http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081128/REVIEW/843636163/-1/NEWS
Man the barricades: Protestors shout anti-French slogans outside a Carrefour supermarket in Chongqing municipality, lashing out against French criticism of China. Today many Chinese youths not only support the Beijing regime, they believe it needs to become stronger at home and abroad. AFP
Updated: November 27. 2008 5:35PM UAE / November 27. 2008 1:35PM GMT
The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China
James Mann
Penguin
Dh48
Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications
Xu Wu
Lexington Books
Dh148
When I first started working in China and was still accustomed to the cozy shopping malls of American suburbia, the ferocity of Chinese shoppers shocked me – I often waited what seemed like hours to pay for groceries as one older Chinese woman after another shoved me aside to reach the cash register. But nothing prepared me for my first visit to a Carrefour in China, in 2005. Superficially, the French supermarket looked much the same as its European outlets – there were the same wide aisles full of endless rows of produce, fresh fish, breads, canned goods. But the resemblance ended there. In the Chinese aisles, shoppers pushed and shoved as they scrambled for products, ramming their carts into one another. At the checkout counter, mobs of shoppers formed a large scrum, which occasionally disgorged one person with a shopping cart who, like a rugby runner, would make a dash for an open cash register.
A few years later, in the spring of 2008, a different kind of crowd gathered at Carrefours across China. But these mobs weren’t there to shop. In response to Western criticism of China’s treatment of Tibetan and Western protests against the Beijing Olympics, angry young Chinese nationalists lashed out. With French President Nicolas Sarkozy voicing particularly tough criticism of China, some demanded that Carrefour must pay. Across the country, demonstrators gathered outside Carrefour outlets, angrily chanting for a boycott.
These two shopping mall scenes illustrate China’s modern-day split-personality disorder. Across urbanised, eastern China, young middle class men and women drape themselves in Western brands and whip out the latest Nokia phones. While China’s industrial sector continues to supply a huge percentage of the world’s manufactured goods, its youths increasingly consume the same products and browse some of the same websites as do their peers around the world. But despite many Western leaders’ predictions that economic growth and increased cultural openness would push China toward political change, China’s teenagers and twentysomethings have not become more politically progressive. In many ways, they are far more nationalist and conservative than their older peers, the men and women who pushed for reform in the 1980s and ultimately failed at Tiananmen Square.
Today, many Chinese youths not only support the Beijing regime, they believe it needs to become stronger at home and abroad. They are pushing Beijing to become more nationalist than the Chinese government itself desires. And if these youths ultimately inherit power in China, they might turn the country, now beginning to work with the international community, in a far more dangerous direction.
Xu Wu, a former journalist at Xinhua, China’s state news agency, chronicles one aspect of China’s new nationalism in his new book, Chinese Cyber Nationalism : Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications. Many of the most strident young Chinese, known as fenqing (angry youth) blog or contribute to websites known for their nationalism, like the “Strong Country” forum linked to the website of the People’s Daily newspaper. Some forums trade in racist images of Japanese, while others call for China to modernise its military and ready itself for battle with America (even as many fenqing apply for higher education in the US). The hatred spills offline, too. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, some Chinese students told pollsters: “When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, I really felt very delighted.” In a broader study of September 11 opinion, researchers found that “most Chinese college students ... were immediately excited because the United States, an abhorrent, overbearing, and arbitrary country in their minds, suffered an unprecedented heavy strike.” Recent polls of Chinese reveal the same trends in antipathy toward the US, Japan and other nations.
Many older professors I’ve met seem shocked at their students’ anger, xenophobia and fervent nationalism. That’s partly because these internet-savvy nationalists are too young to remember the worst moments in China’s own past. The generation of urban Chinese between the ages of 15 and 35, removed from the era of the Cultural Revolution, have never seen their country weak, poor or in total chaos; under this government, they realize, they have become wealthier than any previous generation in modern China. By comparison, older Chinese, who’ve experienced terror at the hands of their own leaders, generally remain more wary of Beijing.
China’s youth been also been carefully weaned on a diet of government spoon-fed nationalism. After the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Beijing realised it needed to shore up domestic support, as Peter Hays Gries notes in his extensive study, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy. Revamped school textbooks have stoked anti-Japanese and anti-Western feelings by emphasising the pre-1949 period, when outsiders carved up China, by highlighting Japan’s war crimes in the Second World War and by portraying Western criticism of China today, on issues like human rights, as red herrings meant to keep China down. Television dramas and other state media celebrate China’s long history and tacitly portray the country as ready to blossom as an international power once again.
