Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Atheism, Buddhism and religious freedom in Myanmar

As religious conflict intensifies in Myanmar, atheists hide their lack of belief behind secret groups.

Hanna Hindstrom |  | Religion, Human Rights, Asia,Myanmar, Democracy
[Getty Images]
Yangon, Myanmar - Theo first began to question his faith in his late teens. But it was not until last year that he told his parents that he had become an atheist. 
"Coming out as an atheist is as hard as coming out as gay," said the 23-year-old, clad in a crisp white shirt and jeans. "I met a kid - he is in his early twenties - he got kicked out of his home because he told his family he was an atheist."
Luckily for Theo, his father did not evict him, although he was disappointed.
Like many others rejecting religion in Myanmar, Theo has struggled to find an outlet for his questions about faith. Then last year he discovered a new Facebook group dedicated to atheism and quickly became an active member.
A clutch of the keenest administrators - representing different walks of life and religious backgrounds - have since become friends and are driving a campaign to promote secularism in the conservative country that is predominantly Buddhist.
In less than a year, the group had gathered nearly 10,000 members, mostly among urban youths in Yangon and Mandalay, Myanmar’s two largest cities. 
They are among a new generation of social media users exploiting Myanmar’s internet boom to explore and challenge religious beliefs since the end of military rule in 2011.
This is despite the rise of a Buddhist nationalist movement, locally known as Ma Ba Tha, which is spreading hate speech and anti-Muslim rhetoric online.
Many atheists hope that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which crushed the ruling military-backed party in a landmark election in November, will usher in an era of greater religious freedom and tolerance.
Buddhist monks attend a Ma Ba Tha ceremony to mark the approval of race and religious laws at Thuwunna indoor stadium in Yangon, Myanmar [EPA]

Anarchist atheist punk rocker

"I wanted to organise atheists in Myanmar, to create an online space where they can come together and share their ideas," said Thiha, a 36-year-old who founded the Facebook group in late 2014. "It is now the most popular atheist group in Myanmar."
Thiha, a self-styled anarchist and punk rocker, was born to a Muslim father and Buddhist mother. For a time, he studied to become an imam and later briefly converted to Christianity before abandoning his faith completely - a decision he attributes to his practice of Vipassana meditation. 
The Facebook group is kept closed under privacy settings so that members can speak freely, without fear of legal repercussions.
Myanmar law carries criminal penalties for defaming religion under a vague provision that has been exploited to muzzle political activists and casual Facebook users alike. In March, a New Zealand bar manager was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for posting an image of the Buddha wearing headphones on Facebook.
The atheist group, which hosts incendiary posts mocking religion, has provoked the anger of some devout Buddhists, who sometimes respond with abusive messages. But the administrators say they just laugh them off or respond with reasoned arguments. 

 Atheism and communism

Social hostility towards atheists has a long history in Myanmar, fuelled by decades of Buddhist nationalist and anti-communist propaganda.
In the late 1950s, the democratic government led by U Nu, the first prime minister of independent Myanmar, released a booklet called "Buddhism in Danger", framing Communism as a lethal threat to religion and morality.
Successive military governments exploited this fear to smear the Communist Party of Burma, which remains banned to this day. The word "communist" in Myanmar is still used as a synonym for atheist, while the official term "batha-may", meaning lack of religion, carries an overwhelmingly negative connotation associated with immorality or deviance. 
"When you speak of atheism, people think of barbarians or communists," said Theo. "There is a lot of discrimination. Some people have to stay in the closet because their superiors or boss might discriminate against them if they are atheist."
Win Htut,  31, a sales manager and former Buddhist who posts almost daily with the group, still hasn't told his family that he is an atheist. 
"I don't want to upset them," he explained. "My wife knows, my best friend knows. That’s all." 

