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southeastasianists · 6 years

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For years in Myanmar, if Kyaw Hla Maung, a historian, were to roll up his sleeves and bare his arms he might have been arrested. His arms are tattooed with an unusual a script with vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines and clusters of dots, the ancient Brahmi language of the Rakhine or Arakanese people from Myanmar's Rakhine State.

"I had to wear shirts with long sleeves," he said. "Even if it was a hot day I still wore a long shirt so I wouldn't get caught."

The Rakhine people, one of the 135 officially recognised ethnic minority groups that live in Myanmar, were forbidden from speaking their language or studying their history from 1962 under a forced assimilation policy. However, since 2015 some schools have allowed the teaching of mother-tongue languages as a second language.

So, Kyaw Hla Maung chose not to record his teachings on paper but instead tattooed the consonants and vowels of one of the ancient Brahmi script on his skin.

Last year, Rakhine State made headlines around the world because of a military crackdown, which forced more than 600,000 Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh. The Rakhine consider the Rohingya outsiders from Bangladesh, and in some cases, have participated in the violence against them.

What is less known is that the Rakhine people also have a history of being oppressed - by the Burmese military, which enforced a rule of 'Burmanisation' or forcing the culture of the Burmese people on the country's various ethnic groups, many of whom have been at war with the central government since Myanmar's independence from the British.

Policy of 'Burmanisation'

Kyaw Hla Maung wants to revive the teaching of the state's history and study of the Rakhine language.

The 64-year-old believes that learning about the history of different ethnic and religious groups in the state is important to rebuilding peace, especially with the Rohingya.

Kyaw Hla Maung, 64, looks more like a rock star than a historian. Dressed in a navy fitted top and flared pants, he now works as a tour guide trainer in Mrauk U, the ancient seat of the Rakhine kingdom.

While the Rakhine language is now openly used and widely spoken, teachers usually volunteer to teach language classes after hours in schools. Government schools and colleges still only allow the Burmese language to be taught.

Under the military rule, a policy of "Burmanisation" resulted in the adoption of Burmese as the official language and schools across the country were forced to implement it. Ethnic language teaching was banned in public schools for four decades.

Kyaw Hla Maung said he was taught Rakhine language and history by his father, grandfather and local historian, Oo Tha Htun, whom he proudly calls his 'grand master'.

"I did my learning deep in the forest because if soldiers or police came, there was lots of problems for us," he said.

In the jungle, not far from the ruins of Mrauk U, they taught him how to read stone inscriptions telling the history of the different periods of Rakhine history - Dhanyawadi, Vesali, Le Mro and Mrauk U - as well as traditional songs such as "Buddha pujarniya", about previous reigning kings.

The lessons came to an abrupt halt when Oo Tha Htun was arrested in 1990 and later died in prison in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine. Kyaw Hla Maung believes his teacher was arrested for a speech he made about Rakhine oppression under the Burmese government.

Brahmi script

After Oo Tha Htun's death, Kyaw Hla Maung, afraid of forgetting his grandfather's teachings, tattooed the Brahmi script on his arms.

The script is key to reading the stone inscriptions around the Mrauk U archaeological zone as it was used by the first of the four dynastic eras of Rakhine State, the Dhanyawadi dynasty, around the mid 4th-century.

The Mrauk U kingdom was known as the golden age of Rakhine. It was a thriving multi-ethnic and multi-faith court that ruled over Rakhine from the 14th to the 18th century. The capital, Mrauk U, was once an important trading hub frequented by Portuguese, Dutch, Armenian, Arab and Persian traders.

From across the sea, the influence of Bengal also resulted in a distinct Muslim influence in Buddhist architecture, and Mrauk U rulers minted coins in both Arabic and Arakanese.

The people of Rakhine enjoyed prosperity up until the late 18th century when the Mrauk U empire was annexed by the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty, and many Rakhine people were taken prisoner.

The British arrived in Burma in the 19th century, bringing with them tens of thousands of migrant labourers from Bengal to work in paddy fields, creating tension with the local population in the Rakhine state. Historians, however, say the Rohingya's history goes as far back as the eighth century.

Mrauk U has remained a relatively peaceful city compared with the rest of Rakhine State with majority Buddhists co-existing with people from other faiths and ethnicities.

Apart from the Rakhine and Rohingya, Mro, Chin, Dynet and Thet ethnic minorities have lived in Rakhine State for centuries.

