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NST – Finding peace and a home

January 30, 2012 in Articles, Spotlight, Tun Dr. Mahathir

Stupka (first row, fourth from right in black sweater) with the other volunteers during training. With them are Malaysians who were engaged as trainers

January 27, 2012 | By kasmiah@nstp.com.my

JOHN Stupka came to Malaysia with only one thought in his mind — volunteer his services under the Peace Corps programme. Once the two-year contract is over, he would go back to his hometown in Ohio, the United States. However, the plan was derailed as 45 years after he stepped foot in this country, he is still here.

Malaysia, to him, is home. He has lived here for so long that he says he wants to spend the rest of his life here.

When he joined the Peace Corps in 1966, Stupka, 71, thought it would be an adventure since he loves to travel. At that time, he was teaching art at a private high school.
And, he admitted that joining the Peace Corps was another way to avoid being drafted into the army. At that time, the US was involved in the Vietnam War and many young men were either being drafted or volunteered to join the armed forces. However, if a person was accepted into the Peace Corps, he would be deferred from being drafted.

“Initially, I thought I would never be accepted into the Peace Corps. I thought the programme didn’t require someone with an art degree from University of Ohio. I thought it accepted business students from Harvard or Yale. But I told myself, why not?”

Months later, he got a call to go for a medical examination at an army base. Once he passed that, he received a letter asking him to report for training at Caltech University in California.
“At the training centre, I was told that I am going to Malaysia if I am accepted into the programme. At that time, I did not know anything about Malaysia. Nobody I knew even knew where it was. I was given a list of books and references and went to library to get them.

UNKNOWN TERRITORY

“From reading, I found out a little bit about the country. I was a bit concerned when I found that Malaysia is close to Vietnam. I knew of Vietnam, but had no idea about of Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand.”
To help volunteers understand more about the country, the Malaysian government sent volunteers to help with the training. Their roles included teaching volunteers about language and culture. Stupka and 17 volunteers trained for three months, mainly in industrial art.

“It was strenuous and we were told that even if we completed training, we may not be accepted. We had to go through many exercises as well as talk to a psychologist. The worst part was having your peers judge whether you are suitable for the programme. But I made it and made my way to Malaysia.”

At that time, Malaysia wanted to set up vocational programmes in secondary schools and industrial art teachers were in demand.   With aid from the Canadian Colombo Plan and teachers from the US, the programme in Malaysia was kick-started.

There were 245 TESL (Teaching English as Second Language) teachers in Stupka’s batch. They were volunteers to teach English in elementary schools, especially in rural areas.

With his background in art and construction, Stupka was asked to teach industrial art at the new Maktab Perguruan Teknik in Cheras, when he arrived in Kuala Lumpur in November, 1967.
“I was nervous and felt that it was a bit overwhelming. I had just graduated and I was supposed to be a student, not a teacher. However, it was also an exciting opportunity.”

STAYING ON

In 1969, Stupka’s contract with Peace Corps ended as under the programme volunteers were required to only spend two years abroad. However, the Malaysian government asked him if he could stay for one more year since it could not find a replacement.

Stupka decided to accept the offer. He felt that he was making a difference. He  —  and other Peace Corps volunteers — were starting something new and were excited to see the progress. “To be truthful, I could not wait to go home the first year I was here. But then slowly I made more friends, I was accepted into the community. I began to to understand the whole fabric of Malaysia more.

“Of course at that time, it was also a personal ego trip. I was proud that somebody noticed what I was doing. I had responsibilities here that I would not have had in the US unless I went through many chains of command.
When his contract ended in 1971, he was given an option of having a ticket to fly home or money. He decided to take the cash and look for the cheapest return ticket he could find.

“I was thinking of coming back to Malaysia. Not as a Peace Corps volunteer but doing something else. At that time, there was no time limit on the ticket, we could use it anytime we wanted to. So I kept my options open.”
When he went back to the US in 1971, Stupka said he felt lost. He did not have a job and felt that he did not have anything in  common with his friends and family. He had a cultural shock and began to realise that everything around him did not change while he had changed a lot.

HOME, NO LONGER

“The food was boring. My relatives and friends were so caught up with their own problems. Only my grandparents who raised me were interested to know what I did in Malaysia.

