country:indonesia

  • "Hacia un pensamiento Islámico decolonial"

    En una mañana de julio en Madrid me encontraba disfrutando de una ponencia del profesor Enrique Dussel y en medio del receso tuve la oportunidad de encontrarme con Sirin Adlbi Sibai a quien había conocido anteriormente por su conferencia “Mas allá del feminismo islámico: hacia un pensamiento islámico decolonial”, la cual, despertó un gran interés en mi por leer y conocer más sobre su trabajo. En sus artículos “Colonialidad, feminismo e Islam” y “Hacia un pensamiento islámico decolonial” Sirin hace un análisis crítico de las bases que sostienen las mayores desigualdades y discriminaciones en el sistema-mundo en el que vivimos hoy y cómo dichas bases se han constituido y han afectado de manera radical a la humanidad; pero sobre todo, cómo el mundo moderno occidentalocéntrico ha afectado a la vida de lxshumanxs (y también la de lxs no humanxs) tanto dentro y fuera de los territorios colonizados. Por todo ello, le manifesté a Sirin mi deseo de entrevistarle para que nos explicase cuestiones que se encuentran en el debate público como lo es el feminismo islámico, la islamofobia y el hiyab de la mujer musulmana, además de que nos cuente un poco de su perspectiva sobre la situación de lxsdesplazadxs por la guerra en Siria y la penosa actitud de los gobiernos europeos ante esta situación.

    Aprovecho este espacio de la entrevista para celebrar y dar a conocer su nuevo libro “La cárcel del feminismo. Hacia un pensamiento Islámico decolonial” publicado en Akal en la colección Inter Pares [1]

    Podrías darnos una breve explicación de qué es el decolonialismo epistémico, para que nos cuentes ¿porqué partes desde estos fundamentos en tus estudios y cual es la importancia, en la actualidad, de promover un conocimiento decolonial? y ¿qué es la violencia epistémica y cómo se ejerce?

    Para comprender qué es la decolonialidad epistémica, tenemos que entender, reconocer y concienciarnos primero de la existencia y práctica estructural, sistémica y sistemática de la violencia colonial epistémica y epistemológica desde hace más de 500 años aproximadamente y hasta la actualidad. También, entender cuáles han sido sus dispositivos de funcionamiento y analizar, visibilizar y denunciar los epistemicidios y los extractivismos epistemológicos que ha generado y sigue haciéndolo.

    La colonialidad es el aparato de poder que se refiere a cómo las jerarquías globales (laborales, epistémicas, lingüísticas, espirituales, etno-raciales, sexuales, culturales, etc.) se imbrican entre sí y se articulan en torno al mercado capitalista global, a la idea de raza y al sistema de sexo-género y constituye el reverso de la modernidad occidentalocéntrica. No hay modernidad sin colonialidad.

    La modernidad occidentalocéntrica se funda y genera entorno a una matriz dualista-negacionista: YO-EL OTRO, dibujada sobre la línea de lo humano: SER-NO SER. Algo que ya dijo Fanon y desarrollan Grosfoguel y Boaventura, caracterizándolo éste último como el pensamiento abismal.

    En contra del mito occidentalocéntrico de una modernidad lineal y auto-instituida (Dussel) que sostiene que la modernidad empieza en una punta de Europa y acaba en la otra: Grecia y Roma hasta llegar a la Revolución Industrial y la Ilustración, la modernidad occidentalocéntrica comienza en 1492, que es cuando Europa se convierte por primera vez verdaderamente en “centro” del mundo con el control de las rutas de comercio internacional y tiene lugar el despliegue del sistema-mundo moderno/colonial.

    Lo que sucede entonces es que una experiencia local y concreta se violenta como imposición universal válida para todo tiempo y lugar y como medida de todo. Ahí podemos empezar a hablar ya del surgimiento del privilegio epistemológico y el epistemicidio. Cuando Europa destruye a las otras civilizaciones y se apropia de todas sus riquezas materiales, culturales, epistemológicas, filosóficas, etc., las interioriza e integra en su proyecto moderno-colonizador-civilizador y usurpa el lugar de un universalismo abstracto invisibilizando y deshumanizando el resto de la existencia y todos los ejercicios de violencia, genocidio, expropiación y apropiación que debe hacer para ubicarse ahí donde lo ha hecho.

    En segundo lugar, la designación de los saberes no occidentales como “tradicionales”, los ubicaba y los ubica hasta el día de hoy, como residuos de un pasado sin futuro, siendo éste propiedad exclusiva de Occidente y estableciéndose por lo tanto la imposibilidad fáctica de acceso por parte de cualquier otra forma cultural, civilizacional, social, política, lingüística o epistemológica, ni al presente, ni al futuro. Condenando, por lo tanto, a todos “los otros” al silencio y a la invisibilización a través de la imposición de un único camino de acceso a los mismos a través de los marcos modernos occidentales, lo cual supone un ejercicio perverso de múltiple anulación y auto-anulación que únicamente perpetúa un monólogo occidental y occidentalocéntrico infinito, que podemos identificar, no sólo como la colonialidad del saber, sino también como otra forma enredada con ella que es la de una colonialidad espacio-temporal.

    Todo esto dibuja, en cierto modo, algunos de los aspectos de lo que yo denomino en mi trabajo la cárcel epistemológico-existencial y espacio-temporal del sistema-mundo moderno/colonial que va a marcar al mundo quién puede hablar, cómo se puede hablar y desde dónde se puede hablar.

    Después de esta muy “breve” introducción es posible intuir cómo los principales conceptos que utilizan las ciencias sociales están impregnados de colonialidad y de violencia epistémica, lo que trunca mediante un macabro ejercicio todas las posibilidades de “pensar”, “hablar” o “ser” de los sujetos colonizados/racializados ubicándolos y re-ubicándolos indefinidamente en el NO SER…en una irracional racionalidad de violencia y aniquilación. De ahí la necesidad ineludible y la urgencia de la descolonización epistemológica, de revisar todos los términos, los conceptos, el uso que hacemos de-con ellos y su trasfondo y cuestionarnos nuestros puntos referenciales de partida, todas y cada una de las categorías que utilizamos. De otro modo, estaremos participando en la reproducción indefinida de la producción de saber y (des)conocimiento colonial con todas las consecuencias, materiales en última instancia, de subalternización y aniquilación de dos terceras partes de la Humanidad.

    Ahora con la oleada de migración de personas sirias, también de países africanos por culpa de los conflictos armados y en medio de la palpable exhibición del racismo de Europa desde su propio seno ¿Cuál es tu perspectiva de todo este panorama cómo mujer proveniente de Siria y como investigadora que ha trabajado la decolonialidad por varios años desde dentro y fuera de Europa?

    Lo que hoy estamos viviendo en Siria, que es la mayor catástrofe y genocidio de los últimos siglos, es consecuencia directa del colonialismo y la colonialidad, que ha mantenido en el poder en los países árabes a mafias corruptas que sirven a los intereses de las principales potencias. Occidente se ha aliado con Rusia (ese héroe de la izquierda marxista-leninista racista y colonial que no duda en apoyar el genocidio de todo el pueblo sirio en nombre de un anti-imperialismo trasnochado) para mantener en el poder al clan de los Asad y no permitir la democratización de Siria que tendría la consecuencia necesaria de la disposición y autodeterminación de los sirios sobre sus bienes y riquezas. Las personas que están muriendo en las fronteras de la Europa enferma, huían de la muerte de las bombas asadíes-ruso-iraníes-occidentales. No nos han dejado vivir en nuestros países con dignidad, libertad y justicia, han desplazado masivamente a la población para seguir implementando sus agendas de saqueo. Nadie querría ir a Europa y abandonar su hogar si puede seguir viviendo dignamente en él, sólo huyen de la muerte para volvérsela a encontrar de frente. Parece que nuestro único destino como infrahumanos es el camino de la muerte y de la aniquilación, en todas su formas. Pero como decía Cesaire, en esta política está inscrita la pérdida de Europa misma, que si no toma precauciones, perecerá por el vacío que creó alrededor de ella.

    Siguiendo con el tema del racismo y colonialidad pero enfocándonos más en el mundo árabe; se habla constantemente en los medios de comunicación sobre islamofobia como la discriminación a las personas que practican el Islam, nos podrías contar ¿qué es el Islam? y ¿cómo nace la islamofobia en occidente?

    Yo defino el Islam como una forma de ser, estar, saber, conocer, sentir y relacionarse en/con la existencia, con la realidad y la naturaleza. El Islam no es una “religión”, este es un concepto cristianocéntrico y occidentalocéntrico que ha sido empleado para la colonización del resto del mundo y de todas las formas plurales de existencia/conocimiento en el mundo. El Islam es una ética y praxis de la más absoluta liberación de todas las formas de esclavitud: el egoísmo, el materialismo, el exhibicionismo, las apariencias, el consumismo. Es un orden de valores y es, como diría AbdelmuminAya, una vuelta a la fitra, naturaleza original y es asumir la deuda que tenemos con la realidad, con la existencia y con todas sus cosas y sus criaturas. El Islam es compasión, humildad, generosidad. Es como dice el filósofo musulmán Taha Abderrahman, una epistemología del Ethos. El componente ético es estructural y transversal y dota de todo sentido y forma al Islam. Así mismo el Islam no es un conjunto de dogmas y doctrinas. En el Islam no hay ninguno de estos dos, sino que es sobre todo una experiencia. No se cree en el Islam, el Islam se experimenta, se vive y se siente y ésas formas, por la naturaleza misma de los seres humanos y de las sociedades, son plurales, multiformes y heterogéneas y es que el Islam es así. Los más de 1600 millones de musulmanes que hay en el mundo, no practican un solo Islam. Pertenecen a todo tipo de culturas y hablan todo tipo de idiomas y por consiguiente tienen también formas muy dispares de experimentar y comprender el Islam.

    La islamofobia es un aparato de poder colonial que hunde sus raíces en el despliegue del sistema-mundo moderno-colonial. Es un dispositivo que específicamente se ocupa de la subhumanización, epistemicidio y aniquilación del Islam y los musulmanes, mediante marcos discursivos y conceptuales que han ido transformándose en las diferentes coyunturas históricas y que en la actualidad se entreteje entorno a los discursos coloniales del desarrollo/el feminismo/el terrorismo/la democratización/la liberalización, etc. Desde aquí se ve ya que trabajo con una concepción alejada del clásico que sostiene muy limitadamente que es una forma de racismo entendido como “el odio al Islam y a los musulmanes”.

    Además la islamofobia, como dispositivo de poder colonial, es triplemente generizada: en el sentido de quién la genera: las instituciones del sistema-mundo moderno/colonial, cómo se genera (a través de qué): del objeto colonial “mujer musulmana con hiyab”; y sobre quién tiene mayor incidencia: las mujeres musulmanas. De este modo estoy planteando una comprensión de la islamofobia que difiere de la sostenida por YasmineZine que habla de un tipo específico de islamofobia que ella denomina como “islamofobia de género”. En mi concepción, la generización no se da en una tipología específica derivada de la islamofobia, sino que atraviesa, estructura, sistematiza y racionaliza todo el aparato de la islamofobia. Es decir, que no hay islamofobia sin género. Esta diferencia es crucial a la hora de concienciarnos, comprender y analizar la fundación-funcionamiento del dispositivo colonial islamófobo y por lo tanto, incide determinantemente en la transformación de los diseños de las resistencias/luchas contra la islamofobia/colonialidad.

    Situándonos en tu trabajo de investigación; sobre la mujer en concreto describes en tus artículos que “la mujer musulmana con hiyab es un argumento islamofóbico que favorece el discurso liberal occidental” ¿podrías explicarnos este argumento?

    Cuando en la respuesta anterior hablo de la triple generización de la islamofobia, me refiero a un tipo de producción de la misma basada en discursos, “la mujer musulmana con hiyab oprimida, subyugada, analfabeta, sumisa” no representa a ningún sujeto real, de hecho, “la mujer musulmana con hiyab” mismamente, así en singular y sin el resto de adjetivos, también es una categoría sumamente problemática. Entonces esa “mujer musulmana con hiyab” es lo que yo denomino un objeto colonial sexuado y feminizado, prototipo supremo de la mujer del Tercer Mundo de la que hablaba Mohanty, un objeto de intervención y clasificación, a través del cual se han colonizado y se sigue colonizando la civilización arabo-islámica: las sociedades y los individuos árabo-musulmanes, sus culturas, sus sociedades, su cosmovisión y todo lo que son. La producción de “la mujer musulmana con hiyab oprimida” se trata del pilar fundamental que va a estructurar todo el edificio islamófobo en sus diferentes vertientes y formas.

    En occidente se considera el hiyab como una institución simbólica del patriarcado árabe, sin embargo las feministas decoloniales lo niegan. ¿Porqué?

    Occidente que se ha autoerigido en portavoz de la humanidad, se ha adueñado de todos los términos y los conceptos, practicando sus violencias y sustracciones epistemológicas. Ha robado la voz de las y los colonizados y el derecho de éstos a desarrollar sus propias formas de ver y entender el mundo. En este contexto, el hiyab es relacionado por parte del colonizador occidental con opresión, sumisión, subyugación o cuanto menos, tradicionalismo, subdesarrollo y retraso, silenciándonos e invisibilizándonos por completo a las mujeres musulmanas que lo vestimos como ejercicio de nuestro pleno derecho a expresarnos del modo y la forma en el que nosotras queramos hacerlo. El colonizador occidental también pretende hacer de policía y salvaguarda de unos derechos y unas libertades que es quien en primera instancia priva al resto de la humanidad de ellos. Ejercemos nuestro pleno derecho a vestir como nosotras consideramos más adecuado, según nuestros valores y nuestra cosmovisión y nos vemos acosadas sistemáticamente por un sistema que pretende mediante la manipulación de los conceptos que demos explicaciones continuas sobre todo lo que hacemos y dejamos de hacer, cómo vestimos, cómo vivimos y casi cómo respiramos. Pero claro que esta práctica de regulación sobre los cuerpos y las vidas de las mujeres no se limita sólo a las mujeres musulmanas, sino a las mujeres en todo el mundo, ya que el sistema es intrínsecamente patriarcal. Solo que las mujeres no occidentales, sufren violencias mucho más complejas, puesto que se hayan intersectadas por la más destructiva y brutal estructura de poder que es la de la colonialidad que Occidente practica contra ellas, reforzando de una manera sistemática los patriarcados y otras estructuras de poder locales que afectan a las vidas de las otras mujeres no occidentales.

    Los patriarcados locales que en las sociedades musulmanas se apropian igualmente del Verbo, de su interpretación y de su puesta en práctica, forzando a las mujeres musulmanas a vestir en ocasiones y en otras a dejar de vestir el hiyab, son reforzados por el patriarcado occidental sobre el Islam. En medio estamos nosotras, las mujeres musulmanas que luchamos por rescatar al Islam de manos de unos y otros para vivirlo en plenitud, lejos de imposiciones y violencias.

