Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Muslims suffer brunt of candidate rejections in Myanmar
The report below is from DVB:
A total of 88 candidates from across Burma, including almost an entire Muslim political party, have been disqualified from the 8 November general election.
The 88 were mostly rejected by the Union or regional election commissions for not meeting personal criteria. The highest number of revoked candidacy applications was in Arakan State – some 28 – all of whom were from the minority Rohingya Muslim community. Invariably, those rebuffed did not meet the election commission’s citizenship criteria.
“They [Rohingya candidates] failed to meet the qualifications under Electoral Law Article 10(e) – that a candidate must be a Burmese citizen, who is also born to parents who are both Burmese citizens. The rejected candidates did not meet this criteria,” said Aung Kyaw Nyunt, the chairman of Maungdaw District’s election commission.
In fact, 17 of 18 candidates were disqualified from one party alone: the Democracy and Human Rights Party (DHRP), based in Rangoon and Maungdaw, which has a high Muslim membership and Rohingya rights agenda.
“We [DHRP] received a letter from Maungdaw District Election Commission saying our candidates were rejected after their applications were scrutinised and found not to be in conformity with the laws and bylaws,” said party chairman Kyaw Min.
“I wonder if the government is prioritising a policy over the law,” he added.
Also among the Rohingya aspirants rejected was incumbent Lower House MP Shwe Maung, a former Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) member, who was seeking to run in the polls this time as an independent candidate for Buthidaung Township.
He told DVB that his appeal against the district election commission’s rejection was dismissed by the state-level election commission on 1 September.
“[Fellow Rohingya candidate] Daw Khin Khin Lwin and I presented our appeals on 27 August and were appointed a hearing on 1 September,” he said. “At 10am, I went to the hearing and presented all my evidence, but the decision must have already been decided, because in less than 10 seconds, [the official] said: ‘U Shwe Maung’s appeal has been dismissed, as has Daw Khin Lwin Lwin’s’.
“From what I could see, the Arakan Election Commission did not give me a proper hearing and had already made a decision [to reject me],” he continued. “This makes me suspect that the Maungdaw district and Arakan state election commissions are being put under pressure by some group or a person.”
The northern Arakan town of Maungdaw, like nearby Buthidaung, is majority Rohingya Muslim, or “Bengali’ as many Burmese prefer to refer to the community, a largely pejorative term suggesting they are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
Tensions between Arakanese Buddhists and the Rohingya community have boiled over several times in the past, most notably in 2012, when communal violence left over a hundred dead and some 140,000 homeless after mobs sowed destruction among each other’s neighbourhoods.
The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) has reportedly said that seven of its 1,138 proposed candidates have been disqualified for a variety of reasons including ethnicity, age, and association with illegal organisations. An NLD spokesman suggested the party would appeal those cases.
The ruling USDP has so far made no announcement about any rejections among its submitted list of 1,139 candidates.
UEC Chairman Tin Aye said the rejected candidates have one week starting from 3 September to appeal the decision with their local election commission. If rejected, they may still reach out but not appeal to the regional [state or division] election commission whose decision will be final.
Myanmarism is Buddhist fascism
Myanmarism or Buddhist fascism has been the face of new Myanmar. With the passage of 4 racist and bigotry-ridden laws aimed at minorities, esp. the Rohingya and other Muslims, there is nothing to feel good about the direction Myanmar is heading. Non-Buddhist religious leaders and human rights groups have condemned the bills. (Click here for an example) The role of Ma Ba Tha, the terrorist Buddhist monks associated with terrorist monk Wirathu, is obvious in writing into law such discriminatory bills.
Already all but one Muslim candidate has been cleared to run the election; the rest of the Muslim candidates have been disqualified without any valid reason. Their only problem - they are Muslims, who represent anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the population inside Myanmar. But even that small percentage is deemed a threat to Buddhism or what it has become under the toxic influence of terrorist and fascist Buddhist monks like Wirathu and their supporters within the general population.
Muslims, in spite of their birth and continuous ancestral ties to the land of Arakan (Rakhine) state of Burma, have been stripped of their citizenship, and forced to now reapply for residential permits, which is the usual process for outsiders who had come to settle in Myanmar. Thus, Muslim minorities of Myanmar are without any rights in this den of hatred and intolerance called Myanmar. With a clear objective of eliminating them from the political process, their representatives can't even run in the election (although many of them had contested and won in all the previous elections), and thus, their fate is doomed, or so it seems.
As hinted above, rights groups meanwhile dismissed the whole candidate scrutiny and appeals process as a sham.
“The right to stand for election is as fundamental as the right to vote itself. Rejecting Shwe Maung’s candidacy directly undermines the credibility of the upcoming elections,” said Son Chhay, a Cambodian lawmaker and head of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, who yesterday accompanied U Shwe Maung to the commission office.
