governments themselves recognized the indispensability of Chinese capital and their role in business. This eventually evolved into close cooperation between the two, a practice known as cukongism (Suryadinata 2005, 128–30). At this time, restrictions on Chinese culture were insignificant. The number of schools which were drastically cut to 510 in 1959, had risen to 629 by the end of 1965 (Coppel 1983, 41). After a two-year vacuum, from 1963 Chinese newspapers were allowed to publish. 17 Their cultural events were allowed to be celebrated freely. Confucianism, as mentioned previously, was even recognized as one of the official religions of Indonesia in 1965. Sukarno condemned anti-Chinese sentiments (Setiono 2003, 682) and supported the Chinese efforts to maintain their cultural identity through his support of Baperki. For those who were contemplating doing otherwise (i.e., choosing Indonesian citizenship), things were not always easy and rosy. In order to get Indonesian citizenship, they needed to provide an acceptable proof of eligibility which could be difficult to obtain for some regional residents (Mozingo 1961, 27–28). Then, those who wished to have their status affirmed needed to pay a high price for the citizenship certificate (Willmott 1961, 109). The worst part was that changing nationality did not guarantee that they would not be discriminated against (Mozingo 1961, 29). Confusion in the implementation of regulations, arbitrary decision of ultra-nationalist local leaders, as well as the difficulties to prove one’s citizenship status meant the alien and citizen Chinese often suffered the same bad treatment. In West Java, for example, all Chinese, regardless of their citizenship, were removed from the villages as the result of the implementation of PP10 (Setiono 2003, 671). Having Indonesian citizenship also had its undesirable consequences. Hopes to go back and live in the motherland one day would be difficult to achieve once they relinquished their Chinese citizenship. Besides that, following the regulation issued at the end of the 1950s, once they opted for Indonesian citizenship, their children were no longer allowed to attend Chinese schools (Williams 1962, 193, Willmott 1961, 97). This was undesirable as Chinese schooling was considered important, particularly during the high tide of returning to the motherland fever. Very soon many regretted their decision not to take up Indonesian citizenship. After the abortive coup in 1965, policies toward the Chinese changed entirely. As Sino-Indonesia relations grew colder, domestic antiChinese sentiments were rising and resulted in forced expulsion, riots, and even mass murder such as in the case of West Kalimantan in 1967. Going back to China was no longer desired as the life in China was bleak—it was known that forced labor, economic austerity, widespread

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famine, and prosecution awaited those who returned. At this time assuming Indonesian citizenship would be the preferable option for many, but they had missed the window of opportunity in the early 1960s. During the first decade of the New Order those who wanted to assume Indonesian citizenship had to go through a slow, complicated, and costly naturalization process. Those who were Indonesian nationals had no other option but to go along with the government policies and support the assimilation measures imposed on them. Others who had overseas connections and/or capital left the country. The persistent high numbers of alien Chinese from the end of the 1960s was the result of the decision made in early 1960s. This was made worse by slow, stringent and costly naturalization imposed by the New Order regime (Suryadinata 1995, 115; Coppel 1983, 93–94). The regime even unilaterally terminated the Dual National Treaty in 1969 and denied the rights of Chinese minors to choose their citizenship when they came of age. 18 The new arrangement made them follow the citizenship of their parents (Kansil 1992, 171). Without warning, the government introduce two policies in January and February 1980 to expedite the naturalization process and give citizenship certificates en masse. Within a few months the government issued 487,650 citizenship certificates to Chinese in Sumatera Utara, Riau, Kalimantan Barat, Jakarta, Bangka, Belitung, Pangkal Pinang, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Bogor dan Kerawang. 19 Further facilitation was made in the later years to “sweep clean” the remaining cases. For example as a result of regulations in 1995, about 180,000 aliens were naturalized (Anxi-Indonesia 2014). Why did the regime suddenly shift its policies on the alien Chinese? Undoubtedly, the confidence of the regime that the mass naturalization would not be a problem was the main factor. It believed that the Chinese were no longer a security threat and China seemed to have assumed peaceful international relations. 20 On the domestic front, the role of the Chinese in the country’s economy had continued to grow over the past fifteen years. Many of the Chinese big businesses were partners of New Order officials, including the president himself. 21 Since it became obvious that the majority of alien Chinese would take up Indonesian citizenship if offered the opportunity; facilitating such a wish was a sensible solution. Returning the alien Chinese to China was no longer an option because the Chinese would oppose the plan. The regime recognized that a large Chinese population remaining in Indonesia was a reality. From a political and security point of view, the regime realized it would be very desirable for them to have Indonesian citizenships. Another explanation linked the policies to the strategy of Golkar, the governing political party, to secure a predominant win in the 1982 election. The Chinese had been known to be supportive of Golkar, and the new citizen Chinese would undoubtedly vote for Golkar. This was prov-

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en to be the case in the 1982 election. In some areas in West Kalimantan the number of votes for Golkar was greater by 10 percent if compared to the party’s achievement in the 1977 election. In Singkawang, for example, Golkar votes had increased from 60.1 percent to 75.3 percent; in Sungai Pinyuh from 51.4 percent to 63 percent, and in South Pontianak from 59.7 percent to 74.5 percent (Departemen Penerangan Kalimantan Barat 1982, 16, 23; Gubernur Kalbar 1983). Those achievements were well above Golkar’s mere 2 percent increase at provincial and national levels (cf. Suryadinata 2002, 32; Tanasaldy 2012, 243). ISSUES OF CITIZENSHIP PAPERS While the majority of the former alien Chinese had received Indonesian citizenships by the 1990s, the issues of citizenship papers remained problematic for their children. While the regulation allowed the use of the citizenship papers of one’s parents to prove one’s citizenship status, in reality it was impractical. Firstly, the document was required by many administrative procedures in the government as well as in other sectors such as education, banking, and property transactions. Often the document was retained by the agency/processing office during the process. Secondly, a large family with children living in different regions would also find it difficult to only depend on their parents’ certificates. Furthermore, government officials often demanded a separate citizenship paper of the individual to be presented in the application. Eventually the children, who were officially Indonesian nationals, were forced to apply for their own proof of citizenship, known as SBKRI—Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia . The roots of SBKRI went back to 1947 when the proof of citizenship was first mentioned. Government Regulation 5/1947 stated that proof of citizenship was not required for indigenous or non-indigenous citizens, but the district court was able to issue a statement of citizenship if requested by the person or government agencies. Then in early 1953, the Ministry of the Interior announced that it would hold a general registration for all non-indigenous citizens and issue them with a citizenship certificate known as STKI (Surat Tanda Kewarganegaraan Indonesia). Due to controversy and opposition, the issuance of STKI was discontinued in 1956 (Willmott 1961, 106–08). Once again those who wanted to obtain proof of citizenship were required to go through the proper channels (i.e., the district court. Citizenship Law 62/1958 prescribed the same arrangement). The statement of citizenship from the court was commonly known as SKKRI ( Surat Keterangan Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia). Between 1960 and 1962, Chinese who chose Indonesian citizenship were also given another form of citizenship paper called SBKI (Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Indonesia) by the Ministry of the Interior.

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In 1977 the government issued a regulation mandating compulsory registration for all Indonesian citizens. The regulation reiterated that those who would like to prove their citizenship status could apply for proof of citizenship to the Ministry of Justice. As a follow-up, the Regulation of the Ministry of Justice JB.3.4.12/1978 outlined the procedures for those who would like to obtain proof of citizenship. Through the 1980 regulations, the issuance of the proof was fast-tracked and was made more affordable. The current version of the certificate, the SBKRI, was first mentioned in the 1978 regulation. However, contrary to common belief, this regulation did not make SBKRI mandatory (see one of such claims in Winarta 2012, 25). The regulation simply stated that each citizen of Indonesia who would like to prove their citizenship status could apply for the SBKRI through the Ministry of Justice. In fact, the government never made citizenship proof a mandatory document for the non-indigenous citizens in any of the previous regulations. The strongest urge from the government came through Government Regulation 20/1959, where it stated that it would be desirable for Chinese descendants to have a statement which firmly stated their Indonesian citizenship. In 1996 the government surprisingly announced through Presidential Decision 56/1996 that proof of citizenship was no longer needed for administrative process if other proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, ID card, or family card, could be provided. The Chinese who welcomed this initiative soon realized that the SBKRI was far from being obsolete. The document was still being demanded for many official applications, and therefore obtaining one’s proof remained important. The process to obtain this important certificate, like the past practice, was intentionally obscured making it an expensive document to obtain that often involved a long process. It was almost a consensus that the citizenship proof had become a source of corruption and blackmail by officials (Winarta 2012, 26; Simamora 2008). One of the widely reported cases was of Hendrawan, a prominent badminton player who had represented Indonesia in many international tournaments. He only obtained his citizenship paper after a long wait and only after raising this issue directly with President Megawati in 2002 (Saraswati 2002). Despites several subsequent regulations and guidelines being issued to confirm the 1996 decision, the practice of demanding the SBKRI continued (Yayasan Pengkajian Hukum Indonesia 2010, 94–95; Brown 2004, 17–18). Well known sport figures such as Susi Susanti and Alan Budikusuma were asked for their SBKRI when they lodged their passport application so they could represent Indonesia in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens (Permana and Ayudea 2008). A survey in several cities in 2008 still found that applicants were requested to show their SBKRI in their passport and ID card applications (Simamora 2008). In fact, the SBKRI was still being issued as late as 2008 (Yayasan Pengkajian Hukum Indo-

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nesia 2010, 121). Recent online searches, however, showed that the majority of problems related to the SBKRI have disappeared these days, although occasional complaints were reported within the immigration department (Syahbana 2013, Yumiyanti 2014). It took more than eighteen years to finally remove, although not completely, the need for a citizenship certificate, one of the most precious but hated documents for the Indonesian Chinese. CONCLUSION The issues of citizenship status and orientation of the Chinese in Indonesia are not new. The Dutch government, which controlled the archipelago in the first half of the twentieth century, had managed these intricate issues quite well. It has only become highly problematic after the Dutch left in 1949 and the new Indonesian government continued its nationbuilding process. This process, unfortunately, involved tightening up control over the activities and influence of the foreign population. The Chinese, being the largest “foreign” population in the country, were the main target. The unfavorable policies toward the Chinese, coupled with the growing attraction of China, as well as improving Sino-Indonesia relations, had influenced many to strengthen their association with China. Significant numbers of Indonesian Chinese who decided to return to China in the 1950s, as well as large numbers who decided to keep Chinese citizenship in the early 1960s, were two indicators. The fall of the Sukarno regime and deteriorating Sino-Indonesia relations saw a drastic change in the official policies toward the Chinese, which had been favourable during a period of a few years prior to 1965. The new regime distrusted the Chinese, and its policies had become harsh and discriminatory toward them. The early years of the New Order also saw frequent riots against the Chinese. However, despite the distress, many ethnic Chinese decided to stay on in Indonesia. For them, returning to China was no longer possible nor desirable as China was at the height of the cataclysmic Cultural Revolution. Although the majority of them would have chosen Indonesian citizenship from this time on, this option was very limited. The prohibitive cost and difficult process due to government suspicion of the Chinese, meant naturalization was not possible for many. Relief came only in 1980 when the government decided to streamline and accelerate the naturalization process. This, together with similar efforts in the 1990s, significantly curbed the numbers of noncitizen Chinese in the country. While issues of citizenship status had been resolved by the end of the 1990s, the issue of the proof of citizenships for the Chinese continued to be problematic well into the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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NOTES 1. The Indies population in the last half of the Dutch colonial order was stratified into three tiers, the Europeans, East Asians and the native Indonesians. These groups were subject to different laws and prosecuted in different courts (Luttikhuis 2013, 541, Von Faber 1926, Lindsey 2005, 42-43). This classification also determined access to certain social and education facilities. The Chinese children, for example, were not generally allowed to enroll in schools for the Europeans, except if their parents had been “equalized” to the same status as the Europeans. 2. Two of the most grave incidents were the massacres of the Chinese in Batavia in 1740 (Setiono 2003, Chapter 8) and the wars with the Chinese kongsis in Borneo in the middle of the nineteenth century (Heidhues 2003, Chapter 2 and 3). 3. One of the most significant incidents took place in West Kalimantan from 1943 to 1944. Citing planning for revolts, many prominent Chinese, together with influential natives and aristocrats, were rounded up and executed by the Japanese (Heidhues 2003, 203–08). 4. Baperki was the main organization of the Indonesian Chinese during the Sukarno era. Partindo was a left-leaning nationalist party which gained support from the Chinese after its role in supporting the victims of the 1963 anti-Chinese conflict. The growth of these two organizations were linked with their leftist outlook as well as their leaders close relations with Sukarno (Rocamora 1975, 233, Tan 2004, 30, Oei 1995, 96). 5. From 1968, special public schools called Sekolah Nasional Project Chusus (SNPC) were allowed to operate so at least to “control” the education of younger Chinese, who were out of formal education after the closure of the Chinese schools in 1966. The regime was concerned that this young generation of Chinese, who could have received education through informal channels, might get influence from the underground leftists. The SNPC used Indonesian as the medium of instruction, but Chinese language was also allowed to be taught for a limited number of hours per week. The sudden increase in the number of schools and reports of the violations committed by those schools led to their closure in 1974 (Suryadinata 2005, 140–44). 6. The only exception was the military-sponsored Harian Indonesia which commenced publishing in Chinese and Indonesian from September 12, 1966. The military thought that it was important to have a media which could reach out to the Chinese, particularly those who were illiterate in Indonesian script. 7. Suryadinata (2005, 185) listed five Chinese members of the People’s Consultative Assembly between 1987 and 1992. Bob Hasan and Anthony Salim were business partners of the regime. Jusuf Wanandi and H. Sindhunata were also close acquaintances of the regime. Only Kwik Kian Gie, representing the Indonesian Democracy Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI), was known to be critical toward the government. Three months before his resignation Suharto appointed Bob Hasan, as the Minister of Industry and Trade (Studwell 2007, 250). 8. A complete ban was not possible. Occasionally local authorities issued limited permits for some cultural events to be held publicly, such as the case in West Kalimantan’s Singkawang in the 1970s and 1980s (Akcaya 1979, Akcaya 1986). 9. The regime invented an acronym for this purpose, SARA, a short form of Suku, Agama, Ras and Antar Golongan (Ethnicity, Religion, Race, and Inter-group). The regime often warned members of the public not to provoke issues that could disrupt those harmonious SARA relations. 10. In 1967 the New Order ordered the use of Cina, a term considered derogatory by most Indonesian Chinese, instead of Tiongkok (China) and Tionghoa (Chinese). 11. The Chinese members of DPR in 2012 were: Albert Yaputra, Lim Sui Khiang, Sonny Waplau, and Eddy Sadeli from Partai Demokrat; Rudianto Tjen, Sudin, Ichsan Soelistio (replacing Murdaya Poo, another Chinese), and Hendrawan Supratikno from Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDIP); Basuki Tjahaja Purnama and Enggartiasto from Partai Golkar; Hang Ali Saputra

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Syah Pahan from National Mandar Party (Partai Amanat Nasional, PAN). There were two Chinese members of DPD: Telli Gozeli and Bahar Buasan, both from Bangka Belitung Province (Batari 2012). 12. The Qing Dynasty disliked the Chinese who abandoned their motherland for opportunity overseas or rebels or criminals who went overseas to avoid justice. The Chinese government offered no protection to them (Willmott 1961, 16, Godley 2002, 60–61). 13. The Qing government was deposed in 1912. Since then China had been under a few governments mostly affiliated with the China Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang, KMT). The subsequent government, however, continue to keep the claim to overseas Chinese as its citizens, for example, in its 1929 citizenship law. The People’s Republic of China, established in 1949, did not enact a separate citizenship law, and therefore was assumed to have continued the claim. The PRC only promulgated its citizenship law in 1980. 14. There were strong practical reasons for them to continue their education in China. Firstly, the general perception that education offered in China was of higher quality. Secondly, limited numbers of Chinese-medium higher secondary and tertiary education institutions in Indonesia. West Kalimantan, for example, had a few junior high schools by 1950s but no senior high schools. This meant, the graduates would have to go outside the province to continue their education (Hui 2011, 72). At the tertiary level, it was difficult to get into any Indonesian state universities due to quota set for the Chinese. The only exception was Universitas Res Publica (known as Ureca) established by Baperki at the end of 1950s in Jakarta with branches in a few major cities in Java and Sumatera (Siauw 1999, 341–45). Attending Ureca could be still problematic as the language of instruction at the university was Indonesian. 15. The political campaigns in China from the early 1950s to 1960s had often affected negatively the overseas Chinese. The Cultural Revolution, for example, treated the overseas Chinese as enemy of the state and made their life extremely difficult. It was estimated that more than 300,000 overseas Chinese, majority of whom were from Indonesia, had left China for Hongkong and nearby Macau at the end 1976 (Godley 1989, 349). 16. High numbers of applications were returned due to errors and lack of proof of Indonesian birth (Mozingo 1961, 30–31). 17. The trigger was the introduction of the new media law in April 1963. In that year at least three were allowed to publish in Jakarta: Harian Ibukota (首都日报) August 5, Warta Bhakti (忠诚报) November 11; Api Revolusi (火炬报) December 2 (Xu 2011). A few more were established later. Some of these newspapers had ‘regional’ editions. The Harian Ibukota, for example, had its West Kalimantan edition. 18. Based on the treaty, minors who were born on January 19, 1960, for example, would have time until January 19, 1979 to decide their citizenship. Politically it was undesirable for the New Order. The regime would like to have a say on who would become a citizen (Kansil 1992, 169–73, Suryadinata 2005, 114). 19. The President Instruction 2/1980 issued on January 31, ordered the issuance of a proof of citizenship to Indonesian citizens of foreign descent by August 17, 1980. The subsequent Presidential Decision 13/1980 issued on February 11 detailed the process and cost of the expedited naturalisation process (details of these two regulations refer to Kansil 1992, 257-350). At the end of the campaign, about 152,252 citizenship certificates were issued to West Kalimantan Chinese; more than 120,000 to North Sumatra, 49,787 to Riau/Pekanbaru, 52,123 South Sumatera, 54,881 in Jakarta, 58,607 in West Java (Anxi-Indonesia 2014). 20. The Reform-oriented faction under Deng Xiaoping had outmanoeuvred radical elements within China’s domestic politics by 1980. China had also started to embrace more peaceful international relations and been recognized by major powers. It established diplomatic relations with Japan in 1973 and with the United State in 1979. Also, its new citizenship law promulgated in September 1980 rejected dual nationality.

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21. Some of these conglomerates seemed to have played important roles behind the policies to fast-track naturalisation in the 1980 and 1990s (Anxi-Indonesia 2014). On their partnership see Robinson (1986, 271–322)

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SIX The Politics of Ethnic Marginalization and Foreign Policy in Malaysia Amy L. Freedman

Since independence in Malaysia, relations among the three major ethnic groups have been negotiated, contested, controversial, and occasionally violent. In turn, these domestic political arrangements have had a significant impact on foreign policy. Once a sovereign state, free from British rule, Malaysia nonetheless maintained ties and support for British interests in Southeast Asia. Domestic politics at independence could be characterized as elite-dominated and consociational. 1 A social bargain evolved where leaders from each community, Malay, Chinese, and Indian, would make decisions on behalf of their communities. These consociational arrangements rested on three elements: deference to elite authority, elite cooperation across ethnic lines, and an understanding that ethnic Malays would have a preponderance of political power. Although ethnically and religiously divided, leaders of the three communities shared some common traits: most were British educated, English speaking, and in favor of establishing the Federated States of Malaysia as a western-oriented, capitalist state. From independence in the 1950s through the end of the 1970s, one of the critical domestic issues in society was how to deal with the Communist insurgency in the country. The early years of independence were marked by harsh and unyielding campaigns to marginalize and destroy the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). This domestic agenda impacted foreign policy as well.

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UNDERSTANDING ETHNIC MARGINALIZATION IN MALAYSIA Malaysia is sandwiched between Buddhist-dominated Thailand and Muslim-dominated Indonesia. Malaysia’s population is roughly 60 percent ethnic Malay, 30 percent Chinese, and 10 percent Indian. Malaysia has been known more for its ethnic accommodation and harmony than for ethnic conflict. Such a reputation, however, makes light of several factors: that this harmony was predicated on the political marginalization of Chinese and Indian communities; that significant conflict has occurred; and finally, it minimizes the very real tension that still exists between the dominant Malay majority and the sizable minority communities. Overall, Malaysian politics remains highly ethnicized. Political parties represent the three largest ethnic groups and are supposed to channel ethnic interests to prevent violence. 2 UMNO, the United Malays National Organization, claims to speak for Malay interests; the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) for Chinese interests; and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) for Indian views. 3 Few issues are not, in some manner, linked to ethnic relations. In addition to ethnic polarization, since the 1980s there has also been an Islamicization in society and politics, thus ethnic identity and religious politics have been fused; this will be discussed later. Ethnic relations in the Malay Peninsula fall into five distinct periods: (1) the period during British colonialism, (2) the era covering the post–World War II transition from colonial rule to independence, (3) the turbulent early years of independent Malaya/Malaysia’s existence (1957–1969), (4) the fourth period stretching from 1969 until about 2000, and (5) a fifth period from 2000-today. This chapter focuses on relations between the dominant Malay population and the ethnic Chinese community. This is not to say that the Indian community doesn’t matter, but it is worth noting that the more contentious political and societal cleavage in Malaysia has historically been between the Malay and the Chinese communities. Throughout Malaysia’s independence, the Chinese in Malaysia have been a dynamic economic force and, because they make up about 30 percent of the current population, they have long been perceived as a potential political threat by the indigenous Malays. The Malay Peninsula has always been ethnically mixed, with indigenous and Malay inhabitants. This pluralism increased when the Chinese began coming to western Malaysia (around 1400), but especially in the mid-nineteenth century when Chinese settlement in the peninsula became significant. By the time the British consolidated control over Malay territories in the nineteenth century, ethnic groups were segmented by employment, place of residence, and place of education. Colonial authorities kept in place the Malay sultanates, and they relied on Malay elites to staff the civil service. Chinese were utilized as economic middleman.