    El problema principal respecto a los significados secuestrados del hiyab es que tanto Occidente como algunos sectores patriarcales islámicos obsesionados ambos con los cuerpos de las mujeres y la regulación sobre ellos, han colonizado y limitado, reduciendo hasta el absurdo la ética global islámica extremadamente sofisticada respecto a los cuerpos de los hombres y las mujeres en general, pero más aún, el hiyab se está utilizando de modo que llegue a constituir un verdadero “velo” respecto al significado y el sentido global de todo el Islam, que es en primer lugar, como ya he dicho, una epistemología ética de liberación.

    Ante esto, hay una corriente mayoritaria de mujeres musulmanas (al contrario de la imagen que los medios promueven y promocionan) que deciden llevar el hiyab y lo hacen desde una plena conciencia de su práctica espiritual transgresora y liberadora, frente a todos aquellos que pretenden imponerles tanto sus visiones deformes de una modernidad colonial como sus interpretaciones tergiversadas del Islam.

    Debido a las diferentes formas de discriminación y violencia hacia la mujer árabe, ya no solo desde los prejuicios coloniales occidentales sino desde las propias estructuras patriarcales del mundo árabe, se ha generado una corriente teórica y activista que reivindica los derechos de la mujer, denominándose así misma como feminismo Islámico, ¿cómo se complementa el feminismo con el islam y cuáles son sus principales demandas?

    Bueno, primero habría que aclarar, que las feministas islámicas más destacadas, no son árabes. Aunque sí musulmanas de EEUU, Malasia, Indonesia, Irán o India, entre otros. También me gustaría subrayar (algo sobre lo que espero haber podido arrojar algo de luz en las respuestas anteriores) que no estamos hablando de simples “prejuicios coloniales” sino de estructuras de poder muy profundas institucionales e institucionalizadas.

    El término “feminismo islámico”, tal y como se ha empleado por parte de las académicas y los medios de comunicación encierra no poca confusión y se mezclan y confunden a menudo los feminismos árabes con los autodenominados feminismos islámicos o con cualquier movimiento femenino que surja en los países árabes y/o musulmanes. Lo cierto es que hay una gran diversidad de movimientos y discursos que son sumamente heterogéneos y que pueden ser incluso contradictorios.

    Si nos referimos a los feminismos islámicos como aquellos que primero se autodenominan a sí mismos como tal y que segundo basan su activismo feminista en el Corán, el hadiz (hechos y dichos del Profeta Muhammad, sAaws) y la sunna (biografía del Profeta) y que también presentan lecturas muy diversas según a quién estemos escuchando y según el contexto sociopolítico en el que se elabora dicho discurso, podemos sin embargo, afirmar que efectivamente guardan una base compartida: la de sostener la existencia en el Corán y por tanto en el Islam, de una matriz igualitaria desde la que partir para construir políticas y praxis de liberación de las mujeres musulmanas. Su trabajo, por lo tanto se centra en hacer una revisión de los textos que refuta cualquier discurso misógino, machista y patriarcal que pretenda justificarse en una base islámica, que en todo caso, solo podría hacerse desde la tergiversación de las interpretaciones de los textos islámicos y la historia de la vida y el ejemplo del Profeta Muhammad (sAaws).

    Dicho esto, personalmente no opto por expresarme como “feminista islámica”, como lo hacen otras compañeras mías a las que respeto y admiro. Yo sin embargo, lo hago como “pensadora musulmana decolonial”, y en mi libro La cárcel del feminismo… trato de sostener el por qué. En el mismo, desde la decolonialidad, problematizo los discursos sobre feminismo e Islam y muestro las diversas violencias epistémicas que se enredan en los modos muy particulares de construir estos discursos. Digamos que trato de llevar hasta la última de sus consecuencias la descolonización epistemológica, terminológica y conceptual. Una de mis hipótesis principales es que la producción de los discursos sobre feminismo e Islam, hoy en día, en términos generales e incluida la de los propios discursos de las mujeres musulmanas, aún no han podido trascender la normativa liberal y se hayan encerrados en la cárcel epistemológico-existencial y espacio-temporal. Necesitamos una revolución decolonial en el seno de los diferentes movimientos de mujeres musulmanas que parta de una consciencia plena del epistemicidio occidentalocéntrico, cristianocéntrico, capitalista, blanco, militar, sexista, patriarcal y sus consecuencias para nuestras vidas y por lo tanto, que repiense todos y cada uno de los términos que escogemos para llevar a cabo el ejercicio de la enunciación como sujetos existentes, conscientes y resilientes.

    Dentro de las distintas hermenéuticas que realizan las feministas islámicas al Corán ¿cómo se analiza la figura de Alá desde una perspectiva de género?

    En tu forma de plantear la cuestión hay algunos problemas de partida, en los que mismamente algunas de las compañeras feministas musulmanas han caído. Y esto es por herencia directa de la colonialidad cristianocéntrica. En primer lugar, desde la concepción islámica no podemos hablar de “figura” si nos referimos a Allah, así como tampoco tiene sentido en una lógica islámica aplicar la perspectiva de género (como han hecho algunos trabajos) al estudio de Allah. Ya que en el Islam, Allah no es la figura patriarcal del Dios que existe en la Cristiandad. Allah en el Islam no tiene género, ni número, ni tiempo, ni forma alguna concebible por las capacidades humanas. Allah no es un conjunto de dogmas y conocimientos previos en los que se tiene fe, como sucede con la figura de Dios en la Cristiandad. Allah en el Islam, no es lo que se entiende por Dios en Occidente y no puede traducirse por Dios (AbdelmuminAya). Las y los musulmanes no creemos en Dios, sino que experimentamos a Allah como la existencia misma, y entonces fluimos en esa existencia y en Allah. En su búsqueda a través de la praxis de una epistemología eminentemente Ética.

    Con todo esto, quiero llamar la atención sobre el peso de la colonialidad occidentalocéntrica y cristianocéntrica sobre el resto de epistemologías del mundo, hasta el punto de haber colonizado nuestra propia capacidad de comprendernos a nosotros mismos y a nuestros referentes, nuestra cultura, nuestras maneras (la de todas y todos los sujetos colonizados en su diversidad invisibilizada) de vivir, de ser y de existir.

    Desgraciadamente, las feministas musulmanas que han caído en la trampa de pretender aplicar la perspectiva de género al análisis de Allah no han estado tan alejadas de las formas patriarcales que se imponen en las sociedades árabo-musulmanas, debido, entre otras cosas, a que esas formas patriarcales fueron reforzadas por el patriarcado Occidental sobre el resto del mundo, y en ese ejercicio se envistieron de occidentalocentrismo y cristianocentrismo las formas de opresión patriarcal locales pre-existentes a la colonización. Aplicar por lo tanto, la perspectiva de género al análisis de Allah en vez de mostrar todas las implicaciones de una comprensión tal de Allah, acaba convirtiéndose en un doble ejercicio de subalternidad y colonización de la tradición islámica.

    “El especismo es una forma de discriminación, contra quienes no pertenecen a determinada especie.En la mayoría de sociedades humanas se considera completamente normal discriminar a los animales de otras especies. La manera en que esta discriminación ocurre y su gravedad difiere en cada lugar, y determinados animales son tratados peor en algunos lugares que en otros.” (animal-ethics.org) Algunas feministas occidentales señalan que la propia construcción de la masculinidad patriarcal esta basada en el especismo en la misma medida en que lo está en el sexismo. Dado que debemos oponernos a todas las formas de discriminación y desigualdades injustificadas, incluso cuando las afectadas no son humanas, independientemente del lugar que ocupemos en el sistema-mundo ¿consideras que dentro del feminismo islámico hay cabida para incorporar planteamientos antiespecistas?

    Dentro del Islam es perfectamente posible desarrollar teorizaciones similares. En la concepción occidental capitalista y patriarcal existe un problema original de planteamiento de “la otredad” y de las formas de relacionarse con todo lo que es construido como otredad. Dentro del Islam no existen los mismos problemas de planteamiento. Las y los musulmanes partimos del concepto del TAWHID: la unicidad y unificación de Allah. La unicidad de Allah significa que ya de entrada en nuestra epistemología no existe el dualismo negacionista (Yo-el Otro) de la tradición occidental. La unicidad de Allah es también la unicidad de la Creación de Allah, de la Existencia y en esa existencia todos los seres, humanos y no humanos, las plantas, los animales tienen en el Islam, derechos sobre nosotros. Para ponerte un ejemplo, se relatan en varios hadizes que una persona puede alcanzar el janna-Jardín eterno (mal traducido por paraíso) por haber tratado bien y haber sido compasivo con un animal y lo opuesto, por haberle maltratado.

    https://vientosur.info/spip.php?article11946

    #décolonialisme #décolonial #islam #Sirin_Adlbi_Sibai

    • La cárcel del feminismo

      Inspirándose principalmente en el pensamiento decolonial latinoamericano, en los llamados feminismos de la #Tercera_Ola y en el pensamiento islámico del filósofo marroquí #Taha_Abderrahman, esta obra plantea una crítica profunda a los fundamentos epistemológicos de los feminismos islámicos, a la vez que tantea la urgencia de un pensamiento islámico decolonial como la respuesta y quizás la única, pero no unificada, solución posible a la crisis del pensamiento islámico contemporáneo. Se trata de una invitación a comenzar un recorrido otro de verdadera introspección dialógica intracultural e intracivilizacional islámica cuya premisa básica parte paradójicamente de «la consciencia del No Ser» en el contexto del «imperio de la anulación del Otro» y que nos brinda posibilidades reales de liberación y de regeneración, así como de una reinserción anticapitalista, antisexista, antipatriarcal, antirracista, anticlasista y anticolonial en los presentes y futuros de los que, como sujetos colonizados, hemos sido expulsados.

      Desde una lectura decolonial renovada de la islamofobia como una de las estructuras de poder, control, gobierno y subalternización del Islam y los musulmanes en el sistema-mundo moderno/colonial, esta investigación muestra cómo los discursos feministas islámicos son una respuesta reactiva a la misma. En este sentido, pueden leerse desde lo que Judith Butler ha denominado «la paradoja de la subjetivización», y es que los discursos que resisten tales normas, son en sí mismos habilitados o creados, incluso, por esas mismas normas, lo cual supone una limitación constitutiva que, aunque no anule su capacidad de agencia social, sí los convierte en discursos reiterativos o rearticuladores inherentes al poder.

      https://www.akal.com/libro/la-carcel-del-feminismo_35238
      #féminisme #livre #féminisme_islamique #islamophobie #pouvoir #subjectivisation

  • Indonesia Election Riots in Photos
    https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/05/indonesia-election-riots-photos/590134

    Yesterday in Jakarta, after it was announced that incumbent President Joko Widodo had been reelected as president of Indonesia, beating former General Prabowo Subianto by 11 percentage points, Subianto’s supporters took to the streets.

    Protesters made claims of widespread cheating, and clashed with riot police in several locations in Jakarta, setting fire to vehicles and buildings. Police reportedly responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, arresting hundreds. After 24 hours of chaos, six people were reported to have died in the protests—the cause of their deaths are under investigation—and more than 200 were listed as injured. Subianto says he plans to contest the election results in court.

  • Suffering unseen: The dark truth behind wildlife tourism
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/06/global-wildlife-tourism-social-media-causes-animal-suffering

    I’ve come back to check on a baby. Just after dusk I’m in a car lumbering down a muddy road in the rain, past rows of shackled elephants, their trunks swaying. I was here five hours before, when the sun was high and hot and tourists were on elephants’ backs.

    Walking now, I can barely see the path in the glow of my phone’s flashlight. When the wooden fence post of the stall stops me short, I point my light down and follow a current of rainwater across the concrete floor until it washes up against three large, gray feet. A fourth foot hovers above the surface, tethered tightly by a short chain and choked by a ring of metal spikes. When the elephant tires and puts her foot down, the spikes press deeper into her ankle.

    Meena is four years and two months old, still a toddler as elephants go. Khammon Kongkhaw, her mahout, or caretaker, told me earlier that Meena wears the spiked chain because she tends to kick. Kongkhaw has been responsible for Meena here at Maetaman Elephant Adventure, near Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, since she was 11 months old. He said he keeps her on the spiked shackle only during the day and takes it off at night. But it’s night now.

    I ask Jin Laoshen, the Maetaman staffer accompanying me on this nighttime visit, why her chain is still on. He says he doesn’t know.

    Maetaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-swarmed Chiang Mai. People spill out of tour buses and clamber onto the trunks of elephants that, at the prodding of their mahouts’ bullhooks (long poles with a sharp metal hook), hoist them in the air while cameras snap. Visitors thrust bananas toward elephants’ trunks. They watch as mahouts goad their elephants—some of the most intelligent animals on the planet—to throw darts or kick oversize soccer balls while music blares.

    Meena is one of Maetaman’s 10 show elephants. To be precise, she’s a painter. Twice a day, in front of throngs of chattering tourists, Kongkhaw puts a paintbrush in the tip of her trunk and presses a steel nail to her face to direct her brushstrokes as she drags primary colors across paper. Often he guides her to paint a wild elephant in the savanna. Her paintings are then sold to tourists.

    Meena’s life is set to follow the same trajectory as many of the roughly 3,800 captive elephants in Thailand and thousands more throughout Southeast Asia. She’ll perform in shows until she’s about 10. After that, she’ll become a riding elephant. Tourists will sit on a bench strapped to her back, and she’ll give several rides a day. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides—maybe at 55, maybe at 75—she’ll die. If she’s lucky, she’ll get a few years of retirement. She’ll spend most of her life on a chain in a stall.

    Wildlife attractions such as Maetaman lure people from around the world to be with animals like Meena, and they make up a lucrative segment of the booming global travel industry. Twice as many trips are being taken abroad as 15 years ago, a jump driven partly by Chinese tourists, who spend far more on international travel than any other nationality.

    Wildlife tourism isn’t new, but social media is setting the industry ablaze, turning encounters with exotic animals into photo-driven bucket-list toppers. Activities once publicized mostly in guidebooks now are shared instantly with multitudes of people by selfie-taking backpackers, tour-bus travelers, and social media “influencers” through a tap on their phone screens. Nearly all millennials (23- to 38-year-olds) use social media while traveling. Their selfies—of swims with dolphins, encounters with tigers, rides on elephants, and more—are viral advertising for attractions that tout up-close experiences with animals.

    For all the visibility social media provides, it doesn’t show what happens beyond the view of the camera lens. People who feel joy and exhilaration from getting close to wild animals usually are unaware that many of the animals at such attractions live a lot like Meena, or worse.

