Articles by FORSEA

We found 46 results.


Arakan Army Leadership Displays Deep-Seated Genocidal Racism Towards Rohingya in Myanmar
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2024

2 Apr 2024 – The extreme racism that Rakhine nationalists display–-their sense of racial and religious superiority vis-à-vis Rakhine state’s largest minority population of Rohingya Muslims, their dogged attempts to deny and destroy Rohingya identity–appears to be their Achilles’ heel.

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On St Patrick’s Day, Mairead Maguire Led Public Condemnation of the Irish American President Joe Biden’s Genocidal Role in Gaza
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Mar 2024

17 Mar 2024 – Quoting St Patrick of the 3rd Century AD who preached, “in Christ, there is no killing”, the TRANSCEND Member, Northern Irish Nobel Peace Laureate, peace activist, and co-founder of the Peace People grassroots movement, delivered a scathing indictment of non-stop killings over centuries by the “allegedly Christian” West.

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A Personal Tribute to Johan Galtung (24 Oct 1930 – 17 Feb 2024): The Man for Just Peace
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Mar 2024

“USA? I love the Republic, but I hate the Empire.” Galtung made unparalleled intellectual and practical contributions to the advancement of our understanding of peace, its social objectives and the conditions for peace, in terms of our global understanding of such an elusive goal.

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Burma Undergoes Quasi-Balkanization and the Embattled Junta Resorts to Mass Conscription
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Feb 2024

23 Feb 2024 – No Burmese in their right minds have bought into the spin “service to the nation” from the junta leadership. Reportedly, young men and women are frantically finding ways to exit the country.

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“Depopulating” Palestine: Israel Through the Bifocal Lens of Hitler and Lemkin
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jan 2024

20 Jan 2024 – As a human rights campaigner and a student of genocides, in my attempts to understand Israel’s physical destruction of Gaza in particular, and its foundational Zionist policies in Palestine, I find most helpful to turn to Raphael Lemkin’s grounded and multi-faceted conception of genocide and Hitler’s “blood-based” ideas of “race-state” and racialized land.

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Israel Defends Itself at the International Court of Justice: From Genocide Victims to Perpetrators
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jan 2024

11 Jan 2024 – Israel’s legal team, a member of which is a Holocaust survivor and the country’s ex-Attorney General, will likely frontload the politico-legal mantra of Israel’s right to “self-defence”.

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Moral and Strategic Consequences of S. Africa’s Case against Israel at the World’s Court
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jan 2024

5 Jan 2024 – The post-apartheid Republic of South Africa filing a genocide case against Israel is a significant act pregnant with positive moral consequences while handing the Palestinian liberation struggle an unprecedented strategic weapon.

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Dr Mahathir on Euro-North American Imperialist Crimes and the Need for Cooperation against Climate Change
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2023

9 Dec 2023 – Former two-time Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad (98) shared his no-hold-barred reflections on the sordid state of the world, still in the grip of the Euro-North American powers.

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I Condemn Myself
Abdelfattah Abusrour, Ph.D. | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Nov 2023

9 Nov 2023 – A poem by a visionary arts educator from the West Bank, occupied Palestine.

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“One Holocaust Does NOT Justify Another”: Britain’s National March for Palestine and the World’s Moral Majority
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Nov 2023

Saturday’s [11 Nov 2023] march that drew 300.000 Britons is a clear testament to the global consensus moral position among hundreds of millions of people around the world.

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Western Myanmar as a Genocide Triangle
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2022

The Triangle:
– Myanmar’s Military-State;
– Separatist Rakhine Nationalists;
– Rohingya Genocide Victims.
– The erasure of a Genocide Convention-protected identity is a crucial part of any genocidal process. The Arakan Army is engaged in this process.

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Western ‘Civilization’
FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2022

Calling Spades Spades

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Extend the Spirit of Partisans to Fight New Fascisms: Homophobia, Discrimination, Exclusion and Racism
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2022

9 May is officially the Europe or Victory Day, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies–-USSR, USA, France and UK–-in 1945. For the first time since the ethnic cleanings in 1992-95, Bosnian human rights activists explore the possibility of international solidarity networks, linking their local activism with those from other parts of the world.