According to the US-based Carter Center, which is monitoring Myanmar’s election, the exclusion of Muslim residents and the growing anti-Islamic hate speech could undermine the looming polls, and lead to more flare-ups of violence.
Myanmar's future seems sealed now with fascism, the same curse that only saw death, and serious abuses of human rights in the previous century. The role of Buddhist monks, sadly, is a matter of grave concern in this Myanmarism - the toxic cocktail of Buddhist fanaticism and bigotry and racism.
Here is a report from Reuters.
Swathed in crimson robes, 77-year-old Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa shuffles through a crowded conference room with the help of an aide, his supporters standing in respect as he takes a seat at the head of a table under a portrait of his own image.
It is from here, at an unremarkable roadside monastery just outside the city of Yangon, that the abbot is propelling the radical Buddhist group he co-founded into the mainstream of Myanmar's politics.
Four bills drafted by his Committee for the Protection of Race and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha, have been passed by parliament and signed into law. Critics say the new laws effectively legalize discrimination against women and the country's minority Muslims.
Along with political clout, Ma Ba Tha is also ratcheting up its public image ahead of elections in November that will be the first free vote in Myanmar in the last 25 years. The radical Buddhist group has regular programming on one of the country's most popular satellite TV channels and has launched a magazine.
"There should be lawmakers in parliament who are reliable for the country," Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said in an interview. "There might be some people, especially Muslims, who are working on weakening Buddhism, so we need strong people for our religion."
Ma Ba Tha has shown no signs of contesting elections itself but says it will "remind" the public of candidates who opposed its four laws. These include Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which is going head to head with conservatives and military figures in the polls.
Established two years ago, Ma Ba Tha sprang from the "969" movement, a loose collection of monks linked to a wave of violence against the country's Muslim minority in 2012 and 2013.
Senior Ma Ba Tha officials said the 969 movement had raised awareness about threats to Buddhism from a burgeoning Muslim population, but was disorganized and lacked leadership.
"It was (concerned with) only the symbols of Buddhism," said Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa.
Now, a growing number of professionals are offering their expertise on everything from media relations to legislation, helping to shape Ma Ba Tha into a slick organization with popular support and real political clout.
One such expert is Aye Paing, who spent two decades toiling as a lawyer in Myanmar's musty courtrooms before finding a dramatic new use for his legal skills.
Aye Paing and a team of Ma Ba Tha-linked lawyers drafted the protection of race and religion bills, the last of which was signed by President Thein Sein on Monday.
Lawyers, economists, IT experts and other professionals had made Ma Ba Tha "very efficient, systematic and legal" said Aye Paing, 52, who wears a black "taik pone", a short collarless jacket worn over a shirt that is common among Myanmar's legal professionals.
"We discuss, give advice and share our visions," he said.
INTERNATIONAL VISITORS
In another sign of its growing influence, foreign diplomats regularly visit the group's monastery headquarters.
One was U.S. ambassador Derek Mitchell, who went there twice in May to discuss "the need for increased interfaith dialogue" and "the importance of keeping religion out of politics", according to a statement from the U.S. embassy in Yangon.
Myanmar's revered and influential monks led many pro-democracy protests during nearly half a century of military rule in the Buddhist-majority nation. But after a quasi-civilian, reformist government took power in 2011, some outspoken monks claimed Islam was eclipsing Buddhism and weakening the country.
Now, Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa says Ma Ba Tha has 250 offices nationwide. He couldn't estimate how many supporters it has, but in June more than 1,500 people attended the group's annual conference in Yangon.
Ma Ba Tha recently struck a deal with Myanmar's popular satellite television provider, SkyNet, to broadcast its sermons.
The broadcasts would help the public "know the truth" about Ma Ba Tha, said Khine Khine Tun, 25, an articulate former teacher and interpreter who heads the group's international relations department.
Through media training courses, she said, she has learnt to speak to visitors with a smile, confounding expectations of the abrasive and sometimes confrontational style for which the group is known.
The television deal bolsters an information campaign that already includes a bi-monthly magazine with a circulation of 50,000 that contains sermons delivered by Ma Ba Tha monks nationwide.
RACE AND RELIGION
In contrast to long-delayed legislation on banking, mining and property, the Ma Ba Tha-backed "race and religion" bills moved swiftly through parliament.
One bill requires some women to wait at least three years between pregnancies. Another requires Buddhist women to seek official permission before marrying a non-Buddhist man.
This will stop Muslim men "torturing and forcing (Buddhist women) to change religion," Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said.
Suu Kyi and her NLD opposed the laws. But government officials and politicians rarely criticize Ma Ba Tha, because they either sympathize with the group's views or fear upsetting its many supporters during an election year.