    Photographer Kirsten Luce and I set out to look behind the curtain of the thriving wildlife tourism industry, to see how animals at various attractions—including some that emphasize their humane care of animals—are treated once the selfie-taking crowds have gone.

    After leaving Maetaman, we take a five-minute car ride up a winding hill to a property announced by a wooden plaque as “Elephant EcoValley: where elephants are in good hands.” There are no elephant rides here. No paint shows or other performances. Visitors can stroll through an open-air museum and learn about Thailand’s national animal. They can make herbal treats for the elephants and paper from elephant dung. They can watch elephants in a grassy, tree-ringed field.

    EcoValley’s guest book is filled with praise from Australians, Danes, Americans—tourists who often shun elephant camps such as Maetaman because the rides and shows make them uneasy. Here, they can see unchained elephants and leave feeling good about supporting what they believe is an ethical establishment. What many don’t know is that EcoValley’s seemingly carefree elephants are brought here for the day from nearby Maetaman—and that the two attractions are actually a single business.

    Meena was brought here once, but she tried to run into the forest. Another young elephant, Mei, comes sometimes, but today she’s at Maetaman, playing the harmonica in the shows. When she’s not doing that, or spending the day at EcoValley, she’s chained near Meena in one of Maetaman’s elephant stalls.

    Meena Kalamapijit owns Maetaman as well as EcoValley, which she opened in November 2017 to cater to Westerners. She says her 56 elephants are well cared for and that giving rides and performing allow them to have necessary exercise. And, she says, Meena the elephant’s behavior has gotten better since her mahout started using the spiked chain.
    Read MoreWildlife Watch
    Why we’re shining a light on wildlife tourism
    Poaching is sending the shy, elusive pangolin to its doom
    How to do wildlife tourism right

    We sit with Kalamapijit on a balcony outside her office, and she explains that when Westerners, especially Americans, stopped coming to Maetaman, she eliminated one of the daily shows to allot time for visitors to watch elephants bathe in the river that runs through the camp.

    “Westerners enjoy bathing because it looks happy and natural,” she says. “But a Chinese tour agency called me and said, ‘Why are you cutting the show? Our customers love to see it, and they don’t care about bathing at all.’ ” Providing separate options is good for business, Kalamapijit says.

    Around the world Kirsten and I watched tourists watching captive animals. In Thailand we also saw American men bear-hug tigers in Chiang Mai and Chinese brides in wedding gowns ride young elephants in the aqua surf on the island of Phuket. We watched polar bears in wire muzzles ballroom dancing across the ice under a big top in Russia and teenage boys on the Amazon River snapping selfies with baby sloths.

    Most tourists who enjoy these encounters don’t know that the adult tigers may be declawed, drugged, or both. Or that there are always cubs for tourists to snuggle with because the cats are speed bred and the cubs are taken from their mothers just days after birth. Or that the elephants give rides and perform tricks without harming people only because they’ve been “broken” as babies and taught to fear the bullhook. Or that the Amazonian sloths taken illegally from the jungle often die within weeks of being put in captivity.

    As we traveled to performance pits and holding pens on three continents and in the Hawaiian Islands, asking questions about how animals are treated and getting answers that didn’t always add up, it became clear how methodically and systematically animal suffering is concealed.

    The wildlife tourism industry caters to people’s love of animals but often seeks to maximize profits by exploiting animals from birth to death. The industry’s economy depends largely on people believing that the animals they’re paying to watch or ride or feed are having fun too.

    It succeeds partly because tourists—in unfamiliar settings and eager to have a positive experience—typically don’t consider the possibility that they’re helping to hurt animals. Social media adds to the confusion: Oblivious endorsements from friends and trendsetters legitimize attractions before a traveler ever gets near an animal.

    There has been some recognition of social media’s role in the problem. In December 2017, after a National Geographic investigative report on harmful wildlife tourism in Amazonian Brazil and Peru, Instagram introduced a feature: Users who click or search one of dozens of hashtags, such as #slothselfie and #tigercubselfie, now get a pop-up warning that the content they’re viewing may be harmful to animals.

    Everyone finds Olga Barantseva on Instagram. “Photographer from Russia. Photographing dreams,” her bio reads. She meets clients for woodland photo shoots with captive wild animals just outside Moscow.

    For her 18th birthday, Sasha Belova treated herself to a session with Barantseva—and a pack of wolves. “It was my dream,” she says as she fidgets with her hair, which had been styled that morning. “Wolves are wild and dangerous.” The wolves are kept in small cages at a petting zoo when not participating in photo shoots.

    The Kravtsov family hired Barantseva to take their first professional family photos—all five family members, shivering and smiling in the birch forest, joined by a bear named Stepan.

    Barantseva has been photographing people and wild animals together for six years. She “woke up as a star,” she says, in 2015, when a couple of international media outlets found her online. Her audience has exploded to more than 80,000 followers worldwide. “I want to show harmony between people and animals,” she says.

    On a raw fall day, under a crown of golden birch leaves on a hill that overlooks a frigid lake, two-and-a-half-year-old Alexander Levin, dressed in a hooded bumblebee sweater, timidly holds Stepan’s paw.

    The bear’s owners, Yury and Svetlana Panteleenko, ply their star with food—tuna fish mixed with oatmeal—to get him to approach the boy. Snap: It looks like a tender friendship. The owners toss grapes to Stepan to get him to open his mouth wide. Snap: The bear looks as if he’s smiling.

    The Panteleenkos constantly move Stepan, adjusting his paws, feeding him, and positioning Alexander as Barantseva, pink-haired, bundled in jeans and a parka, captures each moment. Snap: A photo goes to her Instagram feed. A boy and a bear in golden Russian woods—a picture straight out of a fairy tale. It’s a contemporary twist on a long-standing Russian tradition of exploiting bears for entertainment.

    Another day in the same forest, Kirsten and I join 12 young women who have nearly identical Instagram accounts replete with dreamy photos of models caressing owls and wolves and foxes. Armed with fancy cameras but as yet modest numbers of followers, they all want the audience Barantseva has. Each has paid the Panteleenkos $760 to take identical shots of models with the ultimate prize: a bear in the woods.

    Stepan is 26 years old, elderly for a brown bear, and can hardly walk. The Panteleenkos say they bought him from a small zoo when he was three months old. They say the bear’s work—a constant stream of photo shoots and movies—provides money to keep him fed.

    A video on Svetlana Panteleenko’s Instagram account proclaims: “Love along with some great food can make anyone a teddy :-)”

    And just like that, social media takes a single instance of local animal tourism and broadcasts it to the world.

    When the documentary film Blackfish was released in 2013, it drew a swift and decisive reaction from the American public. Through the story of Tilikum, a distressed killer whale at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, the film detailed the miserable life orcas can face in captivity. Hundreds of thousands of outraged viewers signed petitions. Companies with partnership deals, such as Southwest Airlines, severed ties with SeaWorld. Attendance at SeaWorld’s water parks slipped; its stock nose-dived.

    James Regan says what he saw in Blackfish upset him. Regan, honeymooning in Hawaii with his wife, Katie, is from England, where the country’s last marine mammal park closed permanently in 1993. I meet him at Dolphin Quest Oahu, an upscale swim-with-dolphins business on the grounds of the beachfront Kahala Hotel & Resort, just east of Honolulu. The Regans paid $225 each to swim for 30 minutes in a small group with a bottlenose dolphin. One of two Dolphin Quest locations in Hawaii, the facility houses six dolphins.

    Bottlenose dolphins are the backbone of an industry that spans the globe. Swim-with-dolphins operations rely on captive-bred and wild-caught dolphins that live—and interact with tourists—in pools. The popularity of these photo-friendly attractions reflects the disconnect around dolphin experiences: People in the West increasingly shun shows that feature animals performing tricks, but many see swimming with captive dolphins as a vacation rite of passage.

    Katie Regan has wanted to swim with dolphins since she was a child. Her husband laughs and says of Dolphin Quest, “They paint a lovely picture. When you’re in America, everyone is smiling.” But he appreciates that the facility is at their hotel, so they can watch the dolphins being fed and cared for. He brings up Blackfish again.

    Katie protests: “Stop making my dream a horrible thing!”

    Rae Stone, president of Dolphin Quest and a marine mammal veterinarian, says the company donates money to conservation projects and educates visitors about perils that marine mammals face in the wild. By paying for this entertainment, she says, visitors are helping captive dolphins’ wild cousins.

    Stone notes that Dolphin Quest is certified “humane” by American Humane, an animal welfare nonprofit. (The Walt Disney Company, National Geographic’s majority owner, offers dolphin encounters on some vacation excursions and at an attraction in Epcot, one of its Orlando parks. Disney says it follows the animal welfare standards of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit that accredits more than 230 facilities worldwide.)

    It’s a vigorous debate: whether even places with high standards, veterinarians on staff, and features such as pools filled with filtered ocean water can be truly humane for marine mammals.

    Dolphin Quest’s Stone says yes.

    Critics, including the Humane Society of the United States, which does not endorse keeping dolphins in captivity, say no. They argue that these animals have evolved to swim great distances and live in complex social groups—conditions that can’t be replicated in the confines of a pool. This helps explain why the National Aquarium, in Baltimore, announced in 2016 that its dolphins will be retired to a seaside sanctuary by 2020.

    Some U.S. attractions breed their own dolphins because the nation has restricted dolphin catching in the wild since 1972. But elsewhere, dolphins are still being taken from the wild and turned into performers.

    In China, which has no national laws on captive-animal welfare, dolphinariums with wild-caught animals are a booming business: There are now 78 marine mammal parks, and 26 more are under construction.

    To have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see rare Black Sea dolphins, people in the landlocked town of Kaluga, a hundred miles from Moscow, don’t have to leave their city. In the parking lot of the Torgoviy Kvartal shopping mall, next to a hardware store, is a white inflatable pop-up aquarium: the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium. It looks like a children’s bouncy castle that’s been drained of its color.

    Inside the puffy dome, parents buy their kids dolphin-shaped trinkets: fuzzy dolls and Mylar balloons, paper dolphin hats, and drinks in plastic dolphin tumblers. Families take their seats around a small pool. The venue is so intimate that even the cheapest seats, at nine dollars apiece, are within splashing distance.

    “My kids are jumping for joy,” says a woman named Anya, motioning toward her two giddy boys, bouncing in their seats.

    In the middle of the jubilant atmosphere, in water that seems much too shallow and much too murky, two dolphins swim listlessly in circles.

    Russia is one of only a few countries (Indonesia is another) where traveling oceanariums exist. Dolphins and beluga whales, which need to be immersed in water to stay alive, are put in tubs on trucks and carted from city to city in a loop that usually ends when they die. These traveling shows are aboveboard: Russia has no laws that regulate how marine mammals should be treated in captivity.

    The shows are the domestic arm of a brisk Russian global trade in dolphins and small whales. Black Sea bottlenose dolphins can’t be caught legally without a permit, but Russian fishermen can catch belugas and orcas under legal quotas in the name of science and education. Some belugas are sold legally to aquariums around the country. Russia now allows only a dozen or so orcas to be caught each year for scientific and educational purposes, and since April 2018, the government has cracked down on exporting them. But government investigators believe that Russian orcas—which can sell for millions—are being caught illegally for export to China.

    Captive orcas, which can grow to 20 feet long and more than 10,000 pounds, are too big for the traveling shows that typically feature dolphins and belugas. When I contacted the owners of the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium and another operation, the White Whale Show, in separate telephone calls to ask where their dolphins and belugas come from, both men, Sergey Kuznetsov and Oleg Belesikov, hung up on me.

    Russia’s dozen or so traveling oceanariums are touted as a way to bring native wild animals to people who might never see the ocean.

    “Who else if not us?” says Mikhail Olyoshin, a staffer at one traveling oceanarium. And on this day in Kaluga, as the dolphins perform tricks to American pop songs and lie on platforms for several minutes for photo ops, parents and children express the same sentiment: Imagine, dolphins, up close, in my hometown. The ocean on delivery.

    Owners and operators of wildlife tourism attractions, from high-end facilities such as Dolphin Quest in Hawaii to low-end monkey shows in Thailand, say their animals live longer in captivity than wild counterparts because they’re safe from predators and environmental hazards. Show operators proudly emphasize that the animals under their care are with them for life. They’re family.

    Alla Azovtseva, a longtime dolphin trainer in Russia, shakes her head.

    “I don’t see any sense in this work. My conscience bites me. I look at my animals and want to cry,” says Azovtseva, who drives a red van with dolphins airbrushed on the side. At the moment, she’s training pilot whales to perform tricks at Moscow’s Moskvarium, one of Europe’s largest aquariums (not connected to the traveling dolphin shows). On her day off, we meet at a café near Red Square.

    She says she fell in love with dolphins in the late 1980s when she read a book by John Lilly, the American neuroscientist who broke open our understanding of the animals’ intelligence. She has spent 30 years training marine mammals to do tricks. But along the way she’s grown heartsick from forcing highly intelligent, social creatures to live isolated, barren lives in small tanks.

    “I would compare the dolphin situation with making a physicist sweep the street,” she says. “When they’re not engaged in performance or training, they just hang in the water facing down. It’s the deepest depression.”

    What people don’t know about many aquarium shows in Russia, Azovtseva says, is that the animals often die soon after being put in captivity, especially those in traveling shows. And Azovtseva—making clear she’s referring to the industry at large in Russia and not the Moskvarium—says she knows many aquariums quietly and illegally replace their animals with new ones.

    It’s been illegal to catch Black Sea dolphins in the wild for entertainment purposes since 2003, but according to Azovtseva, aquarium owners who want to increase their dolphin numbers quickly and cheaply buy dolphins poached there. Because these dolphins are acquired illegally, they’re missing the microchips that captive cetaceans in Russia are usually tagged with as a form of required identification.

    Some aquariums get around that, she says, by cutting out dead dolphins’ microchips and implanting them into replacement dolphins.

    “People are people,” Azovtseva says. “Once they see an opportunity, they exploit.” She says she can’t go on doing her work in the industry and that she’s decided to speak out because she wants people to know the truth about the origins and treatment of many of the marine mammals they love watching. We exchange a look—we both know what her words likely mean for her livelihood.

    “I don’t care if I’m fired,” she says defiantly. “When a person has nothing to lose, she becomes really brave.”

    I’m sitting on the edge of an infinity pool on the hilly Thai side of Thailand’s border with Myanmar, at a resort where rooms average more than a thousand dollars a night.

    Out past the pool, elephants roam in a lush valley. Sitting next to me is 20-year-old Stephanie van Houten. She’s Dutch and French, Tokyo born and raised, and a student at the University of Michigan. Her cosmopolitan background and pretty face make for a perfect cocktail of aspiration—she’s exactly the kind of Instagrammer who makes it as an influencer. That is, someone who has a large enough following to attract sponsors to underwrite posts and, in turn, travel, wardrobes, and bank accounts. In 2018, brands—fashion, travel, tech, and more—spent an estimated $1.6 billion on social media advertising by influencers.

