Genocide on our doorstep

After last night's post, I slept fitfully. Because 13 May isn't the only abyss we cannot look into, as Malaysians. The other is the genocide happening right now on our doorstep. Never mind the manner in which we have consistently mistreated Burmese refugees, but what is happening in Burma today is nothing short of genocide. People are being targetted for cleansing on the grounds of their religion. They're being killed and raped and forcibly evicted, forced to deny their heritage, their ancestry and their names. The children who stand up to the killers are being killed.

The CHILDREN who stand up, the children who dare to be counted, who dare to say their names, to sing and shout in the face of oppression, the children are being killed.

Where does non-interference begin and end? Does it encompass the haze? And does it encompass compassion and humanity, that basic gut feeling that makes us feel a little ill, a little uneasy, a little nauseous, when we contemplate the Hutu man who said that they didn't bother torturing the babies, because the babies didn't understand what was happening to them, so there was no point. If it doesn't, then it isn't a policy worth having. If it means that we stand by and watch as our neighbour slaughters and rapes and maims, on any ground, but particularly on grounds of religion, or race, or gender, then it is not a policy worth having. And if it means that our leaders feel justified espousing maniac mantras of Islamic brotherhood while reaping in the profits of joint-venture mining and timber corporations with Burmese generals, then it is not a policy worth having.

When the Hutus murdered the Tutsis, we could blithely murmur that the West sat idly by, the West did not care, because these men, these women, these children, these babies, these Tutsis, they were black. And the West cares not for those who are black. What can we say when it is the Burmese who are doing the slaughtering and who are being slaughtered? When it is happening on our doorstep? Will we say it was not our business, that Burma is too far, too foreign, too difficult? That we have no mechanisms to aid, abet or influence? That these people are not our brethren, these people who live by our side, who have been living among us, these people are too foreign for us to care, when they are slaughtered, worse than sheep, worse than cattle?

On various occasions, over the years, I have read editorials condemning Malaysians, particularly Muslims, for ignoring the plight of the Rohingya refugees, particularly the children, who had fled the Burmese junta, been born on our shores but are stateless, unable to get an education. And we responded, we changed our laws, we helped make lives better. The situation now is incomparably worse. Is there really nothing we can make our leaders do?

Hearing the unseeable, what are our limits?

Continuing an earlier thought-train inspired by Geraldine Muhlmann, she writes that journalism's role in a democracy is to do more than just problematise homogeneity, though this is important. It needs to help the 'we' that is formed by journalism (the nation, or, in a Malaysian context, the race) become 'decentred', which I read as being analagous to 'unbalanced', a place where we teeter on the edge of unreason, fearing that the abyss is gazing back at us. She illustrates this being successfully achieved through Hatzfeld's work on the Rwandan genocide. I've not read these works, but she quotes two books, one that documents the voices of the survivors, one of the perpetrators.

I was reminded of a disturbing account written a view years back of 13 May 1969. The reporter had interviewed older Malay men who reminisced about doing what had to be done, and lamenting that there were no youths today who would be able to defend the race, as they had done in the past. And in trying (unsuccessfully) to track down that post, I came across the story of a man who had left others behind to die in a cinema, knowing that his race wasn't being targeted.

As a Malaysian, these are the areas of darkness that I don't know how to look at. Knowing that this uncle or that uncle in my past or my present were almost certainly in that moment, on that precipice. And that they fell, arbitrarily, on one side or another. It makes our capital city something of a little miracle, that we manage to go on, living side by side, day by day.

But as citizens we need to probe this everyday miracle, to prod and poke at it, because miracles are the substance of myth and fairytale. We need something more substantial on which to base our nation.

Reflecting some more

When I was younger, younger than I thought I was at the time, I had a confidence in my own opinions that has waned with age, much as I try to disguise it. At the time a friend told me that my main problem was I sounded too much like an avenging angel, a little too self-righteous, a little too convinced of my own good. I still think hard on those words. But to act on them, now, would be akin to cowardice, because now is a time when we need people who are concerned more about being and doing, or at least trying to do and be good, than we need people who are trying to be right. It's not that being right isn't important - it just isn't enough.

So this is by way of warning and apology. I'm writing because I think the world needs to change. I want to write posts that challenge and inspire me, and hope that they'll connect with others. Because I know that what Margaret Mead said remains true, that the only thing that can change the world is a small group of committed individuals. And I'm not sure how else to show or be part of that small group of committed individuals. But I'm open to suggestions.

