AUNG SAN SUU KYI'S
Freedom from Fear and Other Writings
Reviewed by JING PORTE
Who has not heard of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's "woman of destiny," many times featured on the cover of various international publications, she who won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Suu, as she is fondly called by her supporters, again featured prominently in media when she was released from six years of house arrest in Burma.
Freedom from Fear and Other Writings is a collection of essays by Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League of Democracy (NLD), the main coalition of groups fighting the authoritarian regime in Rangoon. Edited by her husband, Michael Aris, the book provides the readers with not only a glimpse of the socio-cultural history of Burma but also a personal account of Suu's participation in her people's struggle for democracy.
Suu's essays come in three batches, like a triptych of her political thoughts, reflections on Burmese history and culture and remembrances. Her earlier writings, completed before her return to Burma in 1988, make up the book's first part. Included are a daughter's remembrance of her father, Aung San, the revered leader of the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s; essays on the literary and cultural heritage of Burma; and a comparative study of intellectual development in Burma and India under colonialism.
Forming the book's middle part are miscellaneous documents composed by Suu during her immersion in the Burmese people's democratic struggle. Collectively, these articles convey something of the atmosphere of the whole movement and Suu's response to the unfolding situation. The documents are arranged in chronological sequence from the time Suu returned to Burma, whereafter she quickly stepped into the political scene by issuing her first political manifesto, up to the events that led to her house arrest in July 1989.
Finally, there are the essays written by other people about Suu. There are the poignant and often humorous reminiscences by two people who have known Suu before she became a symbol of Burma's struggle for democracy. Suu's growing up years are recalled by Ma Than E, a close friend of the Aung San family and whom Suu referred to as an "emergency aunt.' Meanwhile Ann Pasternak Slater, Suu's neighbor and close friend in England, writes about Suu's academic years in Oxford and her family life with Michael Aris. The two other essays are by two academics who have closely followed the developments from England and the rise of Suu as Burma's prime spokesperson in the international stage. What emerges from these writings, specially those of her friends', is a more rounded picture of Suu as a person.
Her media celebrity notwithstanding, the question begs to be asked: Who is Aung San Suu Kyi? How does one account for her meteoric rise and continued popularity in a country where the military has dominated all aspects of life for the past 32 years and where no woman in modem times has ever been considered for national leadership?
Josef Silverstein, one of the book's contributors, gives a very telling reply: "There are no real cultural impediments to a woman as a leader in Burma. Throughout its history, women have enjoyed equality with men in the household and the economy. Marriage was and is a civil act; women retain their own names during marriage, and divorce is a simple procedure with no stigma attached to either party. More important, women have always had the right of inheritance. Only in Buddhist religious terms were they considered inferior. "
But while Burmese pre-colonial history is replete with instances where women attained positions of power and influence, the role of women in politics, administration and diplomacy deteriorated during the colonial period. This inferior position persists up to the present. From the colonial period onwards, women's organizations became attached to political parties. Countless women participated in the nationalist struggle of the colonial period and many worked closely with the men who were their leaders. But they never achieved leadership in their own right. Under the military dictatorship, women's social and political status further deteriorated.
Aung San Suu Kyi is special in so many ways. Aside from her being the daughter of a national hero, she has a number of qualities which prepared her well to enter and rise in the political arena in her own right. Suu is intelligent and well-educated, having finished her education in India and later at Oxford. She is also widely-traveled. After leaving Oxford, she went to New York where she was employed for some time at the United Nations Secretariat. Small and thin but feisty, Suu possesses a commanding presence that has been proven repeatedly by her capacity to attract crowds in their thousands.
But it is her courage in the face of adversity that stands out as most outstanding feature. In response to the military's seizure of power on 18 September 1988 after General Ne Win resigned and called for a referendum to adopt a multi-party system, Suu joined in the founding of the National League of Democracy (NLD) and became its general-secretary.
In her position, Suu spoke out sharply against the murder in the streets of Burmese youth, and the military's violations of human rights. At one time, she was accused by the military of allowing herself to be manipulated by the communists Her party, the NLD, was equated with the banned Burmese Communist Party. She parried the attacks by telling the military that she has a mind of her own and by expelling afterwards her co-party leader at NLD who was making similar charges.
Despite the military's ban on public gatherings, Suu traveled around Burma and gathered crowds in the thousands. On 5 April 1989, while campaigning in Danubyu province, an army captain ordered his soldiers to aim their rifles at her. She walked towards the soldiers as the captain started the countdown for the firing. An army major stepped forward and countermanded the order, preventing her assassination.