    Van Houten has been here, at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, before. This time, in a fairly standard influencer-brand arrangement, she’ll have a picnic with elephants and post about it to her growing legion of more than 25,000 Instagram followers. In exchange, she gets hundreds of dollars off the nightly rate.

    At Anantara the fields are green, and during the day at least, many of the resort’s 22 elephants are tethered on ropes more than a hundred feet long so they can move around and socialize. Nevertheless, they’re expected to let guests touch them and do yoga beside them.

    After van Houten’s elephant picnic, I watch her edit the day’s hundreds of photos. She selects an image with her favorite elephant, Bo. She likes it, she says, because she felt a connection with Bo and thinks that will come across. She posts it at 9:30 p.m.—the time she estimates the largest number of her followers will be online. She includes a long caption, summing it up as “my love story with this incredible creature,” and the hashtag #stopelephantriding. Immediately, likes from followers stream in—more than a thousand, as well as comments with heart-eyed emoji.

    Anantara is out of reach for anyone but the wealthy—or prominent influencers. Anyone else seeking a similar experience might do a Google search for, say, “Thailand elephant sanctuary.”

    As tourist demand for ethical experiences with animals has grown, affordable establishments, often calling themselves “sanctuaries,” have cropped up purporting to offer humane, up-close elephant encounters. Bathing with elephants—tourists give them a mud bath, splash them in a river, or both—has become very popular. Many facilities portray baths as a benign alternative to elephant riding and performances. But elephants getting baths, like those that give rides and do tricks, will have been broken to some extent to make them obedient. And as long as bathing remains popular, places that offer it will need obedient elephants to keep their businesses going. 


    In Ban Ta Klang, a tiny town in eastern Thailand, modest homes dot the crimson earth. In front of each is a wide, bamboo platform for sitting, sleeping, and watching television.

    But the first thing I notice is the elephants. Some homes have one, others as many as five. Elephants stand under tarps or sheet metal roofs or trees. Some are together, mothers and babies, but most are alone. Nearly all the elephants wear ankle chains or hobbles—cuffs binding their front legs together. Dogs and chickens weave among the elephants’ legs, sending up puffs of red dust.

    Ban Ta Klang—known as Elephant Village—is ground zero in Thailand for training and trading captive elephants.

    “House elephants,” Sri Somboon says, gesturing as he turns down his TV. Next to his outdoor platform, a two-month-old baby elephant runs around his mother. Somboon points across the road to the third elephant in his charge, a three-year-old male tethered to a tree. He’s wrenching his head back and forth and thrashing his trunk around. It looks as if he’s going out of his mind.

    He’s in the middle of his training, Somboon says, and is getting good at painting. He’s already been sold, and when his training is finished, he’ll start working at a tourist camp down south.

    Ban Ta Klang and the surrounding area, part of Surin Province, claim to be the source of more than half of Thailand’s 3,800 captive elephants. Long before the flood of tourists, it was the center of the elephant trade; the animals were caught in the wild and tamed for use transporting logs. Now, every November, hundreds of elephants from here are displayed, bought, and sold in the province’s main town, Surin.

    One evening I sit with Jakkrawan Homhual and Wanchai Sala-ngam. Both 33, they’ve been best friends since childhood. About half the people in Ban Ta Klang who care for elephants, including Homhual, don’t own them. They’re paid a modest salary by a rich owner to breed and train baby elephants for entertainment. As night falls, thousands of termites swarm us, attracted to the single bulb hanging above the bamboo platform. Our conversation turns to elephant training.

    Phajaan is the traditional—and brutal—days- or weeks-long process of breaking a young elephant’s spirit. It has long been used in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia to tame wild elephants, which still account for many of the country’s captives. Under phajaan, elephants are bound with ropes, confined in tight wooden structures, starved, and beaten repeatedly with bullhooks, nails, and hammers until their will is crushed. The extent to which phajaan persists in its harshest form is unclear. Since 2012, the government has been cracking down on the illegal import of elephants taken from the forests of neighboring Myanmar, Thailand’s main source of wild-caught animals.

    I ask the men how baby elephants born in captivity are broken and trained.

    When a baby is about two years old, they say, mahouts tie its mother to a tree and slowly drag the baby away. Once separated, the baby is confined. Using a bullhook on its ear, they teach the baby to move: left, right, turn, stop. To teach an elephant to sit, Sala-ngam says, “we tie up the front legs. One mahout will use a bullhook at the back. The other will pull a rope on the front legs.” He adds: “To train the elephant, you need to use the bullhook so the elephant will know.”

    Humans identify suffering in other humans by universal signs: People sob, wince, cry out, put voice to their hurt. Animals have no universal language for pain. Many animals don’t have tear ducts. More creatures still—prey animals, for example—instinctively mask symptoms of pain, lest they appear weak to predators. Recognizing that a nonhuman animal is in pain is difficult, often impossible.

    But we know that animals feel pain. All mammals have a similar neuroanatomy. Birds, reptiles, and amphibians all have pain receptors. As recently as a decade ago, scientists had collected more evidence that fish feel pain than they had for neonatal infants. A four-year-old human child with spikes pressing into his flesh would express pain by screaming. A four-year-old elephant just stands there in the rain, her leg jerking in the air.

    Of all the silently suffering animals I saw in pools and pens around the world, two in particular haunt me: an elephant and a tiger.

    They lived in the same facility, Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo, about 15 miles south of Bangkok. The elephant, Gluay Hom, four years old, was kept under a stadium. The aging tiger, Khai Khem, 22, spent his days on a short chain in a photo studio. Both had irrefutable signs of suffering: The emaciated elephant had a bent, swollen leg hanging in the air and a large, bleeding sore at his temple. His eyes were rolled back in his head. The tiger had a dental abscess so severe that the infection was eating through the bottom of his jaw.

    When I contacted the owner of the facility, Uthen Youngprapakorn, to ask about these animals, he said the fact that they hadn’t died proved that the facility was caring for them properly. He then threatened a lawsuit.

    Six months after Kirsten and I returned from Thailand, we asked Ryn Jirenuwat, our Bangkok-based Thai interpreter, to check on Gluay Hom and Khai Khem. She went to Samut Prakan and watched them for hours, sending photos and video. Gluay Hom was still alive, still standing in the same stall, leg still bent at an unnatural angle. The elephants next to him were skin and bones. Khai Khem was still chained by his neck to a hook in the floor. He just stays in his dark corner, Jirenuwat texted, and when he hears people coming, he twists on his chain and turns his back to them.

    “Like he just wants to be swallowed by the wall.”

    #tourisme #nos_ennemis_les_bêtes

  • China Restarts Purchases of Iranian Oil, Bucking Trump’s Sanctions — Bourse & Bazaar
    https://www.bourseandbazaar.com/articles/2019/5/17/china-restarts-purchases-of-iranian-oil-bucking-trumps-sanctions

    PACIFIC BRAVO is currently reporting its destination as Indonesia, but the tanker was recently acquired by Bank of Kunlun, a financial institution that is owned by the Chinese state oil company CNPC. TankerTrackers.com believes China is the ultimate destination for the oil on board.

    PACIFIC BRAVO is the first major tanker to load Iranian crude after the Trump administration revoked waivers permitting the purchases by eight of Iran’s oil customers. The revocation of the waivers, which sent shockwaves through the global oil market, was a major escalation of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran.

    The purchase of Iranian oil in the absence of a waiver exposes the companies involved in the transaction—including the tanker operator, refinery customer, and bank—to possible designation by the U.S. Treasury Department, threatening the links these companies may maintain with the U.S. financial system.

    Bank of Kunlun has long been the financial institution at heart of China-Iran bilateral trade—a role for which the company was sanctioned during the Obama administration. Despite already being designated, Bank of Kunlun ceased its Iran-related activities in early May when the oil waivers were revoked. PACIFIC BRAVO’s moves point to a change in policy.

    China-Iran trade slowed dramatically after the reimposition of U.S. secondary sanctions in November, suggesting the Chinese government had chosen to subordinate its economic relations with Iran to the much more important issue of its ongoing trade negotiations with the United States. But these negotiations have since broken down. This week, President Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on a further $300 billion in Chinese imports in addition to punitive measures against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which has been targeted in part for its alleged violations of Iran sanctions.

    #iran #chine #pétrole #sanctions

  • Indonesia: Post-May Day Update and Call for International Solidarity
    https://mpalothia.net/indonesia-post-may-day-update-and-call-for-international-solidarity

    In Bandung, there was a peaceful action by a group of anarchists almost 1000 strong. It even consisted of mothers, children and teenage girls. Police attacked them and broke the bloc into two groups. They were then chased, beaten and arrested. The pretext for this was ‘vandalism’, some spray-painted graffiti. Many of those who were arrested were stripped and had their heads shaved. Some were spray-painted on their faces and bodies as well. Many were forced to crawl along the road in their underwear. In total 619 anarchists were arrested, of these, 3 still remain in custody for destruction of property.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKMaOpUxZEg

    https://youtu.be/jpEcZksGbgQ

    #indonésie #1er_mai #répression #solidarité_internationale

  • From Sri Lanka to Indonesia, more mothers are becoming suicide bombers – and killing their children too | South China Morning Post
    https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3008808/sri-lanka-indonesia-more-mothers-are-becoming-suicide-bombers-and

    5 May, 2019 Amy Chew - The deadly new phenomenon sees women radicalised by IS ideology taking their children’s lives and their own in pursuit of martyrdom
    Experts say the rise in the radicalisation of married couples is endangering entire families

    IAs night fell on blood-soaked Sri Lanka following the carnage of Easter Sunday last month, police knocked on a door in an upscale neighbourhood – the home of two of the suicide bombers.
    They were greeted by Fatima Ibrahim, the pregnant wife of bomber Ilham Ibrahim
    . On seeing the police, she ran inside and detonated an explosive device, killing herself, her unborn child and her three sons aged five, four and nine months. Three police officers also died in the blast.
    In a similar case in March, anti-terror police arrested a suspected pro-Islamic State (IS)
    bomb-maker, Abu Hamzah, in Indonesia
    . When they went to his home to arrest his wife, Solimah, who had helped him make the bombs, she blew herself up, killing her two-year-old child.

    From Sri Lanka to Indonesia, a deadly new phenomenon is emerging – women, radicalised by IS ideology, are killing themselves and their children in their pursuit of martyrdom.

    Female suicide bombers have always featured in the annals of jihadism, going back to the Chechen Islamists in Russia known as Black Widows, but filicide by female radicals brings a dangerous new dimension to terrorism.

    “We did not have this in al-Qaeda,” said Sofyan Tsauri, former member of al-Qaeda Southeast Asia. “In Islam, jihad for a woman is to take care of the household, nurturing and educating the children, not taking up arms.”

    For these women, the maternal instinct to protect their children is supplanted by the quest for a “swift passage” into heaven, according to Nasir Abbas, a Malaysian former leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and once the most-wanted jihadist in Southeast Asia.

    He later switched sides and is now involved in deradicalisation efforts and other initiatives to counter violent extremism in Indonesia.

    “These [female suicide bombers] believe protecting their children means protecting them from turning into infidels when they are gone,” he told This Week in Asia .

    “In their twisted belief, they are convinced their children will also enter into heaven if they die with them [or] carry out the same act [of suicide bombing].”

    A significant development pointing to this new phenomenon took place when a family of six bombed three churches in Surabaya in May 2018. The perpetrators were a father, mother and four children aged between nine and 18, according to Nasir and the Indonesian police.

    The father, a wealthy businessman named Dita Oepriarto, strapped bombs on his wife and two daughters, who detonated them at a church. He made his two sons ride a motorbike laden with bombs into another church, where they blew themselves up.

    Dita then drove his car, filled with explosives, into a third church. In the space of 10 minutes, the entire family was dead. Dita’s younger son, 16-year-old Firman Halim, was seen crying inconsolably during dawn prayers at a mosque some two hours before the attack.

    “It is believed that the night before the bombings, the father told the children to prepare to die,” said Rizka Nurul, a researcher with the Institute for International Peace Building (IIPB), Indonesia’s first private deradicalisation organisation.

    The rise in the radicalisation of married couples is proving to be a danger to the lives of their children.

    “Children are in grave danger if both their parents are convinced that they must wage jihad … to atone for their sins in this lifetime by carrying out terror attacks,” said Nasir, the former JI leader. “The parents believe in bringing their children with them to heaven.”

    Women are capable of being more radical and militant than men, according to researchers in the field of countering violent extremism.

    “[This is] because women use their hearts. They can be more dangerous as they are more willing to sacrifice, compared with men who tend to be more rational as they consider costs and benefits,” said the IIPB’s Rizka.

    Such was the case with Solimah, who blew herself up in her home following the arrest of her husband, Abu Hamzah. During interrogation, he told investigators his wife was much more radical than him.

    The couple are believed to have been radicalised online by reading the teachings of Indonesia’s foremost IS ideologue, Aman Abdurrahman, who is currently on death row for inciting others to commit terror attacks in Indonesia.

    Many of these women are believed to be radicalised by their husbands and accede to their teachings as a mark of obedience to their spouse.

    “I am not surprised by [the suicide of the woman in the Sri Lanka blast] as she lives in a terrorist group’s environment,” said Ani Rufaida, lecturer in social psychology at Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama Islamic University.

    “In my prior research of wives of terrorists, most express obedience to their husbands. Only a small number of wives could reject the extreme ideology of their husbands, but they face consequences, for example, being separated from their husband,” she said. “Extremist groups require total obedience from the wife.”

    In a chilling development, some radicalised Indonesian women are requesting a suicide vest as dowry from their husbands-to-be, according to former JI leader Nasir. “These women plan to carry out suicide bombings after they are married. Several of them have been arrested,” he said.

    A counterterrorism official told This Week in Asia that a woman who requested such a vest was arrested in Klaten, Central Java, last March.

    Countering this phenomenon requires both a soft and hard approach, according to Nasir. “The deviant teaching of terror networks needs to be [made] public. We need to have continuous deradicalisation and counter violent extremism programmes,” he said, adding that this would help dismantle terror networks
    and detain their members before attacks were carried out.

    Indonesia through its National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) has established a deradicalisation programme for inmates, which works to rehabilitate their ideas about Islam through counter-narratives by religious leaders and psychologists, and equips them with skills they can use when they are eventually reintegrated into society. BNPT also focus on countering violent extremism on university campuses.

    Analysts say getting former militant leaders to work with universities and the police in deradicalisation makes these programmes more effective, as they have unparalleled insight into the minds of attackers.

    Another ex-JI member, Ali Fauzi, the younger brother of two executed Bali bombers, started his own NGO called the Circle of Peace, which is deeply involved in countering violent extremism and deradicalisation.