Meanwhile, Beijing rolls out state policies designed to keep young Chinese close to the regime, taking measures to bring businessmen into the Party, for instance, while simultaneously cracking down on some anti-government activists. According to my colleague Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an American think tank, the government has smartly increased salaries for professors and other opinion leaders as well in recent years. In the 1980s, those academics, angry at the regime’s corruption and at their own poor standards of living, led some of the 1989 protests.
Beijing has reaped its fruit. According to one recent survey by the Pew organisation, a leading American polling group, Chinese citizens express some of the highest degrees of satisfaction with their lives of any people in the world. (The survey concentrated primarily on urban areas; in rural areas, where the economic reforms have produced far less growth, satisfaction with the government is far lower.) Some young Chinese I’ve met deride the country’s remaining pro-democracy protestors as foolish to believe that democracy could work in such a large and potentially chaotic nation – exactly the line many Beijing officials espouse. Other young Chinese simply seem not to care, preferring to focus on exploiting their economic freedoms and enjoying the fruits of wealth. As several professors have told me, campus interest in once-popular liberal arts disciplines like political science now pales in comparison to the droves of students studying business and computing. “There’s nothing we can do about politics,” one young Shanghainese told a reporter in an article in Time magazine entitled China’s Me Generation. “So there’s no point in talking about it or getting involved.”
To be fair, Shanghai’s rich kids do not represent an entire young generation. Pro-democracy activists still stand up across China (and are quickly shut down). But without broader public interest in their actions, there have been no large-scale pro-democracy movements in China since the Tiananmen era.
If the prospect of Chinese democratisation seems more remote than it did even just a decade ago, it is partly because the government has also become more sophisticated in its techniques of surveillance and control. Unlike in the Maoist era, when the regime tried to control virtually every facet of people’s lives, today the average Chinese person is free to do virtually whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes. But the state has set certain invisible lines that average citizens may not cross. Working to form a national movement is one such line, and Beijing responds harshly when it is crossed. After the Falun Gong spiritual movement attempted, in the late 1990s, to build a national political presence, Beijing allegedly arrested, tortured and even killed thousands of Falun Gong practitioners.
Meanwhile, other invisible lines criss-cross cyberspace, granting Chinese internet users only a skewed and partial view of the Web. Beijing has developed the most sophisticated Internet firewall and monitoring system in the world. The “Great Firewall of China” screens millions of websites for certain words, like “Dalai Lama”, and allows censors to block content without most Chinese users even knowing what they are missing. Of course, people who understand how to use remote servers can get around the firewall, but this takes a relatively high degree of computer savvy.
Just because they don’t openly support democracy, the new nationalists don’t necessarily avoid political discourse, nor do they even shy away from criticising Beijing. Over the past five years, nationalist young Chinese have taken to the streets repeatedly to protest perceived international slights against China. In 2005, after Japan published its own school history textbook that downplayed some of its nastier deeds in the Second World War, thousands of middle class Chinese rampaged through downtown Shanghai, chanting “Japanese pigs get out,” attacking Japanese nationals and stoning Japanese restaurants. The riots soon spread to other Chinese cities. Similar demonstrations have erupted against the US in times of poor US-China relations, as when a US military surveillance plane crashed into a Chinese fighter jet in 2001, killing the Chinese pilot.
Though Beijing sometimes turns a blind eye to these demonstrations (a pass other types of protests would never be granted), China’s leaders are clearly becoming worried as the demonstrations grow in size and ferocity. During the anti-Japanese riots of 2005, for instance, the Chinese police initially stood aside as the protests grew, but eventually took a harder line, stopping all demonstrations.
The government is right to worry. As Xu Wu notes, fenqing often take to the internet to blast Beijing – for not being tough enough. They have demanded that Chinese authorities take harder lines on Tibet and on Taiwan, deriding Beijing’s recent policy of rapprochement with the Island government. Moreover, Xu Wu believes that the cybernationalists, once regarded as a radical fringe group, are gaining a wider audience. Earlier this year, according to a story in the New Yorker magazine, a nationalist online video called “2008 China Stand Up!”, which entreated China to confront Western nations encircling it in a new Cold War, drew over a million hits in the first week and a half it was online.
In the future, too, the fenqing may become even more bitter. If the global economic crash hits Beijing any harder – it has already resulted in the closings of thousands of factories that produce consumer goods for the West – the fenqing could become harder to handle. As jobs become scarce, the government’s leading means of keeping them quiet – providing solid economic growth – will falter. Worse, China has one of the most skewed sex imbalances in the world. The rising generation of young Chinese men will struggle to find wives, and many will fail to build a family. And as scholars Valerie Hudson and Andrea M de Boer find in their book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, a generation of unmarried young men is a recipe for disaster. Already, gangs of male youths have been recruited as thugs by crooked developers and other businesspeople and have been used to violently quell protests against illegal land evictions.