In today's Myanmar, Rakhine State is one of the poorest regions in the country, riven by ethnic tensions and several conflicts, including one by the Arakan Army, a Rakhine armed group at war with the military for "self-determination of the multi-ethnic Arakanese population".

'Genocide'

Local Rakhine communities and politicians continue to be excluded from the planning and execution of large-scale investment projects such as the gargantuan oil and gas project at Kyawkpyuh. Arakan Watch, a campaign group, has objected, claiming that the profits are going to the central government rather than local communities.

Some in the Rohingya community, who are denied citizenship and barred from accessing healthcare and education, took up arms following years of persecution at the hands of the army.

Burmese security forces, in response to attacks by Rohingya fighters in August, have killed at least 6,700 Rohingya and set fire to entire villages. Doctors have also treated injuries consistent with violent attacks, recording several incidents of rape of Rohingya women and girls as they fled to Bangladesh.

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN human rights chief, said the persecution of the Rohingya may amount to genocide.

Myanmar's government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has so far ignored widespread international calls for an impartial and independent investigation.

Kyaw Hla Maung is sad to see his state mired in such a brutal conflict.

"I do accept the Rohingya as human beings who deserve to live peacefully in Myanmar because they have been living together with Myanmar nationalities peacefully for a long time," he said.

"I am sorry to see this [violence against the Rohingya]...this is the doing of the Burma security forces, who won't let peace return in Rakhine State," he said, noting the army continues to suppress Rakhine residents as well.

Most recently, on January 16, soldiers fired on a protest held in Mrauk U to mark the end of the Rakhine kingdom in 1784, killing seven demonstrators.

Kyaw Hla Maung believes that recent bloody attack is an assault on Rakhine culture and history. He says that the Rakhine ethnic people can't speak freely about their culture, history and issues that Rakhine people face.

"We need to rediscover our history," he said.

He has just finished drafting a book merging his family's oral traditions with studies of stone inscriptions. His hope is that he can at least start a conversation within his community about uncovering local history and acknowledging the plural interpretations that exist among different minority groups.

"It [local history] is not forgotten, it's not lost, but actually it is 'hidden,' because the government hides it."

#Southeast Asia #Burma #Myanmar #Rakhine People #History

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kendraaleighb · 6 years

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On Believing Sexual Assault Victims

I don’t feel safe writing this thing on Facebook, so I’m dumping my thoughts here on tumblr which isn’t exactly safer, but the people I fear would react poorly on FB are not here so it’s a better place for me to say stuff sometimes.

Anyways.

I’ve got a couple of stories to tell about some people who have been affected by sexual assault and sexual harassment and how people handled it.

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND SEXUAL ASSAULT INCIDENTS DESCRIBED IN DETAIL WITH MENTIONS OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE BELOW THE READ MORE SECTION. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Here goes.

Story 1: Setting is Hobby Lobby, in the frame shop. 2017. I had worked at a different location for 3 1/2 years and moved stores because I moved to a different city to attend university. I had been working at this new store for about 6 months when an employee was transferred into the frame shop to cross-train more employees in framing, but it ended up being his permanent department. I had never spoken to him until he was in my department, but the moment he was transferred in, he began to make comments to me, little snide corrections on my framing skills (even though I had been in the custom framing department for nearly 2 years at this point and was clearly very capable of doing my job since I had been assistant department head at my previous store location) and I often caught him watching me as I worked.

This made me uncomfortable and led to a hostile work environment because I consider myself to be an upfront person and I called him out on the behavior which ranged some days to arguments about whether he was in charge of “giving me permission” to leave for my lunch at my assigned time or the consistent staring as I bent over a table top to place a mat in a frame correctly. I had frequently made it clear to my direct supervisor, who then would pass it along to my store manager. Time and time again the store manager would brush off my complaints by saying “Oh, I thought you guys were flirting, not arguing.”

The final straw came in May 2017. I had been hard at work on putting together a large (60″x60″) shadow box for a pair of antique leather chaps from the early 1900′s. It had taken weeks to get the supplies in and another week for me to attach the chaps to the backboard so they would stand up in the shadowbox and not fall and lean against the glass. It had been taking so long that I finally couldn’t stand in one place any longer and grabbed a chair from the break room to sit in while I worked on the piece. At one point, I stood up to check my work from a different angle when my coworker passed by and proceeded to make a comment.

“Your period blood is on the chair.”

“Excuse me?”

