SEARG Scripts

The global Covid-19 pandemic has radically transformed the way we socially interact, do business, and live our lives. At SEARG, we adapted to this environment by attempting to make ourselves more felt and relevant through a regular newsletter that primarily celebrates the successes and expertise of our student-members (we are, after all, a student organization). It was also tough to program activities, but somehow SEARG was able to pull off one of its most productive years. We thank everybody who has supported us along the way.

The pandemic also painfully puts in front of our faces the sorry state of Southeast Asia and the broken promises of 21st century development. It is jarring, almost inhumane, to realize that most of us are privileged to be here at UW–Madison, trying to survive so we could continue to study the region, while the people we study are dying at a record pace. This pandemic has, thus, sensitized us to go beyond our research and be more active in our service to Southeast Asian communities. UW–Madison has the reputation for marrying scholarship and activism, and a big part of that has been carried by its students.

This final SEARG Scripts for the academic year asks the big question: How can SEARG better contribute to scholarly activism? Our next leaders—Grace Simbulan, Napakadol “Ik” Kittisenee, and Rodlyn-mae Banting—answer this by giving us a preview of the issues they deeply care about and sharing their thoughts on how students like them can find ways to address issues lingering in Southeast Asia. Gleaning from their answers, it is safe to say that SEARG will be up for a cultural reset next academic year.

SEARG:

Hello Grace, Ik and Rodlyn! We’d like to start with this question to get to know you more. What issue in Southeast Asia are you currently passionate about or following?

Rodlyn:

Through the organizing group Malaya Movement-New York Chapter (where I’m originally from), I have recently joined a research team that looks into the historical and ongoing relationships between the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the New York Police Department (NYPD). American police forces have a long history of colluding with the law enforcement of the Philippines, largely without the Filipino people’s wellbeing in mind. Throughout the COVID crisis, the NYPD (and the U.S. in general) has poured billions of dollars into military and defense aid to the Philippines—all money that could have been better used to alleviate the economic and medical stressors of the pandemic (with much of relief being taken into the hands of the people, as Grace talked about above). Collecting current data on this sinister, centuries-long partnership between the NYPD and the PNP is hopefully one step closer to holding the proper authority figures accountable and terminate the transnational aid going into these sectors.

Grace:

As a member of the University of the Philippines-Mountaineers I've been closely following the news about Patricia "Patreng" Non, a colleague who initiated a movement called “community pantry.” She has become the recent target of harassment and "red-tagging" by government agencies in the Philippines (i.e. National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). The community pantry, whose first "branch" in Quezon City, aims to help fight food insecurity during the pandemic through the provision of fresh produce, canned goods, and other necessities to those in need. It's infuriating to learn how Duterte and his allies have focused much of their energies (and people's taxes) on bullying citizens who are just trying to fill the gaps overlooked by the national and local governments. They went so far as to ask several pantries to stop their operations because they were accused of being "communists" or of spreading communist propaganda.

Ik:

The third surge of COVID-19 is now an emergency issue of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. This is worrisome, given the fact that the vaccine rollout in these countries are very limited--let alone other resources and the scarcity of essential workers to meet this immediate need.

SEARG:

How do these issues affect people or citizens outside of that country? Like how are these considered transnational?

Ik:

We have friends, family members and fellow human beings here and there. The infection rate that grows exponentially this time is a big hit on the mental health of both sides of the globe. The world is truly divided by the access to immunization. The pandemic clearly emphasizes this global asymmetry. As a citizen of this planet, now living in a territory where scheduling for a jab can be done online at the wink of an eye plus several choices of vaccine available, I acknowledge at the same moment people are dying because of desperate conditions in another time zone.

Grace:

This is a transnational issue, as the effects of the pandemic have led to dramatic increases in global food insecurity. Conversations surrounding access to food are also linked to climate change, trade, transnational justice, and economic instability within a broader capitalist system. Not only that, access to food taps into intersecting issues of race, gender, class, etc.

Countries like the Philippines are often pressured to change agricultural practices to cater to the demands of the Global North, which leads to internal food insecurity. It is also crucial to highlight that the roots of food insecurity in the Philippines can be traced back to the country’s colonial past. Hegemonic powers like the U.S. and China have continued to reimpose and reinstitute their control over the Philippines through neocolonial policies (often concerning agricultural systems), which greatly impacts Filipinos’ access to food.

Rodlyn:

As abolitionist work continues to gain traction beyond organizing circles and into the general public in the U.S., we must not forget that the fight for abolition includes the termination of transnational conspiracies that work to bolster other nations’ law enforcement, which inflict heightened surveillance, violence, and fear on their people. In this specific situation, New Yorkers, and Americans more broadly, must understand that a portion of our tax dollars are directly funding the murder of the Filipino poor as carried out by Duterte’s War on Drugs.