Religious identity in Myanmar

Thein Htun Linn,  41, a former Muslim working as a taxi driver in Yangon, blames his loss of faith on the "illogical" elements of religion, as well as the cruelty of famine, disease and war. But he still displays a Buddha on the dashboard of his car to blend in with the local culture.
The Myanmar government does not officially recognise atheism as a religious belief, which citizens are required to list on their national identity cards.
Thint Myat, a fresh faced 19-year-old, said he was forced to put Buddhist on his university student card.
"You have to select a religion but they wouldn't let me say I'm an atheist," said the student, who describes himself as a leftist.
He said that the university authorities have since prevented him and other students from organising study groups to talk about religion and left-wing politics.
There are no official statistics on the number of atheists in Myanmar, although the 2014 census offered people the chance to identify as having "no religion" for the first time. The full results are expected to be released in the coming months, detailing a breakdown of Myanmar's religious and ethnic groups.
Publicly criticising Buddhism in Myanmar has become even harder since 2012, when clashes in Rakhine State sparked waves of ethno-religious violence mostly targeting the country’s Muslim minority.
Now Ma Ba Tha is leading a xenophobic campaign to "protect" Buddhism in Myanmar, using social media and sermons to preach about the perceived threat of Islam.
A Rohingya Muslim man who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence [Anurup Titu/AP]

Aung San Suu Kyi opposition and religious conflict

"When I told my parents [I was an atheist], they said I was being controlled by the Muslims,"  Thint Myat said, holding back a smile.
Many people believe the ruling Union Solidary and Development Party has intentionally stirred religious conflict to discredit Suu Kyi's opposition party.
Ma Ba Tha recently worked with the government to push through a package of four discriminatory laws restricting the rights of women and religious minoritiesin Myanmar and is spearheading efforts to penalise those who slight Buddhism.
"We see them as a Burmese Taliban. Only they don't have guns," said Bo Bo, 25, an office worker, showing off a freshly inked tattoo with the words "blasphemy law" etched on his lower arm. "They are not a far cry from Muslim extremists."
Theo says the radical group deserves partial credit for encouraging a new generation of social media users to explore atheism.
"I've been doing research about atheism in Burma and the number of atheists has been rising since a year ago," said Theo, who has been monitoring their supporters on Facebook. He said that many teenagers were now contacting the group with questions about atheism, citing disillusionment with Myanmar's increasingly radical interpretation of Buddhism.
"We have an inside joke that Ma Ba Tha has created more atheists than Charles Darwin," Theo added. 

Women excluded

But there is one community that is widely underrepresented in the Facebook group: women. They make up only a tiny fraction of members and none of the administrators is female.
Min, an 18-year-old woman who was once a Muslim, blames the multiple layers of discrimination that women face in Myanmar.
"Women are oppressed far more than men," she said, sporting a mini skirt and cropped hair. "My parents prohibited many things, such as wearing a short skirt or painting my nails. They used to control every aspect of my life."
When she told her parents she had become an atheist, they stopped speaking to her for a year.
Eventually she decided to leave home and moved in with her boyfriend. It was Thiha, her friend from the punk community in Yangon, who introduced her to the group.
A number of administrators and members now meet regularly in gritty teashops in downtown Yangon to discuss philosophy and religion over beer and cigarettes.
"We argue a lot. They are anarchists, we are capitalists," joked Theo, gesturing first to Thiha and Thint Myat - dressed in black anarcho-punk shirts - and then himself and Win Htut, dapperly attired in a traditional Myanmar longyi.
The team is working to set up Myanmar's first charity promoting secularism, provisionally called the Young Men's Atheist Association. But they are worried that their efforts could be stymied by the authorities or Ma Ba Tha.
The Myanmar army remains a powerful political force, guaranteed a quarter of all parliamentary seats and control over key government agencies. 