“You must have bled through your pants. Look,”

He pointed to a blotch of dried bright red paint on the chair. Clearly, not blood. I explained this to him and he simply shrugged his shoulders and carried on with his work. But it made me uncomfortable and embarrassed. My body and the way it functions are not subjects I want to talk about with my coworker.

I brought up the comments he made to my supervisor, who again brought them to my store manager. This time, he said he would take steps to reprimand my coworker. But, he warned that he would have to mention who had reported his behavior and that could lead to even more aggressive behavior towards me. I asked that he not mention me as to keep my privacy. My store manager said there was no way around it. He would have to inform him of what exactly he had done to receive the write-up. My store manager said the only way he could keep my privacy is if he didn’t write him up.

So, because I feared retaliation from my harasser, I didn’t report him. A month later, I quit because I no longer felt safe in my workplace.

I consider myself lucky. I was able to get out and away from my harasser and now those memories are unpleasant, but easy enough to avoid and forget about.

Story 2. Setting: My apartment. 2011.

A new semester had started and I have new roommates at the dorms. My new roommate is quiet and hasn’t said more than 6 words to me since she moved in, but I don’t think anything of it. I don’t know if this is unusual for her or not, so I let her be. After 2 weeks of living together, I come home on a Sunday night to police cars and an ambulance outside my apartment. I wonder if my roommates have any idea what’s going on, so I go inside to find-oh, the cops are at my apartment.

My quiet roommate is sitting on the couch with a campus police officer next to her while the paramedics check her vitals. My roommate keeps insisting that she’s fine, but clearly she is not. The paramedic says they should take my roommate to the ER anyways because she ingested a large amount of medication. She frets that she’ll have no way to get home after going to the ER with them, so I tell her I will go with her and give her a ride home.

We go to the hospital, the cops tell me to wait in the waiting room and they’ll tell me when I can go back to see my roommate. After a couple hours I’m finally able to track down the police officer who was sitting with my roommate when I came into the apartment and she gives me the story of what exactly happened earlier that night when I wasn’t home. My roommate had taken large dosages of cold and sleep medicine in order to end her life. The police had only found her because she had called a relative to say goodbye and said relative called the police.

I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to end their life. I had no idea what could drive someone to that place.

It wasn’t until I was able to get my roommate home from the hospital that I could get the full story. I couldn’t understand, but I wanted to. I waited while she found the words to describe what had happened to her the first week of the summer break, how she had gone to a party with her boyfriend, gotten drunk, and ended up being raped by an acquaintance of her boyfriend. She told me about how she had asked him for a ride home because her boyfriend had left earlier and she knew she was too drunk to drive. I listened to her while she described what happened in minute detail, down to the taste of the dirty sock he shoved in her mouth to stop her from screaming, how her seat belt was choking her while it happened. She told me about how he had sworn if she ever told anyone what happened, he would kill her. And how he dropped her off at home after the incident like nothing had just happened in the parking lot two blocks from her parent’s house. I held her as she fell apart and relived that night. We cried together and I kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve this. It’s not your fault.” Because I had no idea what else do say. She had never told anyone, not even the doctors or the police what had happened. She didn’t tell her parents, her boyfriend, or even her close friends from home.

She didn’t have any “proof.” Any bruises or marks physically left on her body had disappeared by that point. She didn’t get a rape kit done, so any DNA proof had long been washed off. But the mental scars? You better believe they were there.

We talked about what to do next. I encouraged her to go to the police. See a counselor, do something. Surely someone who had experiences with others dealing with this would know what to do. She decided a few days later she needed to be home that semester to get the help she needed. She moved out by the end of that week.

I listened to her. I believed her. Anyone who had listened to her tell her story should have believed her.

But not everyone did.

Next time I saw her, she told me about what she had done at home. She told me her boyfriend had broken up with her because of it. He said his friend could never have done something like that and she shouldn’t be able to remember something in such detail if she were drunk. He insisted that she was lying.

She went to the police with her experience but because she didn’t get a rape kit done, there was no physical proof to link him to the crime. Even if they did believe her, there wasn’t enough to prosecute on.

I don’t know if her rapist was ever brought to justice. I don’t know if she gets a good nights sleep these days.

I got lucky. I don’t think she did. Neither of us got justice. I came to peace with that. I don’t know if she can, and I don’t blame her if she can’t.

Believe victims. Listen to victims. We have to be better than this.

#text #cw:rape #cw:harassment #cw:suicide

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