SEARG:

Finally, how do you think students, like SEARG members, can help address issues like these, even if we are far from where it is happening?

Rodlyn:

Malaya Movement NY has recently worked to pass the Philippine Human Rights Bill in order to create pressure on the U.S. government regarding this situation. The bill essentially calls for the suspension of all U.S. aid to the Philippine government and police until the proper authorities are held accountable for the various atrocities being enacted on the Filipino people amidst the concurrent crises of COVID-19 and the War on Drugs, among others. Grassroots organizing fueled by the people’s power is often one of the most effective ways to enact change and stand firm in transnational solidarity. Folks can read about the full bill here (HR 8313) and look into joining regional organizing groups based here in the Midwest.

Grace:

Being in Madison has somehow made me feel disconnected and insulated from the social realities in the Philippines. I've made efforts to talk to people back home, read the news, and attend webinars to inform myself of what's currently happening. As students doing research on SEA, citizens of countries of SEA, and as members of SEARG, we can reach out to various organizations from one of the countries in SEA to ask how we can be of help to their advocacies (financially, in kind, or intellectually), and to inform ourselves of the situations in these areas, after all, awareness is the first step to action.

Ik:

We are more fortunate than the people in the previous global pandemic that we have advanced technology of communication that allows us to connect and collaborate with people across the continents. We can provide access to resources, disseminate the reliable information, collaborate with working task forces and help support those in need. Many people suffer mentally not from the virus itself but due to overloading information consumption. I help support several groups of essential workers and help set up a database for learning about the pandemic in Southeast Asia, hoping that in the future we can benefit from this resource whenever we face the unprecedented circumstances. I would like to encourage the members of SEARG to reach out to the people in the countries of your attention and help support them at your capacity. These on-going challenges need cooperation rather than division and isolation.

The panel discussion for A is for Agustin on March 19 generated a lively discussion about Agustin, the film’s main character, who viewers may perceive as not fitting the “typical mold” of an Aeta, let alone an indigenous person. It was short of saying that Agustin is not black enough, his hair not curly enough, to be considered an Aeta—the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines. One of the panel’s discussants, Sheila Zamar, illuminated this issue by drawing attendees to the larger problems of indigeneity and how non-indigenous people and sociopolitical institutions tend to control the narrative of being indigenous.

In this special issue of SEARG Scripts, we transcribe the critical insights shared to us by Sheila, who is currently a doctoral candidate at the Asian Languages and Cultures department and Filipino language teacher here at UW-Madison. SEARG’s questions below were edited for brevity, while Sheila’s answers were transcribed verbatim but slightly edited only for grammar and flow. You can watch more clips from the panel discussion by visiting this site: https://sites.google.com/wisc.edu/agustin

SEARG:

How are indigenous people identified in the Philippines?

Sheila:

In the Philippines, there’s a technical definition based on the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA). It’s a very specific definition: someone who belongs, by self-ascription or by others' ascription to them, to a community that has a culture that remained intact over a long period of time. They never were colonized or did not convert into a different religion. They kept most of their culture intact, and they have their own social practices, their own language, and their own cultures and expressions. So that’s how it’s defined, but of course on the ground we need to operationalize that definition. What do we look for? In reality, most people interpret that as something that they can see with their own eyes. So indigenous people have to, for example, speak a language that’s not part of the mainstream, they need to have songs and dances that are different from the mainstream Philippine cultural songs and dances. Or they need to have a different economic system. For example, for Aeta communities, often most people look for a nomadic lifestyle, or a slash-and-burn type of agriculture or economy. That’s what most people look for in indigenous communities.

Like what we saw in Grace’s film, it’s very different. For most (indigenous) people, they have no choice but to join in what’s happening around them. They have to go to school to find opportunities, they have to learn a different language, they have to interact with people who don’t necessarily share their cultural practices. They have to learn other types of cultural practices, because they’re part of the bigger community outside their own community. So it’s very hard to define what is indigenous in the Philippines.

Prior to IPRA, I think in the literature, Filipinos are all indigenous. Where did we all come from? We were right there, our ancestors have been in the Philippines for a long time. But now, indigeneity has been defined to only include people who are not part of the mainstream, not Christians, who live mostly in the mountains, who don’t participate in most social and political life in the bigger communities outside their own. That’s, I think, what people are looking for. I think we need to be aware that they (indigenous people) don’t remain constant, even if the definition requires them to sort of be a static culture, like they don’t change. But of course, that doesn’t happen. No culture in the world remains the same over time, and it’s true for these communities. It’s true for our own communities. And to expect that they need to be able to show us proof of indigeneity by performing what we imagine as part of an indigenous culture, I think, is not a realistic way of looking for indigeneity in our communities.