"They are afraid of Ma Ba Tha," said May Sabi Phyu, the director of the Gender Equality Network, a women's empowerment group that opposed the bills.
Any plans to sway voters would be "violating the law," said NLD spokesman Nyan Win, adding: "It's the government's responsibility to control and stop them."
============
Here below is a disturbing report about fascist activities of Ma Ba Tha.
Myanmar’s radical monks this week staked a claim as a political force, pledging to urge the public to vote with a “nationalist spirit” as the country enters the final months before all-important elections.
The monk-led Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha, has grown in influence since it was formed two years ago this month, an anniversary marked by a conference this weekend at a monastery in northern Yangon’s Insein Township.
Large video screens showed supporters the face of Myanmar’s best-known nationalist monk, U Wirathu as he delivered a speech. Books by the monk were on sale alongside other nationalist literature, and copies of a news journal published regularly by Ma Ba Tha.
U Wirathu told the crowd of at least 1,300 monks — plus scores of lay people — that the group would continue to lobby the Myanmar government to protect Buddhism and Buddhists against a perceived threat of expansionist Islam.
The government must not allow people rescued from the Bay of Bengal in the past month to stay in the country, he said.
Following international and regional pressure, Myanmar rescued two boats carrying in total more than 900 people, some from Bangladesh but many thought to be Rohingya born in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The government has deported more than 150 people to Bangladesh, but it is not clear what will happen to the rescued Rohingya, who are not Myanmar citizens and are labeled “Bengalis”.
“They might let them just go into the villages,” U Wirathu warned. “If they do that, then they will launch a jihad against the local Rakhine Buddhists.”
U Wirathu’s brand of extreme Buddhist nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric are growing forces in the country’s politics, with monks treated with deference by the Buddhist majority. Myanmar is expected to vote in November in what could be its freest elections in decades, with Aung San Suu Kyi’s popular opposition, the National League for Democracy, expected to compete.
At the end of its conference, Ma Ba Tha issued a 12-point policy statement, which addressed the approach the group will take to the elections.
It called on the government’s Union Election Commission to hold free and fair polls, and insisted that Ma Ba Tha will not throw its support behind a particular political party. But Ma Ba Tha will encourage the public to consider alleged threats to race and religion when voting, it said.
Ma Ba Tha will “urge the people to vote for MPs who protect race and religion, instead of emphasizing a particular party or people,” the statement said, adding that the highly controversial amendments to the country’s 2008 constitution should also take into account the group’s goals.
“It [constitutional amendments] needs to be done with national security in mind, instead of looking at one particular person and particular party.”
The current charter, drafted under military rule, bars Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president because her two sons are British citizens. It also guarantees the military a prominent role in national politics, with a quarter of parliamentary seats reserved for uniformed officers.
Ma Ba Tha also pledged to step up its lobbying to have a set of laws on race and religion passed.
Four such laws — on population control, interfaith marriage, religious conversion and polygamy — have been drafted by the government at the monks’ behest, with only the population control law so far passed.
Already all but one Muslim candidate has been cleared to run the election; the rest of the Muslim candidates have been disqualified without any valid reason. Their only problem - they are Muslims, who represent anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the population inside Myanmar. But even that small percentage is deemed a threat to Buddhism or what it has become under the toxic influence of terrorist and fascist Buddhist monks like Wirathu and their supporters within the general population.
Muslims, in spite of their birth and continuous ancestral ties to the land of Arakan (Rakhine) state of Burma, have been stripped of their citizenship, and forced to now reapply for residential permits, which is the usual process for outsiders who had come to settle in Myanmar. Thus, Muslim minorities of Myanmar are without any rights in this den of hatred and intolerance called Myanmar. With a clear objective of eliminating them from the political process, their representatives can't even run in the election (although many of them had contested and won in all the previous elections), and thus, their fate is doomed, or so it seems.
As hinted above, rights groups meanwhile dismissed the whole candidate scrutiny and appeals process as a sham.
“The right to stand for election is as fundamental as the right to vote itself. Rejecting Shwe Maung’s candidacy directly undermines the credibility of the upcoming elections,” said Son Chhay, a Cambodian lawmaker and head of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, who yesterday accompanied U Shwe Maung to the commission office.
According to the US-based Carter Center, which is monitoring Myanmar’s election, the exclusion of Muslim residents and the growing anti-Islamic hate speech could undermine the looming polls, and lead to more flare-ups of violence.
Myanmar's future seems sealed now with fascism, the same curse that only saw death, and serious abuses of human rights in the previous century. The role of Buddhist monks, sadly, is a matter of grave concern in this Myanmarism - the toxic cocktail of Buddhist fanaticism and bigotry and racism.
Here is a report from Reuters.