    Women must now be a specific focus of these programmes and other community efforts to prevent radicalisation, analysts say.

    A recent Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) report called for more women to be recruited by Indonesia’s counterterrorism police squad, Detachment 88, given the increasing number of female militants.

    “The percentage of women in the police generally remains woefully low, just over 8 per cent,” it said.

    Better programmes are also needed for pro-IS female detainees. There are currently 15 such women in detention, some of whom were involved in violence. According to IPAC, understanding the backgrounds and motivations of these women is essential for a more targeted rehabilitation programme.

    “IS may have reluctantly accepted women as combatants, but they are now encouraged to take part in operations,” the report said. “It is easy to dismiss the competence of Indonesian terrorists, but as long as they continue to subscribe to IS ideology, they remain a serious threat.”

    #Sri_Lanka #Indonésie #terrorisme #religion #islam #asie #daech

  • Last Suspect Freed in Kim Jong-un’s Brother’s Murder Case | News | teleSUR English
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Last-Suspect-Freed-in-Kim-Jong-uns-Brothers-Murder-Case-20190504-000

    There are no other suspects held in custody now that Huong has been released, and it is expected that the case will not reach a conviction.

    Doan Thi Huong, the Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s brother, Kim Jong Nam, has been released from a Malaysian prison after being held for over two years.

    Huong was accused of murdering Kim Jong Nam using the highly toxic VH nerve agent. After being released, Huong was taken into immigration custody until her scheduled flight to Hanoi. The formerly jailed woman stated that she wishes to pursue a career in acting and singing once she returns home.

    There are no other suspects held in custody now that Huong has been released, and it is expected that the case will not reach a conviction, considering Malaysia and Vietnam are attempting to normalize tense bilateral ties.

    Critics believe that the release of Huong will prevent Malaysia from raising further questions.

    On April 1, Vietnam successfully convinced Malaysian prosecutors to drop the murder charge against Huong. Vietnam increase lobbying efforts after the Indonesian government successfully negotiated with Vietnam to release the other suspect, Siti Aisyah, involved in the case.

    Aisyah was released and returned to Indonesia on March 11.

    Both governments used either good or improving intergovernmental relations to convince Malaysia to release the accused women, who maintain that they were tricked by North Korean agents into thinking their act was a harmless prank for a hidden camera TV show.

    The remaining suspects, four Korean nationals who boarded flights out of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, were also allowed to leave Malaysia in order to maintain relations with North Korea.

    “The best the two suspects could have pleaded guilty for is involuntary manslaughter. Instead, they both walk off free,” Sung-Yoon Lee, the assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, stated and added that someone should have been held culpable for the death of Kim Jong Nam.

    #Corée #Vietnam #Malaisie #assassinat #espionnage

  • Indonesia: Polish Tourist Sentenced to 5 Years for Treason | News | teleSUR English
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Indonesia-Polish-Tourist-Sentenced-to-5-Years-for-Treason-20190503-0

    Published 3 May 2019 Authorities accused Skrzypski of collaborating with members of the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), a separatist organization which advocates for a non-violent approach to gain independence.

    Polish tourist Jakub Skrzypski maintains his innocence as the first foreigner in Indonesia to be found guilty of treason and receive a sentence of five years in prison.

    Skrzypski was arrested in Papua, which is located on the far east of Indonesia, in August of last year. The 39-year-old plans to appeal the sentence, saying he was a victim of a politically motivated “show trial. I didn’t have the opportunity to speak in my defense or to present any favorable evidence. I reject the trial as well as the verdict,” he told reporters.

    Authorities accused Skrzypski of collaborating with members of the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), a separatist organization which advocates for a non-violent approach to gain independence. According to his lawyer, Latifah Anum Siregar, “he was a tourist and he was just visiting friends that he met over the internet and other people who he had been recommended to meet who turned out to be activists.”

    Along with Skrzypski, student Simon Magal, the nephew of a prominent West Papua activist Yosepha Alomang was also held. Magal had been jailed previously for a campaign against the Freeport McMoran goldmine in the province.

    While the organization is not outlawed in the country, public demonstrations in support of the movement are. It is also illegal to fly the Papua independence flag.

    Siregar pointed out at the trial that the grounds for accusing her client of treason are unfounded because the KNPB was not registered or classified as banned. The KNBP is one of four separatist campaigns in the region.

    Indonesian authorities also claim that Skrzypski attempted to arrange an arms deal for the group, but this accusation was not mentioned at the trial. According to Papua police spokesperson Suryadi Diaz, “he (Skrzypski) has been involved in buying ammunition for them.”

    Skrzypski denies all accusations, saying that he does not “even know [the conflict in Papua] very well” and reiterated that the “trip wasn’t a clandestine one. I was visiting friends.”

    The Indonesian military and police are documented as being suspicious of foreigners who communicate with Papuans. “The Skrzypski-Magal case is another example that the Indonesian government keeps blocking media access and deters independent reporting about Papua,” Indonesia’s representative for Human Rights Watch, Andreas Harsono, stated.

    Despite the country promising to allow access to the media, the territory has remained restricted to international journalists.

    #Indonésie #Pologne #tourisme #espionnage #trahison

  • Less rainforest, less rain: A cautionary tale from Borneo
    https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/less-rainforest-less-rain-a-cautionary-tale-from-borneo

    A recent study finds that massive deforestation across Borneo, in large part for oil palm plantations, has led to higher temperatures and less precipitation over the past 60 years.
    Forests not only provide shade, but create their own rainfall, essentially recycling the freshwater in the soil and vegetation.
    The local changes in climate could spell trouble for the very crop driving them, and one of Indonesia and Malaysia’s most lucrative commodities: palm oil.
    This post is part of “Saving Life on Earth: Words on the Wild,” a monthly column by Jeremy Hance, one of Mongabay’s original staff writers.

    #forêt #forêt_humide #pluviométrie #sol #Bornéo #c'est_la_vie #déforestation

    • Meijaard calls oil palm a “thirsty plant,” pointing to a recent study in Nature that showed oil palms needed around 167 millimeters (6.6 inches) of rain a month. It also showed that the plant doesn’t like temperatures above 29 to 33 degrees Celsius (84 to 91 degrees Fahrenheit).

      “These conditions are now often exceeded, especially in the hotter and drier southeastern part of Borneo, and we may soon find that oil palm development there is no longer financially viable,” Meijaard says. “The race for water is on, which may also be one of the reasons that developers are keen to plant on peat, which stores a lot of water.”

      #courte_vue

  • Record High #Remittances Sent Globally in #2018

    Remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached a record high in 2018, according to the World Bank’s latest Migration and Development Brief.

    The Bank estimates that officially recorded annual remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $529 billion in 2018, an increase of 9.6 percent over the previous record high of $483 billion in 2017. Global remittances, which include flows to high-income countries, reached $689 billion in 2018, up from $633 billion in 2017.

    Regionally, growth in remittance inflows ranged from almost 7 percent in East Asia and the Pacific to 12 percent in South Asia. The overall increase was driven by a stronger economy and employment situation in the United States and a rebound in outward flows from some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Russian Federation. Excluding China, remittances to low- and middle-income countries ($462 billion) were significantly larger than foreign direct investment flows in 2018 ($344 billion).

    Among countries, the top remittance recipients were India with $79 billion, followed by China ($67 billion), Mexico ($36 billion), the Philippines ($34 billion), and Egypt ($29 billion).

    In 2019, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are expected to reach $550 billion, to become their largest source of external financing.

    The global average cost of sending $200 remained high, at around 7 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database. Reducing remittance costs to 3 percent by 2030 is a global target under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10.7. Remittance costs across many African corridors and small islands in the Pacific remain above 10 percent.

    Banks were the most expensive remittance channels, charging an average fee of 11 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Post offices were the next most expensive, at over 7 percent. Remittance fees tend to include a premium where national post offices have an exclusive partnership with a money transfer operator. This premium was on average 1.5 percent worldwide and as high as 4 percent in some countries in the last quarter of 2018.

    On ways to lower remittance costs, Dilip Ratha, lead author of the Brief and head of KNOMAD, said, “Remittances are on track to become the largest source of external financing in developing countries. The high costs of money transfers reduce the benefits of migration. Renegotiating exclusive partnerships and letting new players operate through national post offices, banks, and telecommunications companies will increase competition and lower remittance prices.”

    The Brief notes that banks’ ongoing de-risking practices, which have involved the closure of the bank accounts of some remittance service providers, are driving up remittance costs.

    The Brief also reports progress toward the SDG target of reducing the recruitment costs paid by migrant workers, which tend to be high, especially for lower-skilled migrants.

    “Millions of low-skilled migrant workers are vulnerable to recruitment malpractices, including exorbitant recruitment costs. We need to boost efforts to create jobs in developing countries and to monitor and reduce recruitment costs paid by these workers,” said Michal Rutkowski, Senior Director of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. The World Bank and the International Labour Organization are collaborating to develop indicators for worker-paid recruitment costs, to support the SDG of promoting safe, orderly, and regular migration.

    Regional Remittance Trends

    Remittances to the East Asia and Pacific region grew almost 7 percent to $143 billion in 2018, faster than the 5 percent growth in 2017. Remittances to the Philippines rose to $34 billion, but growth in remittances was slower due to a drop in private transfers from the GCC countries. Flows to Indonesia increased by 25 percent in 2018, after a muted performance in 2017.

    After posting 22 percent growth in 2017, remittances to Europe and Central Asia grew an estimated 11 percent to $59 billion in 2018. Continued growth in economic activity increased outbound remittances from Poland, Russia, Spain, and the United States, major sources of remittances to the region. Smaller remittance-dependent countries in the region, such as the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, benefited from the sustained rebound of economic activity in Russia. Ukraine, the region’s largest remittance recipient, received a new record of more than $14 billion in 2018, up about 19 percent over 2017. This surge in Ukraine also reflects a revised methodology for estimating incoming remittances, as well as growth in neighboring countries’ demand for migrant workers.

    Remittances flows into Latin America and the Caribbean grew 10 percent to $88 billion in 2018, supported by the strong U.S. economy. Mexico continued to receive the most remittances in the region, posting about $36 billion in 2018, up 11 percent over the previous year. Colombia and Ecuador, which have migrants in Spain, posted 16 percent and 8 percent growth, respectively. Three other countries in the region posted double-digit growth: Guatemala (13 percent) as well as Dominican Republic and Honduras (both 10 percent), reflecting robust outbound remittances from the United States.

    Remittances to the Middle East and North Africa grew 9 percent to $62 billion in 2018. The growth was driven by Egypt’s rapid remittance growth of around 17 percent. Beyond 2018, the growth of remittances to the region is expected to continue, albeit at a slower pace of around 3 percent in 2019 due to moderating growth in the Euro Area.

    Remittances to South Asia grew 12 percent to $131 billion in 2018, outpacing the 6 percent growth in 2017. The upsurge was driven by stronger economic conditions in the United States and a pick-up in oil prices, which had a positive impact on outward remittances from some GCC countries. Remittances grew by more than 14 percent in India, where a flooding disaster in Kerala likely boosted the financial help that migrants sent to families. In Pakistan, remittance growth was moderate (7 percent), due to significant declines in inflows from Saudi Arabia, its largest remittance source. In Bangladesh, remittances showed a brisk uptick in 2018 (15 percent).

    Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa grew almost 10 percent to $46 billion in 2018, supported by strong economic conditions in high-income economies. Looking at remittances as a share of GDP, Comoros has the largest share, followed by the Gambia , Lesotho, Cabo Verde, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria.

    The Migration and Development Brief and the latest migration and remittances data are available at www.knomad.org. Interact with migration experts at http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove

    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/04/08/record-high-remittances-sent-globally-in-2018?cid=ECR_TT_worldbank_EN_EXT
    #remittances #statistiques #chiffres #migrations #diaspora

    #Rapport ici :


    https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/MigrationandDevelopmentBrief_31_0.pdf

    ping @reka

    • Immigrati, boom di rimesse: più di 6 miliardi all’estero. Lo strano caso dei cinesi «spariti»

      Bangladesh, Romania, Filippine: ecco il podio delle rimesse degli immigrati che vivono e lavorano in Italia. Il trend è in forte aumento: nel 2018 sono stati inviati all’estero 6,2 miliardi di euro, con una crescita annua del 20, 7 per cento.
      A registrarlo è uno studio della Fondazione Leone Moressa su dati Banca d’Italia, dopo il crollo del 2013 e alcuni anni di sostanziale stabilizzazione, oggi il volume di rimesse rappresenta lo 0,35% del Pil.

      Il primato del Bangladesh
      Per la prima volta, nel 2018 il Bangladesh è il primo Paese di destinazione delle rimesse, con oltre 730 milioni di euro complessivi (11,8% delle rimesse totali).
      Il Bangladesh nell’ultimo anno ha registrato un +35,7%, mentre negli ultimi sei anni ha più che triplicato il volume.

      Il secondo Paese di destinazione è la Romania, con un andamento stabile: +0,3% nell’ultimo anno e -14,3% negli ultimi sei.
      Da notare come tra i primi sei Paesi ben quattro siano asiatici: oltre al Bangladesh, anche Filippine, Pakistan e India. Proprio i Paesi dell’Asia meridionale sono quelli che negli ultimi anni hanno registrato il maggiore incremento di rimesse inviate. Il Pakistan ha registrato un aumento del +73,9% nell’ultimo anno. Anche India e Sri Lanka sono in forte espansione.

      Praticamente scomparsa la Cina, che fino a pochi anni fa rappresentava il primo Paese di destinazione e oggi non è nemmeno tra i primi 15 Paesi per destinazione delle rimesse.
      Mediamente, ciascun immigrato in Italia ha inviato in patria poco più di 1.200 euro nel corso del 2018 (circa 100 euro al mese). Valore che scende sotto la media per le due nazionalità più numerose: Romania (50,29 euro mensili) e Marocco (66,14 euro). Tra le comunità più numerose il valore più alto è quello del Bangladesh: ciascun cittadino ha inviato oltre 460 euro al mese. Anche i senegalesi hanno inviato mediamente oltre 300 euro mensili.

      https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2019-04-17/immigrati-boom-rimesse-piu-6-miliardi-all-estero-strano-caso-cinesi-spa
      #Italie #Chine #Bangladesh #Roumanie #Philippines

  • Ethiopian 737 pilots followed Boeing guidelines before crash | Daily Mail Online
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6880733/Ethiopian-737-pilots-followed-Boeing-guidelines-crash-WSJ.html


    ©AP

    Pilots on doomed Boeing jet that crashed in Ethiopia ’followed correct emergency procedure when system failed - then tried something else when that didn’t help them regain control’

    The pilots of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet followed emergency procedures outlined by the manufacturer initially but later deviated from them as they tried to regain control of the plane, it has been claimed,

    The airliner went down soon after taking off on March 10, killing all 157 people on board and forcing a global grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets.