Democracy and religious minorities

Myanmar is currently preparing for its first democratic transfer of power in more than half a century, but analysts doubt that the NLD will dare to publicly challenge Ma Ba Tha or its laws.
"They seem to have indicated that religious issues are not their priority, and that they won't prioritise repealing the four laws [to protect race and religion]," said Matthew Walton, a senior research fellow in modern Burmese studies at St Anthony's College, Oxford.
"I think that the overall tone of the discussion in Myanmar society is going to have to change before it will be more productive and less contentious for any government to approach legislation related to religious practice or identity,"  he said.
Theo says that while Muslims are Ma Ba Tha's main target, the future for all Myanmar's religious minorities is under threat.
"Buddhism used to be free, but now it's changing. Now they have strict rules about converting religion or even becoming atheist," he said. "Ma Ba Tha has been targeting Muslims. [Their] next target could be atheists."
Hindstrom, Hanna. "Changing Myanmar's Hidden Atheists." Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera Media Network, 30 Dec. 2015. Web. 13 Jan. 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/changing-myanmar-hidden-atheists-151228093516218.html>.
Response:
(The bold terms and such are just for me to look back at later and done by the author of the article :] ) 
The author of this article, Hanna Hindstrom, depicts two sides in Myanmar: the religiously intolerant government and the oppressed atheist youth. The word Atheist is commonly associated with communism and immorality. Throughout the article Hindstrom lists the oppressive treatment of Atheists in Myanmar and is overtly opposed to the lack of religious freedom in Burma. I find it fascinating because of the recent social media boom in Burma, both sides have been using social media to promote their intentions. Ma Ba Tha, a Burmese politician, is using social media to promote "a xenophobic campaign to "protect" Buddhism in Myanmar, using social media and sermons to preach about the perceived threat of Islam".  Atheists in Burma are also using social media to have a sense of religious freedom and to "promote secularism in the conservative country that is predominantly Buddhist". Hindstrom is biased against the religious oppression of the government as she lists examples of religious oppression and even quotes that the government does not recognize Atheism as a religion.

I found this article interesting because a lot of the time that I think of religious oppression I think of persecuted Christians. I hope that as Myanmar is the closest that have been to a democratic government, that all religious freedom will be promoted. Religious freedom is a human right and as the door opens to some religions, hopefully people will be free to live out a faith that may be different from that of their parents. I am aware that the installation of a democratic government will not immediately guaranteed this  but hopefully through time. 



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Tuesday, 5 January 2016

South Sudan Malaria Outbreak - Sarah Young

South Sudan malaria outbreak

Health workers struggle to contain a severe malaria outbreak as it stretches supplies across the country.

NGOs say the Malaria epidemic is worse than ever in South Sudan [Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera]
Aweil, South Sudan - In a remote northwest corner of South Sudan, Theresa Ahok is in a hurry. The 35-year-old is from the village of Adiang and walked for an hour and a half before managing to flag down a truck to drive her and her sick son another hour to the hospital.
"I'm racing", she says," and I'm worried I won't get to the hospital in time."
Her son Bakita is two-and-a-half years old and has malaria. She gave him some anti-malarial medication at home but it didn't help. He then started convulsing and she knew it was time to make the journey into Aweil.
The city of Aweil is a patchwork of red dirt roads leading to a bustling town centre that has been a pocket of peace in a conflict-ridden country for the past two years. 
People with malaria have been flooding to regional hospitals which are running low on resources to provide care [Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera] 
It hosts a base for the United Nations Mission to South Sudan, a number of aid agencies and is home to the sole functioning public hospital with the only blood bank in the entire state of Northern Bahr el Ghazar.
A large section of the hospital is run by Doctors Without Borders in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and serves about 1.2 million people in what is South Sudan's poorest state.
Once Ahok and her son arrive, Bakita is taken into the ward and treated. "I like the level of care here", she says. "There has been a lot more malaria in my village this year than last year."
Malaria is endemic to South Sudan and is the leading cause of death and illness, but this year Doctors Without Borders say the malaria outbreak is shaping up to be the most severe it has seen. The United Nations has described it as "unprecedented".
Doctors say the outbreak is the most severe they have seen [Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera]
Nearly 1.6 million malaria cases have been reported so far, according to the UN Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. The number of cases in most areas has doubled, and in some quadrupled, compared with the same period last year.
The state of Northern Bahr el Ghazar is one of the worst affected.
"For sure the malaria season has been huge this year," Claire Nicolet, the project manager for Doctors Without Borders in Aweil, told Al Jazeera. "Last year was huge already, but this year has been even worse."
"Usually around December we would be reaching the end of the malaria season but we are still treating about 130 patients a week who have severe Malaria," she said. "So this season is extending well into next year."