SEARG:

So if the scope of the definition is problematic, then proving indigeneity also then becomes problematic.

Sheila:

My problem with the “indigenous” label is that even the NCIP (National Commission on Indigenous Peoples) in the Philippines don’t really know how many indigenous communities there are in the Philippines. Proving your indigeneity is problematic in the Philippines. It’s almost like you have to perform your indigeneity in order for the government to acknowledge your membership to an indigenous community or your being indigenous.

I, for example, am a speaker of a minority language in the Philippines, but I cannot claim indigeneity because I’m Christian, I have gone to school, and so now I’m not considered indigenous. But only less than 10 percent of Philippine languages are spoken by the majority of Filipinos. One hundred seventy of the 180 languages are minority languages, so speakers of these languages belong to ethnolinguistic groups that could be considered indigenous. But they are not all “indigenous.” You have to apply or tell the government, “You have to recognize us as indigenous, and this is our ancestral domain.”

SEARG:

How would you connect A is for Agustin with your research interest on linguistic historiography and language endangerment issues in the Philippines?

Sheila:

What resonated with me most is that Agustin shares the story of many other Filipinos who belong to communities, not just the Aeta communities, not just indigenous communities, but communities that are mired in poverty. They don’t have access to education, many of them don’t finish sixth grade or don’t even go to high school. The statistics over time, since the 1960s up to the last big evaluation of the educational system, remain constant that around 30 percent don’t finish sixth grade, and less than 50 percent finish high school. That’s the reality on the ground, so Agustin’s story is not only a story of people in indigenous communities, it’s a story of people who belong to poverty-stricken communities. But of course, the achievement gap is worse in indigenous communities, because there are added burdens and barriers to them accessing services, like education, healthcare, etc.

In my own work, Agustin shows us the perfect member of the community who is actually multilingual. In the film, he speaks Tagalog, Ilocano and his own native language, Sambal. To me, it’s so beautiful that Grace captured it. He was interacting with this person who is an Ilocano speaker, who was advising him about what he should talk to his boss about and how he should deal with the community outside. In the classroom, he speaks Tagalog and with his family too, except when it's a very intimate discussion with his wife or with some family members when he would go back to Sambal. That was beautifully captured by Grace’s film, which I’ve never seen before. To me, it’s groundbreaking that it’s able to show us a real story, a face to the person that most people only see as a statistic in educational achievement gaps, in literacy percentages, and things like that.

People who are not literate are multilingual. They’re not literate in the technical sense of the word, in the old definition of literacy, but they’re highly literate in so many other things. Like he learned to play the guitar, he can join different social events, so he reads the world perfectly and literately, but he may not have access to how we read ABCs. But eventually he did.

I noticed also that Grace’s film had a frame where there’s a book that’s written in Sambal, like the story of the Aetas in Sambal. I think that’s a great frame, because it tells us that this is where we are right now. In 2016, we started the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education. Now, it’s supposed to be accessible to everyone in their own native language. The idea is, in research, it shows that you can easily transfer literacy skills to other languages if you learn it in your first language. So that was a great frame for me to see there’s a book that they actually read in Sambal in their community.

As of press time, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is trying to resolve the crisis in Myanmar after Indonesia-led efforts appeared to falter. The military’s appointed foreign minister flew to Thailand on Wednesday, February 24, to discuss diplomatic efforts by ASEAN.

The country saw one of the largest protests on Monday, February 22, dubbed as the “22222 uprising.” It involved not only activists but also students, government workers and teachers. On the same day, however, teachers in Rakhine State, the epicenter of the Rohingya conflicts, were instructed to go back to work to prepare for class reopening. Most schools have been closed since early 2020, which in effect obliterated the 2020-2021 academic year.

Myanmar’s education system has lagged ever since the military ruled in 1962. Ethnic minorities were even more affected due to the policy of “Burmanisation,” which prohibited them from practicing their culture due to the imposition of the Burman way of life. In this week’s episode, we delve deeper into the interrelationship between this policy and educational outcomes among ethnic minorities. Our guest is Ei (Eve) Thin Zar, a doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction at the School of Education.

SEARG:

Hello, Eve! Thank you for being our guest. For those who don’t know, you actually have firsthand experience in running a school. Could you tell us how it started and your motivation for doing it?