On 20 July 1989, the military intensified its attacks against the democratic opposition. Many NLD leaders and supporters were arrested and Suu and NLD chair Tin U were placed under house arrest. Suu immediately began a hunger strike when her demand to be put in the same jail as her supporters was turned down by the military. The hunger strike, which lasted 12 days, ended only after Suu was assured by her captors that her supporters would not be treated inhumanly and would be given due process.
In May 1990, the elections for the constitutional assembly was held. Though Suu was not allowed by the military to run, the NLD still won more than 80 per cent of the seats. But the military refused to recognize the results of the election. Instead, it tightened the dragnet against the NLD. By the end of October 1990, only four of NLD's leaders were free.
Suu's captors have finally let her out but the restrictions on her movements remain. Yet, Suu persists in her work, addressing local meetings and demonstrations and lobbying for international support to the democracy movement in Burma. Her initial public speeches indicate that Suu's commitment to the struggle for democracy in Burma is unwavering.
Suu is not only reshaping Burma's politics, but is also helping reinvigorate the Burmese women to reclaim the role they had played in pre-colonial times: coequal, if not better, with men in all aspects of life.
Jing Porte is a projects consultant of KABABAIHAN, a women's center working with urban poor women and trade unions. She was the coordinator for South East Asia of the Hong Kong-based Committee for Asian Workers in the early 1980s, and has written extensively about Filipino women workers.
MARIA MIES' and VANDANA SHIVA'S
Ecofeminism
Reviewed by HELEN R. GRAHAM, M.M.
In Ecofeminism Maria Mies, a German social scientist and activist in the feminist movement, and Vandana Shiva, an Indian theoretical physicist from the ecology movement, issue a serious and urgent call for a new vision, which they term the subsistence or survival perspectives. For Mies and Shiva the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (UNCED, June 1992) simply confirmed their conviction that "solutions to the present worldwide ecological, economic and social problems cannot be expected from the ruling elite of the North or the South... [Rather] anew visiona new life for present and future generations, and for our fellow creatures on earth-in which praxis and theory Eire respected and preserved can be found only in the survival struggles of grassroots movements."
Ecofeminism is a collection of papers and articles in which the two women of different cultural and academic backgrounds, and geographical origins, creatively transcend their differences to make available "shared common concerns that emerge from an invisible global politics in which women worldwide are enmeshed in their everyday life; and a convergence of thinking arising from [their] participation in the efforts of women to keep alive the processes that sustain us."
Mies and Shiva divide the work, contributing a section or two for each of their book's seven chapters. Shiva opens the book with a trenchant critique of modern science "projected as a universal, value-free system of knowledge, which...claims to arrive at objective conclusions about life, the universe and almost everything." She argues that this paradigm is reductionist or mechanical, a "Western, male-oriented and patriarchal projection which necessarily entailed the subjugation of both nature and women." Mies follows with a series of seven methodological guidelines of feminist research which recognize that "the postulate of value-free research" needs to be replaced by what she terms, "conscious partiality" which considers both research objects said the researchers themselves as parts of a bigger social whole."
In the book's second part, Mies discusses the pernicious effect on nature, women, and other people of "the myth of catching-up development," a path which is and will remain an illusion" for women. This is so because the great values of the French revolution (i.e. the promises of freedom, equality, and the self-determination of the individual), "are betrayed for many women because all these rights depend on the possession of property, and of women." Such rights cannot be extended to all women in the world, since the self-interest of the individual is always in competition with the self-interest of others. When applied to the ecological problem, the principle of self-interest leads to intensified ecological degradation and destruction.
Shiva asks where the development paradigm went wrong since, instead of well-being and affluence for all, "it has brought environmental degradation and poverty" especially to women and children. In answer to her question, Shiva contributes significantly to the understanding of the term 'poverty.' The conventional development paradigm, misunderstands poverty as the "absence of Western consumption patterns" which leads to the pursuit of the development process as a 'poverty-removal' project. As Shiva points out, however, "Development," as a culturally biased process destroys wholesome and sustainable lifestyles and instead creates real material poverty, or misery, by denying the means of survival through the diversion of resources to resource-intensive commodity production."