Swathed in crimson robes, 77-year-old Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa shuffles through a crowded conference room with the help of an aide, his supporters standing in respect as he takes a seat at the head of a table under a portrait of his own image.
It is from here, at an unremarkable roadside monastery just outside the city of Yangon, that the abbot is propelling the radical Buddhist group he co-founded into the mainstream of Myanmar's politics.
Four bills drafted by his Committee for the Protection of Race and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha, have been passed by parliament and signed into law. Critics say the new laws effectively legalize discrimination against women and the country's minority Muslims.
Along with political clout, Ma Ba Tha is also ratcheting up its public image ahead of elections in November that will be the first free vote in Myanmar in the last 25 years. The radical Buddhist group has regular programming on one of the country's most popular satellite TV channels and has launched a magazine.
"There should be lawmakers in parliament who are reliable for the country," Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said in an interview. "There might be some people, especially Muslims, who are working on weakening Buddhism, so we need strong people for our religion."
Ma Ba Tha has shown no signs of contesting elections itself but says it will "remind" the public of candidates who opposed its four laws. These include Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which is going head to head with conservatives and military figures in the polls.
Established two years ago, Ma Ba Tha sprang from the "969" movement, a loose collection of monks linked to a wave of violence against the country's Muslim minority in 2012 and 2013.
Senior Ma Ba Tha officials said the 969 movement had raised awareness about threats to Buddhism from a burgeoning Muslim population, but was disorganized and lacked leadership.
"It was (concerned with) only the symbols of Buddhism," said Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa.
Now, a growing number of professionals are offering their expertise on everything from media relations to legislation, helping to shape Ma Ba Tha into a slick organization with popular support and real political clout.
One such expert is Aye Paing, who spent two decades toiling as a lawyer in Myanmar's musty courtrooms before finding a dramatic new use for his legal skills.
Aye Paing and a team of Ma Ba Tha-linked lawyers drafted the protection of race and religion bills, the last of which was signed by President Thein Sein on Monday.
Lawyers, economists, IT experts and other professionals had made Ma Ba Tha "very efficient, systematic and legal" said Aye Paing, 52, who wears a black "taik pone", a short collarless jacket worn over a shirt that is common among Myanmar's legal professionals.
"We discuss, give advice and share our visions," he said.
INTERNATIONAL VISITORS
In another sign of its growing influence, foreign diplomats regularly visit the group's monastery headquarters.
One was U.S. ambassador Derek Mitchell, who went there twice in May to discuss "the need for increased interfaith dialogue" and "the importance of keeping religion out of politics", according to a statement from the U.S. embassy in Yangon.
Myanmar's revered and influential monks led many pro-democracy protests during nearly half a century of military rule in the Buddhist-majority nation. But after a quasi-civilian, reformist government took power in 2011, some outspoken monks claimed Islam was eclipsing Buddhism and weakening the country.
Now, Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa says Ma Ba Tha has 250 offices nationwide. He couldn't estimate how many supporters it has, but in June more than 1,500 people attended the group's annual conference in Yangon.
Ma Ba Tha recently struck a deal with Myanmar's popular satellite television provider, SkyNet, to broadcast its sermons.
The broadcasts would help the public "know the truth" about Ma Ba Tha, said Khine Khine Tun, 25, an articulate former teacher and interpreter who heads the group's international relations department.
Through media training courses, she said, she has learnt to speak to visitors with a smile, confounding expectations of the abrasive and sometimes confrontational style for which the group is known.
The television deal bolsters an information campaign that already includes a bi-monthly magazine with a circulation of 50,000 that contains sermons delivered by Ma Ba Tha monks nationwide.
RACE AND RELIGION
In contrast to long-delayed legislation on banking, mining and property, the Ma Ba Tha-backed "race and religion" bills moved swiftly through parliament.
One bill requires some women to wait at least three years between pregnancies. Another requires Buddhist women to seek official permission before marrying a non-Buddhist man.
This will stop Muslim men "torturing and forcing (Buddhist women) to change religion," Ashin Tilawkar Biwonsa said.
Suu Kyi and her NLD opposed the laws. But government officials and politicians rarely criticize Ma Ba Tha, because they either sympathize with the group's views or fear upsetting its many supporters during an election year.
"They are afraid of Ma Ba Tha," said May Sabi Phyu, the director of the Gender Equality Network, a women's empowerment group that opposed the bills.
Any plans to sway voters would be "violating the law," said NLD spokesman Nyan Win, adding: "It's the government's responsibility to control and stop them."
============
Here below is a disturbing report about fascist activities of Ma Ba Tha.
Myanmar’s radical monks this week staked a claim as a political force, pledging to urge the public to vote with a “nationalist spirit” as the country enters the final months before all-important elections.