Eve:

To make the long story short, I started my boarding school because I experienced the power of education myself. Education literally provided me food, shelter, and clothing. I was convinced that if I wanted my people to have their basic needs met, then teaching would be the best profession for me. However, I could not get any teaching job in government schools, so this led me to start my own school. It was a non-profit boarding school, established in 2010 and closed in 2013. It was at a house I rented in Mawlamyine. Every year, we had about 30 students living with me. Some can pay, but some can’t. Later, I ran the school together with my former students. My students are the best things that happened in my life.

SEARG:

With the current situation right now in your country, how are schools affected?

Eve:

With the COVID situation, schools have not been opened yet, but 1% of the population who can send their children to private schools with online teaching is still continuing their education. After the February 1 military coup, most public school teachers joined the civil disobedience movement, which means they don’t want to work for the military government. However, schools might be pushed to reopen soon. This not only makes it more difficult for teachers to join the civil disobedience movement, it also makes them more at-risk from Covid infection because of lack of protective measures.

SEARG:

Your research focuses on how the education of ethnic minorities is affected by the nationalization of language due to "Burmanisation." Could you give us a brief background on this issue?

Eve:

Burma is composed of 135 officially recognized ethnic tribes belonging to eight major ethnic groups. Burman is the majority ethnic group, comprising about 70% of the population. “Burmanisation” is a term and ideology that emerged in the 1920s under British colonial rule as a form to resist Christianity, the English language, and colonial administration. After the country’s independence in 1948, Burmanisation transformed into a dominant force towards other ethnic minorities living at the borders of Burma, with the nationalization of Burmese language and education system playing a central role. In contemporary Burma, the Burman majority interprets the term “Burmanisation” as “adapting into the Burman culture”, but this is thought of as “Burman supremacy” by ethnic minorities. If language is the umbilical cord of a cultural group, then rejecting one’s language weakens identity formation and leads to further conflicts, rather than peace. My research focuses on the historical formation and transformation of Burmanisation, their manifestations in languages in the public education system, as well as the inflection in the ethnic-national education systems.

SEARG:

Finally, what advice can you give to grad students, especially those like you who are from departments where Southeast Asia is not particularly a strong area of interest but who want to pursue a very unique and focused research related to Southeast Asia?

Eve:

For now, I think, I would say just do what is meaningful for you. Every move counts, every voice counts. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

The Philippines used to pride itself as the freest democracy in Southeast Asia. But a lot has changed since president Duterte came to power in 2016 that underlined the fragility of the country’s democratic institutions: a sitting senator was jailed, the Supreme Court chief justice was removed, a prominent journalist was found guilty of “cyberlibel,” the largest broadcast network was shut down.

The latest blow involves the University of the Philippines (UP), the country’s bastion of academic freedom and political dissent. On January 18, the Department of National Defense informed UP that it is terminating its 1989 accord that prohibits the police and military from entering UP campuses without prior notification. It said that UP is a breeding ground for terrorists, and the 1989 accord hinders the implementation of the new anti-terrorism law. UP, which was not consulted on the decision, countered that the accord could not be unilaterally terminated. All these, as the country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the “Diliman Commune,” a week-long uprising at UP’s flagship campus against the Marcos regime on February 1–9, 1971.

In this podcast, we look at this issue more carefully and discuss how this might affect even the state of higher education internationally. We sit down with Omar Dumdum, a doctoral candidate in mass communication, UP alumni and past lecturer at UP–Diliman.

SEARG:

Omar, thank you for gracing our show. First of all, why is UP being singled out?

Omar:

As the country’s national university, UP enjoys a lot of institutional privileges. It is a state university with an independent charter. It is an elite institution for scientists, artists and scholars, with highly selective student admissions. Yet, its sprawling campus in Diliman comprises not just academic buildings but also a community of neighborhoods (including informal settlers), churches, shopping mall, and its own transport system, political ward (barangay) and law enforcement group. Hence, UP is branded as the “Diliman Republic”—an independent microcosm of the Philippines.

Then there’s that 1989 accord that makes UP a safe haven for political dissenters. Before that, there was the 1981 agreement that protected UP campuses from military intrusion even during the Marcos regime. Note that Marcos was a UP alumni, so to some extent the dictator still had some bit of respect for UP.

SEARG:

What is the new anti-terror law, and how is this related to the termination of the 1989 accord?

Omar:

The anti-terrorism law signed last year is being challenged in the Supreme Court because of its many controversial provisions. Two stand out: it is unclear what forms of dissent are considered as inciting to terrorism, and suspected terrorists can be arrested without warrant by the military. Because UP is a protected space for political activism, the campus continues to host mass protests even during this current pandemic. The 1989 accord perhaps makes UP the final frontier of political opposition, and this last domino needs to fall for any form of dissent to be clamped down. And like other authoritarians, Duterte wants to especially use the military to silence UP.