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Democracy in France 2022: Conversation with Sorbonne Constitutional Scholar and Leftist Intellectual Marie Gren
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2022

29 Apr 2022 – In the fascinating 60-minutes discussion, Professor Gren touched on various aspects of contemporary democracy in France, ranging from the sordid state of the Left and its “caviar socialists” and the increasing acceptability and mainstreaming of Far Right ideologies which Le Pen personifies, to the economic hardships that inflict immense pains on the great majority of the French public.

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Myanmar Mothers’ Cries Do Not Bode Well for the Nation’s Future
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2022

19 Apr 2022 – The musician of resistance Mun Awng reminded the viewers, “The revolution must prevail, against all odds.” Tain Sway was seen nodding her head profusely when Mun Awng spelled out the pervasive sentiment – that “it is better to die fighting for the cause than living under the boot, again”.

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Comedians’ Tragedy: The Global Shortage of Cynicism in the Russian-Ukrainian War
Michimi Muranushi | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Apr 2022

30 Mar 2022 – The world has no choice but to condemn the Russian aggression against Ukraine. It has no choice but to help the Ukrainians to end the war with honor. But it is the role of the Ukrainians to produce statesmen who understand that the Ukrainians need to suspect not only the Russians but also the Americans and the Europeans.

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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine through My Burmese Eyes
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Mar 2022

13 Mar 2022 – None of the leading liberal democracies of the West really honours the principles they loudly espouse such as nonviolence, popular and state sovereignty, human rights, or democracy, nor do they support democratic resistance, armed or nonviolent, unless such support serves their hidden interests, whether commercial or geostrategic.

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The ICJ and the Issue of Lawful Representation in The Gambia v Myanmar
John Packer, Gregory Stanton, Nathalie Chaar, Loujain El-Sahli, and Bailey Pelletier | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Feb 2022

18 Feb 2022 – Ahead of the scheduled public hearings in The Gambia v Myanmar (the Rohingya genocide case) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the University of Ottawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre, Canada, the Genocide Watch of USA and FORSEA release a comprehensive legal analysis. It focuses on the crucial question of who should lawfully speak for Myanmar before the ICJ as Myanmar’s coup resulted in an unprecedented situation with no recognized government or even regime with effective control of the state.

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A Myanmar’s Military That Burns Civilians Alive Ought to Be Designated as Terrorist
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Dec 2021

9 Dec 2021 – While governments and human rights organizations were occupied with the farce of the coup junta’s trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and the expected guilty verdict on 6 December 2021, the junta’s back-to-back acts of terrorism have not been reported in the ways they deserve nor have they received worldwide scrutiny and condemnation.

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“Silent Voices”? The Subaltern Can Speak & Have Always Spoken
Netusha Naidu | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Nov 2021

5 Nov 2021 – If activists are unwilling to be better allies to marginalised groups, they risk becoming complicit in silencing them.

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After Afghanistan, Time to Review and Reset ASEAN & International Policies towards Myanmar
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Nov 2021

27 Oct 2021 – The vicious dialectic of “failed international policies AND failed Myanmar state”, will need to be placed at the right, left and centre of the new international policy debates on Myanmar. Repeating the same strategy of dangling the sweet discourse of mediation before the intransigent mass-murderous generals of Myanmar without the serious stick of international accountability will simply not do.

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On Myanmar’s Dead Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement
FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Nov 2021

17 Oct 2021 – Maung Zarni blew the whistle on military-led top-down democratic reforms – which he argued were, in the final instance, cosmetic as early as these “reforms” were launched by the Burmese generals in 2010. To his rage and dismay, this “transition” was blessed by none other than Aung San San Suu Kyi  and celebrated by Western media and powerful external actors.

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US and UK Usurp Rohingya Voices while (Miss)Framing Myanmar Genocide as “Ethnic Cleansing,” Slobodan Milošević’s Euphemism
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Aug 2021

28 Aug 2021 – It’s one thing for the United States and its British poodle to abandon dissidents worldwide during their hours of needs, yet it is a moral low for the British and American officials and leaders to coordinate acts of genocidal denial as they have done with their official statements on the 4th anniversary of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Rakhine State.