The monk-led Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha, has grown in influence since it was formed two years ago this month, an anniversary marked by a conference this weekend at a monastery in northern Yangon’s Insein Township.
Large video screens showed supporters the face of Myanmar’s best-known nationalist monk, U Wirathu as he delivered a speech. Books by the monk were on sale alongside other nationalist literature, and copies of a news journal published regularly by Ma Ba Tha.
U Wirathu told the crowd of at least 1,300 monks — plus scores of lay people — that the group would continue to lobby the Myanmar government to protect Buddhism and Buddhists against a perceived threat of expansionist Islam.
The government must not allow people rescued from the Bay of Bengal in the past month to stay in the country, he said.
Following international and regional pressure, Myanmar rescued two boats carrying in total more than 900 people, some from Bangladesh but many thought to be Rohingya born in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The government has deported more than 150 people to Bangladesh, but it is not clear what will happen to the rescued Rohingya, who are not Myanmar citizens and are labeled “Bengalis”.
“They might let them just go into the villages,” U Wirathu warned. “If they do that, then they will launch a jihad against the local Rakhine Buddhists.”
U Wirathu’s brand of extreme Buddhist nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric are growing forces in the country’s politics, with monks treated with deference by the Buddhist majority. Myanmar is expected to vote in November in what could be its freest elections in decades, with Aung San Suu Kyi’s popular opposition, the National League for Democracy, expected to compete.
At the end of its conference, Ma Ba Tha issued a 12-point policy statement, which addressed the approach the group will take to the elections.
It called on the government’s Union Election Commission to hold free and fair polls, and insisted that Ma Ba Tha will not throw its support behind a particular political party. But Ma Ba Tha will encourage the public to consider alleged threats to race and religion when voting, it said.
Ma Ba Tha will “urge the people to vote for MPs who protect race and religion, instead of emphasizing a particular party or people,” the statement said, adding that the highly controversial amendments to the country’s 2008 constitution should also take into account the group’s goals.
“It [constitutional amendments] needs to be done with national security in mind, instead of looking at one particular person and particular party.”
The current charter, drafted under military rule, bars Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president because her two sons are British citizens. It also guarantees the military a prominent role in national politics, with a quarter of parliamentary seats reserved for uniformed officers.
Ma Ba Tha also pledged to step up its lobbying to have a set of laws on race and religion passed.
Four such laws — on population control, interfaith marriage, religious conversion and polygamy — have been drafted by the government at the monks’ behest, with only the population control law so far passed.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Myanmar rejects all but one Muslim candidates from running in the election
Myanmar has been setting new low standards in intolerance and bigotry against religious minorities, esp. the Rohingya people, that is unheard of in our time. As noted by Dr. Maung Zarni, Nazi-like songs, full of hatred, anger, ignorance and racism against Muslim minorities, have become very popular amongst the Buddhist population. Commenting on one of those songs "We will fence our nation with our bones", Dr. Zarni says, "Listening repeatedly to it for transcribing and translating it gave me goose-bumps and I felt chill down my spines for the non-Buddhists, especially Muslims."
Here below is the translation of the song (courtesy of Dr. Zarni).
=============
"We will fence our nation with our bones"
Buddha's Wisdom shines over our land
xxx
In defence of Bama race and Buddhist faith we will stand at the front line.
These people (the infidels/Muslims) live on our (Buddhist) soil.
They drink our water.
They break our rules.
They suck our wealth.
And they insult us the host.
They destroy our youth.
Alas, they are just one ungrateful, worthless creatures.
We are one Buddhist brotherhood, now joining hands as One.
We shall pledge to join hands as One.
We do pledege to join hands as One.
We will be loyal and faithful to our Race and our (Buddhist) Faith.
We will only do business with those who share our Buddhist faith.
We will only marry those who share our Buddhist faith.
Hey, shall we
talk about our national affairs.
Let our nationalist consciousness awake!
(Chorus)
We will fence our nation with our bones.
If you show us your (hateful) sword
We will surely reciprocate in kind.
We will fence our nation with our bones.
If you show us your (hateful) sword
we will surely reciprocate in kind.
We will fence our nation with our bones.
If you show us your (hateful) sword
We will surely reciprocate in kind.
===
Dr. Zarni writes, "I stand by my choice of characterization of my own birthplace - once the anchor of my consciouness and existence as neo-Nazi "Buddhist" country and its Nazi-like racism and racist society and politics. It takes an extraordinary degree of delusions and self-deception to use the word 'progress' in reference to my country. The worst is as yet to come."
His statement says it all about the direction Myanmar has been going. So, we should not be surprised about the latest news (see below) that Myanmar’s Union Election Commission (UEC) on Tuesday has rejected all but one candidate from a Muslim party based on its highly controversial and discriminatory citizenship requirements before general elections in November in a move that could lead to the party’s disbandment.