    Boeing had issued guidelines to pilots on how to disable an automated anti-stall system after a deadly crash in Indonesia in October, followed by an emergency airworthiness directive by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

    The pilots had initially shut off the MCAS anti-stall system that was pushing the airplane’s nose down shortly after it took off from Addis Ababa, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified people briefed on the matter.

    However, having failed to recover control, the pilots then switched the system back as they tried to find other ways to manage the jet before it crashed, the newspaper added.

  • Another fork in the road for democracy ?
    https://www.cetri.be/Another-fork-in-the-road-for

    Five years ago, many saw the electoral contest between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto as a battle between good and evil. In April 2019, the two men face-off again for the presidency. This time it seems more like a case of the lesser of two evils. In 2014, Jokowi had campaigned on a promise to end the horse-trading that had slowed democratic reform to a virtual halt, pitching himself as a president who would represent the voice of the people. His candidacy spurred a new sense of hope, (...)

    #Southern_Social_Movements_Newswire

    / #Le_Sud_en_mouvement, #Indonésie, #Asie, #Election, #Inside_Indonesia

  • In Indonesia, a company intimidates, evicts and plants oil palm without permits
    https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/in-indonesia-a-company-intimidates-evicts-and-plants-oil-palm-without

    A state-owned plantation company, PTPN XIV, is evicting farmers to make room for an oil palm estate on the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
    In 1973, the company got a permit to raise cattle and farm tapioca on the now-disputed land, but it expired in 2003. After a long hiatus, the company has returned to claim the land. It says the government has promised to give it permits in the future, but has started operations anyway even as local communities resist.
    The case is one of thousands of land disputes simmering across Indonesia, as President Joko Widodo attempts to carry out an ambitious land reform program.
    The president has also ordered a freeze on the issuance of new oil palm plantation permits, but the level of enforcement remains to be seen.

    #Indonésie #industrie_palmiste #évictions_forcées #terres

  • How land grabbers co-opt indigenous ritual traditions in Papua: Q&A with anthropologist Sophie Chao
    https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/how-land-grabbers-co-opt-indigenous-ritual-traditions-in-papua-qa-with-anthropologist-sophie-chao/?n3wsletter

    Industrial-scale agriculture poses considerable risk to the indigenous peoples of Papua, whose culture and livelihoods are closely linked to the region’s extensive rainforest.
    Last November, Mongabay and The Gecko Project published an investigative article exposing the murky dealings underpinning a mega-plantation project in Papua, as part of our series Indonesia for Sale.
    Anthropologist Sophie Chao has studied the often fraught relationship between Papuans and plantation firms, and the mechanisms through which indigenous people are compelled to give up their land.

    #papouasie_nouvelle_guinée #peuples_autochtones #terres #industrie_palmiste

  • INFOGRAPHIC: Experience the Unequal Ways Communities and Companies Get Land Rights | World Resources Institute
    https://www.wri.org/resources/data-visualizations/infographic-experience-unequal-ways-communities-and-companies-get-land

    Some indigenous groups are trying to protect their land by obtaining legal titles to it. But in many countries, the processes for communities to formalize land rights are significantly more complex than for companies. Communities can spend decades navigating government-ordered procedures. Wealthy corporations can secure rights to the same land in 30 days to five years.

    The infographic below allows you to navigate the process for a community seeking formal land rights in Indonesia, versus for a company securing an oil palm concession.


    #foncier #visualisation

  • China Military Threat: Seeking New Islands to Conquer - James Stavridis - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-21/china-military-threat-seeking-new-islands-to-conquer

    The constant refrain was simple: The West is becoming a less reliable partner. These allies are dismayed by a U.S. administration that has repeatedly criticized its closest partners and accused them of freeloading on defense. They are also worried about weakness and distraction of a Europe facing Brexit. This is compounded as they watch China increase pressure on Taiwan to accept a “one nation, two systems” deal a la Hong Kong and militarize the #South_China_Sea by constructing artificial islands.
    […]
    There is also a less-noticed but extremely worrisome aspect to China’s increasing boldness: It seems to be building its naval capability to dominate farther into the Pacific — as far as what Western analysts call the “second island chain.

    When thinking in a geo-strategic sense about China, the island-chain formulation is helpful. Since the 1950s, U.S. planners have delineated a first island chain, running from the Japanese islands through the Philippines, and down to the tip of Southeast Asia. Dominating inside that line has been the goal of China’s recent buildup in naval and missile capabilities. But U.S. officials warn that Chinese strategists are becoming more ambitious, set on gaining influence running to the second island chain — running from Japan through the Micronesian islands to the tip of Indonesia. As with its initial forays into the South China Sea, Beijing is using “scientific” missions and hydrographic surveying ships as the tip of the spear.

    Japan and Singapore are essentially anchors at the north and south ends the island chains. They have been integrating their defense capabilities with the U.S. through training, exercises and arms purchases. They are exploring better relations with India as the Pacific and Indian Oceans are increasingly viewed as a single strategic entity. This is a crucial element in the U.S. strategy for the region. But there are changes coming.

    First, there are expectations that China will eye the third island chain, encompassing Hawaii and the Alaskan coast before dropping south down to New Zealand. This has long been regarded as the final line of strategic demarcation between the U.S. and China. Second, some analysts are beginning to talk about a fourth and even fifth island chain, both in the Indian Ocean, an increasingly crucial zone of competition between the U.S. and China.

    Two obvious Indian Ocean chains exist. The first would run from southern Pakistan (where China has created a deep-water port at Gwador) down past Diego Garcia, the lonely atoll controlled by the U.K. from which the U.S. runs enormous logistical movements into Central Asia. As a junior officer on a Navy cruiser in the 1980s, I visited Diego Garcia when it was essentially a fuel stop with a quaint palm-thatched bar. The base has expanded enormously, becoming critical to supporting U.S. and British combat efforts in the Horn of Africa and Middle East.

    The fifth and final island chain could be considered to run from the Horn of Africa – where the U.S. and China now maintain significant military bases – down to the coast of South Africa. Little wonder the U.S. military has renamed its former Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command.

    #Mer_de_Chine_méridionale

  • Jagal - The Act of Killing
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILiqotj7Y


    v.o. sans sous-titres

    avec sous-titres
    https://amara.org/en/videos/lCHCQE8uqUJb/en/749348
    à 00:16:00 un gangster parle de sa passion pour le cinémà et comment c’était pratique d’avoir les locaux pour tuer et torturer en face de la salle de projection.

    C’est le film le moins apprécié par l’office de tourisme indonésien car il montre que le pays est gouverné aujourd’hui par les assassins de 1965/66 qui se font un plaisir de se vanter de leurs crimes devant la caméra.

    BACKGROUND | The Act of Killing
    http://theactofkilling.com/background

    CONTEXT, BACKGROUND AND METHOD
    First Encounter with the 1965-66 Massacres – The Globalization Tapes
    In 2001-2002, Christine Cynn and I went to Indonesia for the first time to produce The Globalization Tapes (2003), a participatory documentary project made in collaboration with the Independent Plantation Workers Union of Sumatra. Using their own forbidden history as a case study, these Indonesian filmmakers worked with us to trace the development of contemporary globalization from its roots in colonialism to the present.

    The Globalization Tapes exposes the devastating role of militarism and repression in building the global economy, and explores the relationships between trade, third-world debt, and international institutions like the IMF and the World Trade Organization. Made by some of the poorest workers in the world, the film is a lyrical and incisive account of how our global financial institutions shape and enforce the corporate world order. The film uses chilling first-hand accounts, hilarious improvised interventions, collective debate and archival collage.

    Several scenes in The Globalization Tapes reveal the earliest traces of the methods we refined in the shooting of The Act of Killing: plantation workers stage a satirical commercial for the pesticide that poisons them; worker-filmmakers pose as World Bank agents who offer microfinance to ‘develop’ local businesses – offers that are both brutal and absurd, yet tempting nonetheless.

    While shooting and editing The Globalization Tapes, we discovered that the 1965-66 Indonesian massacres were the dark secret haunting Indonesia’s much-celebrated entrance into the global economy. One of the military’s main objectives in the killings was to destroy the anti-colonial labour movement that had existed until 1965, and to lure foreign investors with the promise of cheap, docile workers and abundant natural resources. The military succeeded (The Globalization Tapes is a testament to the extraordinary courage of the plantation worker-filmmakers as they challenge this decades-long legacy of terror and try to build a new union).

    The killings would come up in discussions, planning sessions, and film shoots nearly every day, but always in whispers. Indeed, many of the plantation workers were themselves survivors of the killings. They would discretely point out the houses of neighbors who had killed their parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles. The perpetrators were still living in the same village and made up, along with their children and protégés, the local power structure. As outsiders, we could interview these perpetrators – something the plantation workers could not do without fear of violence.

    In conducting these first interviews, we encountered the pride with which perpetrators would boast about the most grisly details of the killings. The Act of Killing was born out of our curiosity about the nature of this pride – its clichéd grammar, its threatening performativity, its frightening banality.

    The Globalization Tapes was a film made collectively by the plantation workers themselves, with us as facilitators and collaborating directors. The Act of Killing was also made by working very closely with its subjects, while in solidarity and collaboration with the survivors’ families. However, unlike The Globalization Tapes, The Act of Killing is an authored work, an expression of my own vision and concerns regarding these issues.

    THE BEGINNING OF THE ACT OF KILLING

    By the time I first met the characters in The Act of Killing (in 2005), I had been making films in Indonesia for three years, and I spoke Indonesian with some degree of fluency. Since making The Globalization Tapes (2003), Christine Cynn, fellow film-maker and longtime collaborator Andrea Zimmerman and I had continued filming with perpetrators and survivors of the massacres in the plantation areas around the city of Medan. In 2003 and 2004, we filmed more interviews and simple re-enactments with Sharman Sinaga, the death squad leader who had appeared in The Globalization Tapes. We also filmed as he introduced us to other killers in the area. And we secretly interviewed survivors of the massacres they committed.

    Moving from perpetrator to perpetrator, and, unbeknownst to them, from one community of survivors to another, we began to map the relationships between different death squads throughout the region, and began to understand the process by which the massacres were perpetrated. In 2004, we began filming Amir Hasan, the death squad leader who had commanded the massacres at the plantation where we made The Globalization Tapes.

    In late 2004, Amir Hasan began to introduce me to killers up the chain of command in Medan. Independently in 2004, we began contacting ‘veterans’ organizations of death squad members and anti-leftist activists in Medan. These two approaches allowed us to piece together a chain of command, and to locate the surviving commanders of the North Sumatran death squads. In early interviews with the veterans of the killings (2004), I learned that the most notorious death squad in North Sumatra was Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry’s Frog Squad (Pasukan Kodok).

    During these first meetings with Medan perpetrators (2004 and 2005), I encountered the same disturbing boastfulness about the killings that we had been documenting on the plantations. The difference was that these men were the celebrated and powerful leaders not of a small rural village, but of the third largest city in Indonesia (Greater Medan has a population of over four million people).

    Our starting point for The Act of Killing was thus the question: how had this society developed to the point that its leaders could – and would – speak of their own crimes against humanity with a cheer that was at once celebratory but also intended as a threat?

    OVERVIEW AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE METHODS USED IN THE ACT OF KILLING

    Building on The Globalization Tapes and our film work outside Indonesia, we had developed a method in which we open a space for people to play with their image of themselves, re-creating and re-imagining it on camera, while we document this transformation as it unfolds. In particular, we had refined this method to explore the intersection between imagination and extreme violence.

    In the early days of research (2005), I discovered that the army recruited its killers in Medan from the ranks of movie theatre gangsters (or preman bioskop) who already hated the leftists for their boycott of American movies – the most profitable in the cinema. I was intrigued by this relationship between cinema and killings, although I had no idea it would be so deep. Not only did Anwar and his friends know and love the cinema, but they dreamed of being on the screen themselves, and styled themselves after their favorite characters. They even borrowed their methods of murder from the screen.

    Of course, I began by trying to understand in as much detail as possible Anwar and his friends’ roles in the killings and, afterwards, in the regime they helped to build. Among the first things I did was to bring them to the former newspaper office directly across the road from Anwar’s old cinema, the place where Anwar and his friends killed most of their victims. There, they demonstrated in detail what they had done. Although they were filming documentary re-enactment and interviews, during breaks I noticed that they would muse about how they looked like various movie stars – for instance, Anwar compared his protégé and sidekick, Herman to Fernando Sancho.

    To understand how they felt about the killings, and their unrepentant way of representing them on film, I screened back the unedited footage of these early re-enactments, and filmed their responses. At first, I thought that they would feel the re-enactments made them look bad, and that they might possibly come to a more complex place morally and emotionally.

    I was startled by what actually happened. On the surface at least, Anwar was mostly anxious that he should look young and fashionable. Instead of any explicit moral reflection, the screening led him and Herman spontaneously to suggest a better, and more elaborate, dramatization.

    To explore their love of movies, I screened for them scenes from their favorite films at the time of the killings – Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah and, ironically, The Ten Commandments topped the list – recording their commentary and the memories these films elicited. Through this process, I came to realize why Anwar was continually bringing up these old Hollywood films whenever I filmed re-enactments with them: he and his fellow movie theatre thugs were inspired by them at the time of the killings, and had even borrowed their methods of murder from the movies. This was such an outlandish and disturbing idea that I in fact had to hear it several times before I realized quite what Anwar and his friends were saying.

    He described how he got the idea of strangling people with wire from watching gangster movies. In a late-night interview in front of his former cinema, Anwar explained how different film genres would lead him to approach killing in different ways. The most disturbing example was how, after watching a “happy film like an Elvis Presley musical”, Anwar would “kill in a happy way”.

    In 2005, I also discovered that the other paramilitary leaders (not just the former movie theater gangsters) had other personal and deep-seated relationship to movies. Ibrahim Sinik, the newspaper boss who was secretary general of all the anti-communist organizations that participated in the killings, and who directly gave the orders to Anwar’s death squad, turned out to be a feature film producer, screenwriter, and former head of the Indonesian Film Festival.

    In addition to all this, Anwar and his friends’ impulse towards being in a film about the killings was essentially to act in dramatizations of their pasts – both as they remember them, and as they would like to be remembered (the most powerful insights in The Act of Killing probably come in those places where these two agendas radically diverge). As described, the idea of dramatizations came up quite spontaneously, in response to viewing the rushes from Anwar’s first re-enactments of the killings.

    But it would be disingenuous to claim that we facilitated the dramatizations only because that’s what Anwar and his friends wanted to do. Ever since we produced The Globalization Tapes, the thing that most fascinated us about the killings was the way the perpetrators we filmed would recount their stories of those atrocities. One had the feeling that we weren’t simply hearing memories, but something else besides – something intended for a spectator. More precisely, we felt we were receiving performances. And we instinctively understood, I think, that the purpose of these performances was somehow to assert a kind of impunity, to maintain a threatening image, to perpetuate the autocratic regime that had begun with the massacres themselves.