In the future, angry young men with loose personal ties, fired up by nationalism and furious at a government they see as too soft could turn against Beijing itself. It has happened before. In the late 19th century, unequal sex ratios in China left men idle and contributed to widespread armed rebellions in the countryside. Eventually, those rebellions coalesced in the overthrow of the last Chinese emperor – surely a precedent Beijing’s leaders keep in mind.
Many of these trends, however, barely seem to have registered in other countries, where leaders still simply assume that economic growth will eventually produce democracy in China. As James Mann writes in The China Fantasy, a short, incendiary polemic, Western leaders have relied for years on this article of faith to sell ever-closer relations with Beijing to their own, skeptical publics. They promise that deepening trade relations will eventually catalyse political reform, despite there being little evidence to support this theory. By touting this line, Western leaders gamble on Chinese democratisation, preventing their governments from preparing for an alternative future, one in which China becomes an aggressive, nationalist power, perhaps like Japan before the Second World War.
Yet even if China did develop a freer political system, this might not guarantee a smooth relationship with the rest of the world. “We don’t really know what would happen if China were a democracy,” one Bush administration official, herself a prominent democratization advocate, admitted to me. “Maybe all the public pressure would force a democratically elected government to invade Taiwan.” As Western leaders publicly denounce the Beijing government for its human rights abuses, the slow pace of its economic reforms and its coddling of dictators from Zimbabwe to Burma, many in the West are beginning to whisper behind closed doors that Beijing’s leadership may actually be more moderate than the Chinese middle class.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Angry young men-CHINA
Japanese man among the slain
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20081128a1.html
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
A Japanese businessman was among the scores of people killed in Mumbai by multiple terrorist attacks on major landmarks in India's financial capital, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
Hisashi Tsuda, 38, was shot during an assault on his hotel. A Muslim militant group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has allegedly claimed responsibility for the 13 coordinated attacks on the city.
Tsuda, employed by Tokyo-based Mitsui Marubeni Liquefied Gas Co., was in Mumbai, also known as Mumbai, on business when he was shot in the chest and leg in the lobby of the hotel. One of his colleagues was also wounded.
"We express strong resentment that many lives, including that of a Japanese, were taken because of the attacks," Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said, adding that no act of terrorism can be justified.
Local media have reported that the gunmen were specifically hunting Westerners. Some of the terrorists had reportedly taken hostages and were holed up in a hotel after the attacks.
Later in the day, the Foreign Ministry said it had confirmed the safety of all 268 local Japanese residents and 28 businesspeople in the area.
According to the Foreign Ministry, there have been six major terrorist campaigns in the last six months, including simultaneous bombings in Delhi in September and in Guwahati, Assam, in October.
Following the attacks, the Foreign Ministry issued warnings to Japanese nationals and travelers bound for India, advising them to stay away from crowded public places and to stay alert. It also set up special task forces in both Mumbai and in Tokyo.
Kawamura strongly condemned the attacks.
"We are determined to join hands on the fight against terrorism with our friends in India, the U.S. and other countries," he said.
Analysis: a new tactic by Islamist militants
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5240621.ece
From The TimesNovember 27, 2008
Jeremy Page in Delhi
It felt like India's 9/11 | Co-ordinated attacks | Terrorist 'spectacular' expected | Islamist group suspected | City's history of violence | MEP fears | US promises united front | Cricket tour in doubt
The group that claimed to be behind last night’s attacks on Bombay -- the Deccan Mujahideen — has not hitherto been heard of in India, let alone in the outside world. But it could be an offshoot of the Indian Mujahideen, an Islamist group that was also unknown until it said it had caused a series of multiple bomb attacks on Indian cities in the past year.
Last night’s attacks also appear to fit into a new campaign to hit busy urban targets, popular with foreigners and wealthy Indians, to cause maximum damage to India’s economy and international reputation. Many of last night’s targets — especially the Taj and Oberoi hotels — are frequented by tourists, diplomats and foreign business people as well as the city’s own wealthy elite.
The Taj is one of India’s best-known colonial buildings and is next to the Gateway of India, which was built in 1911 to mark a visit by George V and is one of India’s most popular tourist sites.