The commission rejected the applications of 17 of 18 candidates who had filed to run for parliamentary seats as members of the Democracy and Human Rights Party (DHRP), Kyaw Min (a) Mahmood Shomshul Anwarul Haque, the party’s chairman, told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
Eleven of the rejected candidates are from Rakhine state, and the six others are from the Yangon division, he said, leaving only one party candidate to stand in the elections.
“The rejection notice did not mention detailed reasons behind the decision, but just said the candidates were rejected for violations based on laws and regulations,” he said.
The DHRP is preparing to appeal to the UEC within seven days, although it has not filed yet, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya candidate who himself was rejected, although he was a member of the parliament elected in 1990 elections.
If the UEC rejects the party’s appeal, the DHRP, which was founded by Muslim politicians and activists, would be deregistered under a provision in the country’s Political Parties Registration Law that requires a party to put forth at least three candidates or face disbandment.
By law, the DHRP cannot replace the rejected candidates, Kyaw Min said.
“If rejected, our party will be forced to disband due to [an insufficient] required number of candidates needed to survive after the elections,” he said.
Terms of disqualification
So far, the UEC commission has rejected nearly 50 candidates in total—24 candidates from Rakhine state, including the ones from the DHRP, and 25 from the Yangon division.
The candidates rejected in Rakhine state’s Maungdaw district, where the majority of people are Muslim Rohingya, were disqualified based on two sections of the election law — section 8(e) which bars people from running for office if their parents were not Myanmar citizens at the time of their birth, and section 10(e) which requires candidates to have lived in the country for the past consecutive 10 years, according to local media reports.
All the candidates from Rakhine state are Rohingya, whom the Myanmar government views as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and refers to them as “Bengalis,” although many have lived there for generations.
Kyaw Min, however, pointed out that all the rejected DHRP candidates have citizenship cards or national registration cards.
“The rejection is based not on law; they don’t want to give us [political] space,” said Kyaw Min. “If it’s in the law, they why could we stand in the past? We could stand in the 1990 elections as well as the 2010 elections.”
“We are discouraged by the decision, and we don’t see this is a good sign,” he said. “I think the words like ‘all-inclusiveness’ and ‘transparency’ are not that right here in this case.”
NLD voices disagreement
The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party has called the UEC’s rejection of candidates based on the election law’s citizenship requirements “unconstitutional.”
“It is not constitutional [because] according to the constitution, every citizen has equal rights,” NLD spokesman Nyan Win told RFA Tuesday after political party leaders met with UEC members in Yangon. “The rejection of candidates based on the citizenship of their parents is in my opinion an infringement upon the equal rights of citizens.”
One of the NLD’s own candidates, Tun Min Soe who had planned to run in Rakhine state, was rejected because he lived in Bangladesh in 2006, according to a report in The Myanmar Times.
Last week, officials rejected an application from Shwe Maung, a Rohingya lawmaker from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), to run for reelection because his parents were not citizens when he was born. He was planning to run as an independent candidate in the Nov. 8 elections.
Shwe Maung, who denies that his parents were not citizens, tried to appeal the decision on Tuesday before the Rakhine state election sub-commission in Sittwe, but was further disqualified, according to a report by the online journal The Irrawaddy. He plans to appeal to election commission in Naypyidaw.
=============
Myanmar remains the most racist and bigotry-ridden country in our time. Its discriminatory practices against the Rohingya and other Muslim candidates who were born and raised inside Myanmar once again underscores its savagery and intolerance.
Myanmar signs into law another discriminatory bill
The news below is from Reuters:
Myanmar's president on Monday signed into law the last of four controversial bills championed by radical Buddhists but decried by rights groups as aimed at discriminating against the country's Muslim minority.
Myanmar, which will hold its first democratic national poll in more than two decades on Nov. 8, has seen a flowering of anti-Muslim hate speech since the military gave up full power and opened up politics and the economy in 2011.
President Thein Sein signed the Monogamy Bill after it was passed by parliament on August 21, Zaw Htay, a senior official at the president's office, told Reuters. The law was briefly sent back to parliament for review before being signed.
The bill sets punishments for people who have more than one spouse or live with an unmarried partner other than the spouse.
The government denies it is aimed at Muslims, estimated to make up about 5 percent of the population, and some of whom practice polygamy.
The president also signed two other laws, which restrict religious conversion and interfaith marriage, on August 26, Zaw Htay said.
The measures are part of four "Race and Religion Protection Laws" championed by the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha.
The laws were dangerous for Myanmar, said an official of New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"They set out the potential for discrimination on religious grounds and pose the possibility for serious communal tension," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
"Now that these laws are on the books, the concern is how they are implemented and enforced."