By the end of the UN Decade for Women {19761985) it was evident that development itself was the problem as the increasing underdevelopment of women was seen to be the result of "their enforced but asymmetric participation whereby they bore the costs but were excluded from the benefits" of 'development.' This time, however, "it was not the old colonial powers but the new national elite that masterminded the exploitation on grounds of 'national interest' and growing GNPs." It is women and children, Shiva sharply observes, who are most significantly affected by the "poverty trap, created through the vicious cycle of 'development,' debt, environmental destruction and structural adjustment.
Mies adds to this critique of the conventional development model with a reference to the Chernobyl disaster and the urgent lessons to be drawn from it. The fact that the effects of such industrial catastrophes do not respect political borders, demonstrates that the notion of 'unlimited progress' is a dangerous myth. Humans must realize that they cannot continue to "rape and destroy nature" without themselves suffering the consequences.
In "The Search for Roots," the third part of Ecofeminism, Shiva describes the new religion of development as an uprooting of people from their roots in the soil which is their "sacred mother," by the new highpriests-the managers of 'development'often with the cooperation of a police state which uses terror tactics to wrench people "from their homes and homelands, and consign them as ecological and cultural refugees in the wasteland of industrial society." In what she terms "the process of masculinization of the motherland," Shiva charges the state with having changed its role from that of protector of its people and resources, to that of virtual provider and protector of TNCs. Rather than serve as the TNCs' regulator, the state now acts as their protector.
Shiva then points out the many ways in which gender and diversity are linked. Diversity, which is the principle of women's work and knowledge is also a matrix out of which emerge 'productivity' and 'skills' which respect, and do not destroy, diversity. This productivity and these skills are not given positive values, however, by those for whom value is conferred only through economic exploitation for commercial gain. This criterion of commercial value reduces diversity to a problem, a deficiency. Therefore, Shiva asserts, the "destruction of diversity and the creation of monocultures becomes an imperative for capitalist patriarchy." Shiva's insights into the relationship of sacredness and conservation are worth quoting at length:
"In the indigenous setting, sacredness is a large part of conservation. Sacredness encompasses the intrinsic value of diversity; sacredness denotes a relationship of the part to the whole-a relationship that recognizes and preserves integrity. Profane seed violates the integrity of ecological cycles and linkages and fragments agricultural ecosystems and the relationships responsible for sustainable production."
In the context of biotechnology, Mies takes up the issue of, what she terms, the "sexist and racist implications" of the new reproductive technologies.
She points out that the development of this technology took place "in the ideological climate which makes a sharp distinction between man and nature, culture and nature," and which assigns women and non-white peoples to the side of nature, which must then be conquered by White Man. This technology, therefore, "cannot claim to be neutral; nor is it free from the sexist, racist and ultimately fascist biases in our societies." Both Mies and Shiva address the controversial issues of population and reproduction in "Subsistence: Freedom versus Liberalization," the sixth chapter of Ecofeminism. In a jointly authored article, they offer a new concept of ecology of reproduction, one that challenges those feminists "who put emphases only on women's individual reproductive rights, without demanding changes in the overall political and economic structures of the present world (dis)order." "Population growth," they emphasize, is not a cause of the environmental crisis but only one aspect of it, and "both are related to resource alienation and destruction of livelihoods, first by colonialism and then continued by Northern-imposed models of maldevelopment."
Towards the latter part of their book, Shiva and Mies take up the question freedom for trade or freedom for survived, and the issue of the pernicious effect of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) on agriculture and Third World women. Shiva maintains that 'free trade' in agriculture as interpreted by GATT gives transnational corporations (TNCs) freedom to invest, produce and trade without restriction, amount to "the denial of freedom to rural women to produce, process and consume food according to the local environmental, economic and cultured needs."
Finally, Mies concludes with a call to adopt an alternative to "the prevailing model of capitalist-patriarchal development. She offers the subsistence or survival perspective which can show people "the way out of the many impasses of [the] destructive system called industrial society, market economy or capitalist patriarchy." The main characteristics of the proposed subsistence perspective are summarized in nine assertions/paragraphs which are based on the firm conviction "that we live in a limited world, [and that sustainability is not compatible with the existing profit- and growth-oriented development paradigm."
Mies and Shiva are to be commended for a timely, well-researched, passionately argued and deeply challenging call for a profound metenoia.
Helen Graham is an American Maryknoll nun based in the Philippines, where she is active in the peace movement and the circle of feminist theologians. She wrote her review of Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva's book after turning in her PhD dissertation, and just before taking off for a long deserved break.