“Also the situation in the US at that time was not good. People were protesting the Vietnam War and it was stressful. Everyone was only concerned about the war. I was feeling more depressed.”
Stupka’s dreams of going back to Malaysia came true when he received an offer to become Peace Corps coordinator in the country.  Under the new training module volunteers trained for three months in the respective countries where they were sent to.

Stupka was regarded as the right person to come up with training module in Malaysia. He jumped at the chance of doing something that he liked in a place that he felt was home. His job as the coordinator lasted four years.
In 1978, when his contract ended, he found out about an opening in International School Kuala Lumpur. Without hesitation, he decided to apply for it. With a Master’s in Arts, he was offered a position as an arts teacher.

GROWING UP WITH THE NATION

Stupka has seen the best and worst of Malaysia through the years. He was here during the May 13, 1969 racial riots and had witnessed “horrible” things which he refused to talk about. He was here during the financial crisis and  says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad handled it well. Every race in Malaysia strives to strengthen their relationship with each other.

“I was here when I was in my 20s. I grew up with the nation. I saw how the people and government handled crisis after crisis and overcame them. I have seen so many positive developments. I have also seen the developments in Malaysia due to Peace Corps activities. I have never yet met anyone who say bad things about the Peace Corps.”

Now, he plans to retire as a teacher when he reaches 75. Maybe with more time on his hands, he will be able to travel again. While he goes back to Ohio every two years to visit his mother, he wants to experience autumn and spring again.
“This is my home now. I told my mother that I will die here.”
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Global Peace Day: 11.11.11/ 11.11 am, One Minute of Silence

November 11, 2011 in Articles, Spotlight

Let us all celebrate Global Peace Day! - *Photo from http://arcticcompass.blogspot.com

Global Peace Day

The purpose of celebrating the Global Peace Day is to reinforce the Universal Peace Day which was observed every year on the 11th November every year at 11 am.

It is well known to all that after the World War I , in 1918 it was declared 11th November as the Peace Day with the high intention that there should be no war as such.

As the primary vision of our Foundation is Universal Peace through Individual Peace, we are trying to achieve this through various missions. One such mission is to make every individual to observe one minute’s silence from 11.11 am to 11.12 am everyday for the sake of universal peace. This one minute’s silence observed by large number of people, that thought vibration will bring forth a great effect.

The equation runs as follows. That a large gathering of people gathered in one place vibrate a single thought at the same time, will bring out great change/effect in fulfillment of that thought.

So by this way the Global Peace Day is to be celebrated on 11th November, 2011 in Malaysia. A gathering of 11,000 people of all sections consisting of parliamentarians, doctors, engineers, teachers, various religious heads and faiths assembled in one place observing one minute’s silence and through that silence they will vibrate only one thought of Peace for the entire Globe. While they are keeping this process in that place, all other people around the Country will also observe the same one minute’s silence during the same time. By this the waves of peace vibration will cover the entire country and thereby will enter all the nations around the world.

Hence we submit our humble request through this letter, seeking your support for this Global Peace by taking part to observe one minute’s silence for Peace in your country too. We have been asking all countries for the support of participation for this noble peace effort. Our humble wish is that if this process is declared through UNO to all the countries, definitely there will be a great change in the world in bringing peace.

By observing one minute’s silence by everyone, every individual is in peace thereby his family, his society, his community, his nation and ultimately the entire world and even the entire universe.

This concept is based on the truth that through observance of silence at the same time by all, on one definite purpose, the Electro Magnetic waves (divine vibration) created through that silence tends to pacify all the minds of the people leading the mind to the fourth state of consciousness, i.e., the divine state. This energy level is maintained if this process is continued everyday.
So we have been informing to all people around the world to sacrifice one minute’s silence every day from 11.11 am to 11.12 am, just a minute’s silence, to maintain the positive energy of peace forever.

“Let us sacrifice a miniute of silence for the permanent global peace.” - SANTHOSAM


Source: http://globalpeaceday.org/

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The Sun – Universality of human rights: Challenges

November 3, 2011 in Articles, Spotlight

*Photo from http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com

November 3, 2011 | By Natalie Shobana Ambrose

THE issue of human rights is very much contested and everyone from former prime ministers and IGPs to migrant workers, civil society and even you have opinions on the issue not just in terms of what freedoms you should have but what others should too. So I tread carefully as an advocate for the universality of human rights, acknowledging that there are real challenges and realities of it becoming a certainty for every human being including myself. Having presented a paper in Kyoto University last week discussing various perspectives of human rights within Asean, I feel it most apt to share the following story in light of recent statements made on the issue.