In May, the president signed a Ma Ba Tha-backed population control bill that forces some women to space three years between each birth.
The monk-led group has stoked sentiment against Muslims, whom it has accused of trying to take over Myanmar and outbreed its Buddhist majority.
Hundreds of people have been killed in flare-ups of religious violence in Myanmar. In 2012, an incident in Rakhine State led to the displacement of more than 140,000 people, most of them members of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority.
Myanmar's president on Monday signed into law the last of four controversial bills championed by radical Buddhists but decried by rights groups as aimed at discriminating against the country's Muslim minority.
Myanmar, which will hold its first democratic national poll in more than two decades on Nov. 8, has seen a flowering of anti-Muslim hate speech since the military gave up full power and opened up politics and the economy in 2011.
President Thein Sein signed the Monogamy Bill after it was passed by parliament on August 21, Zaw Htay, a senior official at the president's office, told Reuters. The law was briefly sent back to parliament for review before being signed.
The bill sets punishments for people who have more than one spouse or live with an unmarried partner other than the spouse.
The government denies it is aimed at Muslims, estimated to make up about 5 percent of the population, and some of whom practice polygamy.
The president also signed two other laws, which restrict religious conversion and interfaith marriage, on August 26, Zaw Htay said.
The measures are part of four "Race and Religion Protection Laws" championed by the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha.
The laws were dangerous for Myanmar, said an official of New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"They set out the potential for discrimination on religious grounds and pose the possibility for serious communal tension," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
"Now that these laws are on the books, the concern is how they are implemented and enforced."
In May, the president signed a Ma Ba Tha-backed population control bill that forces some women to space three years between each birth.
The monk-led group has stoked sentiment against Muslims, whom it has accused of trying to take over Myanmar and outbreed its Buddhist majority.
Hundreds of people have been killed in flare-ups of religious violence in Myanmar. In 2012, an incident in Rakhine State led to the displacement of more than 140,000 people, most of them members of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority.
West Point instructor resigned after calling for attacks on Islamic holy places
There are no shortages of hatemongering guys and gals in our world. Not all racists and bigots, however, are dangerous. But some are extremely dangerous because of the position they hold and the influence they create on others. For years, there have been serious criticism of training materials on the Middle East and other religions (esp. Islam) within the institutions of higher learning of the armed forces of the USA.
My attention to this chronic problem was drawn some years ago in the aftermath of 9/11. I was shocked to learn that officers and cadets are taught highly provocative, inaccurate and defamatory information about Arabs that was written in a book by an Israeli scholar who is well known as an ardent racist and bigot. Obviously, it is not difficult to see the impact of those faulty learning or brainwashing on members of our armed forces who are tuned to become mesmerized pawns entertaining unfathomed hostility and intolerance towards the Arabs. Such cannot be a healthy attitude for any military, and surely not for the people in military uniform serving the USA in our time in a world that is seemingly plagued by war and violence.
The Guardian of the UK has reported about a (charlatan) law professor of the US Military Academy at West Point who published an inflammatory article urging attacks on law professors and “Islamic holy sites”. It is worth noting that West Point is the revered undergraduate institution north of New York City where the US army educates its future officer corps. It prides itself on the rigor of its curriculum. West Point is known for its honor code, by which every cadet is expected to abide: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.” Its graduates are judged by it during their entire careers in uniform.
Representatives from the school said William Bradford had only begun his employment there on 1 August. He has been dogged by accusations of misrepresenting his academic and military credentials and has resigned under pressure.
As it is often the case, most of the racists and bigots are liars, and so is the case with Bradford.
In the paper, Bradford identifies himself as an “associate professor of law, national security and strategy, National Defense University”, seemingly his previous job before West Point. But a representative of the National Defense University said Bradford was a contractor at the prestigious Defense Department-run institution, “never an NDU employee nor an NDU professor”.
It appears not to be the first time Bradford misrepresented his credentials. He resigned from Indiana University’s law school in 2005 after his military record showed he had exaggerated his service. (Among his paper’s criticisms of supposedly treasonous lawyers is “intellectual dishonesty”.)
Bradford has had a checkered academic career. In 2004, he quit a job teaching at the Indiana University School of Law after allegations emerged that he had exaggerated his military service, portraying himself inaccurately as a Gulf War veteran, an infantryman and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Star, an award for gallantry in action.
The army provided Bradford’s releasable service history to the Guardian on Monday. Bradford was commissioned into the army as a second lieutenant – the same rank West Point cadets hold upon commissioning – in 1995 and served the majority of his six-year service in military intelligence in the army reserve. He neither deployed nor earned any awards.