VIDEO COLLECTION
USA, English language
Since the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, more than one million people have been tortured, executed or starved to death for demonstrating against the Chinese occupation. Tibetan Buddhist nuns have taken the lead in the resistance by fearlessly staging courageous demonstrations for religious freedom and independence. In retaliation, the Chinese state has imprisoned, tortured and killed countless nuns.
Satya seeks to understand the basis £ind inspiration for the nuns' non-violent actions in their struggle against oppressive Chinese policies.
Pakistan, English language
This film looks at the role women played in the history of Pakistan beginning with its liberation from its colonizers. It traces the accomplishments of Pakistani women and the points of resistance from liberation until the present. Focus themes include cultural bondage, political repression, oppressive religious practices, and economic exploitation.
Indonesia, English language
Structured like a quick tour of Indonesia's various regions. Grabbing the Thread tells the situation of women in this Southeast Asian nation by highlighting the life and struggles of one woman from each region.
Fiji, English language
Charlotte Frankovich is a Samoan mother who lost her son to AIDS. In a frank and moving interview, she describes her son and the painful experience of losing him to a virus that she never thought would touch her life. It was not easy for Charlotte to recount how she lost her boy Nikolai but she says "if telling my story could help someone out there, then I would be so privileged to have had a chance to talk and tell people about what we've suffered."
Vanuatu, English language
Based on a play originally performed by the Wan Smolbag Theater group, Like Any Other Lovers is a story about facing fear with love, courage and hope. It is about Chris and Linda, a young couple whose relationship is threatened when Chris learns he is infected with HIV—the virus which can lead to AIDS. Together, their love overcomes the prejudice and rejection of those around them.
Zimbabwe, English language
Patrick and Neria, through shared hard work and resourcefulness, have built a comfortable home, a good life and a family in the city. But when their loving and equal partnership suddenly ends with the tragic death of Patrick, Neria's nightmare begins.
Patrick's brother Phineas helps himself to their car, bank book, furniture, and house. He takes advantage of tradition to suit his own needs, making no effort to take care of his brother's family. Yet Phineas claims that tradition and law are on his side.
Neria watches helplessly at first, believing there is no legal or moral recourse for her. But when Phineas takes her children, Neria decides she must fight back. In desperation she seeks justice. Neria learns that law and tradition can both be on her side if she remains strong and intelligently fights for her rights.
Philippines, Filipino language
What woman has not uttered a silent prayer before stepping out into the streets, specially if she is going out on her own. Avic Ilagan threads together a sequence of typical events in a typical day of a young woman who works outside the home. The result: a darkly humorous and biting commentary about living dangerously in the city —that is, if you are female, single and independent.
South Pacific, English language
Young women and old, married and unmarried, women from villages and cities speak with humor and sensitivity about their experiences. They speak of menstruation, western and traditional methods of family planning and sex education.
South Pacific, English language
An animated video, Down There also uses interviews with South Pacific women to provide information about human reproduction, methods of contraception and reproductive health care.
USA, English language
Rarely reported and difficult to prosecute, acquaintance rape constitutes more than 60 percent of all rapes. This important video features candid interviews with rape survivors, counselors and male and female college students. Boundaries between consensual coercive sex are drawn by three date rape survivors whose testimonies contrast with a male defense attorney's justification of "casual" versus "absolute" rape. Male socialization, lack of legal recognition and the victim's assumed culpability perpetuate the dangerous and erroneous idea that "no" means "yes." An excellent resource and discussion starter to educate students—both male and female—about this pervasive problem on campuses.
Canada, English language
The struggle to cope with the trauma of incest is faced by many victims alone. Sandra was sexually abused by her father as a child and is now in a loving relationship with a woman. This moving and empowering video tells the story of one woman who found the courage to speak about her experience of incest and in doing so began to overcome the fear, guilt and denial that had shaped her life. Sandra's Garden conveys the sense of wholeness Sandra has found through both the land on which she lives and the support of the women in her community.
USA, English language
This rock music video features the New York Women Against Rape's Acting Out Teen Theatre in an engaging yet serious look at the problem of child and teen sexual abuse. By using the popular media form of music video to address difficult and painful issues, young people can relate easily to the material. The video addresses the fear and isolation experienced by survivors. Teens talk about real experiences with sexual assault, as well as underlying themes of sexual role stereotypes and abuse of power. The video also includes information about what to do if a child is assaulted.