Hazing the haze

Malaysia is once again enveloped in a cloud of smog, ash and smoke drifting across the Straits of Melaka, reminding us once again that our nation isn't any sort of an island. And it isn't just the smog and ash that bind us, we're locked into a spiral of money, blame and perhaps a manifestation of truly neighbourly feelings.

I'm not sure how this is being reported in Indonesia. But the spin could easily be that rich corporate interests in Malaysia come to Indonesia, exploit the Indonesian lack of resources and inability to enact rigorous/ any enforcement of environmental laws, then siphon the profits back to Malaysia. This is not a situation where Indonesians win, any more than it is a situation where Malaysians or Singaporeans win. Not even the politicians. The only people who stand a chance of profiting are those who are in it for just that, a petty profit.

But it isn't only the monied profiteers who suffer from the root cause of this malaise. We all suffer from the inability to distinguish wealth from money. Wealth cannot be measured in bank account balances and capital expenditure, in diamond rings or even coal-fired power stations. Clean air is a source of communal wealth - but it is only when it is endangered that we realise its value. The forests being destroyed are a source of wealth, the peat burning below ground, the mangroves they feed into. Our collective problem is valuing money over wealth.

If we're going to solve the real problem, which isn't just the haze and isn't just the corruption and isn't just police brutality or road deaths or the beating senseless of helpless animals, then we need, urgently, to re-inject the ethical into the everyday. Ethics has become the pastime of academics, who need to fill in ethics applications, and scholars who labour to become philosophers. It seems far removed from modern religions, as scandal after sordid scandal involving the church(es), the purveyors of everyday barbarity remind us. We need an ethics that lives in our every breath, informs our movements and, at the very least, informs our purchases.

The haze is linked with the women who die in garment factories in Bangladesh, with those worked to death making gizmos and gimmicks in China, those bleeding in mineral-fuelled conflict in Congo and Rwanda. And we can do something about it, and it starts with recognising that there is an alternative.

Reflecting on the importance of reflection, of thinking aloud, of saying what I think, you think, is important.

What is the role of the media, the press in a democratic society? I'm reading a really interesting book by Geraldine Muhlmann, Journalism for Democracy, dissecting the role of the press in a democracy, and the underlying assumptions of those who criticise the media.

Her argument thus far is that democracy, and journalism, are about mediating conflict in society, so that the society remains intact. It is not possible, in any society, to have unity, with oppression. I find this a refreshing point of view. First, one of my major gripes with modern political theory when I was at uni, at the height of the Mahathir era, was that democracy was used as a yardstick with which to measure political systems. But I was never satisfied that democracy was or should be an end in itself. Yes, proportional representation is more 'democratic' than first-past-the-post. And? If it results in civil war and an inability to provide basic services to the people, as has been contended in the UK, the plus in terms of representation is insufficient.

But Muhlmann specifies that the role of democracy is to both nurture and to contain conflict. I love that idea - that it is important for conflict to exist, and that it is important for that conflict to be contained. In other words, we keep going about things the wrong way in Malaysia. We aim and strive for unity, but all it leads to is greater division, less understanding or tolerance and a society more precarious and violent than it has been at any point in the last three decades.

We should strive not for violence, nor for stability, but for dynamic conflict, played within the rules of an evolving democracy.

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I've found Clive Kessler's piece on the GE13 insightful, even though I have strong reservations about his analysis (with huge amounts of respect going into these reservations!).

His analysis of Umno's masterstrokes in this election resonates strongly. But his analysis of the rural-urban divide is what I find problematic. As I've noted in a couple of essays (looking primarily at work by Michael Peletz), it is easy to overstate the rural-urban divide. The whole idea of 'balik kampung' is premised on its fluidity. And I think Pas were right when they said that the main factor for them is not race, but age. Without exit polls, it's hard to know exactly what is happening, but I think this is the more salient cleavage than 'rural-urban' or 'Malay-non'.

I suspect, however, that what he writes holds true primarily for the Bumiputras of East Malaysia. The arrogance and condescension should be West Malaysians, the assumptions that we have about our fellow-citizens, are not going to help us to either understand or overcome (for the PR) the vote tallies 'over there'.