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THE CHINESE UNDER BRITISH RULE Since 1911, Chinese involvement in Malaysian politics has been linked to fears of Chinese Nationalist or Communist Party influence. Moreover, under colonialism, Chinese immigrants were allowed to organize and run their own schools, and the curriculum reflected a growing sense of Chinese nationalism. Emphasis was placed on creating military spirit, and drilling, uniforms, and patriotic songs were incorporated into the school day. Shortly after the May 4th Movement of 1919 in China (a protest movement led by intellectuals against the corruption of the new republican regime), Sun Yat-sen’s three principles (nationalism, democracy, and livelihood) became mandatory political components of the already militarized curriculum. This alarmed both Malay elites and the British. Chinese schools and communal organizations would later serve as targets of ethnic conflict. While Malaysia was under Japanese occupation during World War II, the (overwhelmingly Chinese) communists in Malaya succeeded in organizing the only viable underground resistance. In doing so, they gathered widespread cooperation and support from the Chinese (and from some Malays), and they tried to position themselves to assume political power following the war. Indeed, after the Japanese surrender in 1945 the Ma-

Figure 6.1. Malaysia. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1989.

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layan Communist Party (MCP) operated as a parallel government to the British Military Administration, which returned after the war ended. As the British (re)solidified their rule, however, they took steps to reduce the MCP’s power. By 1948, police raids and arrests had destroyed the labor movement, and the party was being shut out of newly formed advisory councils. The MCP opted for armed insurrection, and the colonial government initiated a drive to eliminate the Communist insurgents. During this period, known as the emergency, the Chinese were suspected of participating in the Communist campaigns, and those supportive of the movement were targeted for education campaigns, detentions, and massive relocation efforts (Hack 1999). Simultaneously, during the late 1940s–50s ethnic Malays were determined to win independence from the British, and they wanted to ensure that the new nation would be Malay in character. They feared the Chinese for two, somewhat contradictory, reasons. First, the Chinese Communist Party was well organized and well funded, and the British were reluctant to leave the peninsula if it looked as though the MCP was too powerful. Second, the Chinese were a significant source of capital. If Malaysia were to be independent, Chinese business interests would have to be incorporated in the new government. If not, there was a fear of capital flight that the soon-to-be-independent nation could ill afford. The Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), known as the Malaysian Chinese Association after 1963, was formed at this time as a conservative, business-oriented organization that would work with the British and Malay elites to redirect Chinese support away from the Communists. It was in the economic and political interest of this class to work against fellow Chinese communists. The negotiations among interethnic actors in working toward independence would create a pattern for elite cooperation that would last until 1969. THE EARLY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1957–1989 The concern over non-Malay privilege and ambition (in the form of Chinese economic dominance) led to the institutionalization of Malay special rights in the Independence Constitution of 1957. These rights evolved as part of complex negotiations for multiethnic rule in postcolonial-Malaysia that left the Chinese community dismayed at how Malays were favored by legitimizing the primacy of the Malay identity within the constitution. Although the Independence Constitution was drawn up by Malay and non-Malay members of a multiethnic coalition (called the Alliance Party), the final document clearly favored ethnic Malays, and it quickly became clear that UMNO would be the dominant party in Malaysian politics. The constitution defines a “Malay” as a Muslim, a Malay speak-

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er, and a follower of Malay custom. Non-Malay culture is not defined. The Chinese in Malaysia were (and still are) Buddhist, Confucian, or Christian. Because few Chinese practice Islam, ethnic Chinese citizens can never be “Malay” according to the constitution, and in part for this reason the constitution has been subsequently pointed to as a justification for pro-Malay policies. In return for allowing the Malays to retain their political preeminence, it was agreed that the economic position of the Chinese would be undisturbed and that Chinese and Indians would be permitted to maintain their cultures and traditions (Freedman 2000). For the first ten years of independence, the ruling Alliance coalition was able to maintain about 60 percent of the votes and keep control both of parliament and the state governments, although Malay-Chinese tensions in the early 1960s led to the expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia of the overwhelmingly Chinese city-state of Singapore in 1965. In 1969, however, the system broke down. A riot erupted on May 13, after general elections in which the Alliance won only 48 percent of the votes, down 10 percent from 1964. Victory parades were held after the election, which were perceived as abusive to Malay sensibilities. Rioting ensued in which thousands (mostly Chinese) were killed, and property was burned and looted. After 1969, an official “consensus” evolved that the disturbance was caused by an economic imbalance between the wealthier Chinese and the less-well-off native Malays. A countrywide state of emergency was proclaimed, and parliamentary rule was suspended for nearly two years (1969–1971). 1969–2000 The race riots marked the rise of Malay leadership dedicated to the translation of Malay constitutional privileges into actual policies. This opened the door to a massive shift in economic and social policies to boost the position of Malays within their own country. The New Economic Policy (NEP) was created. Adopted in 1971, the NEP’s aim was to redistribute wealth from the Chinese to the Malays and other indigenous races. A secondary goal was to eliminate the link between race and economic function. In other words, it aimed at bringing the bumiputras (sons of the soil, or ethnic Malays) into sectors of the economy previously dominated by Chinese. It gave preference to Malays in job allocation, scholarships abroad, and university seats, and it required that Malays be given larger ownership stakes in Malaysian companies. In order for this legislation to go forward, however, there needed to be an agreement between Malays and Chinese on the necessity of addressing ethnic income disparity. Chinese elites acquiesced to this “bargain” for two reasons: first, their seat at the table sharing power with UMNO was still protected, and the feeling was that even with the proposed economic giveaways to ethnic Malays, Chinese business interests would still dominate the economy;

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and secondly, there was fear of further violence against ethnic Chinese. Given the horrific violence against Chinese in Indonesia after the 1965 coup attempt, Chinese in Malaysia were willing to give up some economic privileges in exchange for security. This became the second basis for ethnic marginalization; the Chinese, in seeking to protect the economic rights and some small measure of political power for elites, were giving up the potential for full political and social equality (Hua 1983). From 1969 until today, when feeling pressure from internal or external challenges, both the MCA and the UMNO have been inclined to racialize/ ethnicize issues to mobilize support from their fellow co-ethnics. Repression of dissent as a mode of conflict management has also continued to this day, and generally speaking, repression is greater and more extensive against religious and ethnic minorities. 2000–Present From the 1970s until recently, Chinese in Malaysia largely supported the regime’s emphasize on stability over greater political and civil freedoms, but this has changed dramatically. In 2003, a new multi-ethnic political party formed called Keadilan (People’s Justice Party, or PKR). PKR calls for greater social justice and civil and political rights; an end to corruption and the cozy relationship between ruling party elites and business interests; and it calls for an end to NEP. It seeks to replace NEP with a non-ethnically based approach to economic imbalances and poverty reduction. PKR has joined an informal political coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, or the People’s Alliance, with DAP (the Democratic Action party, a traditionally Chinese-based party which has been a leading opposition party and critic of the regime since independence), and with PAS, the Islamic Party of Malaysia. This coalition won 31 seats in the 2008 elections (Freedom House 2014). Since 2003, more Chinese have come to support PKR over the ruling parties. This shift in attitudes is generally attributed to both an increase in younger voters (Chinese, Malay, and Indian alike) and an overall increase in Chinese of all ages to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the political status quo. Weakening support for the ruling parties grew considerably in the runup to the 2008 election and again with the 2013 election. In order to win votes and stay in power, UMNO seemed play up to Malay fears of Chinese dominance; scholars noted a trend of “ethnic hardening,” 4 as UMNO leaders played up ethnic and religious differences in order to shore up support among (particularly conservatives) party members. In 2001 (then) Prime Minister Mahathir declared that Malaysia was an Islamic state. This had the effect of angering both the opposition forces in PAS and non-Muslim citizens of Malaysia. From 2001 until today, UMNO has tried to bolster their Islamic credentials and identity as a way

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of undermining the appeal of PAS. The government, under UMNO leadership, has increased spending on building mosques, on religious education and outreach, and on framing Malaysia as a modern and Islamic state. In the runup to the spring 2013 election, Prime Minister Najib and UMNO tried to woo voters with moderate appeals to Malaysian unity (along with direct cash transfers and vote buying). However, continuing dissatisfaction with a lack of substantive political reforms, continued corruption scandals, and the increasing appeal of opposition parties resulted in the poorest electoral outcomes (particularly among the middle class and among Chinese voters) for the ruling coalition since independence. The ruling coalition regained a 60 percent majority of seats in Parliament but only won 47 percent of the popular vote. Conservative forces within UMNO have been critical of Najib’s moderate approach, and in the fall of 2013, Najib seemed to give in to racialist forces within his party, and he approved the creation of the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment program (The Star 2013). This is a ten-billion-dollar program aimed at enhancing Malay businesses. Thus, the marginalization of non-Malay communities continues. In the 2013 election, Chinese-based parties within the ruling coalition lost significant electoral support. This demonstrates the increased willingness of ethnic Chinese to vote for the opposition and the loss of support for traditional Chinese parties. 5 Malaysia’s electoral system limits the power of Chinese and Indian interests. Electoral constituencies are highly gerrymandered: districts are drawn in such as way to enhance the representation of (rural) Malay voters and give overwhelming leverage to the plurality in each district. Malays constitute a majority in 70 percent of the parliamentary constituencies (versus their 60 percent share in the population as a whole). This severely disadvantages and marginalizes non-Malay voters and minimizes their electoral representation while promoting the political fortunes of the BN coalition. This is perhaps the greatest institutional constraint to Chinese and Indian political power. Between 1969 until 2013, the facade of influence being shared across all three major ethnic groups faded. With the creation of a newly rich, middle and upper class of Malays, and through the continued gerrymandering of electoral districts, there was less of an electoral incentive for the UMNO to cater to Chinese constituents either for funding or for electoral support. Ironically, this situation may have changed with the general election of 1999. In the face of a newly politicized (Malay) electorate, the ruling coalition turned to Chinese citizens for support. By many accounts, the Chinese voted in larger numbers for the ruling parties than they had since the mid-1960s. There are two reasons for this support. First, the major beneficiary of Malay anger against the regime was the Islamic Party of Malaysia (Partai Se Islam di Malaysia, or PAS), a Muslim

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opposition party. Since few Malaysian Chinese are Muslim, many felt that the ruling coalition was preferable to Islamic rule. Second, in light of the riots and violence targeted against the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia in the wake of the financial crisis of 1997–1998, many Malaysian Chinese felt that stability and the continued leadership of Mahathir was better than the risk of the chaos that could result from toppling the regime. However, over time more ethnic Chinese have begun to support opposition political parties. ETHNIC DETERMINANTS OF FOREIGN POLICY Foreign policy in Malaysia since independence reflects these internal ethnic dynamics. Here we examine Malaysia’s key foreign policy interests in terms of the need to balance four critical dynamics: 1) a desire to reap economic benefits from relations with China, while still maintaining a delicate ethnic political balance at home; 2) a desire for leadership among developing countries including the Islamic world vs. a desire for economic gains that come from relations with the US and China; 3) balancing the need of the ruling coalition to play to ethno-religious sentiments at home in order to maintain control vs. efforts to improve relations with the US; and 4) balancing domestic divisions and sensitivities with regional concerns. Balance Number One: Relations with China Anti-communism, coupled with distrust of Malaya’s own ethnic Chinese population, combined to make Malaya, and then Malaysia, a strong ally of Britain and the United States for most of the Cold War and thus frosty to the People’s Republic of China. Warmer relations with China since the 1980s reflects the fact that UMNO and Malay leaders felt confident in their ability to manage and navigate internal relations with ethnic Chinese within Malaysia. Malaysia’s history and approach to China reflects internal ethnic fears and sensitivities, as well as regional dynamics at the time. Malaysia’s policy toward China from the 1960s-1980s is typical for Southeast Asia. After Mao’s successful revolution in 1949, Malaysia feared (legitimately so) Chinese intervention in Malaysia’s own internal struggle against a Communist insurgency. The Communist insurgency in Malaysia had gained strength during Japanese occupation of the peninsula during WWII. The Communists were among the best organized and armed resistance fighters to the Japanese. At the end of the war in 1945, the Communists turned their attention to resisting British recolonization and offering an alternate vision of an independent Malaya based on socialist ideals. Mostly rural-based and largely, but not exclusively, ethnic Chinese in composition, the Communists made their ap-

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peals for support based on ideas of anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, and society organized along class-based, not race/ethnicity or religious identity. During the 1950s–1980s, the ruling elites portrayed the Communists as Chinese and as agents of Mao in the People’s Republic of China. This linking of ethnic identity with dissenting political ideas and threats to the nation would become a mainstay of Malaysian politics even once the Cold War had ended. Although the Cold War was in full swing, and Mao was still alive; Malaysia first normalized relations with China (and was the first member of ASEAN to do so) in 1974. Malaysia’s motivation for this rapprochement was the hope that if they improved relations with China, that in turn China would stop supporting the Communist Party of Malaysia (CPM). This didn’t really happen, and relations between the two countries could be best characterized from 1974–1980s as one of détente and political acclamation. 6 Relations didn’t really improve until the 1980s under the leadership of Prime Minister Mahathir. In 1984, Prime Minister Mahathir commissioned a major reassessment of relations between Malaysia and China. The result was a report titled “Managing a Controlled Relationship with the PRC.” The report recommended strengthening economic ties while remaining vigilant or wary regarding China’s support for Communist movements and their claims in the South China Seas (Storey 2011, 212). In 1985, Mahathir endorsed the report, and it ushered in a new era of pragmatic thinking about China. The charismatic leader of Malaysia sought to cooperate economically with China, but ambivalence remained. By 1989, the CPM had dissolved and the fear of Communism in the region was dying down. Mahathir downplayed the possibility of China being a threat in the region, and he hoped to enmesh China within regional security and economic institutions. This period also reflect relatively stable ethnic relations within Malaysia. NEP was creating a larger middle and business class of Malays, and ethnic Chinese had not yet given up in large numbers supporting MCA and the ruling coalition of ethnic-based parties. From 1985–1989, levels of trade between the two countries doubled to one billion dollars. Mahathir’s “Vision 2020” aimed for Malaysia to become a developed country by that year. So, foreign policy goals were aligned with this. Economic cooperation with China would become the focal point of the two countries’ relations. Despite the atrocities committed by the Chinese regime in the wake of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in the spring of 1989, Malaysia lifted travel bans with China in 1990, and in 1993 Malaysia lifted the ban on Malaysian investment in China, something ethnic Chinese business interests eagerly supported. More importantly perhaps was the rhetoric and symbolism of these gestures at the time. Mahathir warmed up to China just as the West was criticizing the Chinese for human rights atrocities. Mahathir saw this as an opportunity to promote “Asian values” of working for the good of the

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group and having deference and respect for authority (vs. Western values which aim to protect rights of the individual over the state) (Storey 2011, 218). Mahathir further appreciated Chinese support in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, as China refrained from devaluing its currency, and spoke harshly against Western actors (whom Mahathir had been lambasting for the crisis). In 1999, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of normalization of relations, Malaysia and China reaffirmed their bilateral cooperation. Over the last twelve years, there have been numerous high-level meetings and visits between heads of state from both nations. Economic relations have continued to deepen and expand. The implementation of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement on January 1, 2010, only increased these links. Trade between China and Malaysia reached 74.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, up 42.8 percent year on year, making China the biggest trading partner of Malaysia for the second consecutive year and the third consecutive year for Malaysia to be the biggest trading partner for China in ASEAN. 7 It is clear that Malaysia, first under Mahathir, and then continuing under Abdullah Badawi and now Najib Razak, wants to reap as much economic benefit from China’s economic power as possible. Areas of cooperation between the two countries include trade in machinery, energy sector, fisheries, and forestry. 8 There is also cooperation between the two on anti-terrorism, marine enforcement, and law enforcement in drug interdiction. In April of 2012, China and Malaysia launched their first joint industrial park, Qinzhou Industrial Park in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. The industrial park aims at coordinating manufacturing, IT, and service of a multitude of projects. 9 Despite all the smiling diplomatic photos of Malaysian and Chinese leaders, Malaysia cannot be said to be bandwagoning (aligning or siding too clearly) with China. Malaysia may be vigorously pursuing better economic ties with China, but they are also updating and modernizing their military and forging stronger relations with the United States. 10 Malaysian forces regularly conduct joint training with U.S. counterparts, and the U.S. enjoys access to Malaysian airfields and ports. From 2010–2012 relations between the U.S. and Malaysia have gotten even warmer, with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton going out of her way to praise Malaysian leaders for their cooperation in Afghanistan (there is a small medical team serving there), and for their leadership in Southeast Asia. 11 What is most important about Malaysia’s relationship with China is the desire (for Malaysia) to see the relationship as an instrument to further Malaysia’s own economic development goals. To this end, continued economic growth is critical to the regime’s ability to maintain power and to maintain their ethnic patronage system, where political elites maintain cozy business ties with Malay interests, while simultaneously keeping Chinese economic and political elites somewhat placated. Thus, relations with

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China reflect this on-going need to continue economic growth to enhance regime legitimacy and patronage politics based on ethnicity. Balance Number 2: A Desire for International Leadership Mahathir’s forceful voice in the 1980s–1990s as a leader in the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), and then acting as a self-appointed voice for the Third World and expanding Malaysia’s ties and influence to the Middle East and Africa demonstrated the country’s ability to assert power and influence internationally. Malaysia’s international diplomacy has had a more “acerbic” side, as it has often taken anti-US, anti-Australian, and anti-Western positions (Nossal and Stubbs 1997). It should be noted that this plays directly into Malaysia’s ability to forge better ties with China. Its ability to strike an independent foreign policy path also enhances its leadership and position within ASEAN and its leadership towards developing countries globally. Malaysia’s anti-Western rhetoric peaked in reaction to the 1997–1998 financial crisis. Mahathir demonized the West and agents of global capitalism. He blamed “Jewish” bankers and traders for selling off Southeast Asia currencies like the Malaysian ringgit and causing economies throughout the region to crash. Unlike neighboring Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Malaysia refused a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and instead issued tight capital controls. Going against conventional economic wisdom, Malaysia refused to halt large government spending programs, and they defied the advice and recommendations of global lenders and power brokers. While this stance may have reflected Mahathir’s policy preferences, these decisions also reflect a domestic political struggle playing out within the regime (Freedman 2004). Anwar Ibrahim was deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister under Mahathir. He and some other UMNO leaders favored more liberal, open, economic policies; while Mahathir and his close allies supported greater government intervention in the economy and turning away from Western economic models and investment capital from the West. Mahathir was able to consolidate his own power and push aside his rivals; in the fall of 1998 Anwar was sacked and brought up on charges of corruption and sodomy. Ironically, jailing Anwar may have been the most important catalyst within Malaysia to both initiate an awakening of pro-democracy feeling and to crystallize opposition to the regime, as well as giving Malaysia some credibility in appealing to other developing countries as a leader in standing up to the West. Mahathir’s invective against western, liberal (and Jewish) bankers, traders, and speculators who he claimed deliberately doomed economies throughout Southeast Asia played well in many developing countries who also felt victimized and disadvantaged by neo-

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liberal economic policies advocated by the US and her allies. Thus, Mahathir’s actions in 1997–1998 had a dual benefit. He was able to outmaneuver rivals at home to maintain power (and ethnic Chinese largely maintained their support for the regime due to fears of ethnic rioting and violence like what occurred in Indonesia); and Mahathir found that there was global support for railing and demonizing the West, thus he increased Malaysia’s statute and profile among developing and Islamic countries. Although the financial crises triggered some debate and questioning of the ruling coalition’s economic development strategy and their use of both political and economic levers to maintain power and legitimacy, it was not until 2007 that discontent really skyrocketed and frustration with the ruling coalition actually seemed poised to possibly unseat the long standing rule of UMNO and their coalition partners. Elections were scheduled to be held no later than 2008, and increasing government repression of on-line media, corruption, rising crime, inflation, and harsh government measures taken against protestors asking for greater transparency and accountability. The ruling coalition lost its two-thirds majority of seats in parliament for the first time since 1969. Then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi was forced to step down, and Najib Razak took over as head of UMNO and Prime Minister. Prime Minister Najib’s time in office has been noteworthy for his attempts to portray a kinder, gentler face to the ruling systems of power, while also continuing and even exacerbating ethnic and religious politics, and while he uses both rewards or inducements and punishments for ethnic Malays to continue their support of UMNO. So, for example, draconian laws like the ISA (Internal Security Act, which had been used to detain political opponents) were repealed under Najib, only to be quickly replaced by similar laws (The Security Offences Special Measures Act passed in June 2012), allowing the government broad powers to detain and arrest people almost at will. A well-organized campaign calling for greater transparency in government, an end to corruption, and for greater oversight of elections, Bersih has helped organize mass protests in Malaysia over the last four years. And leaders of this organization, along with other civil society activists, have suffered harassment, detention, and lawsuits as retaliation for their actions. In the 2013 general elections, the ruling coalition only won 47 percent of the popular vote, but this translated (through gerrymandering and malproportioned districts) to 60 percent of the seats in Parliament. 12 Beginning in the 1980s and intensifying in the years since September 11, 2001, Malaysia’s political leaders have also sought to burnish their Islamic credentials. As mentioned earlier, the political motives for this were multifold: first, it allowed ruling UMNO leaders to “out-Islam” the lead opposition party, PAS; second, it allowed UMNO to further marginalize non-Muslims in the country by devoting financial resources to