Related Links
Terrorists bring carnage to Bombay
Multiple bombs rock India's Assam state
Terrorist attacks in Bombay: hour by hour so far
India has blamed most of the recent terrorist attacks on Islamist militant groups based in Pakistan or Bangladesh which, it says, have links to Pakistan’s intelligence service. Other alleged culprits include Maoist rebels and separatist groups in India’s remote northeast, on the borders of
China, Bangladesh and Myanmar. But this year, the Indian Mujahideen has said that it has carried out multiple bomb attacks that have killed more than 130 people in the cities of Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.
In September the group threatened to attack Bombay, accusing the city’s Anti-Terrorism Squad of harassing Muslims. It is also reported to have threatened British and US targets in India.
Some terrorism experts say the Indian Mujahideen is a front for an older group called the Students Islamic Movement of India, which they say has links to Pakistan.
Others decribe it as the first homegrown terrorist group to have emerged from India’s 151 million strong Muslim population.
India’s Muslims have long complained of discrimination at the hands of its Hindu majority. Many also object to Indian rule in Kashmir, the Muslim majority region claimed by both india and Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda has repeatedly threatened to attack India in revenge for its policies in Kashmir, although Indian security officials maintain that the group has no active presence within the country.
The picture has this month been complicated by the arrest of a senior military intelligence officer on suspicion of involvement in a bomb attack by Hindu extremists in western India in September. Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit is the first serving officer in India’s Army — seen as a bastion of secularism since the country won independence in 1947 — to be arrested on terrorism charges.
Police are now investigating whether he and other members of Abhinav Bharat (New India), a Hindu nationalist organisation, were behind other recent bomb attacks. Abhinav Bharat’s president is Himani Savarkar, the niece of the Hindu radical who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
Indian officials said that it was too early to say which of these groups carried out last night’s attacks, but the scale, complexity and targets suggested that it was the work of an Islamist group.
Rakesh Patel, a British citizen who was staying in the Oberoi, said that the gunmen had asked specifically for British and American passport-holders. “They were looking for foreigners,” he told India’s NDTV channel.
Islamic militants have been blamed for all the recent attacks on Bombay, including multiple bombings of trains and railways stations that killed more than 180 people in 2006. In 2001 an assault on the Indian parliament by Islamic militants left 12 people dead and almost led to war between India and Pakistan.
If India accuses Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of masterminding this attack, it will almost certainly cause another crisis in already tense bilateral relations.
Pressure will now increase on the Indian Government to overhaul its counter-terrorism infrastructure in time for the national elections, due before May.
Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html
Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India's Muslims in Crisis
By Aryn Baker Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008A gunman walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai
Sebastian D'souza / AP / Mumbai Mirror
Facebook Yahoo! Buzz Mixx Permalink Reprints Related The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.
The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindu population, which hovers around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels, and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2000 people, most of them Muslim. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai.
The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's, and neighboring Pakistan's, progress towards peace and prosperity. But before inter-communal relations can improve there is an even bigger problem that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam, and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.
The Beginning of the Problem
On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment, attacked his British lieutenant. His hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and five hundred years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent was brought to a halt.
Muslim society in India collapsed. The British imposed English as the official language. The impact was cataclysmic. Muslims went from near 100% literacy to 20% within a half-century. The country's educated Muslim élite was effectively blocked from administrative jobs in the government. Between 1858 and 1878, only 57 out of 3,100 graduates of Calcutta University — then the center of South Asian education — were Muslim. While discrimination by both Hindus and the British played a role, it was as if the whole of Muslim society had retreated to lick its collective wounds.
From this period of introspection two rival movements emerged to foster an Islamic ascendancy. Revivalist groups blamed the collapse of their empire on a society that had strayed too far from the teachings of the Koran. They promoted a return to a more pure form of Islam, modeled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Others embraced the modern ways of their new rulers, seeking Muslim advancement through the pursuit of Western sciences, culture and law. From these movements two great Islamic institutions were born: Darul Uloom Deoband in northern India, rivaled only by al-Azhar University in Cairo for its teaching of Islam, and Aligarh Muslim University, a secular institution that promoted Muslim culture, philosophy and languages, but left religion to the mosque. These two schools embody the fundamental split that continues to divide Islam in the subcontinent today. "You could say that Deoband and Aligarh are husband and wife, born from the same historical events," says Adil Siddiqui, information coordinator for Deoband. "But they live at daggers drawn."
The campus at Deoband is only a three-hour drive from New Delhi through the modern megasuburb of Noida. Strip malls and monster shopping complexes have consumed many of the mango groves that once framed the road to Deoband, but the contemporary world stops at the gate. The courtyards are packed with bearded young men wearing long, collared shirts and white caps. The air thrums with the voices of hundreds of students reciting the Koran from open-door classrooms.
