Deadlines

I've been working very hard these past few weeks, working to a deadline, and the experience is leaving me with very mixed feelings.

When I retired ("oh, you're too young to retire") before we moved here I took off my watch and have never put it on again. Nor do I intend to ever wear a watch again. Apparently this makes me extremely hip as Number 2 Son informs me that no one of his generation wears watches anymore. No need if you're tethered to a cell phone.

Also, in the time I've been here, the only deadline I've had to worry about is catching the next plane to somewhere.

That's changed.

Last year I took a Philippine history course through an organization called Museum Volunteers of the Philippines. Every Wednesday morning from September to April. It was great, I loved it and made a ton of new friends. In fact, I loved it so much I volunteered to come back this year and lead a section of the course. And therein lies my current dilemma.

My volunteer job is actually very similar to the recent work I left back in Canada. I need to design the program, research the content, prepare and deliver some presentations, choose the guest speakers, decide on and source any videos, assist the students with their own presentations (each student has to choose a topic, research it and present to the class - last year my topic was General MacArthur) and generally make sure the section goes smoothly. And since I really liked my work back then, it is definitely not a hardship, au contraire.

But taking a break from my life as a dilettante (living my life's ambition) and having to be a responsible human being working to deadline has been a shock to the system.


The section of the course I'm responsible for is called The Independent Period, which runs from the end of The War in 1945 through to 1986 when Ferdinand Marcos was deposed and sent into exile in Hawaii. I'm really enjoying learning about all this. I vaguely remember images of opposition leader Benigno Aquino being shot the minute he stepped off the plane, returning from exile in 1983. I remember Dictator Marcos getting turfed out and the palace being stormed in 1986, and I think everyone knows about Imelda and her thousands of shoes. But that was the extent of my knowledge and I certainly had zero understanding of it all.

One of the many things I like about studying this part of Philippine history is that it is close enough to contemporary times that - some - of the people are still around to bear witness. I've even found serendipity. A few weeks ago, at a time when I was deeply immersed in reading about the Marcos years, I walked into my pilates studio, passing a bodyguard who was waiting outside the front door, to find that one of the Marcos daughters was there - our appointment times must be in sync because I see her now every week. Then, later that same week, I walked into my elevator and was face to face with the Marcos son and his bodyguard. We had a very pleasant conversation on our way down to ground level - he and his family used to live in our apartment and have now moved to another unit upstairs.

Big city, small town.


I was also talking to my Tagalog teacher this past Wednesday about the Marcos martial law period. He had been a student at the time. He had been at the 3-day People Power uprising, when thousands upon thousands of citizens faced down the military and forced Marcos out of power. He described the events for me of those days - the fear and the exhilaration.

He also told me about his older cousin. She had been a writer and activist in the early 1970's, openly critical of Marcos and his government and what was happening in the Philippines at the time - poverty, corruption, injustice (sounds familiar today). She was one of the many thousands of people snatched by the Marcos enforcers and imprisoned and abused. Later the family found that she had been murdered by them.

Desaparecido.

Oh, Now I Get It - Rohingya Part 2

“You will see in the photos that their complexion is dark brown,” said Burmese Counsel Ye Myint Aung in Hong Kong, in a letter to fellow diplomats, referring to the Rohingya boat people. He went on to describe the complexion of Burmese as “fair and soft, good looking as well.”
His own complexion, he said, was typical of a Burmese gentleman and his fellow diplomats could easily contrast their diplomatic colleague with Rohingya.
“Rohingyas are as ugly as ogres,” he said.
In essence, what he said was that Rohingyas couldn’t qualify as Burmese citizens because of their appearance, and they are not recognized as an ethnic group of Burma.

The Irrawaddy

Rohingya Refugees

According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees there are an estimated 11.4 million refugees in our world plus another 20 odd million asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and other "persons of concern".

This is only one story currently unfolding.

About 200 refugees were picked up by the Indonesian Navy near Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra last week. They had been drifting at sea aboard a 4o foot wooden boat for almost three weeks. This was the second boatload of people from Burma to land in Aceh in the past month. So far 6 boatloads have been found in the Andaman Sea over the past six weeks.

The refugees are members of the Rohingya, a marginalised Muslim ethnic group from the northern Rakhine state of Western Myanmar on the border with Bangladesh. Although they have a history dating back to 7th century when Arab Muslim traders settled in the region, the estimated 3 million Rohingya were denied their ethnic minority group status by the Citizenship Act of Burma in 1983 and are officially stateless, subjected to violence and discrimination by the Burmese government. Hundreds of thousands have fled across the border to Bangladesh, where they survive in inadequate refugee camps. The Bangladesh government doesn't want them there. Some leave by boat, trying to get to Malaysia.


This latest group of Rohingya sought to flee from their desperate conditions. But once launched on their perilous journey, things went from bad to worse.

Apparently they ended up in Thailand, where their reception was far from welcoming. They were rounded up by the Thai military, beaten and abused, then dragged out to sea where they were abandoned, left to drift in tattered open boats with no engines. In this most recently discovered boat, originally there had been 220 men but 22 died at sea. All told, there had been a flotilla of 9 motorless boats towed out to sea by the Thais containing about 1200 people. Three boats still remain missing.




Since the current outcry over the Thai treatment of these boat people, the government has announced that any Rohingya arriving by boat would be treated humanely but would be returned to Myanmar. They have absolutely no intention of creating refugee camps for these people. They have implied that because they are Muslims they are concerned about their current problems with Muslim groups in southern Thailand, and are not inclined to add to the numbers. Currently there are 9 camps in northern Thailand along the border containing 111,000 registered refugees from Myanmar, mostly Karen, as well as camps near the Laos border containing the Hmong, who are now being repatriated.

Angelina was touring the northern camps along the Thai-Myanmar border yesterday. She issued a statement saying "Visiting Ban Mai Nai Soi and seeing how hospitable Thailand has been to 111,000 mostly Karen and Karenni refugees over the years makes me hope that Thailand will be just as generous to the Rohingya refugees who are now arriving on their shores,"

Doesn't look likely.



Top cartoon by Harn Lay , bottom cartoon by Stephff , in the Irrawaddy