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Islamic organizations and activities, and to make life more difficult for communities of other religious faithful to practice as they wished; and it connected nicely to Malaysia’s outreach to other developing countries, particularly Islamic countries elsewhere in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Mahathir in 2001 stated that Malaysia was an Islamic state (Zurairi 2012). This reflected a need to play up Islamic credentials as a way of minimizing the appeal of PAS, one of the strongest opposition parties, and as the US’ “war on terror” heated up after 9/11, it gave Malaysia’s political leaders some cover to both work with the US on anti-terrorist activities in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia sent a small medical team to Afghanistan, and to crack down on so-called deviant Islamic groups within Malaysia itself. After Prime Minister Mahathir stepped down, both Abdullah Badawi and Najib Razak have continued to try and promote a Malaysian vision of Islam and to take on a leadership role among Muslim countries. In January of 2012, Prime Minister Najib convened the “Global Movement of Moderates” in Kuala Lumpur (KL). The goal was to promote ideas of moderation in relation to social, economic, financial, religious, and international politics. This outreach to so-called “moderate” Islamic countries demonstrates Malaysia’s desire for Islamic leadership outside of the Arab world. This vision of Islam as modern, prosperous, and moderate follows up on Mahathir’s quest for Malaysia to portray itself as piously and selfconsciously Muslim but also as modern and prosperous. Thus, under Mahathir, and continuing through today, Muslim women and girls are strongly encouraged to wear tunics over their clothes and wear headscarves, and yet, women also go to university in equal numbers to men and work professionally outside the home. Political leaders in Malaysia go to great pains to portray Malaysia abroad as modern and Muslim (as opposed to western), hence the attempt to promote the mantle of “moderateness.” The domestic political angle to this is that if UMNO can successfully sell both foreigners and Malay audiences at home of this successful blending of “traditional” 13 characteristics like religion and prosperity or modernity, then it robs PAS of their ability to criticize the regime for not being religious enough and of not caring or protecting Islam. Currently Malaysia, together with Brunei and Indonesia are the only ASEAN members who do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. Other countries such as Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines have established diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and maintained political, security, economic, cultural and functional cooperation with Israel. Singapore, for example, has had close defense cooperation while Thailand maintains close economic and functional cooperation with Israel. Attempts by some to raise the issue of whether or not KL should consider economic and social relations with Tel Aviv have been severely criticized by the public (Harun 2009). While Najib clearly wants to promote policies that facilitate economic growth, and closer ties to Israel could foster and

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enhance Malaysia’s desire to be a global hub technology, it is not worth the domestic risks right now to improve ties to Israel. At the moment, there are no compelling reasons or the urgency for Malaysia to revise its current “wait and see” policy on Israel. As it had been often explained, any change in current policy depends on the settlement of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and the ruling party would need to feel highly secure in its domestic political position in order to take the risk of normalizing relations with the Jewish state. So, Malaysia wants to be recognized as a leader among developing states and within the Islamic world. However, political leaders need to balance these desires with the larger, more important need to maintain good relations with China, the US, and the EU for the economic gains to be had from forging better trade deals, increasing investment flows, and the positive outlook of “the market” so that Malaysia can maintain high levels of economic growth. Balance Number Three: Ethno-Politics at Home with US Relations Relations between Malaysia and the US are good but pose two challenges for the government of Malaysia. First, Malaysia needs to be able to tolerate or cope with criticism from the US for their anti-democratic practices; and second, Malaysian officials need to be mindful of strong popular dislike for US foreign policies (like support of Israel and US military policies in the Islamic world). Although the US and Malaysia enjoy strong diplomatic ties, US elected officials have been known to criticize Malaysia for weaknesses in civil rights and civil liberties and specifically for the treatment of opposition voices by the regime. The best and most obvious example of this was Al Gore’s (at the time vice president under Bill Clinton) criticism of Mahahtir’s treatment of Anwar in the wake of the 1997–1998 financial crisis. Since then, human rights forums such as Freedom House and Human Rights Watch (as well as some elected officials, religious groups, and civil liberties groups) have been critical of the Malaysian government’s treatment of opposition forces, particularly of actions taken against Bersih over the last several years as they have staged protests, and rallies and demanded greater attention be paid to electoral fraud, corruption, and lack of transparency in the political process. Likewise, US and other Western organizations have expressed concern over the treatment of religious minorities, church burnings, and court rulings against non-Muslim groups in the countries, such as the 2012 ruling that the word “Allah” cannot be used by Christian groups to refer to God (Liow 2010). While groups from the US have been critical of such government actions by Malaysia, US high-ranking officials have generally tried to steer clear of being too critical of their Malaysian counterparts, the US sees the relationship with Malaysia as important for two critical reasons: first, the

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US wants to be able to point to positive, close, and cooperative ties with Muslim countries; and secondly, as China’s power continues to grow, particularly in Asia, the US wants to make sure it maintains friendly relations with countries in Southeast Asia who could serve as a balance to Chinese power. Malaysian leaders also need to be mindful of domestic politics in deciding how cozy they want to be with the US, due to domestic popular opposition to US foreign policy behavior in the Middle East. Ethnic Malays, like Muslim elsewhere, generally support the cause of Palestinian statehood and view the US as firmly on the side of Israel in the long-running conflict between Israel and Palestine. And, while there was an outpouring of sympathy for the US after the 9/11 attacks, Malaysians are very wary (and easily angered at) of US policies and interventions in the Islamic world. So, any Malaysian leader who appears to be too supportive of the US risks people interpreting better relations with the US as an endorsement of US military actions and foreign policy. So, Najib’s job is to try to improve relations with the US for economic reasons and to improve Malaysia’s own military and security position, but to do this without seeming to support US policies more generally. In reality, relations between the US and Malaysia are quite strong. President Obama finally made a visit to the region in 2014, and he enjoyed a full state visit in Malaysia, meeting with the Yang di Pertuan Agong, the top sultan or king, and having a state dinner with Prime Minster Najib. It is noteworthy that President Obama did not meet with Anwar Ibrahim, the most forceful opposition voice in the country (The Guardian 2014). 14 It is a difficult balance for UMNO to strike, playing up their Islamic credentials both for domestic purposes at home to Malay traditionalists and; and abroad to the Islamic world community, while also maintaining strong ties to the United States. Balance Number Four: Domestic Divisions and Regional Sensitivities There are a number of regional issues with which Malaysia is in conversation (although rarely in agreement) with her neighbors. These issues include migration and the on-going conflict in Burma between Buddhist and Muslims. Malaysia is both an exporter and an importer of labor. While welleducated Malaysians migrate (emigrate) in sizable numbers (women and ethnic Chinese are the largest share of these migrants) to work and live elsewhere; Malaysia also imports workers from neighboring Indonesia and the Philippines. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but estimates are that between two to three million (about 10–15 percent of the labor force) migrants are in Malaysia working. Malaysia’s rapid growth in the last twenty years, combined with higher levels of education for the indigenous work force, have meant that Malaysians no longer want the lowskilled, dirty, or dangerous jobs which these migrants come to fill. They

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work in mining, agriculture, construction, as maids and nannies, and some low-paying service jobs (Ozden et al. 2014). Over the years there have been repeated accusations of mistreatment of migrants and of domestic workers in Malaysia. The Indonesian and Philippines governments have registered their anger on behalf of their citizens working in Malaysia. But little has been done legally or practically to improve the position of migrant laborers working in Malaysia from these neighboring states. Muslim migrants are given preference for work permits and temporary worker IDs. This reflects domestic political considerations for maintaining an ethnic balance that favors Muslims. Although the thinking and the political calculation behind this is that immigrants will be more easily assimilated into Malaysia if they are Muslim, and that they will eventually be UMNO supporters (if when they are given citizenship) due to their appreciation of policies that allowed them the opportunity to migrate in the first place, but there is actually anger about migration policies from both ethnic Malays (particularly in Sabah where immigration is highest) and from opposition groups (Chinese and others) who see immigrants as being used by the regime as extra voters. After the 2008 and again after the 2013 elections, there were numerous charges levied against the ruling coalition that migrant workers were being given identity cards (IC) and papers allowing them to participate in the election, then being bused to polling stations to vote (presumably for the government candidates) (Chong 2012). 15 Outrage over electoral abuses and fraud cut across ethnic lines, but ethnic Chinese in particular see the problem as reflecting the larger ethnic tensions in the country and their continued marginalization. Despite anger at the IC issue, there does not seem to be much sympathy in Malaysia for the plight and treatment of foreign workers in Malaysia. Malaysians seem more concerned with their own day-to-day grievances, the increasing cost of living, and the pressures of competition in the global marketplace. Thus, the government of Malaysia is able to tilt toward domestic concerns rather than greater cooperation and concessions to its neighbors over migration issues. Ultimately, the thinking behind using Muslim migrants to bolster voting rolls plays into the regime’s use of religion and ethnicity and policies of marginalization to maintain their position in power. Malaysia has also come into conflict with her neighbors Thailand and Burma over the treatment and migration of the Muslim Rohingya community from Burma. Long stateless and in a precarious position within Burma, over the last two years intimidation and violent attacks have escalated in Burma against the Rohingya. Thousands have been forced to flee and seek asylum or sanctuary outside of Burma. Thai smugglers (and some have said the Thai navy is complicit in this as well) have been extorting significant sums of money from refugees and their relatives to try to smuggle Rohingya to Malaysia. 16 For Malaysia’s part, they want to

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be viewed as a Muslim nation helping Muslims in need, but there is little doubt that the country does not want to be forced to deal with thousands of refugees seeking help. The country is not a signatory of the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees, so asylum seekers are treated like illegal migrants and are vulnerable to detention. Despite this, Rohingya Muslims continue to arrive in Malaysia (Pak 2012). Again, Prime Minister Najib needs to balance the domestic unpopularity of immigration issues, with his desire for Malaysia to play a leadership role in Southeast Asia, and to be viewed in a positive light within the Islamic world. Najib has worked to foster better regional relations to deal with the issues, but has to do so carefully so that the benefits of better regional relations translate into domestic political payoffs. CONCLUSION The most significant factor impacting foreign policy is electoral politics and the broader need for BN to maintain power. Over time, UMNO and ruling elites have needed to adjust how they sell their right to rule. They have needed to adjust their basis of legitimacy. In earlier periods, legitimacy was based on stability and harmony of ethnic relations. Then it was based on economic success of NEP and results of major economic development and industrialization efforts. More recently, legitimacy has rested on a program of Islamicization, or claims of modernization consistent with Islamic revivalism. The fostering of Islamic credentials at home and abroad is part of a larger attempt to weaken the potential power of opposition party PAS, and for the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) more generally. Throughout Malaysia’s independent history, ethnic relations and the marginalization of Chinese and Indian minority communities has been a consistent element of politics. Ruling elites have claimed to govern on behalf of their co-ethnics. And when this consensus has been questioned, elites have resorted to divisive ethnic or religious favoritism both in their rhetoric and through policies. Foreign policies have reflected these dynamics. Foreign policy used to be the clear purview of elites in the prime minister’s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; however, with the rise of technology and access to instant and far-reaching information, and with the globalization of information networks and trade/business relations, there is increasing pressure on these elites to be mindful of how foreign policy decisions will look to domestic constituents. This has forced leaders to work hard at balancing internal political dynamics and demands with their larger foreign policy goals. The top priority for leaders in Malaysia since the 1970s has been economic development. So, to some extent foreign policy reflects this priority. However, Malaysian leaders must keep in mind the fragile ethnic balance; thus they cannot

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afford to be too cozy either with China or with the United States. And, leadership among developing and Islamic countries helps make relations with these super powers easier to justify at home. Ironically, after discussing different examples of how foreign policy reflects and even exacerbates ethnic divisions within the country, there are several two recent issues that serve to unite Malaysians in their positions and in their national (as opposed to ethnic) identity and patriotism. There is a long-running dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over territorial claims in Sabah. “In February 2013, the alleged Rajah Muda (Crown Prince) of the ‘Sultanate of Sulu’ and his heavily armed men sailed to the island of Sabah and occupied part of it as an initial invasive act to a forcible takeover. In defense of the territory, the Malaysian government ordered its armed forces to quench the invasion,” which they forcibly did. 17 While this conflict does not reflect Philippine national objectives, response in Malaysia was nearly unanimous; across all ethnic and class divisions, people supported the government’s use of force to end the incursion. Secondly, when on March 8, 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went missing, Malaysians were riveted to their TVs and computers praying for information and some reason to hope for the finding the plane and its passengers. Some Malaysians criticized their government for its awkward and slow response, and some criticized the Air Force for not picking up on the missing plane’s silence sooner. However, anti-Malaysia protests in China and Chinese (official and popular) criticism of Malaysia’s handling of the crisis has promoted a sort of “rally ‘round the flag effect” in Malaysia. Instead of levying their own criticism against Najib’s government, and instead of divisive political rhetoric, Malaysians of all ethnicities have reacted to Chinese condemnation by pointing out the human tragedy of the missing jet and have been fairly muted in their criticism of their own government. Thus, there are foreign policy issues that serve to enhance a sense of nationalism and unity in Malaysia. Yet, the larger, more on-going foreign policy issues, like relations with the US, China, Southeast Asian neighbors, and with the developing and Islamic world, will continue to reflect ethnic dynamics and the regime’s need to balance and maintain indigenous Malay support to stay in power, without entirely ignoring or marginalizing Chinese and Indian communities. NOTES 1. There are numerous books on Malaysian politics and the role of ethnic politics, see for example Milne and Mauzy (1967) and Freedman (2000, ch. 3). 2. For good sources about Malaysia’s post-independence history and policies see Crouch (1996); Kah and Loh (1992). 3. For work on the ethnic based party system in Malaysia see Heng (1988) and Funston (1981).

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4. Bridget Welsh writes extensively about Malaysia, and she has used the term “ethnic hardening.” For her work on Malaysia politics go to: http://bridgetwelsh.com/. 5. For good analysis of the 2013 election see Elizabeth Segran, “Malaysia Malaise” Foreign Affairs, letter October 10, 2013. And, Simon Roughneen, “Winning the Election, Losing Malaysia”, Foreign Affairs, letter from May 18, 2013. Both can be found at: (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/asia/southeast percent20asia/malaysia). Accessed, May 20, 2014. 6. Editors, “Global Insider: China-Malaysia Relations”. World Politics Review, June 1, 2011. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/print/9025 and see Lim (2009). 7. Zhangjin (web editor) “China-Malaysia Relations Eye Brighter Future” Xinhua, http://english.cri.cn (May 22, 2011). 8. For articles on current economic relations between China and Malaysia see the following: New Straits Times, “China is a Reliable Friend of Malaysia”, New Straits Times, June 2, 2012; “Malaysia, China Sign Pacts to Boost Investment”, Abcnews.go.com, April 28, 2011; “Malaysia Seeks China JVs” www.livetradingnews.com/ malaysia-seeks-china-jvs, April 23, 2012; “China, Malaysia Pledge to Seek Stronger Economic Cooperation”, Xinhua news, http://news.xinhuanet.com, April 19, 2011; and a variety of articles on the joint industrial park: from China Daily, Sin Chew, The Sun Daily, Asiaone.com. 9. There are a variety of articles on the joint industrial park: from China Daily, Sin Chew, The Sun Daily, Asiaone.com. 10. In the 1980s Mahathir signed the Bilateral Training and Consultation (BITAC) agreement with the US. This agreement provided a framework for working with the US military for training and joint exercises. The initial premise for the agreement was clearly suspicion of China and lingering Cold War tensions in the region. However, the relationship between Malaysia and the US for military cooperation has continued. In 1994, defense ties between the two countries were strengthened with an additional agreement that allowed US naval ships and aircraft to transit through Malaysia for resupply and maintenance. The US has utilized this agreement and 15–20 US naval ships visit Malaysian ports every year. The two militaries also conduct join training exercises, and US Special Forces conduct training at Malaysia’s jungle warfare facility in Johor. This relationship with the US signals Malaysia’s acknowledgement and interest is having the United States play a stabilizing role in the region, and it illustrates Malaysia’s continued sense of caution in developing overwhelming close ties to China (Storey, 2011, 223). 11. For information on the US-Malaysia relationship see: John Roberts, “US Praises Malaysia’s Autocratic Government.” World Socialist Web Site, Nov. 29, 2010. (www. wsws.org/articles); speech given by PM Najib Razak when he was defense minister on the occasion of a visit to the US, May 2002 reprinted in: Harakah Daily “Malaysia-US Defence Cooperation: a ‘Well Kept Secret’.” (http://en.harakahdaily.net/index.php/ berita-utama); Daniel Ten Kate, “U.S. Boosts Asian Defense Ties Amid Growing Challenge From China Military.” Bloomberg, July 22, 2010. 12. Freedom House, “Freedom in the World: Malaysia 2013” (http://www. freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/malaysia#.U35OxvldVqU) Accessed May 22, 2014. 13. It is interesting to note that wearing a head scarf in Malaysia does not reflect “traditional” Malay dress or custom. Women in Malay 100 years ago or 200 years ago would not have been wearing such religious attire. 14. President Obama’s visit did trigger both significant opposition to both the President and to US foreign policy and positive support from Malay, Chinese, and Indian Malaysians pleased at Obama’s visit and the goal of better US-Malaysia ties. 15. For a more extensive discussion of the problems with migration see Sadiq (2005). 16. Washington Post editorial. “How Thailand is Contributing to the Misery of Burma’s Persecuted Rohingya.” May 14, 2014. (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions) accessed May 22, 2014.

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17. Ruel Pepa, “Resolving the Sabah Island Conflict between Philippines and Malaysia” News Junkie Post, July 15, 2013. (http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/07/15/ resolving-the-sabah-island-conflict-between-malaysia-and-the-philippines/#sthash. SEbo6Ull.dpuf.

REFERENCES Chong, Eng Leong. 2012. “Sabah’s Lingering Misery Over ‘Project IC.’” Malaysiakini— August 13, 2012. Accessed December 10, 2012 . Crouch, Harold. 1996. Government and Society in Malaysia. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Freedman, Amy L. 2000. Political Participation and Ethnic Minorities Chinese Overseas in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the United States. New York: Routledge. Freedman, Amy. 2004. “Economic Crises and Political Change: Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia” World Affairs, Volume 166, Number 4: 185–196. Freedom House. 2014. “Freedom in the World: Malaysia 2013.” Accessed May 15, 2014. www.freedomhouse.org/country/malaysia. Funston, NJ. 1981. Malay Politics in Malaysia: A Study of the United Malays National Organization and Party Islam. Heinemann Press. Hack, Karl. 1999. “Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malaysian Emergency” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 30, Issue 1, March: 99–125. Harun, Ruhanas. 2009. “Malaysia and Israel: In Pursuit of National Interest:Change and Continuity in Malaysia’s Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East” Jurnal Antarabangsa Kajian Asia Barat (International Journal of West Asian Studies) Vol 1: 23–38. Heng, Pek Koon. 1988. Chinese Politics in Malaysia: a History of the Malaysian Chinese Association. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Hua, WY. 1983. Class and Communalism in Malaysia: Politics in a Dependent Capitalist State. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press and Zed Books. Kah, Joel and Francis Loh Kok Wah. 1992. Fragmented Vision. Culture and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Lim, Tin Seng. 2009. “Renewing 35 Years of Malaysia-China Relations: Najib’s Visit to China,” EAI Background Brief (National University of Singapore) No. 460, June 23. Liow, Joseph Chinyong. 2010. “No God But God, Malaysia’s ‘Allah” Controversy,” Foreign Affairs, Feb. 10, 2010. Accessed May 19, 2014. www.foreignaffairs.com. Milne, RS and DK Mauzy. 1967. Politics and Government in Malaysia. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Nossal, Kim Richard and Richard Stubbs. 1997. “Mahathir’s Malaysia: An Emerging Middle Power.” In Niche Diplomacy, Middle Powers After the Cold War, edited by Andrew F. Cooper, 147–163. UK: MacMillan Press. Ozden, Caglar, Ximena Del Carpio, and Mauro Testaverde. 2014. “South South Migration: Foreign Workers in Malaysia.” Accessed May 22, 2014. People Move http:// blogs. Worldbank.org/peoplemove. Pak, Jennifer. 2012. “Rohingya Muslims Want to Call Malaysia Home.” BBC News, June 18, 2012. Accessed May 22, 2014.www.bbc.com. Sadiq, Kamal. 2005. “When States Prefer Non-Citizens over Citizens: Conflict over Illegal Immigration into Malaysia.” International Studies Quarterly 49 No. 1: 101–122. Storey, Ian. 2011. Southeast Asia and the Rise of China. London: Routledge. The Guardian. 2014. “Barak Obama Visits Malaysia.” April 26, 2014. Accessed May 23, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/26/barack-obama-visitsmalaysia-us-economy-security. The Star. 2013. ”Full Text of the PM’s Speech at the Bumiputra Empowerment Launch.” September 14, 2013. Accessed May 23, 2014. http://www.thestar.com.my/news/ nation/2013/09/14/full-text-najib-bumi-speech.aspx/.

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Zurairi, AR. 2012. “Dr. M: MCA Did Not Object to ‘Islamic Country’ Declaration.” The Malaysian Insider, Oct. 23, 2012. Accessed May 19, 2014. www.themalaysianinsider. com.