Anna served as associate professor in the largest local university for over 30 years and yet her children were never allowed admission into that university on the basis that they were considered migrants, though many foreigners call this university their alma mater. If Anna’s children wanted to attend local university, it meant two extra years in high school which wasn’t a guarantee of university or degree choice. Bella, her daughter, had aspired to be an architect since young and with great effort went through those two extra years. After doing well and fulfilling the requirements for architecture school, Bella was told instead that the only spot available for her was in interior design – the quota system had failed her. Now not only did Bella have to start university two years later, she was two years behind many other students in a course the system chose because she was considered a migrant. It didn’t matter that her parents are citizens, her grandparents citizens and her great grandparents citizens – Anna and Bella were both born with a generational debt that they can never repay no matter how hard they tried.

This story narrates the reality of an age old dilemma of cultural diversity and universal human rights coexisting. Now one can argue that when it comes to human rights, one size does not fit all and that culture, philosophy, belief and history should be taken into consideration and the margin of appreciation apply when implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). To take the point further, many governments in this region in particular attest that such universality of human rights is a western precept and does not resonate with the values of the east; but are not all of Adam’s decendents born equal regardless of race, doctrine and creed? Most religions subscribe to this fundamental belief and many developed minds do too.

Some believe that fundamental rights are the outcome of a developed economy, yet there is no evidence of countries that progress economically automatically according all their citizens basics rights. Neither is there a prescribed level of development to be achieved before fundamental rights can be accorded.
It’s a dangerous line to tread when trying to make a convincing argument on the merits of blatant discrimination for the preservation of human rights for some. The simple equation of continual oppression, as we have witnessed around the world in the last year alone, has the potential to equal a real threat – for some the threat is violence, but in the case of Anna and Bella, the threat is brain drain and mass migration which are extremely detrimental to any economy.

Countries in which the four fundamental freedoms (Roosevelt) – freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want – are violated do not develop evenly and breed deep insecurities. An analysis of countries that did not fare well in the United Nations Human Development Index, showed them tending to have a weakened state of human security and human rights.

Hence, in order to have a positive functioning economy, achieving human rights for all (not relative human rights) is necessary as there are no substitutes for good governance and the rule of law to make a functioning state.

The reality is there are many variations when discussing human rights. Some prescribe to it being a gift based on decency, religion and cultural relativism. Then there are the generations of extremists, moderates, liberalists, absolutists, progressives and contextualists with varying intensities of conviction. However, there are no half rights or half truths.

Rights should not exclude groups of people but include rights of the aged, minorities, the displaced and so forth which are all embodied in the UDHR.
Anna’s story is not uncommon but closer to home. Anna’s story is my story, Anna my mother and Bella my sister; a Malaysian family who have lived and served this country for generations and for generations have never had equal rights to education, employment, land and the full privileges of being a citizen.
If the debate in Malaysia today is still against universality, I guess then the question should be is there such a thing as half torture and half discrimination? I’m still not convinced.

Natalie believes that the protection of human rights is a unifying ethic and should not be misused to cause divide. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

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NST – Nobel win no help to president’s polls bid

October 11, 2011 in Articles

Supporters of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf cheering and holding posters of her during her campaign rally in Monrovia. — Reuters picture

2011/10/11
By Adam Nossiter

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf may have won the Nobel Peace Prize but in Liberia, her success counts for little as the country is still mired in poverty and corruption. ADAM NOSSITER looks at her prospects at the presidential polls today

THE day began in the battered seaside capital of Monrovia with shouts and drumming for a leading Liberian politician — but not the one honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the Nobel winner, is lionised by the outside world as the woman who calmed a country ravaged by years of brutal civil war.

But she is viewed more sceptically at home by a population still mired in poverty and official corruption, and struggling with little electricity. Its attention is fixed on something much closer to home than the Nobel committee in Olso: a closely contested presidential campaign involving a popular former football star.