See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
【日刊ベリタ】ジェーン・バーキンが新曲「アウンサンスーチー」
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2008/11/28
People's Forum on Burma
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
今週11月26日、フランスの歌手・女優である、ジェーン・バーキンさんが
新作アルバム『冬の子供たち』を発売しました。
その中には、アウンサンスーチーさんやビルマの民主化活動家、
僧侶、子どもたちへ捧げる曲「アウンサンスーチー」も収録されています。
ビルマ情勢に強い関心を持つジェーン・バーキンさんは、昨年
来日された際に、在日ビルマ人の民主化活動家の皆さんとも会い、
ビルマ情勢についてお話されたそうです。
▼新曲「アウンサンスーチー」のビデオクリップ（日本語字幕版）はこちらの
サイトでご覧いただけます。
http://jp.youtube.com/user/AIJapan
以下、関連記事とともに、紹介させていただきます。
ビルマ市民フォーラム事務局
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
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【日刊ベリタ】 ビルマ民主化：2008年11月12日19時46分掲載
----------------------------------------------------- ジェーン・バーキンが新曲「アウンサンスーチー」
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
フランスの歌手、女優、映画監督と多彩な活動をくりひろげる、
ジェーン・バーキンが新作アルバム『冬の子供たち』で「アウン
サンスーチー」というビルマ（ミャンマー）の民主化運動指導者に
捧げる曲を歌っている。アルバムは１１月２６日にEMIミュー
ジックから発売される。日本にも多くの熱心なファンがいる
ジェーンは、スーチーさんの解放への支援を日本の人びとに訴える
メッセージも寄せている。またフランスのアムネスティと作った
「アウンサンスーチー」のビデオもYouTubeで公開されている。
（ベリタ通信）
人権活動に熱心なジェーン・バーキンはビルマの民主化問題に
強い関心をもち、昨年９月に僧侶が中心となった反政府デモが
軍政に弾圧されたことに衝撃を受けこの曲を書いたという。
事件の直後、彼女は米国にあるビルマ亡命政府のセインウィン
首相とともにサルコジ仏大統領に会い、軍政への圧力を強化する
よう訴えた。また、パリのビルマ大使館前で行われた国際人権団体
アムネスティの抗議行動にも参加した。
スーチーさんとは、旧首都ヤンゴンのフランス大使館で会ったことがある。
「アウンサンスーチー」の歌詞の一部は以下のとおり。
アウンサンスーチーさんは死んで
よく売れるＴシャツの絵柄になるでしょう
僧侶たちは死にかけ
少年兵たちは泣いている
私たちは４年越しの行ったり来たりを続けながら
実体のない計画をもてあそんでいるばかり
拷問 麻薬取引が
私たちの夢に資金を出しているのよ
どうして私たちは
株式市場の利益なんて気にしなきゃならないの？
（訳・沼崎敦子）
「この曲をアウンサンスーチーさん、国民民主連盟、僧侶や学生の
皆さん、ビルマの皆さん、子供たちに捧げます」と題して、
ジェーンは以下のメッセージを寄せている。
日本の皆さん、あなたがたは世界から尊敬も友情もそそがれる
民主主義の国の人です。しかも、軍事政権下にあるビルマ（ミャンマー）と
非常に深い関係を持っています。そういう日本が、ビルマの人たちを
助けるために何をするのか、それとも何もしないのか。どちらにしても、
ビルマへの影響はとても大きいのです。世界中があなた方の行動を
見守っています。―――ジェーン・バーキン
「アウンサンスーチー」のYouTube
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv3qad2jg8s
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
★ジェーン・バーキン最新アルバム
『冬の子供たち』発売中
TOCP-66841 \2,500 (税込)
★EMIミュージック ジェーン・バーキン公式ホームページ
http://intl.jp/jb/
新曲「アウンサンスーチー」のビデオ、日本語字幕版完成！
国際人権団体アムネスティ・インターナショナル日本のYouTube
動画サイトでは、アムネスティとジェーンが合同制作したビデオ
「アウンサンスーチー」の日本語字幕版（制作：アムネスティ・
フランス支部、提供：アムネスティ日本）が公開されています。
ぜひご覧下さい。
http://jp.youtube.com/user/AIJapan
Myanmar comedian sentenced to 14 years
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/myanmar.dissident.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A court inside Myanmar's notorious Insein prison sentenced a comedian who has criticized the government's cyclone response to 14 more years Thursday, bringing his total prison term to 59 years, his lawyer said.