SEVEN The Ethnic Chinese in Cambodia’s Pre-War Economy Peter J. Hammer

Studying the historic role of the Chinese in the Cambodian economy provides an intriguing window into Cambodia’s past. Despite extremely high levels of ethnic segregation of economic functions and the near complete domination of the Cambodian economy by the Chinese minority for centuries, there was relative harmony and a lack of ethnic rancor. “Cambodia was probably the most successful case of smooth assimilation of the Chinese into the local society in all of Southeast Asia” (Mackie 1988, 220). To understand the uniqueness of this situation, this paradox needs to be juxtaposed with another: the high degree of stability of Cambodia’s set of rural institutions over hundreds of years. Even today, there is a sense of timelessness in many parts of rural Cambodia, places that appear to stand outside time and history. Is there any connection between these two puzzles? In attempting to answer this question, we must consider others. How do economic and political institutions change over time? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012) persuasively leverage the insights of a simple two-by-two matrix contrasting notions of political inclusion and exclusion with degrees of economic inclusion or exclusion to draw lessons as to why some nations fail and others succeed over time. One key lesson is that combinations of political and economic inclusiveness are essential for economic innovation and social adaptation over time. If this is true, then other combinations of political and economic exclusion may help explain why stagnation and a lack of dramatic change or growth characterize other political and economic regimes. Discrimination, occupational segrega127

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tion, limitations on citizenship, grants of monopoly licenses and restrictions on land ownership are critical indices of political and economic inclusion and exclusion. As such, how countries treat ethnic minorities can provide windows into broader economic and political dynamics that may have structural significance for the entire nation. Which organizational structures take root and adapt over time helps define not only a country’s economy but its entire history. The analysis in this chapter proceeds as follows: First we set the stage by examining Cambodia’s social structure in broad historical strokes. We then examine the role of the Chinese in Cambodia’s pre-war economy using William E. Willmott’s history “The Chinese in Cambodia” as the primary frame. We look at this classic work, however, through the lens of contemporary institutional economics (Hammer 2013, 84). This leads us to a more careful examination of the vertically integrated network of Chinese control of the rice trade in Indochina and ultimately to the question of whether the role of the local Chinese merchant was exploitive or symbiotic with that of the Khmer peasant. Finally we examine the strains that modern objectives of state-building and market-building placed on these traditional relationships with the coming of Independence in 1953. CAMBODIAN SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN BROAD HISTORICAL STROKES Humility forces the acknowledgment of how much we do not and may never know about life in sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteen-century Cambodia. “Available source materials are not always clear about social organization: in particular, they tell us little of the way things actually worked as compared to formal structure and norms and the lives of common folk as contrasted to elite” (Ebihara 1984, 280). What follows is an admittedly incomplete picture, painted in broad strokes to provide grounding for the subsequent discussion of the Chinese in the Cambodian economy and society. May Ebihara’s account of social organization in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Cambodia focuses on different segments of society: 1) the king and royalty, 2) dignitaries and other elites, 3) ordinary common free persons, 4) the Buddhist monkhood or Sangha, and 5) non-Khmer people. Relationships between these groups are expressed through networks of horizontal and vertical interactions, but in true Khmer style, these interactions entail substantial flexibility. “[A]lthough certain categories/ strata can be delineated on the basis of both objective and subjective Khmer distinctions; these were not strictly bounded, exclusive, hereditary groups. Rather, membership within these categories was somewhat fluid and movement between strata was possible” (Ebihara 1984, 283). Movement in and out of Sangha and its openness to all able-bodied men

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regardless of social distinction is one well-known example. Even the role of kingship possessed substantial fluidity: there were no clear lines of succession and not even a single royal family, inviting strategic behavior on the parts of both internal and external forces. Like many aspects of Cambodian society, the role of kingship can best be understood by considering what the institution lacked. There was no centralized bureaucracy. Instead, layered and overlapping systems of patronage served this institutional function, albeit in a highly different form. “[A]dministrative responsibilities, such as tax collection, levies of corvee labor, mobilization of troops, adjudication of legal cases, etc., lay in the hands of a staggering array of dignitaries and title-holders appointed by the king” (Ebihara 1984, 285). These higher dignitaries and elites, in turn, sub-delegated responsibilities to their own appointees and lesser officials in a cascading network of patron-client relations. In the Buddhist tradition of impermanence, these grants could be revoked at the king’s or patron’s pleasure. Titles and positions were not meant to be hereditary. Moreover, whatever power these positions entailed had to be exercised in the absence of effective systems of transportation and communication. This highly diffuse and unstructured environment permitted the rise and fall of vacillating central and regional centers of power and authority. Obviously, most Khmer were not members of the royal family, dignitaries, or elites. Most people were peasant farmers, chiefly growing rice. The state made two primary demands on these farmers: taxes in the form of rice (rather than money) and labor. “Produce was extracted primarily in the form of taxation of one-tenth of the rice crop, the bulk of which went (theoretically) to the royal treasury and from which one-tenth was divided among provincial officials. In addition, able-bodied free men were subject to corvee and to conscription into the army in time of military need” (Ebihara 1984, 288). Cambodia also included a range of non-Khmer people. The largest group consisted of the many different indigenous hill tribes. The other principal group consisted of foreign residents. Foreign residents included Chinese, Malays Vietnamese, Cham, and some Europeans (Ebihara 1984, 293). While Ebihara focuses on social groups, Chandler gives us a sense of the geographic and spatial structure of Cambodia in the eighteen century. Thinking about Cambodia requires thinking in terms of rivers and not roads. Discounting what may have existed during the Khmer Empire, “there were no roads to speak of until the 1830s” (Chandler 1993, 101). Setting aside the capital, most Khmer lived in villages, of which Chandler identifies three main types. The first can be called kompong after the Malay word meaning “landing place,” which often formed part of their names—as in Kompong Svay or Kompong Som. These were located along navigable bodies of water and could support populations of several hundred people. . . Some of

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In terms of Ebihara’s social groups, this would also be the home of the dignitaries and elite, such as they were. Rice-growing villages, the second category, enclosed the kompong . . . Poorer and smaller than kompong, rice-growing villages were numerous and were more likely to be populated by ethnic Khmer. Houses were scattered around in no special order near a Buddhist monastery, or wat, and also near the pond or stream that provided water for the village. Rice-growing villages were linked to the kompong and the world beyond in irregular ways—through incursions of officials looking for recruits or rice; through the wat, whose monks were encouraged to travel about in the dry season; through festivals at the new year and other points in the calendar; and through trade with the kompong, exchanging rice and forest products for metal, cloth and salt (Chandler 1993, 102–3). The loosely linked kompong and its surrounding ricegrowing villages constituted the entirety of life for most Khmer. The distant and unknown world lay outside this compact domain: “The third type of village lay hidden in the prei or wilderness that made up most of Cambodia at this time. Here the people were . . . usually nonBuddhist; they spoke languages related to Khmer but owed no loyalty to the kompong or the capital . . .” (Chandler 1993, 103)

Just as with kingship, the system of kompong and villages can be defined by their absences. There was no centralized administrative bureaucracy and no tradition of government provision of public goods. Taxes in rice and labor seem to have been paid, irregularly, on demand. Village government was perhaps more noticeable in the kompong, where there were more officials and hangers-on, but there is no evidence that any villages in Cambodia were governed by formally constituted councils of elders, as was the case in nineteenth-century Vietnam (Chandler 1993, 104). This created a very inwardly focused dynamic. Inside the confines of the village, life was organized around the units of “the family and the Buddhist monastic order, or sangha.” (Chandler, 104). “Outside the villages, just past the fields in most cases, lay the prei, crowded with wild animals, malarial mosquitos and the spirits of the dead. Beyond the prei, where villagers seldom ventured, lay the world of the kompong, the capital, and the court.” (Chandler 1993, 104)

It is useful to imagine how these forces might shape a distinct way of understanding the world: [R]ural life had its boundaries only a few kilometers around one’s native village. . . . The hamlet was the place best known and even the village was already another world. Beyond the commune (sub-district) the world was of another order and beyond comprehension for the

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common villager. Thus the nation consisted of a central structure (the court and the capital) superimposed upon a large number of self-sufficient rural villages. (Vijghen and Ly 1996, 11)

As such, David Chandler has written that Cambodian “peasants have been outside history for many years” (Chandler 1977, 210). This observation should be viewed without criticism or romanticism. Over time, social structures rise to meet social need. Again, absences dominate. Rural life existed largely in the absence of the state and the absence of functioning economic markets. There was little of that specialization and division of labor whose interdependence characterizes commodity exchange and gives rise to generalized social conflicts whose solution might involve community organizations. The Khmer village, or phum (which means simply “inhabited space” and has no organizational connotations) “is only a grouping of houses in particular geographic conditions.” The author of these words, Jean Delvert, goes so far to say “One fact seems certain. The absence of a rural community.” Perhaps the words “organized community” would have been more accurate (Kiernan 1982b, 33 [quoting Delvert 1961, 213, 218]). The last element in understanding the past lies in the land itself. Farming techniques, land, and land ownership in rural Cambodia exhibit a number of distinguishing historic features, including the poor quality of the soil, the low level of agricultural technology, and the fragmented or parceled nature of the small plots farmed by most peasants (Kiernan 1982b, 31). In addition, Cambodia maintained a relative abundance of land and exhibited extremely high levels of land ownership by Khmer peasants. These factors lay the foundation for a pattern of economic, social, and political relations in Cambodia that are quite different from other Southeast Asian countries. Different commentators emphasize different characteristics, but these factors need to be understood in their totality. The typically poor quality of the soil limited the overall productivity of land, especially in the absence of technological innovation. Land, by itself, was not an effective means for generating wealth. Significantly, Cambodian history lacks examples of landlordism or the aggregation of land into large estates. Most peasants owned enough land for subsistence, no more than one to two hectares. Even these relatively small land holdings were seldom combined into a single lot, consisting rather of separate lots scattered in different areas around the village (fragmented and parcellized) (Hou 1982, 35). Hu Nim disparages the lack of efficiency of these arrangements (Hu 1982, 71) without necessarily appreciating how such fragmentation may have served implicit insurance functions given variations in rainfall and soil quality.

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Hou Youn complains about the “primitive tools,” commenting that the “tools of production are archaic, there is no use of fertilizer, cultivation risks are high and yields are mediocre” (Hou 1982, 56). It would not be unfair to say that Khmer peasants—standing outside time—have used substantially the same farming methods that have been used since the end of the Angkor Empire. This profound observation suggests a radically deep form of stability and the absence of substantial change in a range of technological, economic, and social relations. The literature ubiquitously comments on the low cost of land or the ready availability of land to anyone willing to clear and farm it. “We know that in the feudal period everyone could acquire land by tilling it” (Hou 1982, 36). “Villages were small, 10–40 families, and land was abundantly available” (Vijghen and Ly 1996, 11). Khieu Samphan makes note of the “availability of easily cultivated land in Cambodia where nature is truly generous” (Khieu 1959, 38). Extremely high levels of land ownership by Khmer peasants illustrates this fact. Willmott comments that “95 percent of the peasants are owner-cultivators and very few people own more land than they can cultivate themselves” (Willmott 1967, 97). Even in the twentieth century, “the Kampuchean peasantry did not have a landowning aristocracy pressing down on them” (Kiernan 1982a, 4). There were few large estates of any kind. “In the rice lands of central Kampuchea, landlords possessing more than 10 hectares are rare” (Hu 1982). What is less appreciated, however, is that if land is readily available, land is not very valuable. “The fact that large numbers of Khmer peasants owned smallholdings gave their land very little scarcity value” (Kiernan 1982a, 10). With no value, there is no active market. “[T]here has always been enough uncultivated land available in fertile areas to prevent the development of an active land market” (Willmott 1967, 97). This historic observation comes with some modern caveats. Trends in land ownership before and after independence suggest increasing rates of concentrated ownership. At some level, this is demographically determined by population growth and relative rates of urbanization. Hu Nim examined data from 1930, 1956, and 1962 and concluded that “a tendency toward concentration has become more and more noticeable” (Hu 1982, 74.). Kiernan claims that the trend accelerated post-independence, resulting in “a marked increase in the proportion of tenants and sharecroppers—smallholdings became too small and farmers were forced to sell out and work for a landlord” (Kiernan 1982a, 4). This also suggests the beginning of the creation of a market for land. “Landlordism increased significantly, especially after 1954, as urban classes enriched by foreign capital bought up land, usually near the towns, from ruined peasants” (Kiernan 1982a, 5). Additional confirmation for the growing scarcity of land can be found from Laura Summers, drawing from reports from 1962–1963: “Growth through expansion of cultivation to virgin land areas

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has slowed in response to raising costs and diminished rates of return. The opening up of secondary land areas on a family basis was viewed as uneconomic” (Summers 1986, 21–22). The time of readily available land was coming to an end. ROLE OF THE CHINESE IN THE PRE-WAR CAMBODIAN ECONOMY William Willmott links the initial presence of the Chinese in Cambodia to trade, making Phnom Penh the lynch pin of the Sino-Khmer relationship. This relationship was longstanding. “A Portuguese adventurer tells us that in 1609 three thousand of Phnom Penh’s twenty thousand inhabitants were Chinese” (Willmott 1967, 5). By 1921, according to the only census undertaken during the French protectorate, there were 91,920 Chinese in Cambodia, nearly 20,000 of which lived in Phnom Penh (Willmott 1967, 12). By 1967, the Chinese population had reached 425,000, constituting 7.4 percent of the country’s population. Nearly one-third lived in Phnom Penh, while another 12 percent were dispersed in the three other largest cities (meaning that approximately 55 percent resided in smaller towns and villages) (Willmott 1967, 17). The Chinese in Cambodia have never been a monolithic group. By 1967, the Chinese comprised five major sub-groups, defined by language: Teochiu, Cantonese, Hainese, Hokkieb, and Hakka. Different sub-groups came to Cambodia at different times, settling in different parts of the country and serving different economic functions. While second in terms of absolute numbers, the Cantonese are likely the oldest established group in Cambodia. The Cantonese have an almost exclusively urban footprint, being “84 percent urban, the vast majority of them residing in Phnom Penh, Batambang and Kompong-Cham” (Willmott 1967, 20). The largest language group is the Teochiu, constituting three-quarters of the Chinese population. “But while the Cantonese have remained largely in the cities, the Teochiu have spread throughout the country, beginning their careers as itinerant peddlers or village shopkeepers, and often remaining in the villages” (Willmott 1967, 17–18). They make up almost 90 percent of the rural Chinese. Most of the Teochiu, however, have arrived in Cambodia only since the 1930s. Other language groups play more discreet roles. The Hainanese have been in Cambodia for over 200 years but are most closely associated with pepper farming in Kampot and being responsible for the central role that Chinese pepper played in the French colonial period (Willmott 1967, 21). The Hokkien are almost 90 percent urban and almost exclusively located in the northwest city of Batambang (Willmott 1967, 26). Although smaller in number, the Hakka likely immigrated in tandem with the Teochiu. “Hakka grow vegetables, cultivate a little rubber and run small general stores” (Willmott 1967, 24).

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The Chinese in Cambodia are associated with two discrete types of agricultural activities—growing pepper and market gardening. Willmott classifies both endeavors as cash crops and distinguishes them from other agricultural pursuits, such as growing rice. Pepper requires substantial startup costs which can impede entry from those lacking sufficient capital. Moreover, the raising of pepper is very labor intensive. [T]he plants must be shaded most of the year, each sapling must be watered and fertilized daily, and blossoms must be stripped carefully from the plant during the first three years of its life. Hainanese plantation owners hired contract labour from Hainan to do this work, most of the workers coming for periods of three years, and many of the subsequently remaining in Cambodia. (Willmott 1967, 49)

The second agricultural pursuit, market gardening, occurs around each city and focuses on growing vegetables and fruit to be sold in town. Willmott argues that, like pepper, market gardening is labor intensive and involves “a high degree of financial speculation, since the products spoil quickly and riverine property is subject to flooding” (Willmott 1967, 51). He concludes that these features make the activities more like commerce than agriculture. In the end, whether one classifies these activities as agricultural or commercial is not very important. Rather, their importance lays in their consistency with a broader pattern of the segregation of almost all economic activity in Cambodia by ethnicity. The story of the Chinese in pre-war Cambodian economy is a story of near complete domination of the commercial sector, against the countervailing realization that the Cambodian commercial sector was relatively small and almost completely devoid of a manufacturing or industrial base. Cambodia remained a predominately rural, agricultural society with weak economic and administrative ties connecting the capital with the small towns and even smaller and more loosely organized villages in the Provinces. Willmott’s description of the role of the Chinese in the Cambodian economy in the 1960s can be used as the starting point in an exercise of historical backwards engineering; a point of departure to better understand the social, political, and economic forces that generated this particular outcome. The statistics illustrate a striking contrast between the role of the Chinese and Khmer ethnic groups in various economic pursuits in 1962–1963. Eighty-six percent of all Khmer were either farmers or fishermen. In contrast, according to Willmott, there were no Chinese engaged in these pursuits (classifying cash crops of pepper and market gardening as commercial rather than agricultural undertakings) (Willmott 1967, 63). From this perspective he concludes that “[i]n the usual sense of the word, there are no Chinese peasants in Cambodia” (Willmott 1967, 95). Instead, 84 percent of the Chinese engaged in activities Willmott classifies as commercial, while only 6.5 percent of Khmer engaged in commercial activ-

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ities. Similarly, 15.5 percent of Chinese engaged in wage labor, in contrast to 4 percent of Khmer. These numbers underscore the relative lack of wage labor or a cash economy more generally. Significantly, power in economic realms did not translate into power in political realms: less than 1 percent of Chinese individuals were employed in professional or governmental pursuits. Positions of political power and authority were reserved for ethnic Khmer. Suggesting the relatively small role of the public realm and the anemic nature of bureaucratic and administrative structures more generally, only 3.5 percent of Khmer engaged in these pursuits. While it is sometimes difficult to gage the scope and intensity of economic activities from how Willmott reports the data, one can paint a fair picture of the role of industry in Cambodia’s post-independence economy. In table XI, he reports “Private Industrial Concerns in Cambodia, 1960-61,” distinguishing between Chinese and non-Chinese enterprises (Willmott 1967, 54). One is first struck by how much this “industrial” activity is built around the agriculture sector. The largest industrial category is “rice milling” (3,902 Chinese concerns, 5 non-Chinese concerns), followed by “other primary processing” (1,715 Chinese concerns, 6 nonChinese concerns), followed by “manufacture” (301 Chinese concerns, 9 non-Chinese concerns), followed by “food products” (135 Chinese concerns, 2 non-Chinese concerns), with “printing and machinery” (70 Chinese concerns, 11 non-Chinese concerns) coming in last. Non-Chinese does not imply Khmer in this setting but also includes western and other foreign-owned enterprises. As a pattern, Chinese concerns were relatively smaller and relatively less capital intensive than non-Chinese concerns (Willmott 1967, 57). Taken together, these numbers suggest a small, poorly diversified and predominately agriculturally centered industrial base. As late as the 1960s, economic life in Cambodia still revolved around the rural Khmer peasant and the central role of the local Chinese merchant. While one might quibble with Willmott’s use of the term “middle class,” one cannot quibble with his main characterization: Chinese in the Cambodian economy “constituted the commercial middle class that carried on the small amount of trade necessary to maintain the Cambodian paysan” (Willmott 1967, 44 [emphasis added]). These data also illustrate the absolutely dominant role of the Chinese minority in the nation’s commerce. “[T]he Chinese probably represent over 90 percent of the total number of people engaged in commerce in Cambodia and 95 percent of the merchants themselves” (Willmott 1967, 63–64). This long-standing role predates the French protectorate: “Prior to the French hegemony, the Khmer King leased, usually to Chinese, monopoly farms in revenue, gambling (and lotteries), opium, alcohol, fishing, and in some places wood-cutting” (Willmott 1967, 45). These monopolies straddled both political and economic realms and illustrate

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additional functional roles the Chinese played in the absence of wellfunctioning state and market institutions. One does not need to “farm out” the right to collect taxes if one has an established set of public institutions and trained civil servants ready to carry out the task. Similarly, the grant of a monopoly for fishing or forestry is an institutional substitute for a public set of regulatory institutions granting licenses, policing conduct, and collecting revenue. “Even before French times, the Chinese were the economic middlemen between the Khmer peasantry and aristocracy, leasing farms [monopolies] from the king, collecting revenue from his subjects, and organizing the rice and fish trade from which the court obtained substantial income” (Willmott 1967, 94). In playing these economic roles, the Chinese often received political protection from the dominant political group such as the Khmer aristocracy and the French protectorate. When the top of the power structure changed from the Khmer king to the French, the subsidiary institutional functions played by the Chinese were largely retained because they continued to produce value for the new governing authority. Indeed, the Chinese adapted to serve new economic roles as the opportunity arose. For example, the “Chinese were the only aliens permitted to bid for contracts with the French administration, such as public works and supplying the army and civil organization” (Willmott 1967, 72). Avoiding direct areas of competition allows for the preservation of economic power: “To the French, the activity of the Chinese merchant was necessary and desirable, for he was operating in sectors of the economy which had little interest to French companies” (Wilmott 1967, 47). In this capacity, “the Chinese in general contributed so much to the economy of French Indochina that they have been described as the ‘precious leaven’ of the colonial regime” (Willmott 1967, 47). The historic monopoly arrangements reflect interesting mixings of public and private roles, as well as the mixing of political and economic functions. The congregation system of ethnic regulation of groups deemed “foreign residents” best exemplifies such intermingling of roles. The congregation was a form of ethnic self-regulation, where ethnic and sub-ethnic groups were divided into congregations subject to a series of external and internal duties and responsibilities. The congregation system predated but was greatly extended by, the French. Within the realm of the congregation, ethnic groups enjoyed substantial autonomy, as the “French eschewed involvement in the day-to-day functioning of each congregation, leaving the running of them largely up to the Chinese themselves” (Barrett 2007, 73). Each Chinese congregation was divided by language group and place of origin. Each group was placed under jurisdiction of its own leader or chef, elected by each congregation. “In small towns and outlying provinces outside Cochinchina, universal male suffrage enabled all Chinese men over the age of 18 to participate in presidential and vice-presidential

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elections held by the congregations with which they were affiliated.” (Barrett 2007, 34–35). In larger cities, like Phnom Penh, “only prosperous Chinese or property owners enjoyed the right to vote.” (Barrett 2007, 35). The powers of the elected chef were quite substantial. The congregations provided rather effective legal control over the Chinese. An immigrant could not enter the country unless he were accepted into an appropriate congregation by its chef. No Chinese could move from one province to another without written permission of both chefs involved; nor could he leave Cambodia without obtaining a certificate that he had fulfilled all current tax obligations. Each chef was personally responsible for the taxes of all congreganistes and for maintaining order among them, for which purpose he could call upon constabulary or army if need be. He also had the authority by law to effect the deportation of any of his congreganistes. Each Chinese had to carry an identification card identifying his congregation. (Willmott 1967, 71)

Khmer peasants were subject to demands of a tax levied on rice and corvee labor (a logical system in a non-cash-based economy where an individual’s primary assets were their agricultural output and ability to labor). In contrast, the Chinese were exempt from corvee labor requirements but had to pay special taxes instead. This was a major source of cash revenue for the governing authority. Making the chef responsible for the taxes of his entire congregation was a modified example of tax farming. The public function was contracted out to the chef, who had responsibilities to the king (and later the French) but, in turn, was permitted to make substantial demands on the members of the congregation. The chef was not necessarily the wealthiest or most powerful member of the community. “Big businessmen and powerful industrialists often avoided roles as officers in the congregations because of the tremendous time consumed by such responsibilities,” creating leadership challenges and areas of potential conflict. (Barrett 2007, 75). The congregation was expected to settle the internal disputes of its members. The congregations as a whole were collectively responsible for resolving disputes among themselves. [D]isputes were settled within the Chinese community itself. Each congregation had a “reconciliation commission” . . . for this purpose. If disputes arose between Chinese of different congregations, or if a party wished to appeal a decision of his own commission, these cases could go before a commission composed of ten members, two from each congregation. (Willmott 1967, 77)

Furthermore, there was an implicit hierarchy among congregations in Indochina. “Congregations authority adhered to a strict pecking order, with rural congregations subordinate to urban ones and the congregations of Saigon and Cholon dominant over all” (Barrett 2007, 193).