While Liberians widely acknowledge that peace and security have improved markedly during her tenure, Johnson-Sirleaf’s success in securing forgiveness for billions of dollars in Liberian debt and the transformation she has effected in the nation’s once infamous international image are often less appreciated here than abroad.

Indeed, as the world absorbed the news of her prize, Monrovia was virtually shut down by a previously scheduled rally to energise the opposition before the presidential election today. The early-morning shouting reverberating through the city was for the former sports hero, George Weah, one of Johnson-Sirleaf’s opponents.
In Oslo, though, she was honoured as a peacemaker, along with two women who share the prize with her this year, Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen.

“Three women receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is really overwhelming,” Gbowee said. “It’s finally a recognition that we can’t ignore the other half of the world’s population.”

Gbowee led a grassroots women’s protest movement credited with helping to end the 14-year war in Liberia in 2003. She was at the forefront of mass open-air demonstrations at a Monrovia fish market in defiance of the warlords who ruled the country, shaming them into heeding the women’s demands.
About 250,000 people were killed in the war, and the country’s infrastructure, institutions and economy were ruined. With its accounts of mass killings, rape and cannibalism, Liberia — the first independent republic in Africa — had become a poster child for Africa’s ills.

The country has been at peace since then, roads have been built, children in uniform again attend classes, the country’s US$4.6 billion (RM14.7 billion) in foreign debt has been wiped out, and Johnson-Sirleaf is credited with presiding over the change.

In 2005, she became the first woman elected as a head of state in Africa, and the Nobel committee, in highlighting the gender of this year’s recipients, acknowledged the central role that the Liberian war’s most brutalised victims — women — have played in healing the country.

“We are now going into our ninth year of peace, and every Liberian has contributed to it,” Johnson-Sirleaf said on Friday in Monrovia after the Nobel announcement. “We particularly give this credit to Liberian women, who have consistently led the struggle for peace, even under conditions of neglect.”

Johnson-Sirleaf’s opponents dismissed the prize and its potential impact on the race.

“I don’t think there are many Liberians who pay attention to the pronouncements of the Nobel committee,” said Robert Tubman, a spokesman for the nominal head of Weah’s ticket, Winston Tubman.

The frenzy here all week has been for the former football star, and on Friday, Monrovia was mobbed by supporters of the Weah-Tubman ticket. Traffic was paralysed and streets were jammed in the final pre-election rally.

“Let the international community know that we are tired with this woman,” said Nathaniel Eastman, an unemployed man. “In fact, a woman cannot be the head. Man will always be the head.”

Weah, who lost to Johnson-Sirleaf in the 2005 election, brings traffic to a standstill wherever he appears, leaning out of his olive green Hummer.

Nobody disputes that the political atmosphere in Liberia, once a byword for repression, has lightened beyond recognition under Johnson-Sirleaf. A veteran of Liberian politics, she has a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard, once served as minister of finance in a government overthrown in a bloody coup, and later spent years in political exile.

“You hear that noise?” said a doctor who lived here through the years of turmoil, Moses Massaquoi, gesturing out the window at the din from an opposition political rally.

“In America, people talk like that, too,” he said, suggesting that Liberia had reached a level of democracy in which government opponents could campaign openly, even boisterously.

But analysts say more tangible benefits are harder to pin down. Corruption “remains pervasive at all levels” amid “widespread claims of malfeasance in government circles”, a recent report on Liberia by the International Crisis Group noted.

A leading anti-corruption official was not reappointed, and Johnson-Sirleaf has ignored a report by a commission set up to investigate crimes committed during the war. It recommended that she be banned from office for 30 years because of her early involvement with the warlord Charles Taylor, which she later said she regretted. There have been no prosecutions, rankling many voters.

“If people are not penalised, other people might have similar mind to do the same thing,” said Agrippe Nyanti, a pastor.

This mixed picture dampened expressions of enthusiasm for the newest Nobel laureate.

“Progress, generally, yes — we’re not at war,” said John Kollie, head of Liberia Media Initiative, a good-governance organisation. But he adds that Weah’s camp “have the people behind them” and it will be “tough” for the president.

Those who support her insist that the scale of her task — putting a country in ruins back together — makes the yardstick unfair.

One of the biggest boons she has brought to this small coastal nation of just fewer than four million people is invisible on the ground and appears to be largely a matter of indifference to the impoverished citizens here.