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Transnational Activism vs White Saviourism in Myanmar Affairs
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Aug 2021

18 Aug 2021 – As a Burmese who has been angry – very angry – for decades over numerous forms and countless instances of oppression and injustices in Myanmar, and emphatically, around the world, I am less concerned about the morally corrupt desire of revenge and vengeance of the oppressed towards their oppressor or the System than the enveloping White Saviourism with its corrupting coloniality.

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Our Life as Rohingya Refugees
Austin Jani | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Aug 2021

2 Aug 2021 – A poem written by a young Rohingya poet, from Rakhine state, living in Rangoon.

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(Burmese-မြန်မာ) ငါတို့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာလူမျိုးတစ်မျိုးတည်းပဲလား
Austin Jani | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Aug 2021

2 Aug 2021 – From Sittwe, Rakhine, Myanmar – ရိုဇင်မြင့်ထိုက် -ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ကဗျာဆရာ

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Myanmar Coup Regime’s Handling of COVID-19: Is It Genocidal?
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

15 Jul 2021 – It is conceivable that the Myanmar terrorist regime of the SAC may be genocidally minded in its approach in tackling COVID-19 within the military and its sub-social system, while deliberately putting at risk the lives of millions of anti-military Burmese of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.

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Myanmar Anti-Coup Opposition’s Happy Birthday Parties for Aung San Suu Kyi Do Not Augur Well for the Country’s Future
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Jun 2021

24 Jun 2021 – The mass hysteria around Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday is the clearest indication of deeply entrenched cultist neo-totalitarian thoughts, mental habits and political behaviour among Ms Suu Kyi’s populist base. It confirms how indifferent this base is to the democratic ethos, international law, and normative principles of human rights.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 3)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Jun 2021

17 Jun 2021 – Those of us Burmese who have made overthrowing our country’s well-entrenched military dictatorship, our business – or Doe-Ayay, as we say in Burma in specific reference to protests against any Oppressive Order – do not look to the UN or the EU, let alone ASEAN, for help.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 1)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Jun 2021

9 Jun 2021 – The Burmese military regime remained, as intransigent towards any compromise with the democratic opposition, as it was repressive, towards Burmese dissidents.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 2)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Jun 2021

11 Jun 2021 – In those years, the Burma policy world was caught in the emerging Orwellian duality of ‘Sanctions Bad, Engagement Good’ of international debates which took place with respective proponents talking past one another, pursuing their own concealed interests.

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Prof. Noam Chomsky on Democracy
FORSEA Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 May 2021

Recorded for the Delegates at the Official Launch of FORSEA, Kuala Lumpur, 16 Feb 2019

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The Plight of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Australia
FORSEA Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 May 2021

“It’s from the frying pan of wars and genocide at home, into the flaming fire of an off-shore refugee-prison complex in Australia”. How a democratic state such as Australia adopted and institutionalized an anti-refugee policy since around 2001.

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Dr Maung Zarni Shares His Expert View of the Burmese Military
FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Apr 2021

21 Apr 2021 – Zarni argues that contrary to the view of western journalists and Burma experts, which promotes the empirically false conception of the Tatmadaw as “the glue” that keeps the country’s ethnic groups together, the Tatmadaw has been the single most divisive and destabilising institution in the diverse ethnic nations that formed a voluntary Union of Burma in the last days of the British rule post-WWII.

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တရက်ဆိုတာမြန်မာပြည်သူတွေရဲ့အသက်ပါ A Typical Day in the Life of People in Myanmar under Terrorist Siege
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Apr 2021

13 Apr 2021 – A thoughtful but painful comment on the situation in Myanmar written by an anonymous Burmese Facebook user. English Translation by Maung Zarni

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“Federal Army for Federal Democracy”: The Dawn of Myanmar’s New Politics
Maung Zarni | FORSEA Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Apr 2021

9 Apr 2021 – Myanmar’s peoples of all ethnic backgrounds are undergoing a revolutionary process. Ms Suu Kyi may have to be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice: give up her centre stage in order that a revolution can grow and succeed in its revolutionary mission: a federal army and federal democracy. Otherwise, the pursuit of federalism in Myanmar will continue to be the Achilles’ heel for all democrats and federalists, the majority and minorities.