Malaria drugs and resource shortage

About an hour outside Aweil is a public healthcare clinic (PHCC) for the town of Nyamlell, in West Aweil county. It is backed by the Ministry of Health together with a non-government organisation called Concern.
It is a sprawling site of concrete rooms with patients sheltering under trees in a dusty courtyard or lying on the ground. It is run by Matthew Deng, 30, a nurse who is in his first year out of training school.
Matthew , the nurse who runs the clinic at Nyamlell, said he is struggling to provide care with the shortage of supplies[Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera]
He says that the severity of this outbreak has been made worse by a shortage of supplies, which is crippling his ability to provide adequate care.
"We don't always have drugs for malaria because everything is supplied by the Ministry of Health," he said. "The last batch of medication we received was in November, but for this month we haven't received anything."
He said that the centre was given 2,000 paracetamol tablets that were supposed to last a month, but instead were used up in a week.
The only alternative is to write a prescription for patients, who are then advised to buy the medication from pharmacies in town. But most patients can’t afford it, so they head home to their villages and they wait.
"It's about 25 South Sudanese pounds ($1.25) for simple malaria medication. But it’s a lot of money and most of the time they don't have it," Deng told Al Jazeera. "So they keep the prescription and go home and then return when they have a complication."
That complication means that the malaria has advanced from simple to severe. Deng does have some supplies of the quinine injection which is used to treat severe malaria, but he saves those supplies until it's absolutely necessary to use them.
He said he is also hampered by a lack of staff. "We have 30 people working here but the downsize is coming ..." He expects 10 people to lose their jobs next year.

No doctors

It's a similar scene at the PHCC for the town of Marial Bai.
The health centre is smaller and, unlike the PHCC in Nyamlell, has a makeshift pharmacy. But the same problems persist.
Pharmaceutical assistant at the Marial Bai clinic, Simon Kauc, said the it is short of medication [Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera] 
Simon Kauc, the pharmaceutical assistant, said they don’t have enough medicine.
"We don’t even have enough for one month", Kauc told Al Jazeera.
The centre is run by nurse William Deng who manages 32 staff including security guards and cleaners. There are no doctors.
"We have to tell our patients to buy their medication from the market but that is a big problem because they can’t afford it," he said. "Our people are dying because we don’t have basic medication."
Both these Public Healthcare Centres are being run with support from Concern. Al Jazeera visited the one health clinic that was run by the Ministry of Health alone - it was boarded up, covered in graffiti and abandoned.

Malaria task force 

The UN Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said a malaria task force has been set up comprising  the Ministry of Health, the UN and a set of NGOs. In order to ramp up efforts to control the outbreak, said OCHA, another $4 million is needed, in part to distribute mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs.
The hospital is run by Doctors Without Borders in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and serves about 1.2 million people in what is South Sudan's poorest state [Caitlin McGee/Al Jazeera] 
For now, the shortage of supplies, ill-equipped facilities combined with medicine they can’t afford, means malaria sufferers have little choice but to wait until their condition is serious.
Some will stay at home and die there. Others will go to their local clinic and be referred to the hospital in Aweil, but the process is slow and delays treatment even further. Another options is to bypass their local clinics to make the long, slow journey to the hospital by themselves, as in the case of Theresa Ahok.
Sometimes the delay can be the difference between life and death.
Ahok's toddler Bakita is recovering now but she has already lost a son. He was one of six children she has had to raise alone because her husband is a soldier who lives away from home.
She never made it to the hospital. "He started convulsing", Ahok remembers, "... and then that was it." 
Citation: McGee, Caitlin. "'Unprecedented' Malaria Outbreak in South Sudan." Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera Media Network, 4 Jan. 2016. Web. 05 Jan. 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/malaria-outbreak-south-sudan-151229092502839.html>
Response: 
In many African countries global aid organizations supply free or subsidized drugs to treat malaria, TB, and HIV. This is malaria Although the medications may be available, they may not get to the people in need. In South Sudan Specifically this could be due to complications of civil war and poverty. In this article, Caitlin McGee refers to the current outbreak of malaria in South Sudan and describes the limited medical  resources that are available there. One medical center stated that the December drug supply had not been recieved from the government or there are not enough available drugs.  This article highlights issues of drug availability in South Sudan but mirrors issues faced by many other African countries. This article raises awareness against the severity of malaria and the necessity of supplied drugs. This also may be directed at possible doners as McGee wrote that aid organizations are still in need of $4 million to  supply mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs. McGee reference patients being sent home until the symptoms are more  "severe". The cost of waiting could be death or cerebral malaria in children that causes neurological and cognitive deficits, behavioral difficulties and epilepsy in survivors. McGee could reference that while aid organizations wait for the appropriate funds, local villages could combat malaria through measures like removing stagnant water.