    We sensed that the methods we had developed for incorporating performance into documentary might, in this context, yield powerful insights into the mystery of the killers’ boastfulness, the nature of the regime of which they are a part, and, most importantly, the nature of human ‘evil’ itself.

    So, having learned that even their methods of murder were directly influenced by cinema, we challenged Anwar and his friends to make the sort of scenes they had in mind. We created a space in which they could devise and star in dramatisations based on the killings, using their favorite genres from the medium.

    We hoped to catalyze a process of collective remembrance and imagination. Fiction provided one or two degrees of separation from reality, a canvas on which they could paint their own portrait and stand back and look at it.

    We started to suspect that performance played a similar role during the killings themselves, making it possible for Anwar and his friends to absent themselves from the scene of their crimes, while they were committing them. Thus, performing dramatizations of the killings for our cameras was also a re-living of a mode of performance they had experienced in 1965, when they were killing. This obviously gave the experience of performing for our cameras a deeper resonance for Anwar and his friends than we had anticipated.

    And so, in The Act of Killing, we worked with Anwar and his friends to create such scenes for the insights they would offer, but also for the tensions and debates that arose during the process – including Anwar’s own devastating emotional unravelling.

    This created a safe space, in which all sorts of things could happen that would probably elude a more conventional documentary method. The protagonists could safely explore their deepest memories and feelings (as well as their blackest humor). I could safely challenge them about what they did, without fear of being arrested or beaten up. And they could challenge each other in ways that were otherwise unthinkable, given Sumatra’s political landscape.

    Anwar and his friends could direct their fellow gangsters to play victims, and even play the victims themselves, because the wounds are only make-up, the blood only red paint, applied only for a movie. Feelings far deeper than those that would come up in an interview would surface unexpectedly. One reason the emotional impact was so profound came from the fact that this production method required a lot of time – the filmmaking process came to define a significant period in the participants’ lives. This meant that they went on a deeper journey into their memories and feelings than they would in a film consisting largely of testimony and simple demonstration.

    Different scenes used different methods, but in all of them it was crucial that Anwar and his friends felt a sense of fundamental ownership over the fiction material. The crux of the method is to give performers the maximum amount of freedom to determine as many variables as possible in the production (storyline, casting, costumes, mise-en-scene, improvisation on set). Whenever possible, I let them direct each other, and used my cameras to document their process of creation. My role was primarily that of provocateur, challenging them to remember the events they were performing more deeply, encouraging them to intervene and direct each other when they felt a performance was superficial, and asking questions between takes – both about what actually happened, but also about how they felt at the time, and how they felt as they re-enacted it.

    We shot in long takes, so that situations could evolve organically, and with minimal intervention from ourselves. I felt the most significant event unfolding in front of the cameras was the act of transformation itself, particularly because this transformation was usually plagued by conflict, misgivings, and other imperfections that seemed to reveal more about the nature of power, violence, and fantasy than more conventional documentary or investigative methods. For this same reason, we also filmed the pre-production of fiction scenes, including castings, script meetings, and costume fittings. Make-up sessions too were important spaces of reflection and transformation, moments where the characters slip down the rabbit hole of self-invention.

    In addition, because we never knew when the characters would refuse to take the process further, or when we might get in trouble with the military, we filmed each scene as though it might be the last, and also everything leading up to them (not only for the reasons above), because often we didn’t know if the dramatization itself would actually happen. We also felt that the stories we were hearing – stories of crimes against humanity never before recorded – were of world historical importance. More than anything else, these are two reasons why this method generated so many hours of footage (indeed, we have created a vast audio-visual archive about the Indonesian massacres. This archive has been the basis of a four-year United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council project called Genocide and Genre).

    After almost every dramatization, we would screen the rushes back to them, and record their responses. We wanted to make sure they knew how they appeared on film, and to use the screening to trigger further reflection. Sometimes, screenings provoked feelings of remorse (as when Anwar watches himself play the victim during a film noir scene) but, at other times, as when we screened the re-enactment of the Kampung Kolam massacre to the entire cast, the images were met with terrifying peals of laughter.

    Most interestingly, Anwar and his friends discussed, often insightfully, how other people will view the film, both in Indonesia and internationally. For example, Anwar sometimes commented on how survivors might curse him, but that “luckily” the victims haven’t the power to do anything in today’s Indonesia.

    The gangster scenes were wholly improvised. The scenarios came from the stories Anwar and his friends had told each other during earlier interviews, and during visits to the office where they killed people. The set was modeled on this interior. For maximum flexibility, our cinematographer lit the space so that Anwar and his friends could move about freely, and we filmed them with two cameras so that they could fluidly move from directing each other to improvised re-enactments to quiet, often riveting reflection after the improvisation was finished.

    For instance, Anwar re-enacted how he killed people by placing them on a table and then pulling tight a wire, from underneath the table, to garrote them. The scene exhausted him, physically and emotionally, leaving him full of doubt about the morality of what he did. Immediately after this re-enactment, he launched into a cynical and resigned rant against the growing consensus around human rights violations. Here, reality and its refraction through fiction, Anwar’s memories and his anticipation of their impact internationally, are all overlaid.

    The noir scenes were shot over a week, and culminated in an extraordinary improvisation where Anwar played the victim. Anwar’s performance was effective and, transported by the performance, the viewer empathizes with the victim, only to do a double take as they remember that Anwar is not a victim, but the killer.

    The large-scale re-enactment of the Kampung Kolam massacre was made using a similar improvisational process, with Anwar and his friends undertaking the direction. What we didn’t expect was a scene of such violence and realism; so much so that it proved genuinely frightening to the participants, all of whom were Anwar’s friends from Pancasila Youth, or their wives and children. After the scene, we filmed participants talking amongst themselves about how the location of our re-enactment was just a few hundred meters from one of North Sumatra’s countless mass graves. The woman we see fainting after the scene felt she had been possessed by a victim’s ghost. The paramilitary members (including Anwar) thought so, too. The violence of the re-enactment conjured the spectres of a deeper violence, the terrifying history of which everybody in Indonesia is somehow aware, and upon which the perpetrators have built their rarefied bubble of air conditioned shopping malls, gated communities, and “very, very limited” crystal figurines.

    The process by which we made the musical scenes (the waterfall, the giant concrete goldfish) was slightly different again. But here too Anwar was very much in the driver’s seat: he chose the songs and, along with his friends, devised both scenes. Anwar and his cast were also free to make changes as we went.

    In the end, we worked very carefully with the giant goldfish, presenting motifs from a half-forgotten dream. Anwar’s beautiful nightmare? An allegory for his storytelling confection? For his blindness? For the willful blindness by which almost all history is written, and by which, consequently, we inevitably come to know (and fail to know) ourselves? The fish changes throughout the film, but it is always a world of “eye candy”, emptiness and ghosts. If it could be explained adequately in words, we would not need it in the film.

    For the scenes written by the newspaper boss Ibrahim Sinik and his staff, Sinik enlisted the help of his friends at state television, TVRI. He borrows the TVRI regional drama studios, and recruits a soap opera crew. In these scenes, our role was largely to document Anwar and his friends as they work with the TV crew, and to catalyze and document debates between fiction set-ups. In our edited scenes, we cut from the documentary cameras to TVRI’s fiction cameras, highlighting the gap between fiction and reality – often to comic effect. But above all, we focused our cameras on moments between takes where they debated the meaning of the scene.

    The Televisi Republik Indonesia “Special Dialogue” came into being when the show’s producers realised that feared and respected paramilitary leaders making a film about the genocide was a big story (they came to know about our work because we were using the TVRI studios.) After their grotesque chat show was broadcast, there was no critical response in North Sumatra whatsoever. This is not to say that the show will not be shocking to Indonesians. For reasons discussed in my director’s statement, North Sumatrans are more accustomed than Jakartans, for example, to the boasting of perpetrators (who in Sumatra were recruited from the ranks of gangsters – and the basis of gangsters’ power, after all, lies in being feared).

    Moreover, virtually nobody in Medan dares to criticise Pancasila Youth and men like Anwar Congo and Ibrahim Sinik. Ironically, the only significant reaction to the talk show’s broadcast came from the Indonesian Actors’ Union. According to Anwar, a representative of the union visiting family in Medan came to Anwar’s house to ask him if he would consider being president of the North Sumatra branch of the union. According to Anwar, the union was angry that such a large-scale production had occurred in North Sumatra without their knowing about it. Luckily, Anwar had the humility to tell them that he is not an actor, that he was playing himself in scenes made for a documentary, and therefore would decline the offer.

    Anwar and his friends knew that their fiction scenes were only being made for our documentary, and this will be clear to the audience, too. But at the same time, if these scenes were to offer genuine insights, it was vital that the filmmaking project was one in which they were deeply invested, and one over which they felt ownership.

    The Act of Killing : don’t give an Oscar to this snuff movie | Nick Fraser | Film | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/23/act-of-killing-dont-give-oscar-snuff-movie-indonesia

    It has won over critics but this tasteless film teaches us nothing and merely indulges the unrepentant butchers of Indonesia

    The Act of Killing won the documentary prize at the Baftas last week and is the favourite to win the much-coveted Oscar. I watch many documentaries on behalf of the BBC each year and I go to festivals. I’m a doc obsessive. By my own, not quite reliable reckoning, I’ve been asked by fans to show The Act of Killing on the BBC at least five times. I’ve never encountered a film greeted by such extreme responses – both those who say it is among the best films and those who tell me how much they hate it. Much about the film puzzles me. I am still surprised by the fact that so many critics listed it among their favourite films of last year.

    For those who haven’t seen the film, it investigates the circumstances in which half-a-million Indonesian leftists were murdered in the 1960s, at the instigation of a government that is still in power. You might think this is a recondite subject, worthy of a late-night screening for insomniacs or atrocity buffs on BBC4, but, no, the film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer has made the subject viewable by enlisting the participation of some of the murderers. He spent some years hanging out with them, to his credit luring them into confessions. But he also, more dubiously, enlisted their help in restaging their killings. Although one of them, the grandfatherly Anwar, shows mild symptoms of distress towards the end of the film, they live in a state of impunity and it is thus, coddled and celebrated in their old age, that we revisit them.

    So let me be as upfront as I can. I dislike the aesthetic or moral premise of The Act of Killing. I find myself deeply opposed to the film. Getting killers to script and restage their murders for the benefit of a cinema or television audience seems a bad idea for a number of reasons. I find the scenes where the killers are encouraged to retell their exploits, often with lip-smacking expressions of satisfaction, upsetting not because they reveal so much, as many allege, but because they tell us so little of importance. Of course murderers, flattered in their impunity, will behave vilely. Of course they will reliably supply enlightened folk with a degraded vision of humanity. But, sorry, I don’t feel we want to be doing this. It feels wrong and it certainly looks wrong to me. Something has gone missing here. How badly do we want to hear from these people, after all? Wouldn’t it be better if we were told something about the individuals whose lives they took?

    I’d feel the same if film-makers had gone to rural Argentina in the 1950s, rounding up a bunch of ageing Nazis and getting them to make a film entitled “We Love Killing Jews”. Think of other half-covered-up atrocities – in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, Israel, any place you like with secrets – and imagine similar films had been made. Consider your response – and now consider whether such goings-on in Indonesia are not acceptable merely because the place is so far away, and so little known or talked about that the cruelty of such an act can pass uncriticised.

    The film does not in any recognisable sense enhance our knowledge of the 1960s Indonesian killings, and its real merits – the curiosity when it comes to uncovering the Indonesian cult of anticommunism capable of masking atrocity, and the good and shocking scenes with characters from the Indonesian elite, still whitewashing the past – are obscured by tasteless devices. At the risk of being labelled a contemporary prude or dismissed as a stuffy upholder of middle-class taste, I feel that no one should be asked to sit through repeated demonstrations of the art of garrotting. Instead of an investigation, or indeed a genuine recreation, we’ve ended somewhere else – in a high-minded snuff movie.

    What I like most about documentary film is that anything can be made to work, given a chance. You can mix up fact and fiction, past and present. You can add to cold objectivity a degree of empathy. You will, of course, lie to reluctant or recalcitrant participants, in particular when they wish not to divulge important pieces of information. And trickery has its place, too. But documentary films have emerged from the not inconsiderable belief that it’s good to be literal as well as truthful. In a makeshift, fallible way, they tell us what the world is really like. Documentaries are the art of the journeyman. They can be undone by too much ambition. Too much ingenious construction and they cease to represent the world, becoming reflected images of their own excessively stated pretensions.

    In his bizarrely eulogistic piece defending The Act of Killing (of which he is an executive producer), Errol Morris, the documentary maker, compares the film to Hamlet’s inspired use of theatre to reveal dirty deeds at the court of Denmark. But Hamlet doesn’t really believe that theatrical gestures can stand in for reality. Nor, we must assume, did his creator. A more apt analogy than Morris’s might come from Shakespeare’s darkest play, Macbeth. What would we think if Macbeth and his scheming wife were written out of the action, replaced by those low-level thugs paid to do bad business on their behalf? We might conclude that putting them centre stage, in the style of The Act of Killing, was indeed perverse and we’d be right.

    There are still half-forgotten, heavily whitewashed atrocities from the last century, such as the Bengali famine allowed to occur during the second world war through the culpably racist inattention of British officials; the never wholly cleared-up question of Franco’s mass killings; or the death of so many millions in the 1950s as a consequence of Mao’s catastrophic utopianism. Those wondering how to record such events will no doubt watch The Act of Killing, but I hope they will also look at less hyped, more modestly conceived depictions of mass murder. In Enemies of the People (2010), the Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath goes after the murderers of the Khmer Rouge. He finds Pol Pot’s sidekick, but it is the earnest, touching quest of Sambath himself that lingers in the mind, rather than the empty encounters with evil-doers. Atrocity is both banal and ultimately impossible to comprehend.

    Writing in 1944, Arthur Koestler was among the first to gain knowledge of the slaughter of eastern European Jews and he estimated that the effect of such revelations was strictly limited, lasting only minutes or days and swiftly overcome by indifference. Koestler suggested that there was only one way we could respond to the double atrocity of mass murder and contemporary indifference and that was by screaming.

    I’m grateful to The Act of Killing not because it’s a good film, or because it deserves to win its Oscar (I don’t think it does), but because it reminds me of the truth of Koestler’s observation. What’s not to scream about?