Comedian Zarganar offers a meal to Buddhist monks in Yangon during last year's protests in Myanmar.
Comedian and activist Zarganar was given a 45-year prison sentence last week after he was convicted on charges related to interviews he gave to foreign media outlets.
In the interviews, he said the government was too slow in responding to a May cyclone that killed more than 84,000 people.
Myanmar's military, which has held power since 1962, tolerates no dissent. It frequently arrests artists and entertainers regarded as opposing the regime.
It has further ramped up its crackdown on dissent since Buddhist monks led pro-democracy protests in September 2007
The government holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the demonstrations, according to international human rights groups.
The military government's wave of harsh sentences has been condemned worldwide by Western governments and human rights groups. They contend that the sentences make a mockery of the ruling junta's professed plan to restore democracy with a 2010 election.
Zarganar's lawyer, Khin Htay Kywe, said he was convicted Thursday for causing public alarm, a reference to his interviews with foreign media, and for communicating with exiled dissidents, among other charges.
Zarganar, whose birth name is Maung Thura, was among at least 100 people to receive sentences of two to 65 years since early November. Many of the trials were held in closed sessions, sometimes without defense lawyers or family present.
He has been imprisoned several times before, including a three-week stint for providing aid to those who demonstrated last year.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
All About Myanmar • Human Rights Policy
Fw: [burmainfo] 今週のビルマのニュース（0837号） 草の根無償資金協力が５件／FW: 講演会「ミャンマーサイクロン被災者救援活動の現場から その祈りと行動」(12月15日、名古屋市熱田区)
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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2008/11/28
People's Forum on Burma
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ビルマ情報ネットワーク（BurmaInfo）からのメール、以下２つを転送させていただき
ます。
（重複の際は何卒ご容赦ください。）
①今週のビルマのニュース（0837号） 草の根無償資金協力が５件
②講演会「ミャンマーサイクロン被災者救援活動の現場から
その祈りと行動」(12月15日、名古屋市熱田区)
ＰＦＢ事務局
http://www1.jca.apc.org/pfb/
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ビルマ情報ネットワークの「今週のビルマのニュース」をお送りします。
「今週のビルマのニュース」バックナンバー
http://www.burmainfo.org/weekly.html
きょうのビルマのニュース（平日毎日更新）もご利用ください。
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo/
ビルマ情報ネットワーク （www.burmainfo.org）
秋元由紀
========================================
今週のビルマのニュース Eメール版
2008年11月28日号【0837号】
========================================
【今週の主なニュース】
民主化活動家らへの判決続く
・今月半ばに始まった多数の市民や僧侶への長期の
禁固刑判決言い渡しは今週も続き、これまでに少なく
とも150人が刑を宣告された。サイクロン被災者救援
活動をして逮捕された人気コメディアンのザガナー氏は
45年と14年の禁固刑判決を宣告された。判決を受けた人
の多くは遠隔地の刑務所に移送され、家族などが食糧や
薬を差し入れるのが困難になっている。軍政が2010年に
予定している総選挙を前に、反対意見を徹底的に抑え
込む姿勢を打ち出したとみられる（27日付イラワディ誌ほか）。
【その他】
国連総会決議案が委員会を通過、ほか
・国連総会第3委員会（人道問題）は21日、ビルマの人権状況
を非難する決議案を賛成多数で採択した。日本など89か国が
決議案に賛成、インドや中国など29か国が反対、タイなど
63か国が棄権した（22日付毎日新聞、24日付ミジマ）。
・国境なき医師団（MSF）は26日、ビルマでのエイズ治療薬
（ARV薬）の深刻な不足を指摘した。MSFによれば、
同国にいるとされるHIV感染者約24万人のうち7万6000人が
緊急にARV薬を必要としているが、実際に入手できる患者は
2割未満。軍政の医療保健分野への支出はGDP の0.3％
（2007年には国民1人当たり0.7ドル）にすぎず、2008年度
のHIV・エイズ関連予算は合計20万ドルだった。MSFは、
軍政は天然ガス輸出によりますます大きな収入を得ており、
医療保健分野への出資を増やすべきだとした。
【ビルマへの政府開発援助（ODA）約束状況など】
〔草の根・人間の安全保障無償資金協力〕
11月24日
ヤンゴン管区、小学校建設（約824万円）
同
エヤワディー（イラワジ）管区、サイクロンで壊れた僧院付属学校の再建（約841万
円）
11月20日
マンダレー管区、病院の医療器材整備（約840万円）
11月18日
シャン州、僧院付属学校の建設（約745万円）
11月17日
カイン（カレン）州、健康センター建設（約353万円）
【イベントなど】
・アジアと日本のつながりを考える国際セミナー
「100人の村 あなたもここに生きています」
ヒューライツ大阪ほか主催
秋元由紀がパネリストとして参加
（大阪市阿倍野区民ホール・小ホール、12月5日14時～）
・ビルマ市民フォーラム例会