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In a pre-modern society where both market and state apparatus were substantially underdeveloped, the various congregations formed potentially powerful institutions for facilitating and reinforcing group cooperation. While underexplored in the literature, such institutions could have served important overlapping economic, political, and social functions that would be helpful in building and maintaining a vertically integrated network of trade in the region. VERTICAL INTEGRATION AND CONTROL OF THE RICE TRADE The cultivation, processing, and sale of rice lay at the heart of the Cambodian economy. There was a clear ethnic division of labor: the Khmer peasant grew the rice, and the Chinese sold it. The sale of rice, however, entailed a complicated network of vertical relations. “The Chinese developed a hierarchy of rice trading which kept it in Chinese hands, from the small rural dealer who bought it directly from the field, through the dealers and transporters, to the Cholon mills, who passes it on to the French export firms that shipped it abroad” (Willmott 1967, 53–55). Significantly, the political footprint for this economic activity in the preIndependence era was all of French Indochina, not the ostensive national boundaries of Cambodia. At the turn of the nineteenth century, all rice mills were in Saigon-Cholon with Cambodian rice being transported down the Tonle Sap for processing and export. There were few rice mills in Phnom Penh till after independence (Willmott 1967, 55). Economic risk is associated with all stages of agriculture. How these risks are allocated and what formal and informal mechanisms exist to ensure against various types of risks provide a useful lens through which to understand social relations in rural Southeast Asia. For the peasant Khmer farmer, rice is a subsistence crop. Growing rice as opposed to cash crops that are primarily for sale on the market is an important form of self-insurance. For the Chinese merchant, however, even at the most local level, rice is essentially a cash crop. This presents a different set of economic risks. “Since only one-fifth of the rice harvest is for export, small variations in the total harvest can cause considerable fluctuation in the amounts available for sale. To guard against ruin in bad years, the smallscale local rice dealer usually combines his business in rice with other lines, such as lending money and retailing manufactured goods” (Willmott 1967, 56). Diversification to control risk is not the only explanation for the broader economic role of the local Chinese merchant. The telling characteristic of rural Cambodia is the relative absence of both the state and the market. As such, the vertically integrated network of Chinese traders was the primary economic artery connecting the rural peasant to the small number of economic functions they needed to survive, providing “the

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economic link between the Khmer village and the outside world” (Willmott 1967, 60). Credit is one important function the rural Chinese shopkeeper provides at the village level. Rural Khmer peasants need credit to get them through the hungry period—the time between the planting and the harvest of rice (Hou 1982, 66). These loans were small and could be repaid in as short a period as a few months. Credit might also be needed for life events such as weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies, as well as possible advances for supplies and merchandise (Munson et al. 1968, 41). Willmott draws on the work of Delvert for much of his understanding of these transactions. The village shopkeeper (almost always Chinese) lives in symbiosis with the peasant. He fulfils a double role: he provides the peasant with essential purchases [and] he exports his production . . . These products are almost never sold to the peasant; they are advanced to him on the harvest. When he needs something, the peasant asks the shopkeeper; he will pay it back at harvest, in paddy. (Willmott 1967, 59 [quoting Delvert 1961, 511, emphasis in original])

These local merchants are not totally free agents but are “often agents for larger businesses houses in Phnom Penh” (Willmott 1967, 59). “Without him,” Delvert writes, “the peasant doubtless would be hampered, except in several regions, in securing his subsistence” (Willmott 1967, 59–60 [quoting Delvert 1961, 523]). Yet no service is provided without charge: “about 18 percent of the value of agricultural production by Khmer peasants goes into the hands of the Chinese merchants” (Willmott 1967, 59 [quoting Delvert 1961, 523]). While not using the economic discourse of vertical integration, there are comparable descriptions in the literature of the tightly interlinked connections of the Chinese rice trade in French Indochina. Hou Yuon quotes extensively from Paul Bernard’s 1934 work Le Probleme Economique Indochinois: there is, in effect a two-way circulation, one of imports which flow from the great Cholon business houses and branches out into the whole country, first to the small wholesale houses which comprise the secondary arteries, then to the merchants in the big towns, the small arteries, and the small retailers, whose thatch shops may even be established at the corner of two rice field embankments, completing the arterial network. These arteries are common to both circulation systems: they convey imported products out to the most remote part of the countryside, but they also drain away all of the paddy which remains in the hands of the peasants and smallholders, and deliver it first to the merchants who collects the paddy, who then sends it on to the small wholesale merchant in the provincial centre, and finally, thanks to the transport network, connects the wholesale rice trade to the shops in the big Cholon

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A complete understanding of the role of credit, therefore, must appreciate the risks and needs of the small wholesaler and local merchant, as well as the local farmer, and the role of credit within the entire vertically integrated trade network. This point is often overlooked. Hou Youn adds his own description of this intricate set of relationships: The Chinese permeates the economic and social life of the country. He is the grocer, the retailer, the agent of the informer who penetrates the smallest hamlet. He is the collector, the pedlar; he is the manager of the junks in the river fleet which circulates on the waterways of Kampuchea and of the road transport companies. He levies taxes on the markets, there he feeds the prisoners, elsewhere he farms the salt marshes and rents the fisheries on the Great Lake, usually in order to sublet them. He is even assigned the right to exploit the gambling houses, ferries, markets, etc. The heart of the organization of trade and credit in Cholon, where the big buyers, the millers, the exporters and importers co-operate directly, their interests inextricably intertwined. (Hou 1982, 60)

This network performs a range of state (public) and market (private) functions that are served in other countries and at other times by much more differentiated instrumentalities of the market and the state. Tellingly, no other organized institution, with the exception of the Buddhist wat, can claim to have penetrated so deeply into the Cambodian countryside as the vertically integrated network of Chinese enterprises. Kiernan observes: Although much work remains to be done in this field of research, it seems that the unusually privileged position enjoyed by merchants and money-lenders (most of whom were Chinese) in the Kampuchean countryside accounts for the fact that “41 percent of the Chinese in

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Cambodia are rural; that is, they live outside the three or four major towns in each province.” Rural Chinese in Kampuchea were in “a substantially higher portion than in most other South East Asian countries.” (Kiernen 1982, 11 [quoting Willmott 1967, 17; Willmott 1970, 6])

While the observation is well taken, causation is likely reciprocal, as in most complex systems. The key institutional roles played by the Chinese helped create the central functions and wealth they produced, which, in turn, facilitated the deeper penetration of the Chinese into rural domains of Cambodia, which made their functions more central. It is important to remember what we know and what we do not know. We lack a complete and detailed view of the nature of the underlying economic relationships. We know that there were close vertical ties, but we also know that there were independent Chinese economic actors within the system (Willmott 1967, 55). We lack critical details about the relationship between different parts of this integrated network. For example, Willmott suspects but cannot prove the existence of close hierarchical ties between traders in Phnom Penh and those in Saigon (Willmott 1967, 47). I share his suspicion as a matter of economic theory and intuition. We do not know critical details about the relationship between these business enterprises and their connections to the overlapping congregation systems. We do not know the extent to which different language groups and separate congregations competed or cooperated with each other in the economic sphere or how ancillary conflicts were reconciled. By illustration, Willmott talks in passing about a shift in economic power in the 1930s from the Cantonese to the Teochiu in response to international economic crises (Willmott 1967, 60). Examining such episodes of economic competition and transition would greatly enhance our understanding of these internal dynamics. WAS THE CHINESE ROLE IN RURAL CAMBODIA SYMBIOTIC OR EXPLOITIVE? Willmott stresses the relative harmony that characterized Chinese-Khmer relations and the “lack of rancor towards the foreigners that were ‘exploiting’ the Khmer peasants” (Willmott 1967, 41–42). He paints a fairly rosy picture. “[T]he nature of the economic ties between Chinese trader and indigenous peasant are such that mutual advantage demands their continuation and elaboration. . . . Furthermore, credit arrangements that neither wishes to break, necessarily based on trust, tie the two inseparably” (Willmott 1967, 96). This was not always true for the rest of Southeast Asia where violence and ethnic tensions were more prominent. “There is no historical record of anti-Chinese riots to parallel those occurring in Vietnam in 1919 and 1927” (Willmott 1967, 40)

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In contrast, three Khmer Socialist writers—Hou Youn, Hu Nim, and Khieu Samphan—highlight what they claim to be the exploitive role of money lending and usury, though their respective attitudes about the Chinese more generally differ greatly. All three individuals played important roles on the political left in Cambodia in the 1960s, were members of the Beijing-based government in exile in the early 1970s and ultimately members of the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea (Kiernan 1996; Chandler 1992). Each suffered very different fates within the perverse politics of the Khmer Rouge: Hou Youn was killed mysteriously in 1975 ostensibly for voicing objections to the forced evacuation of towns and cities; Hu Nim served as Minister of Information for the government of Democratic Kampuchea before his comrades turned on him. He was tortured and killed at Toul Sleng in 1976; Khieu Samphan was a central leader throughout the regime of Democratic Kampuchea and is now on trial for genocide at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Each individual also wrote dissertations in the 1950s and 1960s examining issues of land, the peasantry, and the economy in Cambodia. Whatever one thinks about their politics, these works help deepen our understanding of Cambodia’s pre-war economy. Hou Youn’s description of the central role of the Chinese in rice trade has already been noted. Little disagreement exists regarding the descriptive aspects of these relationships—the tight, vertically integrated control of all aspects of the economy. Disagreements do arise about the characterization of the relationship. Delvert characterized them as symbiotic. Hou Youn characterized them as exploitative. “What becomes of the isolated individual peasant in the context of this powerful organization of trade and credit? He can be compared to an insect trapped in a spider’s web. From all sides, he is oppressed and exploited, as a producer and a consumer” (Hou 1982, 60). Hou Youn continues: “The market in Kampuchea is such that the peasant is robbed when he sells his agriculture produce and held ransom when he buys the products he needs” (Hou 1982, 59). Interestingly, while Hu Nim similarly criticized of the nature of money lending arrangements, he characterizes these relations strictly in economic rather than ethnic terms. The merchant in the countryside effectively plays a double role; he provides the peasant with essential purchases and, with a view to the sale for export, collects his agricultural produce. As over 70 percent of peasants are more or less poor, purchases and sales are not carried out under normal conditions: generally products for consumption are not actually sold to the peasants but advanced to them against the harvest. (Hu 1982, 77)

(It should be noted that the use of in-kind payments is characteristic of a cashless economy and need not be associated with either poverty or ex-

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ploitation.) Hu Nim appreciates the tight, interconnected nature of these relationships and traces this as the source of the peasant’s exploitation, again without mentioning the role of ethnicity. “At each sale of agricultural produce, a multitude of middlemen from the top to the bottom— shopkeeper, individual collector, miller, transporter, small wholesaler, wholesaler, exporter—take out exorbitant profits so that a very tiny portion of the sale value at the last exchange gets back to the peasant” (Hu 1982, 78). Hu Nim estimates that the relative distribution of value “for each social group would be as follows: 19 percent to the producer . . . 81 percent to all the intermediaries from the point of production to that of export (collectors, millers, small wholesalers, transporters, wholesalers, not counting the usurers)” (Hu 1982, 79). Like Hu Nim, Khieu Samphan discusses the function of money-lending and usury largely in economic rather than ethnic terms. “In Cambodia, middle peasants own their own agricultural implements, as well as their own animals. But more often than not, they lack operating capital. They obtain it from village usurers who are also large landowners or traders. They are then unable to escape the grasp of these people” (Khieu 1959, 40). The same holds true in his characterization of exploitation. “The 200,000 tons of paddy exported each year (15 percent of production) are ‘extracted’ at the expense of peasant consumption and by means of rent, usury, and commercial practices amounting to theft” (Khieu 1959, 51). When Khieu Samphan expressly addresses the Chinese, however, he distinguishes their role from that of western influences. Consistent with standard Marxist dependency theory of the time, he lays responsibility for exploitation at the feet of capitalism. Moreover, the Chinese are denounced as “parasites incapable of creating wealth and living off the elaborated substance of the peoples’ labor.” [quoting Bernard (1934)]. It seems to us that such a view neglects the sources of primary responsibility for this situation: international integration of the Khmer economy and the competition of foreign merchandise resulting from it. It is generally understood that the Chinese, in fact, played an important economic role in Cambodia even before the French intervention. We believe it is appropriate to make a basic distinction here between the economic role of the Chinese and that assumed by other “foreigners” coming from Europe and later from North America. . . . Their interest in Cambodia being only a tiny fraction of the whole of their affairs, their link to the country is therefore weak. These “Europeans” or Americans, therefore, cannot be integrated into Khmer society. This argument does not pertain to the Chinese. (Khieu 1959, 55)

In the end, Khieu Samphan paints a fairly favorable picture of the Chinese in Cambodia. Most overseas Chinese are part of the disbursed Chinese bourgeoisie which fled from the feudal society on ancient China to

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settle in Cambodia and elsewhere. The goods they acquired in a country (land, plants) and those they use to good advantage fix this population in a country permanently, for they have no other interest in China or elsewhere other than family ties, which will weaken as subsequent generations settle in (Khieu 1959, 55). There are a range of historical, political and personal reasons that could explain Khieu Samphan’s treatment of the Chinese-Cambodian relationship. His Marxist ideology likely clouds his understanding of the rural peasant’s real need for credit. The rural peasant did not borrow for “operating capital” but rather to pay for funerals, weddings and religious services, or simply to make it through the hungry period. Samphan makes no real effort to reconcile his negative portrayal of the “village usurers,” whom he identifies as “large landowners or traders,” with his favorable view of the Chinese generally. In the end, neither those that characterize relations between the rural Khmer peasants and Chinese merchants as symbiotic, nor those that characterize them as exploitative, provide very helpful frameworks from which to make such assessments. Although focusing generally on Southeast Asia and not Cambodia, James Scott develops a model of the rural patron-client relationship that can shed light on our discussion (Scott 1972). Scott views relations between peasants and agrarian elites as vertical relationships, whose legitimacy is determined by the relative balance of exchange of goods and services. Each party in this personal relationship has reciprocal obligations such as the provision of various forms of social insurance (loan forgiveness and assistance in time of crisis) in a world where physical security and subsistence living predominantly preoccupy the peasant (Scott 1972, 8–9). At its heart, this is a bargaining problem, for which the parties’ relative bargaining power determines the balance of exchange. The bargaining power, in turn, depends on such factors as scarcity of land, potential shifts to commercial agriculture, expansion of state power, and population growth. Moreover, every set of institutional arrangements, such as the patron-client relationship, faces implicit competition from alternative means of organizing comparable political and economic exchanges. According to Scott, in the pre-colonial period, the power of local elites was checked by kinship and village structures which were capable of providing alternative sources of benefits, the presence of unclaimed land which gave peasants exit options, and the presence or absence of external backing of local power holders (Scott 1972, 12–13). During the colonial period in Southeast Asia, structural changes substantially altered the nature of the terms of exchange between patrons and clients in many countries. Scott emphasizes the role of increased social differentiation and the creation of multiple separate ties in place of broader, more diffuse single relationships. This was exemplified by a shift in local power bases that provided greater external backing to local elites and the increased com-

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mercialization of agriculture, bringing increasing uncertainty and price fluctuations while also increasing land concentration and therefore elite bargaining power (Scott 1972, 17–18). In many parts of Southeast Asia, these changes produced a loss of legitimacy of traditional patronage relations creating an environment for greater political instability and ethnic tensions. Application of Scott’s model to Cambodia, however, illustrates again how Cambodia often differs from the rest of Southeast Asia. Cambodia shares many historic features with its neighbors: a tradition of a weak central state unable to provide security or basic public goods; local rather than national power bases; loose forms of social organization; and personal rather than bureaucratic institutional sources of power. At the same time, there are many differences. Cambodia had fewer elite classes and no tradition of landlordism. There was minimal expansion of the central state, no shift to commercial agriculture (outside of a few exemptions noted earlier), and relatively lower levels of population growth. Outside certain activities centered at the Buddhist wat and local practices such as mutual assistance in transplanting rice, there were few kinship and village structures capable of providing alternative sources of benefits or social insurance. What are the implications of these differences for the question of the potential exploitation of the peasant-merchant, patron-client relationship? One would like to have detailed micro-level information on the terms of trade and the presence or absence of social norms on the part of merchants providing implicit forms of social insurance. The vertically integrated nature of the rice trade could provide relatively low-cost means of affording social insurance not only for the local peasants but also for local Chinese merchants themselves. In the absence of such evidence, one can make reasoned inferences from more general macro-level characteristics. Approaching the relationship as a bargaining problem requires considering how different factors influenced the relative bargaining strength of the parties. Independent land ownership distinguishes Cambodia. All else being equal, land ownership should increase the bargaining strength of the peasant. This power would be further enhanced to the extent that laws prevented land ownership by the Chinese. The ability of the Chinese to own land has varied over time. A 1904 royal decree renounced the right of the crown to all land in the kingdom, making it possible for the French, but also the Chinese, to acquire land (Willmott 1967, 71). By 1924, the Chinese were expressly prohibited from owning urban land, with the prohibition extended to rural land in 1929 (Willmott 1967, 72). In what contemporary law and economics scholars would characterize as an insightful application of the Coase theorem (Coase 1960), a number of commentators have reasoned that the inability to own land need not and, in their opinion, did not limit the ability of money lenders

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to exploit the peasant class. Coase postulates that the efficient outcome of a bargaining problem can be independent of the allocation of underlying property rights: indeed, “[i]t is clear that although ethnic Chinese moneylenders were legally barred from owning land, this did not reduce their economic power over peasants” (Kiernan 1982a, 7). Exploitation need not be carried to the point of forcing insolvency and when it was, the sale of land need not be to the Chinese merchant but could be to other Khmer farmers. As such, comparable levels of exploitation could be obtained either through a regime of landlordism and tenant sharecropping or through retained land ownership and usurious credit. “With the widespread need to borrow and the exorbitant interest rates it seems likely that debt repayments took up a similar proportion of a landowning peasant’s crop as if the land had been leased from a landlord” (Kiernan 1982a, 10). The fact that such exploitation could take place does not imply that it did take place. The Coasian rejoinder would call for a more nuanced consideration of relative transaction costs of enforcing money lending agreements, particularly in the absence of anything resembling a functioning legal system, and the undoubtedly higher transaction costs associated with the forced resale of property. The absence of a functioning land market itself would be the source of substantial transaction costs. The answer, however, may be ascertained from more readily known facts. If the claim of abundant land is true, there would be a substantially reduced motive on the part of merchants to foreclose on land, as the real value rested not in the land but in the peasant’s labor and ability to generate the next year’s crop. This reality would have influenced the nature of the bargains that were struck in a manner where merchants would have strong incentives to keeps peasants laboring on their land, particularly with the greater exit options for peasant who found themselves in difficult positions. A number of the additional considerations suggest that bargains between peasants and merchants may well have stayed within the bounds of what the parties themselves might have judged as legitimate. While no society is ever static and institutional arrangements are always somehow adapting, relative stability has defined the reality of the Cambodia countryside for centuries. Relationships with high degrees of exploitation are likely to be associated with resistance, change, and instability. Moreover, exploitation would itself encourage the entry of alternative institutional arrangements to provide comparable functions or services. What one observes in Cambodia, however, seems to represent an equilibrium set of rural institutions. The literature suggests another way that Cambodia differs from its neighbors. Patron-client bonds in Cambodia were weaker than elsewhere and were subject to periodic renegotiation and change. Chandler observes that “these ‘lopsided friendships’ could be renegotiated in times of

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stress” (Chandler 1993, 106). While looking at client-patron relations in contemporary rural Cambodia, John Vijghen and Ly Sareoun identify similar traits that have historic antecedents. They suggest that patronage bonds in Cambodia are weaker than those in other societies, terming it a “patronage custom,” and not a patronage system or relationship (Vijghen and Ly 1996, 6–7). The breaking and renegotiation of these ties suggests greater relative bargaining power on the part of the client-peasant than is consistent with the assertion of extreme levels of exploitation. If I cannot “make you an offer you can’t refuse,” I have to make you an offer you are willing to accept. I advance the following claim on a more tentative basis and only as a matter of a loose analogy. Fairly tight levels of vertical integration were a defining characteristic of the Chinese rice trade, indirectly supported by the congregation system of self-regulation and internal enforcement. Borrowing from the literature in industrial organization, we know that tightly integrated corporations have different incentives than loosely integrated business arrangements. Similarly, vertically integrated monopolies have different incentives than markets where monopolies exist at multiple levels of the vertical chain that must transact with each other. While it would require substantially more investigation to support this claim, the vertical nature of the Chinese-dominated rice trade itself, with support of the system of congregations, may have placed countervailing checks on the types of exploitation that might otherwise have existed if merchants were acting as completely independent entities. For example, manufacturers often have incentives to have their products sold at lower prices than independent retailers want to sell them, leading to systems of resale price maintenance. This does not mean that surplus is not be extracted or that actors do not seek to maximize profits but rather that the systemic rationality of the whole enterprise might imply strategies more favorable to local peasants than would exist in a system where local merchants were acting strictly as independent economic actors. As such, a range of concerns on the part of the vertically integrated rice trade may have placed underappreciated internal checks on the degree of exploitation that one might otherwise expect. Other evidence supports the proposition that while debt was common in rural Cambodia, forms of extreme and destructive indebtedness were more limited. May Ebihara studied a small village in 1959, finding that “it does not happen that most or all of the unfortunate household’s crop is carted away immediately after the harvest by creditors . . . two or three families [out of thirty-two] are caught in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of annual debt because of grossly inadequate holdings” (Kiernan 1982a, 8–9 [quoting Ebihara 1968, 275, 333–34]). This does not make it any less of a tragedy for these individual families, but it engenders a different impression of the system as a whole. “Ebihara agreed that ‘large scale indebtedness was not widespread’ in the village” (Kiernan 1982a, 9 [quot-

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ing Ebihara, 334]). This situation is consistent with a broader equilibrium set of social institutions. A further consideration supports the assertion that peasant-merchant relations stayed largely within the bounds of legitimacy. Exploitive institutional arrangements create incentives for rival institutions to emerge. Not only were historic credit arrangements relatively stable, but there is also a history of failed efforts to create new institutions of rural credit in Cambodia: in 1875, the French established the Bank of Indochina; in 1922, they established the program for Popular Agricultural Credit; and in 1942, the Office of Popular Credit (Hou 1982, 63–67). At one level, the failure of these programs to effectively address the needs of rural credit illustrates the broader challenges of state-building and market-building. At another level, these efforts demonstrate the programs’ inability to compete effectively with the already existing economic institutions established by the Chinese, despite the persistent historical allegations of exploitation and usurious local credit. As a rule, the French programs were poorly calibrated to meet the needs of rural peasants. The loan amounts were too large, the distances to offices too great, and the transaction costs too high to be of much use: The peasant certainly has a pressing need for money, but he does not need that much. A few dozen piasters would be enough. For this moderate sum he does not travel hundreds of kilometers from home, entailing lost time and expense of all sorts not only through his trip but through administrative formalities. Thus the peasant with his urgent needs prefers to approach the village usurer. (Hou 1982, 65–66)

Post-independence efforts were no more successful. Peasant indebtedness was still perceived to be a serious problem and responsibility was laid at the feet of the Chinese shopkeepers (Summers 1986, 22). Credit and marketing services of the Royal Office of Co-operation were increased in 1964. The program was a failure; loans were made on the basis of status and not creditworthiness, collection efforts were weak, and default rates were high (Summers 1986, 26). None of these formal credit institutions could compete effectively with the private Chinese moneylenders. On balance, the evidence supports a more symbiotic, rather than exploitive set of interrelationships. That said, it was not a set of institutions generating substantial economic growth. “In spite of the criticisms of usurious Chinese money lending to small borrowers, the wage and prices prevailing for Chinese financed enterprises do not reflect any excessive rate of return” (Munson et al. 1968, 215). The Cambodian economy as a whole remained relatively small and fairly stagnant.