    Nick Fraser is editor of the BBC’s Storyville documentary series

    #film #documentaire #Indonésie #hécatombe

  • Are Indonesia and Malaysia Ready to Stand up for China’s Muslims ?
    https://www.cetri.be/Are-Indonesia-and-Malaysia-Ready

    The two Southeast Asian states might be the best hope for pressure from the Islamic world. By now, the scale of the crisis is clear. There are up to 3 million Turkic Muslims – primarily Uyghurs but also ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz – in a vast network of concentration camps in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. The result is the 21st century’s greatest human rights crisis : Empty Uyghur neighborhoods. Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academics jailed. “Graduates” of these camps are (...)

    #Southern_Social_Movements_Newswire

    / #Le_Sud_en_mouvement, #Chine, #Indonésie, #Malaisie, #Répression, #Religion, The (...)

    #The_Diplomat

  • With Fatwas and Blasphemy Claims, Cleric Emerges as a Force in Indonesia - WSJ
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/conservative-muslim-cleric-emerges-as-a-force-in-indonesias-elections-115482448
    https://images.wsj.net/im-49236/social

    JAKARTA, Indonesia—The Muslim cleric poised to become vice president of the world’s third-largest democracy is known for curbing religious freedoms, opposing gay rights, and for his role in the prosecution of a Christian politician for blaspheming Islam.

    Ma’ruf Amin is the running mate of Indonesia’s more-moderate president, Joko Widodo, and polls indicate they should comfortably win April elections in the country of 250 million.

    #indonésie #islam #islam_radical

  • China says pace of Xinjiang ’education’ will slow, but defends camps

    China will not back down on what it sees as a highly successful de-radicalisation program in Xinjiang that has attracted global concern, but fewer people will be sent through, officials said last week in allowing rare media access there.

    Beijing has faced an outcry from activists, scholars, foreign governments and U.N. rights experts over what they call mass detentions and strict surveillance of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and other Muslim groups who call Xinjiang home.

    In August, a U.N. human rights panel said it had received credible reports that a million or more Uighurs and other minorities in the far western region are being held in what resembles a “massive internment camp.”

    Last week, the government organized a visit to three such facilities, which it calls vocational education training centers, for a small group of foreign reporters, including Reuters.

    In recent days, a similar visit was arranged for diplomats from 12 non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Kazakhstan, according to Xinjiang officials and foreign diplomats.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-insight/china-says-pace-of-xinjiang-education-will-slow-but-defends-camps-idUSKCN1P
    #Chine #Ouïghour #rééducation #camps #camps_d'internement

    Commentaire de Kenneth Roth sur twitter:

    The million Uighur Muslims whom China is detaining until they renounce Islam and their ethnicity, they must be happy, right? During a staged visit, they were forced to sing, in English, “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands.” End of story.


    https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1082005177861922816

    ping @reka

  • Rise of carbon dioxide–absorbing mountains in tropics may set thermostat for global climate | Science | AAAS
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/rise-carbon-dioxide-absorbing-mountains-tropics-may-set-thermostat-globa

    Hate the cold? Blame Indonesia. It may sound odd, given the contributions to global warming from the country’s 270 million people, rampant deforestation, and frequent carbon dioxide (CO2)-belching volcanic eruptions. But over much longer times, Indonesia is sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

    Many mountains in Indonesia and neighboring Papua New Guinea consist of ancient volcanic rocks from the ocean floor that were caught in a colossal tectonic collision between a chain of island volcanoes and a continent, and thrust high. Lashed by tropical rains, these rocks hungrily react with CO2 and sequester it in minerals. That is why, with only 2% of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10% of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years (although they are now threatened by global warming).

    #climat #co2 #carbone

  • Can Facebook Ads Tell Us Which Asian Country Is Most #crypto-Crazy?
    https://hackernoon.com/can-facebook-ads-tell-us-which-asian-country-is-most-crypto-crazy-6dc4b9

    Can Facebook Tell Us Which Asian Country Is Most Crypto-Crazy?As a marketer in the crypto/blockchain space, I’m fascinated by how similar and yet different crypto #marketing and “traditional” digital marketing are. I’ve been particularly interested in the reaction in Asia to the crypto craze, so when Facebook threw a few bucks in free #advertising credits my way, I thought: “How can I use Facebook to test crypto interest in Asia?” With that goal, I promoted a recent article about decentralized exchanges — “The Paradox of Decentralized Exchanges: Many Projects, Few Users” — targeted at 18+ year olds in China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, and Myanmar, and who show an interest in cryptocurrency as a topic.Facebook (...)

    #facebook-ads #blockchain

  • Encore une compilation de musique politiquement engagée, un coffret de 4 CDs même, prévu pour février 2019, produit par le Smithonian Institute:

    The Social Power of Music
    https://folkways.si.edu/the-social-power-of-music

    From parties to protests to prayer, music is a powerful catalyst for celebration, for change, and for a sense of community. Through making music together, we become bigger than ourselves. Whether singing with our families and friends or with thousands of strangers in an arena, music transforms lives, engages individuals, and connects local and global communities. The Social Power of Music chronicles the vivid, impassioned, and myriad ways in which music binds, incites, memorializes, and moves groups of people. This richly illustrated 124-page book, with 80+ tracks on 4 CDs, invites listeners into musical practices, episodes, and movements throughout the U.S. and beyond. These songs of struggle, devotion, celebration, and migration remind us that music has the potential to change our world.

    Countries: Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Congo-Brazzaville; Denmark; Dominican Republic; France; Greece; Indonesia; Italy; Korea, South; Lebanon; Mexico; Nicaragua; Poland; Puerto Rico; Republic of Kosovo; Scotland; South Africa; Thailand; Turkey; United Kingdom; United States; Vietnam

    101 We Shall Overcome The Freedom Singers 2:09
    102 This Land is Your Land Woody Guthrie 2:48
    103 De colores ([Made] of Colors) Baldemar Velásquez, Aguila Negra 3:02
    104 Union Maid Bobbie McGee 2:13
    105 If I Had a Hammer Pete Seeger 1:54
    106 Reclaim the Night Peggy Seeger 4:33
    107 Estoy aquí (I Am Here) Quetzal 5:21
    108 Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) Sammy Walker 4:57
    109 We Are the Children Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, Charlie Chin 2:55
    110 I Woke Up This Morning Fannie Lou Hamer 2:36
    111 I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Country Joe McDonald 2:59
    112 El pobre sigue sufriendo (The Poor Keep On Suffering) Andrés Jiménez 3:26
    113 Ballad of the ERA Kristin Lems 4:11
    114 Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger 2:06
    115 Blowing in the Wind The New World Singers 2:32
    116 Quihubo raza (What’s Happening, People) Agustín Lira and Alma 3:50
    117 Solidarity Forever Jim Jackson 2:30
    118 Joe Hill Paul Robeson 3:00
    119 Joaquin Murrieta Rumel Fuentes 3:35
    120 Which Side Are You On? The Almanac Singers 2:10
    121 Legal/Illegal Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger 4:12
    122 It Isn’t Nice Barbara Dane, The Chambers Brothers 4:05

    201 Amazing Grace The Old Regular Baptists 2:44
    202 Come By Here Barbara Dane, The Chambers Brothers 5:33
    203 Will the Circle Be Unbroken The Strange Creek Singers 3:38
    204 Peace in the Valley The Paramount Singers 3:50
    205 Many Eagle Set Sun Dance Song The Pembina Chippewa Singers 2:11
    206 Zuni Rain Dance Members of Zuni Pueblo 4:41
    207 Calvary Shape-note singers at Stewart’s Chapel 1:27
    208 Northfield The Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee 1:58
    209 The Call to Prayer / Adhān Ahmad Al Alawi 2:10
    210 Zikr (excerpt) Sheikh Xhemail Shehu, members of the Prizren Rifa’i tekke 2:45
    Audio Player
    211 Buddhist Chants and Prayers Tu Huyen, Hai Phat, Tam Thu, Hai Dat 4:34
    212 Kol Nidre Cantor Abraham Brun 5:05
    213 Dayeinu Raasche, Alan Mills 1:47
    214 Night Chant Sandoval Begay 2:12
    215 Hark, Hark Carolers from the Black Bull, Ecclesfield, UK 3:11
    216 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot The Princely Players 2:47
    217 The Old Rugged Cross The Paschall Brothers 5:17
    218 Madre de Dolores (Mother of Sorrows) Hermanos de la Morada de Nuestra Señora de Dolores del Alto 2:56
    219 San Miguel (Saint Michael) Francia Reyes 4:11
    220 I’ll Fly Away Rose Maddox 2:32

    301 Party Down at the Blue Angel Club Clifton Chenier and His Red Hot Louisiana Band 4:51
    302 San Antonio Rose Los Reyes de Albuquerque 2:38
    303 Jolie blonde (Pretty Blonde) Austin Pitre 2:47
    304 Shake Your Moneymaker John Littlejohn 4:19
    305 Beer-Drinking Polka Flaco Jiménez, Max Baca 2:25
    306 In Heaven There Is No Beer The Goose Island Ramblers 2:32
    307 SAM (Get Down) Sam Brothers Five 4:10
    308 Golden Slippers / The Butterfly Whirl Lester Bradley and Friends 4:31
    309 Sligo Indians / Paddy Clancy’s / Larry Redican’s / The Rambling Pitchfork Tony DeMarco 4:21
    310 La entrega de los novios (The Delivery of the Newlyweds) Lorenzo Martínez 3:46
    311 Rock Dance Song (Cree/Metis) The Pembina Chippewa Singers 2:20
    312 Pow Wow Song Chippewa Nation 2:52
    313 Mary Mack Lilly’s Chapel School, Alabama 1:58
    314 Johnny Cuckoo Janie Hunter and children at home 1:15
    315 Rooster Call John Henry Mealing and group 4:00
    316 Joy to the World Elizabeth Mitchell 3:06
    317 Oylupnuv Obrutch (The Broken Hoop Song) The Golden Gate Gypsy Orchestra 2:01
    318 Liberty Funeral March The Liberty Brass Band 4:51
    319 Junkanoos #1 Key West Junkanoo Band 3:07
    320 The Star Spangled Banner Unknown orchestra 1:16
    321 Mardi Gras Medley (excerpt) ReBirth Jazz Band 4:33

    401 Viva la Quince Brigada (Long Live the 15th Brigade) Pete Seeger 3:04
    402 Bella ciao (Goodbye Beautiful) Singers of the “Bella Ciao” production of Spoleto 1:35
    403 A desalambrar (Tear Down the Fences) Expresión Joven 5:07
    404 Muato mua N’Gola (Women of Angola) Lilly Tchiumba 2:34
    405 Un gigante que despierta (An Awakening Giant) Luis Godoy, Grupo Mancotal 4:03
    406 Hasret (Longing) Melike Demirag 3:10
    407 Prisioneros somos (We Are All Prisoners) Suni Paz 2:19
    408 Funeral do lavrador (Funeral of a Worker) Zelia Barbosa 1:59
    409 Izakunyatheli Afrika Verwoerd (Africa is Going to Trample on You, Verwoerd) South African refugees in Tanganyika 1:52
    410 The Boy with the Sunlit Smile Mikis Theodorakis 2:48
    411 Hidup di Bui (Life in Jail) Gambang Kromong Slendang Betawi, Kwi Ap 5:34
    412 Man and Buffalo (Kon Gap Kwai) Caravan 3:40
    413 Why Need We Cry? Cantor Abraham Brun 2:32
    414 El palomo (The Dove) Grupo Raíz 4:06
    415 Hvem sidder dér bag skærmen (The Roadmaker) Inger Nielsen 3:08
    416 Mon’ etu ua Kassule Musician supporters of the MPLA 5:35
    417 Le temps des cerises (Cherry Blossom Time) Yves Montand 4:37
    418 Chongsun Arirang Singer from Central Korea 4:03
    419 The Passport Marcel Khalifé 9:23
    420 Inno della Resistenza (Hymn of the Resistance) Choir of FLN fighters 1:28

    #Musique #Musique_et_politique

  • Investment platforms vie to capture a share of global #remittances

    Investment platforms are vying to capture a share of global remittances
    IN 2016 AYO ADEWUNMI, a Nigerian-born agricultural trader living in London, bought a five-hectare farm in
    his homeland. It has produced little since. “I am not in the country, so I have to rely on third parties. It’s just
    not good enough,” he says.
    Mr Adewunmi has since discovered another, potentially more satisfactory way to make such investments:
    through #FarmCrowdy (https://www.farmcrowdy.com), a crowdfunding platform that lends to Nigerian farms and provides technical
    assistance to their owners. The two-year-old startup, which is considering expanding into Ghana, places high
    hopes in the African diaspora as a source of funds.
    The case for such platforms goes beyond agriculture. Global remittances are expected to soar from $468bn
    in 2010 to $667bn in 2019. They are among the top two foreign-currency sources in several countries,
    including Kenya and the Philippines. Yet hardly any of the money is invested.
    In part, this is because recipients use three-quarters of the money for basics such as food and housing. But it
    is also because emigrants who want to invest back home have few options. New investment channels could
    attract lots of extra cash—about $73bn a year in Commonwealth countries alone, according to research by
    the 53-country grouping.

    Crowdfunding platforms would enable investors to put modest sums directly into smaller businesses in
    developing countries, which are often cash-starved. Yet of the emerging world’s 85 debt- and
    equity-crowdfunding ventures, only a handful raise money abroad. Several platforms set up in rich countries
    over the past decade to invest in developing countries, including Emerging Crowd, Homestrings and Enable
    Impact, quickly folded.
    A big problem is that few developing countries have rules about crowdfunding. Many have allowed activity
    so far chiefly because the industry is so small, says Anton Root of Allied Crowds, a consultancy. Cross-border
    transfers using such platforms easily fall foul of rich countries’ rules intended to stop money-laundering and
    the financing of terrorism.
    Some developing countries have realised that they need to act. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia
    have all recently passed regulations on equity crowdfunding or peer-to-peer lending. But from a
    cross-border perspective, Africa seems most inventive, owing to active entrepreneurs and Western help.

    Last month the British government approved a grant of £230,000 ($300,000) to the African Crowdfunding
    Association to help it craft model accreditation and investor-protection rules. Elizabeth Howard of
    LelapaFund, a platform focused on east Africa, is part of an effort to see such rules adopted across the
    continent. That would help reassure sending countries that transfers do not end up in the wrong hands, she
    says. She hopes to enlist the support of the Central Bank of West African States, which oversees eight
    Francophone countries, at a gathering of crowdfunders and regulators sponsored by the French
    government in Dakar, in Senegal, this month.
    Thameur Hemdane of Afrikwity, a platform targeting Francophone Africa, says the industry will also study
    whether prospective laws could be expanded to the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, a
    grouping of six countries. Harmonised rules will not guarantee crowdfunders’ success, but would be a useful
    step towards raising the amount of diaspora capital that is put to productive use.


    https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/11/08/investment-platforms-vie-to-capture-a-share-of-global-remittances?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/investmentplatformsvietocaptureashareofglobalremittancesitscominghome
    #agriculture #crowdfunding #migrations #investissement #développement