“Liberia was a fearful, frightful, violent place,” said the US ambassador here, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “She’s changed that image. She’s made Liberia a country that’s respected.” — NYT

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NST – Nations face waves of voter disdain

October 3, 2011 in PLF News

Activist Anna Hazare’s supporters celebrating in New Delhi after he ended his hunger strike when Parliament agreed to his anti-corruption measures. — NYT picture

2011/10/02
By Nicholas kulish

More and more people the world over are taking to the streets, in part because they have little faith in the ballot box, writes NICHOLAS KULISH

HUNDREDS of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.

Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, towards traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.
“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

Economics has been one driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment and recession-driven cuts in social spending breeding widespread malaise. Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with boycotts and strikes that, in London and Athens, erupted into violence.

But even in India and Israel, where growth remains robust, protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change.
Young Israeli organisers repeatedly turned out gigantic crowds insisting that their political leaders, regardless of party, had been so thoroughly captured by security concerns, ultra-Orthodox groups and other special interests that they could no longer respond to the country’s middle class.

In the world’s largest democracy, Anna Hazare, an activist, starved himself publicly for 12 days until the Indian Parliament capitulated to some of his central demands on a proposed anti-corruption measure to hold public officials accountable.

“We elect the people’s representatives so they can solve our problems,” said Sarita Singh, 25, among the thousands who gathered each day at Ramlila Maidan, where monsoon rains turned the grounds to mud but protesters waved Indian flags and sang patriotic songs. “But, that is not actually happening. Corruption is ruling our country.”
Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favour of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modelled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, towards traditional institutions of the elite.

The rising disillusionment comes 20 years after what was celebrated as democratic capitalism’s final victory over communism and dictatorship.

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, a consensus emerged that liberal economics combined with democratic institutions represented the only path forward. That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man, has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises — the Asian financial collapse of 1997, the Internet bubble that burst in 2000, the subprime crisis of 2007 to 2008 and the continuing European and American debt crisis — and the seeming inability of policymakers to deal with them or cushion their people from the shocks.

Frustrated voters are not agitating for a dictator to take over. But, they say they do not know where to turn at a time when political choices of the Cold War era seem hollow.

“Even when capitalism fell into its worst crisis since the 1920s, there was no viable alternative vision,” said the British left-wing author Owen Jones.

Protests in Britain exploded into lawlessness last month. Rampaging youths smashed store windows and set fires in London and beyond, using communication systems like BlackBerry Messenger to evade the police. They had savvy and technology, Jones said, but lacked a belief that the political system represented their interests. They also lacked hope.

“The young people who took part in the riots didn’t feel they had a future to risk,”

In Spain, walloped by the developed world’s highest official rate of unemployment, at 21 per cent, many have lost the confidence that politicians of any party can find a solution. Their demands are vague, but their cry for help is plaintive and determined. Known as indignados or the outraged, they block traffic, occupy squares and gather for teach-ins.

While the Spanish and Israeli demonstrations were peaceful, critics have raised concerns over the urge to bypass representative institutions.

In India, Hazare’s crusade to “fast unto death” unless Parliament enacted his anti-corruption law struck some supporters as self-sacrifice. Many opponents viewed his tactics as undemocratic blackmail.

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out last month in New Delhi to vent a visceral outrage at the state of Indian politics. One banner read: “If your blood is not boiling now, then your blood is not blood!” The campaign by Hazare, 74, was intended to force Parliament to consider his anti-corruption legislation instead of a weaker alternative put forth by the government.

Parliament unanimously passed a resolution endorsing central pieces of his proposal, and lawmakers are expected to approve an anti-corruption measure in the next session. Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign tapped a deep chord with the public precisely because he was not a politician. Many voters feel that Indian democracy and the major parties, the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, have become unresponsive and captive to interest groups. For almost a year, India’s news media and government auditors have exposed tawdry government scandals involving billions of dollars in graft.

In many European countries the disappointment is twofold — in heavily indebted federal governments pulling back from social spending and in a European Union viewed as distant and undemocratic. European leaders have dictated harsh austerity measures in the name of stability for the euro, the region’s common currency, rubber-stamped by captive and corrupt national politicians, protesters say.

“The biggest crisis is a crisis of legitimacy,” a Spanish protester said. “We don’t think they are doing anything for us.” — NYT

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