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INCREASING STRAINS POST-INDEPENDENCE: MODERN STATE AND MARKET BUILDING To claim that relations between the Chinese merchant and the Khmer peasant in rural Cambodia constituted an equilibrium set of institutional arrangements is not to say that they were benign or inconsequential. Residual wealth was extracted from rural Cambodia, making its way to Phnom Penh and other cities, as well as to Saigon and beyond, though not at levels that undermined the stability of the underlying relationships. For better or worse, their arrangements also forestalled the development of other sets of political and economic institutions, contributing at some level to institutional stagnation and the seeming timelessness associated with rural life in Cambodia over centuries. Time, however, never stands still. It has already been observed that trends toward increased land concentration started as early as the 1930s. Sometimes demography is destiny, with population growth threatening the relative abundance of land that was key to the stability of traditional relationships. It should also be recalled how the Chinese were often called upon to fill roles that were necessitated by the absence of robust markets and well-functioning state bureaucracies. The French obviously had no interest in state-building in Cambodia, and French notions of market-building coincided with France’s own colonial agenda. An independent Cambodia would have very different notions of building the state and building the market, with the cultivation of new sets of political and economic institutions. These efforts would present direct challenges to the historic role of the Chinese in the Cambodian economy. Effective bureaucratic states’ competitive markets are relatively recent historic phenomena. Both states and markets require sophisticated sets of social institutions to support their operations. In the absence of functioning states and markets, economic and political relationships are often mediated through more personal forms of exchange, with families, kinship bonds, and cascading systems of patronage playing critical roles. Economic historian Douglass North captures this concept by characterizing the process of “development” as a movement from personal to impersonal mechanisms of exchange (North 2005, 117–18). It is no small accomplishment to ground an economy in impersonal economic transactions, undertaken for the most part between people who are complete strangers. Laura Summers makes a similar point by contrasting status-based and market-based economic distinctions in post-independence Cambodian policy: “In matters of economy, too, status considerations rather than market considerations or impersonal economic needs, were paramount in government policy making and economic practices” (Summers 1986, 16). This was the root cause of many failed initiatives. Post-independence economic policies took on understandable nationalistic overtones. The 1956 Immigration Act listed twenty-six occupations

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open only to Cambodian citizens, aiming “specifically at ‘nationalising’ what had previously been Chinese occupations” (Willmott 1967, 46). Following the French example, decrees in 1958 made clear that land could only be sold to Cambodians or Cambodian companies (Willmott 1967, 81). The ultimate bite of these provisions depended, in part, on new standards defining citizenship and naturalization. During the French protectorate, there was no ability (and little incentive) for Chinese “foreign residents” to become Cambodian citizens. Prior to French rule, however, Cambodian standards of citizenship were fairly liberal: Chinese individuals born in Cambodia could become citizens, conditioned on their abandoning Chinese dress and custom (Willmott 1967, 75). Comparable norms were returned to after independence. The 1954 immigration law broadened notions of citizenship. Anyone with one Cambodian parent was Cambodian regardless of place of birth, and anyone born in Cambodia with at least one parent also born in Cambodia was Cambodian (Willmott 1967, 79). The immigration law, however, was not retroactively applied, leaving naturalization as the only option for Chinese persons in Cambodia born before 1954. [A]ny alien of good character and morals who has resided in Cambodia at least five years (two years if born in Cambodia or married to a Cambodian) may apply for naturalisation. The original law demanded a “sufficient” knowledge of the language, but an amendment in 1959 changed this requirement to being “able to speak Cambodian fluently and exhibiting sufficient assimilation to Cambodian manners, customs and traditions.” (Willmott 1967, 80–81)

Apparently, generous donations to the Buddhist wat and giving rice to monks aided as proof of assimilation to Cambodian traditions (Willmott 1967, 39). The strict language requirement itself could be overcome by a sufficiently high payment to a broker to help process the paperwork (Willmott 1967, 81). While not easy and coming at non-trivial costs to ethnic traditions and customs, pathways were opening to a more inclusive Cambodian society. New institutions often displace the old. Post-independence immigration and tax laws led to the demise of the congregation system, seriously curtailing the powers of the chef. “The Immigration Act of 1956 further limited his powers by permitting free movement throughout the country to immigrants holding valid identity cards, and by revoking the chef’s power of deportation. The position of the chef de congregation was finally abolished in 1958” (Willmott 1967, 82). At the same time, institutions have the capacity to adapt and change over time. The congregations laid the foundation for a variety of language-based social organizations and voluntary associations to serve a range of community and economic functions.

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New challenges arose in 1963 when laws were passed to nationalize banks and foreign trade. “Since credit and trade, both internal and external, were in the hands primarily of resident Chinese, nationalization appeared to be against the interests of the majority of Chinese merchants, yet it was met with no opposition from that quarter” (Willmott 1976, 100). Willmot attributes the lack of opposition on the emergence of new SinoCambodian elites, consisting of distinct sets of political and economic elite groups (Willmott 1967, 98). In theory, the political Sino-Khmer elite might protect the interests of the economic Sino-Khmer elite, providing workable means to navigate these waves of post-independence nationalism. Penny Edwards is less sanguine about the harmful effects of postindependence and pre-war nationalistic economic policies, reporting that “widespread unemployment quickly followed” the occupational exclusions of 1958, “triggering the distribution of relief funds from the PRC” (Edwards 2009, 196). She reminds us that “[a]lmost every first-generation Chinese . . . interviewed in rural Cambodia arrived with nothing” and had to struggle to make a life in Cambodia (Edwards 2009, 196). “The sole beneficiaries of these policies have been those few wealthy Chinese wealthy enough to cultivate the patronage of military, bureaucrats and political elites” (Edwards 2009, 196). Whether forms of social insurance embodied in the old congregations and carried forward in the newer voluntary associations could have ameliorated these adverse consequences over time remains an open question. There is a particular nostalgia now associated with Willmott’s classic 1967 study of the Chinese in Cambodia, one that Willmott could never have anticipated. The reader does not want the clock to move forward. Sadly, the organic evolution of pre-war institutions was never permitted to take place. We will never know whether the more harmonious future anticipated by Willmott as shepherded by an emerging Sino-Cambodian elite or the rockier road anticipated by Edwards would have been the hallmark of evolving institutions navigating the tensions between the Chinese and Khmer in post-independence Cambodia. Rather, the relative harmony between the Chinese and Khmer and the long-standing stability of rural institutions in Cambodia would all come to an abrupt end. While certain future regimes would consciously demagogue Chinese ethnicity as an instrument of division and oppression, it would be the markers of difference associated with centuries’ old patterns of ethnic-economic segregation that led to the greatest abuses under the Khmer Rouge—the inability to speak Khmer, the lack of any experience with basic aspects of agricultural production—as well as lingering associations with urban life and Western capitalism. While Cambodia’s system of ethnic-economic segregation produced stability of a sort in terms of an equilibrium set of rural institutions, it was layered inside a broader set of institutions lacking characteristics of polit-

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ical inclusiveness and economic openness. Such exclusive institutional combinations are not well-suited to adapt over time to changing environments (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). The strains on traditional systems of extreme ethnic-economic segregation were already becoming clear under the state- and market-building pressures post-independence. While it is doubtful that any set of Cambodian institutions could have successfully adapted to the growing political, economic, and military pressures accompanying United States intervention in Southeast Asia, the very set of institutions in Cambodia that helped preserve rural life in a near timeless manner for hundreds of years made it particularly vulnerable and unable to adapt to change when change finally arrived. REFERENCES Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Business. Barrett, Tracy C. 2007. “Transnational Webs: Overseas Chinese Economic and Political Networks in Colonial Vietnam, 1870-1945.” PhD diss., Cornell University. Bernard, Paul. 1934. Le Probleme Economique Indochinois. Paris. Chandler, David P. 1977. “Transformation in Cambodia.” Commonweal 104(7): 210. Chandler, David P. 1992. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Boulder: Westview Press. Chandler, David P. 1993. A History of Cambodia (2nd Ed). Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Coase, Ronald H. 1960. “The Problem of Social Cost.” Journal of Law and Economics 3:1–44. Delvert, Jean. 1961. Le Paysan Cambodgien. Paris: Mouton. Ebihara, May. 1968. “Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia.” PhD diss., Columbia University. Ebihara, May. 1984. “Societal Organization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Cambodia.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15(2):280–95. Edwards, Penny. 2009. “Ethnic Chinese in Cambodia.” In Ethnic Groups in Cambodia. 173–233. Phnom Penh: Center for Advanced Study. Hammer, Peter J. 2013. Change and Continuity at the World Bank: Reforming Paradoxes of Economic Development. Northampton: Edward Elgar. Hou, Youn. 1982. “The Peasantry of Kampuchea: Colonialism and Modernization.” In Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981, edited by Chanthou Boua and Ben Kiernan, 34–68. London: Zed Press. Originally published by Hou, Youn. 1955. “La Paysannerie du Cambodge et ses Projects de Modernization.” Translated by Ben Kiernan. PhD diss., University of Paris. Hu, Nim. 1982. “Land Tenure and Social Structure in Kampuchea. In Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981, edited by Chanthou Boua and Ben Kiernan, 69-86. London: Zed Press. Originally published by Hu, Nim. 1965. “Les Services Publics Economiques du Combodge.” Translated by Ben Kiernan. PhD diss., University of Phnom Penh. Khieu, Samphan. 1959. Cambodia’s Economy and Industrial Development. Translated by Laura Summers. 1979. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies. Kiernan, Ben. 1982a. “Introduction.” In Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981, edited by Chanthou Boua and Ben Kiernan, 1–28. London: Zed Press. Kiernan, Ben. 1982b. “Introductory Note to Part I.” In Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981, edited by Chanthou Boua and Ben Kiernan, 31–33. London: Zed Press.

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Kiernan, Ben. 1996. The Pol Pot Regime: Race Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mackie, J.A.C. 1988. “Changing Economic Roles and Ethnic Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese: A Comparison of Indonesia and Thailand.” In Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese Since World War II, edited by Jennifer W. Cushman and Wang Gungwu, 217–260. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Munson, Frederick P., et al. 1968. Area Handbook for Cambodia, October 1968 (DA Pam No. 550-50). Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. North, Douglass C. 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scott, James C. 1972. “The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia.” Journal of Asian Studies 32(1): 5–37. Summers, Laura. 1986. “The Sources of Economic Grievance in Sihanouk’s Cambodia.” Southeast Asia Journal of Social Science 14(1): 16–34. Vijghen, John, and Sareoun Ly. 1996. “Customs of Patronage and Community Development in a Cambodian Village.” Cambodian Researchers for Development: Institute for Social Research and Training: Paper No. 13b. Willmott, William E. 1967. The Chinese in Cambodia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. Willmott, William E. 1970. The Political Structure of the Chinese in Cambodia.

EIGHT Justice and Rights in the MalayMuslim South of Thailand 1

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The long history of unrest and rebellion in the three southernmost provinces of Thailand, Patani, Narathiwat and Yala, is well-known among Thai people. To them, the story is rather simple and commonplace. The Southerners, mostly Malay Muslims of the old Patani 2 sultanate state, were a minority and unruly citizens and coupled with their deep religious attachment to Islam, sets them apart from the majority of Thai citizens who are Buddhists. This perception of the Malay Muslims of the deep South (see Figure 8.1) has persisted for quite some time because, among other things, it conforms with the Thai state’s ideology and its rationale for the creation of a modern nation-state. The memory and history of the relations between Siam and Patani, therefore, follows the logic and rationality of the former. Even the history of Patani, like many other regional and local histories in Thailand, has been written by official or Bangkok historians whose perspectives were informed with the Thai sensibility and knowledge, which in due time complemented the rise of Thai nationalism. In fact, Patani was made to be a villain from the beginning of the formation of the modern Thai nation-state because the former’s leaders had resisted and attempted rebellion against the Siamese rule and power. Thais have been reminded that the success of the Great King Chulalongkorn or Rama V (r.1868–1910) in his signature policy of modernization came as a result of his ability to put down rebellions and resistance from the former tributary states of Siam in the North, Northeast and the South. Patani was the last pocket of rebellions in the lower South. Since 155

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Figure 8.1. Thailand. Washington DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005.

then, the story of Patani’s unrest and violence has been narrated in the form of modernity versus backwardness or right vs. wrong. In the present political environment in which human rights discourse has been appropriated extensively by government agencies and rights activists and organizations over the issues and problems of human rights violations and protection, it is time that the long-wounded history of SiamPatani should be viewed in a new light and that can bring a fresh under-

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standing for both Thais and Malay Muslims. The chapter presents the case study of the trial and prosecution of Haji Sulong in the 1940s as a window into the relations between the Thai state and Malay Muslims, and the latter’s struggle for the right to self-determination. As the discussion illustrates, the struggle of Malay Muslims must be understood within the context of the political transformation of the Thai state. HAJI SULONG On January 16, 1948, Haji Sulong and his associates were arrested and charged with treason. As expected, the arrest ignited simmering discontent in the Pattani region in southern Thailand. A little less than a month after the detention of Haji Sulong the Pattani provincial attorney requested the court to bring the case to trial at Nakhon Si Thammarat provincial court. The reason was that the defendants in this serious case led a well-organized movement with a large number of followers. Provincial officials were alarmed when they brought Haji Sulong and his followers to the court, requesting the extension of the detention of the accused during police investigation of the case. A huge crowd of Muslims gathered at the court, and it was clear that the arrest of Haji Sulong had hurt Muslim sensibilities so much that officials were fearful of possible unrest during the trial (Ratanapakdi 1972). Born in 1895 in a local Muslim family of Patani, Haji Sulong bin Abdul Kadir was inspired by the wave of modernity which opened up a new world to him. After completing his education at the local school, he went on to further his studies of Islam in Mecca. Haji Sulong had spent twenty years as a student studying with famous Islamic scholars in the Middle East, from which his first experience with nationalism was formed. It is interesting to note that the intellectual and political climate of the first quarter of the twentieth century had exerted a similar influence upon the young students of that generation (e.g., Pridi Banomyong and Plaek Kittasangka, or Phibun, from the central region, and Thong-in Phuripat and Tiang Sirikhan from Northeastern Thailand). These young members of the intelligentsia represented the new men and women of the Southern, Central, and Northeastern parts of a changing country. All of them were attracted to the ideas of nationalism and modernity, together with an awareness and cultivation of self-consciousness. The Muslim intellectual, however, was different than the others due to the emergence of Islamic revivalism in the Middle East and the independence struggle just south of Patani in the Malay Peninsula. While Haji Sulong was influenced by Arab nationalism, the other Thai intellectuals were imbued with the spirit of secular constitutional revolution exemplified by the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the Republican Revolution of 1911 in China.

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Haji Sulong returned to Patani in 1927, the same year that a group of progressive Thai students gathered in Paris to plan for the revolution in Siam. The declining state of Patani and the Muslim communities, reflected in part through the neglect of Islamic education and practices, led him to found a modern Islamic school there. Haji Sulong started teaching as a Toh Guru (toh khru [elderly teacher]), traveling to various communities in Patani. His teaching elicited opposition from traditional Muslim teachers who later reported his activities to the provincial governor accusing him of being a potential threat to the stability and peace in the region. The governor of the area summoned Haji Sulong for investigation, but due to a lack of evidence he was released. Meanwhile, villagers flocked to Haji Sulong’s teaching. They eventually encouraged him to open up an Islamic school in Patani in place of the local pondok [hut] which passed for a school. He agreed to the idea and campaigned for school donations and support among the Muslim population and even from Thai-Buddhist supporters. The school project received wide support from the people but it also generated divisions between local Muslims and the Thai elite. Subtle friction between Malay nationalism and Thai royal-nationalism arguably started to emerge around this time (Aphornsuvan 2008). From a brief sketch of Haji Sulong’s life experiences, we can see the formation of the new generations of Malay intellectuals whose worldview had been informed by modern education and the ideology of nationalism. Politically, the appearance of Haji Sulong in the Muslim movement was very significant, for it constituted a new departure from the old history of the Malay Muslims’ political activism. Previously, the struggle against Thai domination and subjugation was led by the traditional raja (king) of the old Patani kingdom. But this time it was led by a commoner whose ideas and commitment were closely related to the fate of the common people in the region. One figure who was opposed to Haji Sulong’s political orientation was Phraya Ratnapakdi (Chaeng Suwanchinda), the last royal governor of Patani. He was later removed from office by the People’s Party government in 1933 because of his royalist stance. Surprisingly, he would be reappointed as governor of Pattani after the 1947 military coup and immediately played a fatal role in the arrest of Haji Sulong, with whom he had had close contact for quite some time, on treason charges. Haji Sulong and his followers finally completed the construction of the school in 1933. One of the last donations to aid the completion of the school came from Phraya Phahol, prime minister of the newly “democratic” government led by the People’s Party. He even traveled to Patani to attend the opening ceremony of the school. Pridi Banomyong, the influential leader of the People’s Party, also visited Haji Sulong and his pupils in 1945. From then on, Haji Sulong and his school grew in popu-

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larity, and he became the most notable religious leader in the Muslim south. Confrontation and Protest against the Thai State Two issues that are crucial to the understanding of the nature of the conflict in the Muslim South in the time of Haji Sulong are the processes of national integration and the emergence of democracy as a popular political system in Siam. Both processes involved the construction of new (modern) institutions about which there was little understanding, coupled with the fact that these were areas where there was little or no foundation to support the functioning of the institutions. Both suffered from a lack of, or limited popular participation due to the success of the Chakri monarchs in transforming the pre-modern dynastic state into the modernizing absolutist state (Mead 2004). The unique character of the Thai nation at that time was the hegemonic rule of the monarchy over the declining power of the nobility. The commercial class was forming but had no real political power. Thus, during the initial formation and development of the modern Thai nation-state, it was clear that the crucial meaning and function of the state was to protect and represent the ruling monarchy, not the people who still were the subjects in general (Aphornsuvan 2006). In practice, the idea of the state and its functions were primarily designed and defined by the ruling elite, the Chakri Dynasty. The state as it evolved over time became the main source of historical changes, notably in the arena of the organization of production and maintenance of law and order. Those changes, however, did not originate within formal political institutions due to the inadequate and limited access to formal education initiated and supervised mainly by the government. Up until that time, the non-state realm still played a somewhat relative autonomous role in the political and economic transformation of the society. With the modernization project under the direction of the royal elite, the state began to penetrate more extensively into the communities and society in order to establish the economic and political agenda for the country. The absolutist regime, however, met its resistance and finally the overthrow by the military, which, ironically, was a creation of Chulalongkorn’s modernization policies. The establishment of the constitutional monarchy regime following the coup in 1932 still carried on with a more or less similar idea of the state as the protector of the people and the sole ruler. The People’s Party then set about creating a constitution based on the concept of popular sovereignty. The monarchy was not abolished, but it was now subject to constitutional rule. Thailand thus entered the historical era of formal bourgeois democracy, along with other former colonial and semi-colonial states in Asia. The People’s Party, born inside the absolutist bureaucracy,

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proved unable fully to transcend its origins. In an overwhelmingly rural society, with a high degree of illiteracy, it had no large and firm popular base. The revolution of June 24, 1932, however, represented a turning point in Siam’s history and especially with respect to the opening up of democratic popular participation in the longer run. The democratic government under the People’s Party showed signs of its understanding of the particular practice of the Southern Muslims and its distinct membership in the nation’s political life. The government then implemented the just completed civil law concerning the family in the whole kingdom in 1934 but exempted the former area of Greater Patani from the new law code. Instead the government allowed the Muslim provinces to continue the practice of observing Islamic law regarding family, property and inheritance, which had been in place during the reign of King Chulalongkorn. Yet the hope to mediate the government’s penetration into the lives of Muslims and their society was cut short by the failure of the parliament— as a democratic institution—to have any influence in national politics. The centralized bureaucracy continued to exert its power and control over the provinces. With the rise of militarism in 1938, the government under Field Marshal Phibun began to mobilize the population under the banner of Thai-nationalism from which a policy of forced assimilation was promulgated with little or no tolerance for the unique cultures of other minorities. Phibun’s nation-building policy was aimed at the reform and reconstruction of the social and cultural aspects of the country as well as its physical representation. Since the coup in 1932 had ended the absolute monarchy, this was the first time that the government attempted to really replace old ideas and feudalistic practices among the population with what they thought to be a modern and civilized practice. In his address to the Cabinet and senior officials in 1941, Phibun said, In an effort to build a nation with a firm and everlasting foundation, the government is forced to reform and reconstruct the various aspects of society, especially its culture, which here signifies growth and beauty, orderliness, progress and uniformity, and the morality of the nation. (Aphornsuvan 2007)

