This piece was originally published at The Diplomat on 24 May 2016. Available here. — The government of Myanmar has come under fire this month following Aung San Suu Kyi’s rebuke of U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel’s reference to the Rohingya, the estimated one million stateless Muslim inhabitants of Myanmar’s Western Rakhine State. Aung San Suu … More Eliminating Statelessness in Southeast Asia
This article was originally published at The Diplomat on 5 May 2016. Available here. A week after having released 199 political prisoners, on April 17 the Government of Myanmar released 83 additional prisoners. Among those released were student activists involved in peaceful protests against the National Education Law and Naw Ohn Hla, a land rights activist … More Myanmar: Prisoner Amnesty Highlights the Need for Penal Code Reform
This article was originally published at openDemocracy.net on 24 November 2015 and is available here. Whereas countless public figures have insisted that the Olympics be kept “apolitical” for decades, nonviolent action and civil society together have succeeded in revealing the hollowness of such a notion. A Tiananmen Square-themed Olympic logo. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.Bringing … More Nonviolent activism around the Olympic Games: History and lessons learned
This article was originally published 26 August 2015 at The Diplomat. Available here. Last Thursday, Myanmar’s parliament approved the remaining two of four “Protection of Race and Religion” bills. ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights Chairperson Charles Santiago prefers to call them the “Race and Religion Discrimination bills.” Their passage—which would allow local governments to impose … More The Truth About Myanmar’s New Discriminatory Laws
First Published at openDemocracy on April 8, 2015. Also available here. Prominent human rights activist Pu Zhiqiang has languished in pre-trial detention since his arrest last May – in the lead-up to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre – on charges for several crimes including “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. His case remains … More Matching resistance to repression in China
This article was originally published in a shortened version on 7 February 2014 at Waging Nonviolence. Available here. — Last week China observed the lunar New Year. The Spring Festival is celebrated with two weeks of fireworks and food, when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to be with their families, but this year … More In China: Citizenship on Trial
On 31 December Wagingnonviolence published their 5 Overlooked Activist Victories in 2013. I am proud to be a contributor to Wagingnonviolence and especially proud that my contribution on cyber resistance in China was number five on their list. The editors write: Activists experienced some big wins in 2013 — from the overturning of the Defense … More “5 overlooked activist victories in 2013”
The common wisdom is that in the post-Mao years China has experienced unprecedented developments from the grassroots level to the high echelons of power. Some observers cling to examples of minor achievements in political opening to bolster far flung claims that China is on a gradual path toward political liberalization. Such pundits, mired in now … More Localizing Inclusive Institutions: Adaptive Governance in China
The following is an excerpt from In Quest of Democracy, an essay written by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The original essay was written before Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in July 1989 and had been planned as part of an anthology of essays on democracy and human … More The Buddhist King and Modern Politics
Under House arrest since April 2013, outspoken human rights defender and citizen lawyer Xu Zhiyong was formally detained on 16 July 2013 and arrested on 22 August 2013 under charges of ‘gathering crowds to disrupt public order,’ a patently spurious charge for someone under house arrest. These charges are merely another set in the on-going … More New Citizen’s Movement
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