「初めての方のための『ビルマ入門講座』
-ビデオ上映と講演-根本敬」
（文京シビックセンター、12月6日18時半～）
・世界人権宣言60周年記念・世界人権デー マーチング
呼びかけ団体 在日ビルマ人共同行動実行委員会ほか
（宮下公園集合、12月10日14時半～）
・上智大学アジア文化研究所「旅するアジア08」
第4回講演会「エネルギーの本当の値段～
ビルマ（ミャンマー）の天然ガス開発と人権」
講師：秋元由紀
（四谷・上智大学、12月12日18時～）
・テーラワーダ仏教講演会―ミャンマーサイクロン被
災者救援活動の現場から その祈りと行動
講師：ティータグー長老（ニャーニッサラ師）
＊ミャンマーの民芸品や料理の出店、写真展、舞踊、
油絵もあり
（名古屋市熱田区の本遠寺、12月15日、昼の部13時～・夜の部18時～）
★ジェーン・バーキン最新アルバム『冬の子供たち』が
発売中。アウンサンスーチー氏に捧げる楽曲「アウンサンスーチー」を収録。
☆インターネット放送局「アワープラネットTV」がビルマ
でのダム開発問題を取り上げた。
ビルマ情報ネットワークの秋元由紀が解説（映像、16分）。
http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/video/contact/2008/20081008_10.html
★特定非営利活動法人メコン・ウォッチの
季刊誌「フォーラムMekong」、最新号はビルマ特集。
－ビルマ～サイクロン後の人々、軍政－
http://www.mekongwatch.org/resource/forum/FM_vol9_2_01.html
【もっと詳しい情報は】
きょうのビルマのニュース（平日毎日更新）
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo/
ビルマ情報ネットワーク
http://www.burmainfo.org/
【お問い合わせ】
ビルマ情報ネットワーク 秋元由紀
====================================
今週のビルマのニュース Eメール版
2008年11月28日号【0837号】
作成： ビルマ情報ネットワーク
協力： ビルマ市民フォーラム
====================================
以下、ご紹介させていただきます。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク (http://www.burmainfo.org)
箱田徹
----
【テーラワーダ仏教講演会のお誘い】
―ミャンマーサイクロン被災者救援活動の現場から その祈りと行動―
日時：2008年12月15日（月）
昼の部13：00～15：30
夜の部18：00～20：30
※講演開始前20分間ほど、被災地の映像を映し出して犠牲者追悼のセレモニーを
行います。
※ミャンマーの民芸品、シャンラーメン、エスニックカレーなどの出店、写真展、
ロウソクの光と共に踊る舞踊、有名な画家・ウ・グェカインの油絵なども楽しめ
ます。
《長老の講演はプロの通訳が付きます》
場所：本遠寺 熱田区白鳥町2-3-20 (Tel: 052-682-2865)
地下鉄名城線 神宮西口下車3番出口 徒歩8分
講演者：ティータグー長老（ニャーニッサラ師）
プロフィール
1937年、ミャンマー中央部の小さな町で生まれ、7歳で学習のために地元の寺に
入り、20歳までに僧侶になる。マンダレー大学でパーリ仏典を専門的に研究。テー
ラワーダ仏教僧の習いに従い、1970年代の3年間を、森の中で瞑想修行をしてす
ごす。1979年、自身の僧院を建て、ほどなく、住民のための大規模な水の供給施
設を造り、人々の生命を守る社会活動に乗り出す。以来、貧しい人々のための病
院や、テーラワーダ仏教を修学するための国際仏教アカデミーなどを開設し、国
民の篤い支持を得ている。
************************************
ティータグー長老ことニャーニッサラ師は、今年5月、下ビルマのデルタ地帯
を襲った巨大サイクロン・ナルギスによる被災者の、救援活動を精力的にしてお
られます。この間の貴重な経験を、仏教僧としての立場から自由闊達にお話しし
ていただきます。
長老は救援物資を届けるため、被災直後から被災地域に入られました。おびた
だしい数の被災者たちに食物やテント、衣類や医薬品を提供し続けています。ま
た、避難民たちの肉体的および精神的な回復と生活の再建のための、長期的な支
援についても計画しておられます。
ミャンマーデルタ地帯の最も困難な状況にある地域で、具体的にどんな支援活
動がなされているのか、あるいは、今後どのような支援が必要なのかを知る、ま
たとない機会です。そしてまた、今回の講演を通じて、ティータグー長老の幅広
い活動の中心にある、テーラワーダ仏教についても、認識を新たにしていただけ
るものと思います。
主 催：ミャンマーサイクロン災害支援名古屋グループ
協 賛：日蓮宗名古屋宗務所、アーユス東海、ビルマ難民救援センター☆名古屋
連絡先：ナインナイン（090-9939-3096）、馬島（090-3958-3743）
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配布元: BurmaInfo（ビルマ情報ネットワーク）
http://www.burmainfo.org
連絡先: listmaster@burmainfo.org
バックナンバー: http://groups.yahoo.co.jp/group/burmainfo/
※BurmaInfoでは、ビルマ（ミャンマー）に関する最新ニュースやイベント情報、
参考資料を週に数本配信しています。
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The Bell Tolls for Burma -IRRAWADDY
http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=14709
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By YENI Friday, November 28, 2008
The latest insult to the intelligence of the Burmese people was the excessive sentences handed down recently to pro-democracy activists—including Buddhist monks, social workers, lawyers and women—by the Burmese military authorities under the guise of "national reconciliation" between the regime and the opposition movement.
Burma's dictator-in-chief, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, has forced the populace to accept his "seven-step road map" political process, whereby he calls the shots and locks up any opposition while at the same time saying he wants "to build a peaceful, modern and developed new democratic nation with flourishing discipline."
The response from the international community has been weak and fractious.