His emphasis on culture was a result of the rise of militarism and nationalism in post-World War I Asia. The other factor was the opportunity to break away from the traditional fetters of the monarchy. The imminent threat of war among the major powers persuaded Thai leaders to choose with which side the country would be aligned. In the view of the Thai leaders, one was the civilized and strong and the other was the slave and weak. In order to be recognized as civilized and modern by powerful nations, the country must do away with “the people [who] remain poor in culture and exhibit ignorance about hygiene, health, clothing, and ra-

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tional ways of thinking.” With these firm beliefs on the goal and status of the nation, Phibun’s government enforced the National Culture Act. The most sensitive one was known as “ratthaniyom” or the state decrees. Under this policy came the idea of Thai-ness and Thai nationalism. The perception of a civilized Thai nation-state devoid from the remnants of feudalism was actually very Eurocentric in its presumption. Various minority groups were affected by this cultural policy, but the Malay Muslims of the South, however, were especially hit by these new cultural laws and regulations. The terms “Southern Thais” and “Islamic Thais” were now to be referred simply as “Thais.” The term “Thai Islam” was an invention of the Thai government to indicate that while it did tolerate religious differences, it did not consider that there should be any other significant differences among citizens of Thailand. Under these laws penalties were prescribed for those who failed to observe the regulations concerning “proper dress, behavior and etiquette” when appearing in public places. Other regulations required women to wear hats and Western dress, forbade the chewing of betel and areca nuts, and instructed the use of forks and spoons as the “national cutlery.” The most sensitive one was the abolition of the Islamic family and inheritance laws in 1944, which had been allowed to function since the annexation of the Patani region in 1902. By imposing the Thai Civil Law in the four Muslim provinces, the government also revoked the Islamic judge, Dato Yuttitham, who had decided family and property cases among the Muslims. Interestingly, Muslims from southern Thailand begin to use the Islamic courts in Kelantan, Kedah, Trengganu, and Perlis (states in neighboring Malaya) for justice. From 1943 to 1947, there were no cases filed by Malay Muslims in the Thai court at all. Implicitly, these people had been denied their civil rights by the Thai state and they were forced to seek justice (the kind that mattered to them) elsewhere— outside of their homeland. Furthermore Malay Muslims were no longer permitted to observe Fridays (a day of prayer) as public or school holidays. Most disturbing were Thai attempts to in fact convert Muslims to Buddhism. This period thus saw the increased radicalization of the Malay-Muslim movement and the unrelenting enforcement of nationalist policies from which the seeds of resistance and irredentism were sewn. In its bid to consolidate the Thai kingdom, the Phibun government had decided to join with the Japanese government and declared war against the Allies. Japan, in return, assisted Thailand in retaking its former Malay dependencies, Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis, which had been ceded to Britain in 1909. However the transfer in 1943 not only benefited the Thai state but also strengthened ties among the Malay Muslims in Patani. They could now renew their ties and share their problems with their brethren in Malaya. Tengku Mahmud Mahyiddin, the youngest son of the former raja of Patani, found it difficult to live in Thailand and went

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back to Kelantan and, during the months of the Japanese occupation of Malaya, joined the resistance movement. In 1944, Tengku Abdul Jalal bin Tengku Abdul Mutalib, son of the late raja of Saiburi, whose Thai name was Adul na Saiburi, and a member of parliament from Narathiwat, submitted petitions to the Phibun I and Khuang governments protesting the mistreatment by Thai officials which had caused economic difficulties and religious discontent. The government’s reply after a series of investigations was that the local authorities had acted in a correct and proper manner in carrying out their policies of religious and cultural assimilation. As a result, Tengku Jalal left Narathiwat for Kelantan and joined Tengku Mahyiddin in providing leadership to the Malay Muslim struggle for their rights and justice. In the same year Haji Sulong also set up an Islamic organization in Patani, “He’et alNapadh alLahkan alShariat”, or the Patani Malay Movement (PMM) with the object of encouraging cooperation among Muslim leaders in order to fight against the government’s tampering with the Islamic way of life. The policy of forced integration and assimilation of Malay Muslims into the Thai national state, however, was halted in 1944 when Phibun fell from power. Subsequent governments were more sympathetic to Muslim sentiments and quickly addressed the new radical protest arising from the Muslim constituency in the south. To redress the Muslim grievances during Phibun’s forced assimilation policy, the Thai government, under Pridi Banomyong’s leadership, promulgated the Islamic Patronage Act (1944) with the aim of restoring “pre-Phibun conditions” in the four southernmost provinces. The rights to observe Friday as a religious holiday and the restoration of Islamic family and inheritance laws were also returned to the Muslim community. The reform of Islamic affairs also included the reappointment of the Chularajmontri (head of all Muslims in Thailand or Shiekhul Islam) to act on behalf of the king regarding Muslim concerns. For a brief period following the end of the war until 1947 Pridi’s Islamic Patronage policies, which aimed at reform and reconciliation, succeeded, to a certain degree, in establishing national Islamic institutions acceptable to both the government and Muslims. Previous Islamic traditions and practices were reinstated or allowed. A positive development was the opening of a free and open dialogue between Malay-Muslim leaders and the government from which the first official negotiations between representatives of the Thai government and Patani community was conducted in 1947, resulting in the Seven Pleas from the Patani negotiators. But with postwar economic hardship and scarcity, especially the shortage of rice in the south and the smuggling of rice along the border areas, the patronage policies could not deflect the course of southern Malay-Muslim disaffection for Thai rule and the still growing nationalist sentiment. In brief, national integration proved to be more resilient and eventually culminated in the creation of the mono-ethnic state in the period of Field Marshal Phibun in the 1930s

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and thereafter. Constitutional democracy also faced a similar fate and ended up in authoritarian rule under military-led governments following the coup in 1947. The context in which Haji Sulong operated was the construction of a fledgling democracy in the Muslim South. The first generation of Patani intellectuals went from local pondok education to further their studies in Mecca and returned to open modern religious schools in the south. They began to break with the old school of Muslim leaders. This period, called by academics as the “reawakening,” was characterized by the emergence of the Malay Muslims’ self-awareness and identity under Islamic principles. Next the Patani awakening was influenced partly by religious students, most of whom were inclined toward modernism, who had come over from or gained experience in the northern states of Malaya when these had come under Thai administration during World War II. It also drew intellectually on Malay nationalist and populist sentiments expressed by political groups in Kelantan and Kedah. Haji Sulong was among the ulama who distrusted the government’s involvement in the religious affairs of the community. He believed that political intrusion into the legal and religious matters of the Muslims since the reign of King Chulalongkorn was corrupting the purity of Islam. He made clear that his life mission was to follow the footsteps of the Prophet to “elevate and purify Islam.” His idea of a “proper” Muslim community therefore demonstrated attempts to bring justice and progress together with the practice of Islam to the Muslim community. Haji Sulong was convinced that such a community could not be established as long as it remained solely under Thai rule and vision. During the course of his popular religious leadership in the province he had realized the potency and possibility of Islam as a political force. The Muslim movement thus carried in it a deep faith in Islamic and outward political involvement and social activism. Following the military coup on November 8, 1947, Khuang Abhaivong, the leader of the Democrat Party, was appointed by the coup group to become the interim premier. By late 1947 the new Minister of Interior under the Khuang government, also a retired army general, Luang Sinadyotharak, was deeply worried about the disturbances and unrest in the Muslim south. Amid the defensive mood of the illegitimate government he opted for a drastic measure to quell disorder and restore “peace and order” to the region. He dismissed the governor of Pattani and replaced him with Phraya Ratanaphakdi, whom he trusted would be able to remove the root cause of the Muslim problem since he had governed Pattani previously. Phraya Ratanapakdi, as mentioned earlier, was the last governor of Pattani under the absolute monarchy and had been deposed by the People’s Party government in 1934. He was then a retired official, hoping to run for a Parliament seat but had been unable to gain the support of Haji Sulong in Patani. In a way they were at once both ac-

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quaintances and foes. Upon setting foot back in Pattani Phraya Ratanapakdi gathered detailed reports about Haji Sulong and his activities and submitted them to the Interior Minister for decisive action (Ratanapakdi 1972). Believing that it could root out the problem once and for all the Khuang government (not Phibun’s government, as generally believed) authorized the arrest of Haji Sulong. That was the time of trouble in many parts of Thailand due to post-war economic hardship, but most serious troubles were in the deep South. In late February a popular uprising took place in several districts of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. Violent clashes with police and security forces occurred throughout the four provinces with hundreds killed and thousands fleeing across the border to Malaya. As the situation in the South deteriorated Field Marshal Phibun finally replaced Khuang, leader of the Democrat Party and elected prime minister, and returned as prime minister on April 8, 1948. HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE THAI STATE It is interesting to note that when the Pattani provincial attorney brought the case against Haji Sulong and his three companions to court, the prosecutor stated in the written official document that Haji Sulong and his disciples were all of “Thai” race and nationality. At that time many other minorities, including the Chinese, had difficult tasks trying to prove and convince the Thai state that they were actually Thai citizens by birth, residency, or education. On the contrary, the Malay Muslims did not want to be Thai race or nationality. They preferred Malay because of its origin to which the Thai state resisted. Next, the charges prepared by the provincial attorney against the four defendants were “plotting and organizing to change the traditional Royal government of the kingdom over the four provinces, i.e., Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun; causing injury to the independence of the state; and provoking violent disruptions in the country by outside forces” (The Pattani Provincial Court, Criminal Case No. 25/2491). Haji Sulong and associates were not charged with separatism. Note that at that time, this term had not been coined and used by government officials and the media until the prosecution and persecution of Isan (Northeast) members of Parliament after the 1947 Coup, which led to their calling for the establishment of a confederated state of Thailand in 1949. In a detailed description of the court record of the seditious activities of Haji Sulong and his followers, the Thai state told us that in August 1947 Haji Sulong had held a meeting of about 100 Muslims at Masjid Baan Prike in Pattani. After instructing them on religious matters he then “spoke conceitedly to the audience, insidiously arousing rebellious feelings among the people almost to the point of creating unrest in the king-

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dom.” His vile speeches humiliated the government and the royal bureaucracy in the eyes of the populace. He roused the Muslim audience with his rallying cry that they should always remember and love their Malay race. He also defamed the Thai government by stating that: “For the past forty years the Thai government had ruled over the four provinces but had done nothing to improve the region. For example, the schools here were still like chicken pens, which were looked down upon by other people.” But the most serious political accusation was that Haji Sulong had persuaded local people to lodge petitions at Pattani Provincial hall calling for self-government. If the government complied they would invite Tengku Mahmood Mahiyiddin, the son of Tengku Abdul Kadir, the last raja of Patani, who resided in Kelantan, to preside as leader of the four provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun. He would then implement Islamic law in order to eliminate all evil and bring progress to their homeland. In the end, if the government did not yield to their demands for self-government, Haji Sulong would urge the Malay population in the four provinces to make their complaints heard until they succeeded (The Appeals Court Record 1948). The other piece of evidence which implicated the defendants on the charge of plotting against the independence of the Thai nation was a printed letter in the Malay language, dated January 5, 1948, inviting Tengku Mahiyiddin to be the leader of the Malay Muslims in order to demand political autonomy. The letter stated: We, the Islam Malays under the reign of Siam, beg to inform you that we cannot bear any more injustice, hardship, oppression and the loss of all personal liberty that has been imposed on us by the officials and Siamese government. (Pitsuwan 1985)

Although they had begged the government several times to give them their “rights and privileges as human beings”, in return the government had given them nothing, not even a reply. Thus, we give you herewith, full powers and rights to do anything possible and proper to satisfy our requests, so that we may live as any other human beings in this world, having personal liberty, regaining our Malay racehood, and our Islam religion. With these aims and wants we, individually, of our own accord and pleasure, put hereunder our signature and/or thumb prints . . . to appoint you as an above mentioned representative. (Pitsuwan 1985)

In the eyes of the Thai state this letter misled the public to cause hatred of the Thai government and officials, which could lead to defiant acts and unrest within the kingdom. The court dismissed the first charge, which accused Haji Sulong of making a rousing speech in the masjid as not valid evidence of inciting an uprising to the point of changing the royal government in the four prov-

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inces. For the second charge of distributing an open letter to Tengku Mahyiddin, although the act of printing the letter was not wrong, the court found guilty in the contents of the letter, which had defamed and humiliated the Thai government and its officials. It is interesting how the court translated that offense into a guilty verdict. The court stated that the said wrongdoing amounted to “an offense of sedition within the kingdom according to Criminal Law clause 104” and sentenced Haji Sulong and his associates to three years’ imprisonment. The rationale and reasons of the judges behind this verdict are very interesting for they show clearly the political beliefs and the rule of law in a transitional Thai democracy. What the prosecuting attorney had in mind was the attempt by the Malay Muslim leaders to transform the royal government in the four provinces into a form of independent Malay state causing damages to the independence of the Thai state. But all evidence did not justify the conviction of secession and Haji Sulong’s seditious acts. All acts, which led to his accusation and prosecution, including his public speech in the masjid, an open letter to Tengku Mahyiddin and rumors of armed guerrilla movement, were groundless. The Thai court, however, was still able to punish him as a “rebel” (kabot) based on what it considered to be Haji Sulong’s unruly behavior toward the Thai state and government officials. How could that be? One wonders pondering over the legal codes and justice in the Thai system. No doubt this verdict would not have happened if the trial were to be conducted in the present Thai court of justice. The key to this perplexing question is the existence of the old Criminal Code. Back then, the judges still used the old Criminal Code R.S. 127, (Bangkok Era 127) which was promulgated during the reign of King Chulalongkorn as one of the first modern Thai codes. The so-called Criminal Code R.S. 127 had been duplicated from the British Criminal Code in India as Siam was pressured and demanded by the Western powers. The essence of justice in the code, thus, was based on colonial administration and severe punishment for the disturbances against the security of the ruling regime. Haji Sulong’s criticisms of the government officials and the government in his letter, if trial in the liberal and free political atmosphere, the most he could be found guilty is libel or insulting of the officials, which would not result in a jail term. But the Criminal Code R.S. 127 stipulated that insulting acts of the officials amounted to “an offense of sedition.” That was the fate of Haji Sulong in the hands of the Thai justice system. However, the state attorney still was not satisfied with the sentence and deemed it to be too lenient. The prosecutor appealed the case, arguing for a more severe punishment of Haji Sulong, citing evidence that a separatist movement was planned and a rebellion by violent means was in the making, though it lacked any clear proof of a rebel’s armed forces. Again it is irony that it was the Thai authorities that were trying very hard to make the Malay Muslims to be separatists and join with the

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newly formed Federation of Malaya on the other side of the border. The appeal court, finally, concurred with most of the charges, especially the verdict that his acts were seditious—a rebellion [kabot]—therefore, the harsh penalty was justified in order to inhibit any further attempt by the local population in the future. But the Appeal Court also needed sufficient evidences to increase the verdict. First the judges extended the interpretation of the Primary Court or Court of First Instance in judging Haji Sulong’s open letter. This time the judges maintained that the defendants as Thai citizens had freedom and rights under the existing Constitution on expression and religion, but when their minds were twisted in hoping to set up a new Malay nation in the Thai soil, their views of the government turned pessimistic. They, therefore, no longer behaved as proper Thai citizens. That’s why it was an unconstitutional act. Next the appeal court went back to the Seven Pleas again, and this time they found the basis for sedition in the evidence. Although the Seven Pleas were regarded as one of the strongest pieces of evidence of the separatist plans of the Patani Malay Movement led by Haji Sulong, the Primary Court found that the charges laid by the Pattani provincial attorney contained no legal grounds for prosecution. Interestingly, the court could not prosecute him based on the first demand of the Seven Pleas, which stated that the highest ruler of the four Muslim provinces should be a Malay Muslim and the last demand that the courts in the area should be separated between Islamic and government’s civil courts. Apparently these Seven Pleas had been submitted to the Thamrong government before the November 1947 coup, and the government had yet to redress all of the demands. These demands therefore were not a plan to secede from the nation as charged by the prosecutor. Seen in this light it would have been very awkward for the state prosecutor to sue Haji Sulong based on a set of demands that had been legally accepted by the previous government. The appeal court reasoned that they based the ill intention of the Seven Pleas on the article written by an English journalist, Barbara Whittingham-Jones, which was published in The Strait Times of Singapore in October 1947. The article portrayed the mistreatments of the Malay Muslims by the police in Pattani and presented the Seven Pleas in full support of the Patani Movement. This article was crucial because the author had been invited by Tengku Mahyiddin to visit and write about Pattani. She was met by Haji Sulong who also became her guide and key source on the situation in Pattani. The new sentence thus increased the jail term to the maximum of seven years, but owing to the defendants’ willingness to cooperate with the investigation and trial procedures the appeals court granted a reduction of the sentence to four years and eight months. The Dika, or Supreme Court, also confirmed the same sentence. Here lays the irony of the first Malay Muslim “separatist.” Even though the court found no evidence of sedition, it nevertheless was able to punish him as a “rebel” based on his

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unruly behavior toward the Thai state and government officials. It suffices to say that Haji Sulong became a rebel and separatist against the Thai state by the act of law. My last point in this interpretation of Haji Sulong’s case is the issue of human rights. The judges for the first time encountered the novel concepts of human rights, which had been propagating in Thailand after the country was admitted as a member of the UN and a signatory of its Universal Human Rights principles. The interesting thing is that the judges found that Haji Sulong’s activities in the masjid and other places were purely “political” because they were aimed at protesting against the government and officials. The Malay Muslims calls for their rights to religious freedom were also deemed as being political. All these political acts, according to the judges, were regarded as “unconstitutional and against Thai law.” Therefore, the rights of the Malay Muslims were not legal in the Thai judicial system and could not be defended. Human rights, thus, were subjected under Thai organic laws and lost its idealistic meaning and aspiration. The sad case of Haji Sulong demonstrates the abstract and meaningless nature of the concept of human rights when applied in Thailand. Human rights claims were rooted in the Enlightenment philosophy and the rise of liberal political institutions in the West from which the individuals had been constituted as socially legal subjects and as citizens—rights-bearing citizens. On the other hand, these citizens also need rights-giving political communities in order to implement and protect the rights of citizens. Haji Sulong and the Malay-Muslims were regarded as Thai race/nationality but not as rights-bearing citizens. Without the support of the rights-giving communities, they were forced to fall back on the abstract claims of human rights. Hannah Arendt in her critical remarks of the lesson of the Holocaust concluded that, the rights of the “human” are much less than the rights of the “citizen.” The bearer of merely ‘human’ rights is subordinate, dependent and in a position of supplicant to others (Arendt 1973). The justice system in dealing with the Malay Muslims was ended more or less arbitrary, resulting in “privileges” in some cases, injustices in most. CONCLUSION Haji Sulong spent four years and six months in jail before he was released in 1952. He returned to a Pattani rife with anger and resentment against the government. Then in 1954 he mysteriously disappeared after reporting to the special branch police office in Songkhla province. Popular belief held that he and his companions, including his eldest son, Wan Othman Ahmad, had been “killed by the Thai police under General Phao Siyanond, then Director-General of the Police Department, on the night of 13 August 1954. They are said to have been tied to heavy stones and

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drowned in the sea behind Nu Island” (Haemindra 1977; Anurugsa 1984). In short, the Malay Muslims struggle to establish their an autonomous and self-governing community has been very much driven by their political relations with the Thai state over the past decades. The Haji Sulong legacy only reminds the Malay Muslims that in order to ensure their political and human rights, the only available route is to achieve it through armed struggle. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter contains materials drawn from the author’s previous works and are reproduced here by permission of the author. These works include Aphornsuvan (2007; 2008). 2. The English usage of the name “Patani” is based upon Malay spelling and historical consciousness among local Patani intellectuals referring to the old Patani Kingdom down to its annexation by Siam in 1902, while the Thai government usage of “Pattani” is based on Thai spelling of the Province and also the new official history of the Deep South.

REFERENCES Anurugsa, Panomporn. 1984. “Political Integration Policy in Thailand: The Case of the Malay Muslim Minority,” Ph.D Diss., University of Texas at Austin. Aphornsuvan, Thanet. 2006. “Nation-State and the Muslim Identity in the Southern Unrest and Violence.” In Understanding Conflict and Approaching Peace in Southern Thailand, edited by Dr. Lars Peter Schmidt and Imtiyaz Yusuf, 92–127. Bangkok: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Aphornsuvan, Thanet. 2007. “Rebellion in Southern Thailand: Contending Histories.” Policy Studies 35 (Southeast Asia). Washington, D.C., East-West Center Washington. Aphornsuvan, Thanet. 2008. Origins of Malay-Muslim ‘Separatism’ in Southern Thailand.” In Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic Interactions on a Plural Peninsula, edited by Michael J. Montesano and Patrick Jory. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harvest. Haemindra, Nantawan. 1976. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand.” (Part I) Journal of Southeast Asian Studies Vol. 7 No. 2: 197–225. Haemindra, Nantawan. 1977. “The Problem of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces of Thailand.” (Part II) Journal of Southeast Asian Studies Vol. 8 No. 1: 85–105. Mead, Kullada Kesboonchoo. 2004. The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism. New York: Routledge Curzon. The Pattani Provincial Court, Criminal Case No. 25/2491, Pattani Provincial Attorney v. Haji Sulong and Co., February 6, 1948, reprinted in Phraya Ratanapakdi, 1966. Prawat Muang Pattani [History of Pattani], (Bangkok, 1966), 75–78. Pitsuwan, Surin. 1985. Islam and Malay Nationalism: A Case study of the Malay Muslims of Southern Thailand. Bangkok: Thai Khadi Research Institute, Thammasat University. Rattanapakdi, Phraya. 1972. din dan thai nai lam thong [Thai territory in the Golden Peninsula]. Bangkok: Cremation Volume. Satha-Anand, Chaiwat. 1992. “Pattani in the 1980s: Academic Literature and Political Stories.” Sojourn Vol. 7 No. 1: 1–38.