In 2005, the Guardian has learned, Bradford took a visiting professorship at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, teaching property law. A former student who wished to remain anonymous said Bradford’s behavior included “doing push-ups in class [and] making students stand and give answers in a military-like manner”.
Bradford, the former student said, ended up leaving his class – and ultimately the college – without grading the final exam.
Bradford urges the US to wage “total war” on “Islamism”, using “conventional and nuclear force and [psychological operations]”, in order to “leave them prepared to coexist with the West or be utterly eradicated”. He suggests in a footnote that “threatening Islamic holy sites might create deterrence, discredit Islamism, and falsify the assumption that decadence renders Western restraint inevitable”.
Bradford went on to argue that “total war” against terrorism ought to include military targeting of “Islamic holy sites”, in order to restore an American deterrent. He acknowledged “great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties and civilian collateral damage” were entailed in his proposal, and suggested that dissent ought to be curbed.
“[D]oubts and disputes about this war [should] be muted lest around them coalesce a new set of self-imposed restraints that prevent Western forces from waging war with sufficient ferocity and resolve so that either Islamism is discredited and the political will of Islamist peoples to prosecute a jihad collapses, or, if necessary, all who countenance or condone Islamism are dead,” Bradford wrote.
Bradford recently published an academic article titled, in translation, “The Treason of the Professors”. The lengthy paper, which has been repudiated by its journal editor as a “mistake”, accused a “clique of about 40” law professors of active collaboration with “Islamist” organizations and recommended targeting them as enemy combatants.
The National Security Law Journal’s editor-in-chief has called the article’s publication a “mistake” and an “egregious breach of professional decorum”.
Supplementing military action, Bradford recommended that Congress investigate links between the professors and “Islamism” under “a renewed version of the House Un-American Activities Committee”, which was one of the vehicles for the discredited “Red Scare” hunts for Communists in the 1950s. “Treason prosecutions shore up national unity, deter disloyalty, and reflect the seriousness with which the nation regards betrayal in war,” Bradford wrote.
The US military’s educational institutions have come under fire before for promoting “total war” against Islam. In 2012, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, ordered a comprehensive scouring of anti-Islam training material after a course proposed “Hiroshima” tactics against Islamic holy sites, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary”.
The previous year, highly regarded counter-terrorism scholars affiliated with the US army aided the FBI in eradicating similar material from its own training. Those scholars came from West Point.
You can read the full Guardian story by clicking here.
Gang rape of women becoming common in India
Gang rape of girls and women is becoming quite common these days in India, esp. when the victims come from disadvantaged economic and religious groups.
Here below is the latest news about such an incident reported by the Daily Beast.
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The girls, from the “untouchable” caste, are being punished for their brother’s elopement with a married woman.
The sisters, one 15 and the other 23, were condemned to this brutal fate by an informal legal system with a history of doling out egregious punishments. Their so-called crime was that their brother eloped with a married woman of a higher caste. The sisters and their family are from the Dalit caste, commonly called Untouchables, which is the lowest in the Indian social hierarchy. On July 30, the village council in the northern Indian district of Baghpat decreed that the two sisters would be raped, then paraded around their village naked, with their faces covered in black paint.
The ruling from this all-male panel is not legally valid, but these unelected panels called khap panchaya controversially act as courts throughout the country and still command power.
The family has already fled the town, seeking refuge in Delhi in May.
Earlier this month, the elder sister petitioned the country’s highest court to protect her family, whose home was ransacked. “After we went to the Supreme Court, the villagers are even more aggressive,” the sisters’ other brother told Amnesty International.
India’s Supreme Court previously ruled that the village court’s decrees are not legally binding, but that hasn’t fully eliminated the system.
A petition released by Amnesty International this week has already garnered nearly 30,000 signatures.
“Revenge rape” as a punishment for a woman or her family member’s crimes isn’t unheard of in the region. It’s traditionally seen as a way to ruin a family’s worth, by tarnishing its honor and ruining a daughter’s chances for marriage. Last year, a 22-year-old woman was left in critical condition after village elders ordered 13 men to rape her as punishment for her relationship with a man outside the community. The attackers were later arrested by police.
July of last year saw the rape of a 14-year-old whose brother was accused of sexual assaulting a married woman. The woman’s husband was ordered to dole out the punishment, and took her into the woods as the village looked on.
The issue has commanded worldwide attention before—notably in a 2002 case in Pakistan, when a victim of this savage “justice” took her attackers to court and was paid restitution. “I tried to commit suicide twice after the incident because I felt like I wasn’t getting any justice,” she told the BBC last year. “What happened to me is another form of honor killing.”
A perferct picture of occupation from Ha'aretz
Occupation is always brutal and inhuman. It violates human rights of all those under occupation. The life of ordinary Palestinians living under occupation is no different. You can read the report from Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on victims of occupation by clicking here.
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