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Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Pakistan halts funding to hundreds of 'ghost schools'

About 450 absentee teachers fired in Balochistan, where many had been drawing salaries from already abandoned schools.

About 40 percent of the population aged 10 and above is illiterate [File pic - Mohammad Sajjad/AP]
About 40 percent of the population aged 10 and above is illiterate [File pic - Mohammad Sajjad/AP]
Pakistan authorities have stopped funding hundreds of educational institutions that existed only on paper and have fired 450 absentee teachers in a mission to close down the so-called ghost schools.
Baloch officials vowed to launch a crackdown on the common practice in the southwestern province of Balochistan late on Tuesday.
Raza Muhammed Khan Barrech, education adviser to the chief minister in Balochistan, told Al Jazeera that many teachers who were drawing salaries without doing the job had been fired in the process.
"We have been investigating and closing down such schools for the past year," he said. "The only way to completely shut them down is to not provide funds to those schools."
"There were about 400 to 500 ghost schools in the region that existed only on paper. And about 450 teachers who were drawing salaries. Half of the schools were abandoned as students never showed up."
Barrech said the provincial government is in the process of implementing article 25-a of the constitution, which says the state "shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such manner as may be determined by law".
He also revealed that the 'ghost students' had been 'enrolled' by education officials in the region and teachers in the past to show a maximum number of schools to get monetary benefits.
Late last year, a website was launched to identify ghost schools called the Education Management Information System (EMIS), which helps to ensure the presence of teachers in schools and improve the quality of education in the province.
Improvements in education sector 
According to Roshan Bharucha, a former senator and a social worker in Balochistan, plans to improve education in the region were under way.
"Many children drop out of schools because of lack of facilities and checks and balances in the education system. However, this seems to be changing," she said. 
"The 'ghost school' phenomenon is not just here in Balochistan but also in many other rural areas of Pakistan. This has to be eradicated because those funds can be utilised on improving education."
Pakistan's education rate is still relatively low. As per the Education for All 2015 report, about one-third of primary school age children are out of school, while 42 percent of the population aged 10 and above is illiterate.
At the national level, about two-thirds of women aged 15 and over cannot read and write, and 35 percent of girls remain out of school.
"It is estimated that more than 6.7 million children are out of school, and the majority of them [62 percent] are girls," the report says.
UNESCO and Pakistan recently launched the Girls' Right to Education programme for Pakistan worth $7m.

The programme aims to enrol 50,000 more girls in primary schools in remote areas over the next three years.
Citation:
Qazi, Shereena. "Pakistan Halts Funding to Hundreds of 'ghost Schools'" Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera Media Network, 11 Nov. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/pakistan-halts-funding-hundreds-ghost-schools-151111134222577.html>.
Response: 
Pakistan has the second largest amount of children out of school in the world. Lack of education is a serious problem in the developing world and is obviously a  problem in Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is tackling the issue of corruption in school systems as teachers receive salaries for achieving nothing and running "ghost schools". Shereena Qazi is highlighting the positive efforts of Pakistan's  government and the logical steps that they are being taking towards giving all children an education. Qazi commends Pakistan for it efforts to combat corruption in the school system.  Also, Qazi writes that Pakistan has launched accountability programs for the schools to ensure that this problem does not happen again. The "ghost school" phenomenon is not just an issue in the Southern Pakistan but all over and could be the case for many other countries throughout the world. Qazi's article encourages others to take related measures to ensure the proper education of children throughout the world.
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