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Syukri, Ibrahim. 1985. History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani [Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani], Translated by Conner Bailey and John N. Miksic. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies. The Appeal Court Record, 1948, in Phraya Ratanapakdi,1966. prawat muang pattani, 121.

Index

Adul na Saiburi, 162 Afghanistan: Bamyan, x, 1, 9, 11; Beitamoshkin, 8–9; civil war, viii; destruction of Buddha statues by Taliban, x, 1, 6; dominant Pashtun, ix, 3; ethnic Hazaras. See Hazaras; Gholghola City or City of Screams, 2, 7, 8; landscape and heritage sites, 8–11; map, 2; Markaz Bamyan, 4–5, 7; Zargaron, 8, 9; Zuhak City, 2, 7 Ahmad, Wan Othman, 168 Ali, Mohammad Wasim, 74, 75 Ali Baba system, 95 Alliance Party, 108 All India Kashmir Samaj, 59 Amir Syamsuddin, 91 Amnesty International, 77 anti-Hindu pogroms, 68. See also Balai Bazaar Pogrom; Sutrapur Pogrom Anton, Muhammad, 91 Anwar Ibrahim, 115, 119 Arunachalam Transitional Relief Village, 23 asylum seekers, 42 Awami League, 64, 66, 67, 78 Azad, Salam, 81 Badawi, Abdullah, 114, 116, 117 Balai Bazaar Pogrom, 68, 75–76. See also anti-Hindu pogroms; Sutrapur Pogrom Banarjee, Shymol, 74 Bangladesh: anti-Hindu atrocities, 64–68, 83; Balai Bazaar Pogrom. See Balai Bazaar Pogrom; elections. See under elections; ethnic cleansing of Hindus, 77, 79, 80, 82; government's refusal to change, 77–79; government's silence on anti-Hindu atrocities, 77; Hindu's dying

population, in, 63; map, 65; moderate Muslim democracy, as, 80; persecution of minority Hindus, viii, x; potential for progress, 82–83; Sutrapur Pogrom; Sutrapur Pogrom; trade with United States, 82; war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, x; why lack of action on anti-Hindu atrocities, 79–81 Bangladesh Garment Manufacturing and Exporting Association, 82 Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhists, Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC), 66, 68 Bangladesh Minority Watch (BDMW), 64, 74, 76 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), 64 Bank of Indochina, 148 Baperki, 90, 95, 100n4 Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, 91, 100n11 bazaars, 9–10 BBS. See Bodu Bala Sena BDMW. See Bangladesh Minority Watch Bersih, 116 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 63 BHBCUC. See Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhists, Christian Unity Council BJP. See Bharatiya Janata Party BNP. See Bangladesh Nationalist Party Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), 31, 35 British Military Administration, 108 Buasan, Bahar, 100n11 Budikusuma, Alan, 98 Bumiputera Economic Empowerment program, 111 bumiputras, 109 Burma, 119, 120

171

172

Index

Cambodia: Chinese merchants, 135, 138, 140, 144, 149; Chinese role exploitive, 141–142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148; Chinese role symbiotic, 142, 144, 148; congregation system, 136–138, 141, 147, 150; discrimination of ethnic Chinese, 128; elections, 137; ethnic Chinese in pre-war economy, xi, 127, 133–138; growing pepper by Chinese, 134; Immigration Act of 1956, 149–150, 150; Khmer peasants, 129, 131, 132, 137, 138, 144, 149; limits on citizenship of ethnic Chinese, 128; market gardening by Chinese, 134; occupational segregation of ethnic Chinese, 128; post-independence strains: modern state and market building, 149–152; restrictions on land ownership by Chinese, 128, 132, 145–146; social structure in historical context, 128–133; vertical integration and control of rice trade, 138–141 Cameron, David, 18 Cantonese, 133 Central Indonesian National Committee, 89 Chaeng Suwanchinda, 158 Chakri Dynasty, 159 Chando, Jogesh, 69 chef, 136–137, 150 China Nationalist Party, 101n13 Chinese, ethnic. See under Cambodia; Indonesia; Malaysia Chinggis Khan, 2, 5, 7 Chulalongkorn, King, 155 Cina, 100n10 Clinton, Bill, 79, 118 Clinton, Hillary, 114 Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), 105, 113 conflict-induced displacement, 42 Confucianism, 90, 91, 95, 109 congregation system, 136–138, 141, 147, 150 corvee, 137 CPM. See Communist Party of Malaya credit, 139, 140, 148

cukongism, 95 Daerah Istimewa Kalimantan Barat (DIKB), 89 DAP. See Democratic Action party in Malaysia Das, Sawpan Kumar, 76 Das, Tarkanath, 69 Democratic Action party (DAP) in Malaysia, 110 Democrat Party in Thailand, 163 Deng Xiaoping, 101n20 Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (DPD), 92 Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), 91 DIKB. See Daerah Istimewa Kalimantan Barat displaced populations, ix. See also internally displaced persons diversification, 138 Dold, Robert, 64 DPD. See Dewan Perwakilan Daerah DPR. See Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Dual Nationality Treaty in 1955, 93, 96 Dutthagmani, King, 15, 17 Education Sector Development Framework and Programme (ESDFP) of Sri Lankan Ministry of Education, 26 elections: Bangladesh, in, 64, 77, 81, 82; Cambodia, in, 137; Indonesia, in, 91, 96–97; Malaysia, in, 109, 110, 110–111, 111, 116, 120; Sri Lanka, in, 14, 33, 34, 36 Ershad, Hussain Muhammad, 78 ESDFP of Sri Lankan Ministry of Education. See Education Sector Development Framework and Programme Federated States of Malaysia, 105 FIR. See First Information Report First Information Report (FIR), 74 Ghosh, Rabindra, 67, 74, 76, 77 GHRD. See Global Human Rights Defence Gill, K.S., 44

Index Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD), 64, 68 Global Meet, 59 Golkar, 96–97 Gore, Al, 118 Goswami, Beraj, 71, 72 Goswami, Koli: abduction of, 68, 71–74; forced conversion of, 71, 72, 73 Hainanese, 133 Haji Sulong bin Abdul Kadir, xii, 157–158; confrontation and protest against Thai State, 159–164; disappearance and presumed murder of, 168; human rights and Thai State, 164–168, 168; offense of sedition, 164, 165–166; Seven Pleas as evidence, 166–167; verdict in trial and appeals, 165–167 Hakka, 133 Halder, Bikash, 72, 73 Hang Ali Saputra Syah Pahan, 100n11–101n12 Hasan, Bob, 100n7 Hauz Rani Camp in Delhi, India, 51 Hazaras: contested (identity) terrain, 5–7; descendants of the Kushans, 6, 7; discrimination of, viii; ethnic, ix; exorbitantly high taxes levied on, 4; higher education, excluded from, 4; lands confiscated and land rights given to others, 4; marginalization of, ix–x, 3–5, 11; new national identity, 5; servant class, turned into, 4 Hendrawan Supratikno, 98, 100n11 high security zones (HSZ), 28 Hindu American Foundation, 64 Hizb-e-Wahdat political party, 3, 8 Hokkieb, 133 Hokkien, 133 HSZ. See high security zones IC. See identity cards Ichsan Soelistio, 100n11 identity cards (IC), 120 IDP. See internally displaced persons IDP/Host dynamic, 51 IMF. See International Monetary Fund

173

Indonesia: alien Chinese, 93–94, 96; anti-Chinese riots, 89, 90–91, 99; changing orientation of the Chinese, 87, 93–97, 99; Chinese banned from retailing business, 89; Chinese newspapers, 89, 90, 91; Chinese role in politics, 90, 91; Chinese schools, 89, 90, 91, 95; citizenship status of Indonesian Chinese, 87, 92–93, 99; discrimination of Indonesian Chinese, 87, 91, 99; elections. See under elections; ethnic Chinese population, xi; Fortress Program, 89; government policies towards the Chinese, 87–92, 99; issues of citizenship papers, 97–99, 99; loss of Chinese ethnic identity, 90; New Order policy, 90, 96; pass system, 87–88; zoning system, 87–88 Indonesian Chinese. See under Indonesia Indonesian Citizenship Law of 1946, 92 Indonesian Democracy Party, 100n7 Indonesian National Legislative Council, 91 Indonesian Regional Representative Council, 91–92 Interfaith Strength, 68, 72 internally displaced persons (IDP), 42. See also displaced populations; reasons people forced to flee, 42 Internal Security Act (ISA), 116 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 115 ISA. See Internal Security Act Islamicization, 121 Islamic Party of Malaysia, 111 Jacob, Abdullah Al-Islam, 76 Jamaat e-Islami party, 64, 79 Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), 44 Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), 35 JHU. See Jathika Hela Urumaya JKLF. See Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front kabot, 166

174

Index

Kashmiri Pandits (KP), x; access to education, 55; challenges of displaced families, 41–42, 48–49; displacement of, 43, 44–47, 50, 57; family voices, 46–47; fled due to economic survival, 47; Hindu minority community of Kashmir Valley, 46; issue of return, 54–55, 59; loss of identity, 56–57; migrant townships, 58; official stance addressing displacement, 49–50; overall policy impact, 55–57; sociopolitical impact and continued predicament, 50–53; structural challenges, 53–54; victims of systemic and structural violence, 47, 54 Kashmir Valley region in India, x, 41; historical context, 43–44; Kashmiri Pandits. See Kashmiri Pandits; map, 45 Keadilan, 110 Khuang Abhaivong, 163 KMT. See Kuo Min Tang KNIP. See Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat (KNIP), 89 kompong, 130 KP. See Kashmiri Pandits Kuo Min Tang (KMT), 101n13 Kwik Kian Gie, 91, 100n7 landmines, 10 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), x, 13 Lim Sui Khiang, 100n11 LTTE. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam Luang Sinadyotharak, 163 Mahathir Mohamad, 113, 115, 115–116, 118 Mahavamsa (MV), 17 Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), 108 Malayan Communist Party (MCP), 108 Malaysia: Chinese under British rule, 107–108; domestic divisions and

regional sensitivities, 112, 119–121; dominant-minority relations, xi; early years of independence, 19571989, 108–109; elections. See under elections; emergency, the, 108; ethnic Chinese, 105, 106, 110, 121; ethnic Indian, 105, 106, 121; ethnic Malays, 105, 106, 109, 119; ethnic marginalization in, 106, 111, 121; ethno-politics at home with U.S. relations, 112, 118–119, 121; foreign policy, ethnic determinants of, 105, 112–121; foreign policy desire for international leadership, 112, 115–118, 122; foreign policy relations with China, 112–114, 121; foreign policy relations with Philippines, 119, 122; gerrymandered electoral system, 111; history of ethnic relations, 106; history of ethnic relations from 1969-2000, 109–110; history of ethnic relations from 2000-present, 110–112; Japanese occupation during World War II, 107; map, 107; missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370, 122; New Economic Policy, 109; peaceful period, viii; race riots, 109, 112 Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), 106, 108 Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), 106 marginalization, ethnic, ix; Hazaras in Afghanistan, of, ix–x, 3–5, 11; Malaysia, in, 106, 111, 121; Tamils in Sri Lanka, of, 31 Massoud, Ahmad Shah, 5 Mazari, Abdul Ali, 3 MCA. See Malayan Chinese Association; Malaysian Chinese Association MCP. See Malayan Communist Party Menik Farm, 23 MIC. See Malaysian Indian Congress migrant townships, 58; Jammu's Kashmiri Migrant Townships, 56 minorities, ix; conceptualizing, viii–ix; ethnic Chinese of Cambodia. See under Cambodia; ethnic Chinese of

Index Malaysia. See under Malaysia; ethnic Hindus of Bangladesh. See under Bangladesh; Hazaras. See Hazaras; Indonesian Chinese. See under Indonesia; Kashmiri Pandits; Kashmiri Pandits; Malay-Muslims in Thailand. See under Thailand; Tamils; Tamils missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370, 122 Modi, Narendra, 63 Murdaya Poo, 100n11 MV. See Mahavamsa Najib Razak, 111, 114, 116 NAM. See Nonaligned Movement National Awakening Party, 92 NEP. See New Economic Policy Nested Model, 50, 52, 53 New Economic Policy (NEP), 109 Nonaligned Movement (NAM), 115 Office of Popular Credit, 148 Pakatan Rakyat (PR), 110, 121 Pangestu, Marie, 91 Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI), 100n7 Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB), 92 Partai Se Islam di Malaysia (PAS), 111, 121 Partindo, 100n4 PAS. See Partai Se Islam di Malaysia pass system, 87–88 Patani Malay Movement (PMM), 162, 167 patronage custom, 147 PDI. See Partai Demokrasi Indonesia People's Alliance, 110 People's Conscience Party, 92 People's Justice Party (PKR), 110 People's Party, 159–160 Phao Siyanond, 168 Phibun, 157, 160, 162 Philippines, 119 Phraya Phaol, 158 Phraya Ratnapakdi, 158, 163 phum, 131 PKB. See Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa PKR. See People's Justice Party

175

Plaek Kitasangka, 157 PMM. See Patani Malay Movement pondok, 158, 163 Popular Agricultural Credit, 148 post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), 25 PR. See Pakatan Rakyat prei, 130 Pridi Banomyong, 157, 158, 162 Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), 3, 9–10 PRT. See Provincial Reconstruction Team PTSD. See post-traumatic stress syndrome Qing Dynasty, 101n12 Rahman, Abdur, 4 Rahman, Azizur, 74 Rahman, Mahbubur, 69 Rahman, Mujibar, 69 Rahman, Ziaur, 78 raja, 158, 165 Rajapakse, Mahinda, 14, 15, 33–35; second Dutthagamani, 15, 17 Rama V, King, 155 refugees, 42 Relief and Transition Centers in Menik Farm near Vavuniya, Sri Lanka, 20 Roy, Jowtish Chandra, 75 Roy, Laksmi Rani: rape of, 68, 74–75 Roy, Satish Chandra, 76 Rudianto Tjen, 100n11 Rusdi Kirana, 92 Rwanda genocide, 79 Sadeli, Eddy, 100n11 Salam, Abdus, 73 Salim, Anthony, 100n7 sangha, 130 SARA. See Suku, Agama, Ras and Antar Golongan (Ethnicity, Religion, Race and Inter-group) Sayyaf, Abdul Rassul, 5 SBKI. See Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Indonesia SBKRI. See Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia

176

Index

Security Offences Special Measures Act, 116 Sekolah Nasional Project Chusus (SNPC), 100n5 Shiva Mandir, 69 Shuranjit Sengupta, 70 Sindhunata, H., 100n7 Singh, Maharaja Hari, 44 Sirisena, Maithripala, 33–34 SKKRI. See Surat Keterangan Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia SNPC. See Sekolah Nasional Project Chusus South and Southeast Asia: Afghanistan. See Afghanistan: Bangladesh; Bangladesh: Cambodia; Cambodia: dominantminority relations, vii; ethnoreligious minorities, vii; ethnoreligious tensions, viii; Indonesia; Indonesia; Kashmir Valley; Kashmir Valley region in India; Malaysia; Malaysia; map, xv; minorities. See under Hazaras; Kashmiri Pandits; Tamils; individual country names; Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka; Thailand; Thailand Sri Lanka: civil war, viii, x, 13; current conditions in the north and east, 24–31; economy, 26–27, 35; education, 24–26; elections. See under elections; human rights violations, 18; immediate post-war situation, 14–16; international relations, 18–19; nationalisation of schools in 1961, 25; national relations, 16–18; Northern Spring program, 13, 26; post-war impressions, 19–20; Sinhala as official language, 28; Sinhala Triumphalism, 16–18; SinhaleseTamil relations, x; Tamils. See Tamils; thirteenth amendment, 16, 36; war crimes, 18 STKI. See Surat Tanda Kewarganegaraan Indonesia Suku, Agama, Ras and Antar Golongan (Ethnicity, Religion, Race and Intergroup) (SARA), 100n9

Sun Yat-sen, 107 Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Indonesia (SBKI), 97 Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia (SBKRI), 97, 98; citizenship certificate needed for passport application at 2004 Olympic Games, 98 Surat Keterangan Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia (SKKRI), 97 Surat Tanda Kewarganegaraan Indonesia (STKI), 97 Susanti, Susi, 98 Sutrapur Pogrom, 68–71. See also antiHindu pogroms; Balai Bazaar Pogrom Tamil National Alliance (TNA), 35 Tamils: arbitrarily arrested and expelled from Colombo, Sri Lanka, 19; autonomy through thirteenth amendment, 16, 36; defeat of ethnic, viii–ix, 17; designation of Hindu places of worship as Buddhist, 32; economic development, deprived of, 26, 27; education of, 24–26; internally displaced persons, 15, 20; internment camps, 20–22; internment camps’ visit, 22–23; Jaffna, in, 24; jobs scarce to nonexistent, 30; land ownership and changing demographics, 28; marginalization of, 31; national anthem forbidden to be sung in Tamil, 28; place and street names changed from Tamil to Sinhala, 29; prostitution by Tamil women, 31; reconciliation and reintegration, 31; register with police and report visitors, 19; religion and culture, 28–30; societal decline, 30–31 Tanoesoedibjo, Hary, 92 Telli Gozeli, 100n11 Tengku Abdul Jalal, 161–162 Tengku Mahmud Mahyiddin, 161, 165 Teochiu, 133 Thailand: Chakri Dynasty, 159; conflict with Malaysia over migration of Muslims from Burma, 120;

Index confrontation and protest against Thai State, 159–164; constitutional monarchy, 159; forced integration and assimilation of Malay-Muslims into Thai national state, 162; human rights and Thai State, 164–168, 168; Islamic Patronage Act, 162; MalayMuslims in, xii, 155, 157, 158, 161; map, 156; military coup on November 8, 1947, 163, 167; National Culture Act, 160–161; peaceful, viii; “reawakening”, 163; revolution of June 24, 1932, 159–160; trial and prosecution of Haji Sulong. See Haji Sulong bin Abdul Kadir Thong-in Phuripat, 157 Tiananmen Square, China demonstrations, 113 Tiang Sirikhan, 157 Tionghoa (Chinese), 100n10 Tiongkok (China), 100n10 TNA. See Tamil National Alliance Toh Guru, 158 Touhidul Islam Bhuiya (Sumon), 71 UMNO. See United Malays National Organization UNHCR. See United Nations High Commission for Refugees

177

United Malays National Organization (UMNO), 106 United Nations Convention on Refugees, 121 United Nations First Nations Convention, 6 United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 42 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), 66 USCIRF. See United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Vanni Tech, 24 Vested Property Act (VPA), 69–70, 78 Vested Property Return Act, 77, 78 VPA. See Vested Property Act Wajed, Hasina, 64 Wanandi, Jusuf, 100n7 Waplau, Sonny, 100n11 wat, 130, 140, 145, 150 Yaputra, Albert, 100n11 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 91 zoning system, 87–88

Contributors

Thanet Aphornsuvan is distinguished fellow at the Pridi Banomyong International College, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. He is former dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat Universiy, director of the Southeast Asian Studies Program, and vice-rector for International Affairs, Thammasat University. He is also former visiting professor at the Southeast Asian Studies Center, UCLA, visiting research professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and the Australian National University. His specializations include Thai politics and intellectual history. Richard Benkin is an internationally distinguished human rights advocate, writer and lecturer who received his PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked to document human rights violations, assisted victims, and has written extensively on human rights issues and religious persecution in South Asia, especially of Hindus in Bangladesh. His book, A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus, is in its second printing. Melissa Kerr Chiovenda is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Connecticut. She holds an MA in anthropology from the University of Connecticut and an MA from Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies in Washington, DC. She spent eighteen months conducting field research in Afghanistan in Bamyan, Jalalabad, and Kabul. Her areas of research have included Hazara ethnic identity; civil society in Bamyan; historical memory among the Hazara; Pashtun women’s work with NGOs, and development projects in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. She previously served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. Amy Freedman is a professor of political science at LIU Post and an associate research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She is the author of several books; recent ones include Threatening the State: The Internationalization of Internal Conflicts, forthcoming with Routledge, and Political Change and Consolidation: Democracy’s Rocky Road in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia, with Palgrave (2006). She is also the author of numerous journal articles relating to political economy questions, minority/ethnic politics, and questions about political Islam. Her work appears in Journal of Civil Society, Religion and Politics, World Affairs, Asian Affairs, and elsewhere. 179

180

Contributors

Peter Joseph Hammer is a professor of law and director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. The Keith Center is dedicated to promoting the educational, economic, and political empowerment of underrepresented communities in urban areas. His expertise includes domestic health law and policy, as well as international public health and economic development. He has over twenty years experience engaging issues of human rights, law and development in Cambodia and serves on the Board of the Center for Khmer Studies. His latest books include Change and Continuity at the World Bank: Reforming Paradoxes of Economic Development, and Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith. Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam is a professor at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in the University of Passau (Germany). She has had extensive experience conducting research in Southeast and South Asia and published widely on issues of dominant-minority relations in these regions. Sunil Kukreja is professor of sociology at the University of Puget Sound. His areas of interest include Southeast Asian and South Asian studies, multiculturalism, and international political economy. He serves as editor of the International Review of Modern Sociology and International Journal of Sociology of the Family. At the University of Puget Sound, he has served as chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, associate academic dean, and dean of Graduate Studies. Sudha G. Rajput teaches at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University. She is an expert on the internal displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits. Having also worked at the World Bank, she has a strong background in development issues as well. Taufiq Tanasaldy is a lecturer in the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. His research interests are on ethnicity (particularly in ethnic politics, conflicts, minority, and marginalization), issues of separatism and regionalism, decentralization, democratization, and overseas Chinese. Although Indonesia and Southeast Asia remains his main focus, he has a strong research interest in undertaking comparative studies involving other countries in the Asia Pacific region. Taufiq’s most recent publications include a book on ethnic political history of the Dayak of West Kalimantan Indonesia (KITLV, 2012), and a chapter on Borneo in The Political Economy of Divided Islands, edited by Godfrey Baldacchino (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He is currently writing up articles based on his fieldworks on the revival of Indonesian Chinese politics in the regional Indonesia.