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Revolutions and Revolutionary Acts
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

23 Mar 2021 – I do not have the moral or intellectual option of telling those on the ground who risk their lives and livelihoods that their resistance is futile. Nor do I share the view that resistance is futile or that another world is not possible. History does not change through normal politics. What Myanmar and her people are undergoing is nothing less than a textbook example of Revolution.

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China-backed Junta’s Murder and Violence Aggravates Myanmar Economy
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Mar 2021

16 Mar 2021 – While the ongoing confrontation between Myanmar society and the criminal junta negatively impacts Myanmar’s economy, China is also responsible. Its short-sighted, human-rights-indifferent approach to pursuing its interests, is further aggravating the economic and political conditions with potentially dire consequences for all.

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We Should Call the Myanmar Coup Regime a Terrorist Group
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

8 Mar 2021 – Myanmar today has become a textbook example of failed and collapsed state with the national armed forces, having morphed into gangs of heavily armed terrorists, still commanding the air force and navy. Myanmar’s military regime should no longer be treated as a state actor. They are terrorists, no less.

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FORSEA Condemns Military Coup in Myanmar
FORSEA-Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia - TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2021

1 Feb 2021 – FORSEA, a grassroots network of scholars and activists across Southeast Asia, unequivocally condemns Myanmar military’s coup and the detention of NLD leaders and MP-elects. Myanmar military has been acting without any restraint or consideration for the protection of civil and political rights, nor human rights.

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Are We as Area Studies Scholars Guilty of Negligence in Allowing Genocides to Happen in the Regions We Study?
Michael Charney | FORSEA Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia - TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2021

21 Jan 2021 – Foreign scholars CAN help to prevent genocide again. If we’re waiting for policymakers to prevent things on their own and save ourselves the trouble so that we can take a well-funded research trip and sit outside a coffee shop in Naypyitaw or Yangon, why should the rest of the world have any interest in reading anything we have to write? Scholarship and research should mean something.

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Leading Scholars’ Consensus Was Clear: Neither ICJ nor ICC on Their Own Will Deliver Rohingyas from Hell
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2020

On 15 December 2020, a group of leading scholars and experts from Canada, USA, and Ireland involved in the global campaign to end Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingyas held a legal roundtable, jointly organised by the Free Rohingya Coalition and FORSEA.

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Votes Have Changed Little in Myanmar since Suu Kyi Assumed State Counsellorship 5 Years Ago
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2020

13 Nov 2020 – Myanmar’s second experiment with the parliamentary democracy is irredeemably flawed: The constitutional framework in which democratic process is located is categorically anti-democratic.

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Myanmar’s Double Contagion: The COVID-19 and the Viral Discourse of Islamophobia
Maung Zarni | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

15 Apr 2020 – Over the last 8 years, another type of virus, namely Islamophobia, has effectively spread across all segments of Burmese society, with devastating impact on Muslim communities and, more acutely, the community of Rohingyas, numbering 2 million in total.

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What Does the Myanmar Provisional Measures Order by the International Court of Justice Mean for ASEAN?
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Feb 2020

12 Feb 2020 – It is long overdue for ASEAN to sync its policies towards Myanmar with international opinion, legal and human rights, and the global public. It needs to prove that it is a part of the solution, rather than being a Bystander in yet another genocide in its backyard after Khmer Rouge genocide four decades ago.

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Report: Seoul International Conference on Protection of Rohingya Survivors and Accountability for Genocide
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2019

30 Aug 2019 – The Seoul International Conference focused on the illegal and barbaric uses of sexual violence and rape of target victim population as a matter of strategy and policy by genocidal and militaristic regimes, past and present, in Asian region, from the WWII-era Fascist Japan, Suharto’s Indonesia and General Yaya Khan’s West Pakistan in the civil war in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) to Pol Pot’s Cambodia of the late 1970’s to present-day Myanmar. The conference attracted 150 activists, engaged scholars and experts from 12 different countries, far and near.

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