The United Nations General Assembly's Third Committee last week passed a resolution critical of human rights conditions in Burma. However, it was only approved by a vote of 89 in favor, 29 against and 63 abstentions after an intense round of disagreement among its members. Hardly a strong and united message.
While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which includes Burma, has nothing to say about the recent judicial crackdown on the Burmese opposition, China and India are free to move in again and secure their business ties with the Burmese junta, exploiting both the country’s economy and its natural resources.
China recently announced that the project to build an oil and gas pipeline from Yunnan Province in southwestern China to the bay of Bengal on Burma's Arakan coast would go ahead as planned, starting in early 2009.
For its part, India won a concession for the construction and operation of a multi-modal transit and transport facility on the Kaladan River connecting the port of Sittwe, capital of Arakan State, with the Indian state of Mizoram.
Although the US and the EU countries routinely condemn the regime and maintain economic sanctions, it is clear the White House is preoccupied with the ongoing financial crisis, the transition to Barack Obama’s administration and its disastrous military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some US lobbyists have suggested that the serious human rights abuses in Burma should be prioritized in Obama's foreign policy with bipartisan support from the US Congress and Senate. We shall see.
But when the political pundits can only shrug and utter comments like “Something is better than nothing,” you know Burma is facing its darkest night.
Many of them have criticized the politicking of detained NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the leaders of 88 Generation Students, calling it a "strategic failure."
Those so-called experts have also come to believe that a "space" would open up following the 2010 election and the subsequent realization of provisions under the constitution.
However, in Naypyidaw’s eyes, there isn’t even enough space in the government for the existing junta and its emerging ranks, never mind allowing civilians into the club.
Meanwhile those "pragmatics" say there are different approach between the "insiders" and "outsiders" of the country, and the exiles can only criticize but they don’t face the stark reality of daily life in the country.
Certainly the pro-democracy activists who were recently sentenced to 65 years in prison know the difference between "insiders" and "outsiders" in the struggle for liberty. They will wake up to it every day in dark, dirty cells.
In fact, there is no alternative. To break the political deadlock, we must follow the path of dialogue and compromise.
Burmese people know that the dawn of democracy is not tomorrow—in the words of UN Special Rapporteur Tomás Ojea Quintana, the "restoration of democracy cannot happen overnight. It will take generations."
In today’s world, the new generation is looking toward young, energetic leaders such as US President-elect Obama. The word "change" rings out like a bell tolling hope for people around the world.
But Burma has already sacrificed generations in this struggle—young people shot in the streets, imprisoned or forced to flee the country.
Perhaps that's why Min Zeya, a leading member of the 88 Generation Students group, openly ridiculed the Burmese court when his sentenced was pronounced. “What? only 65 years?” he shouted.
The world is moving forward. It must not neglect the brave political prisoners of Burma, nor allow them to die forgotten in remote prison cells.
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