SEARG:

This is clearly a national concern, but how do you think this becomes a transnational issue?

Omar:

Civil–military relations always have an international dimension, but I’d like to narrow down to its potential impact in Southeast Asian studies. UP attracts international scholars and students because of its academic reputation. This issue has a chilling effect on foreigners who want to study Philippine society, arts and sciences in UP and other Philippine universities, especially those who might have a politically critical stance. On the reverse side, top Filipino faculty and graduates might rather work abroad, further contributing to brain drain that is an ongoing concern in ASEAN. The loss of eminent scholars in the Philippines would lead to the declining quality of field data and scholarship that researchers abroad need. Thus, restricting academic freedom in the Philippines affects the productivity of Philippine studies internationally.

SEARG:

Finally, how does this issue relate to your research?

Omar:

While my primary areas are journalism and multilateral institutions, I have recently been drawn to comparative politics, particularly civil–military relations, at the prodding of my political science colleagues. We just finished a book chapter on populist leaders’ commitment problems in the militarization of “drug wars” in Latin America and Asia. It’s for a volume on democracy and security, so hopefully it goes out this year. Militarization of the police is another area I'm collaborating with PoliSci professors here and in another university. We're still in the very early stages of a very cool experiment investigating the role of religion in the Philippines' “drug war.” Hoping that it also turns out well this year.

Unbeknownst to many (we just love sprinkling old English), Burma/Myanmar also held a hotly contested election this month. As of press time, the incumbent ruling party already got majority of parliamentary seats, implying that Aung San Suu Kyi would continue to be the country's de facto head. A former political prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize winner, she is now internationally disgraced for her inaction of the ongoing Rohingya genocide.

(Unbeknownst to many, Facebook had a "determining role" in the genocide. Further unbeknownst is that Burmese refugees are now the top arriving refugee group in Wisconsin.)

In this podcast, we invited Khine Thant Su, a doctoral candidate in history, to help us understand more about the recent elections in this Southeast Asian country.

SEARG:

Hello, Khine! Thank you so much for visiting us here in our fancy studio. Let's first talk about Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite international criticisms, she continues to be very popular domestically. Why is this so?

Khine:

I think there are two main reasons for Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity in Myanmar: the predominance of the cult of personality in Burmese politics, and the relationship between a leader’s perceived moral standing and the legitimacy of their government. In addition to being the daughter of the national hero Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi has displayed personal sacrifices through her political career such as leaving her family in England to enter the political scene in Myanmar, and choosing to remain under house arrest by the military junta for 15 years without leaving the country for good to return to her family in England. These actions humanized her and helped her gain tremendous respect and sympathy among people in Myanmar. For her supporters, she has become an antithetical figure to the oppressive and patriarchal military dictatorship.

SEARG:

The military continues to be a powerful institution, despite the dissolution of the military junta in 2011. Could you describe the military's involvement in current politics, specifically their participation in this election?

Khine:

The 2008 constitution ensures continued military dominance in managing national security ministries and military autonomy in managing its own affairs. The 2008 constitution also allows the military to control 25 percent of legislative seats, enough to prevent any constitutional changes. In the 2020 elections, the military’s participation and influence have been indirect. While not in charge of setting up polling stations (which was managed instead by the Union Election Commission), the military has created social and political instabilities that had dictated the circumstances under which the elections happened, such as canceled polling in Rakhine, Shan, and Kachin states, which resulted in disenfranchisement of many ethnic voters.

SEARG:

You mentioned about ethnic minorities not being able to vote in their areas. This does not only pertain to Muslim Rohingyas, but also ethnic Buddhists in Rakhine state, where there is an ongoing insurgency. What are the underlying reasons behind this insurgency?

Khine:

A fundamental reason behind continued conflict in the Rakhine state is the clash between the Burmese state using military force to bring ethnic areas under its control and ethnic communities seeking self-rule. Since the end of the British colonialism and establishment of national borders between Burma and East Bengal, there have been insurgencies in the Rakhine state led by Muslim separatists. In recent years, the Arakan Army (AA) has become a major threat for the Burmese government with attacks on police posts and abduction of candidates from the National League for Democracy (NLD). The Burmese government’s use of “clearance operations” in retaliation has only contributed to the instabilities in the region, leading to death and displacement of Rohingya communities who are caught in the crossfire between the Burmese military and the insurgent groups.

SEARG:

Finally, how do all of these issues intersect with your research interests?

Khine:

My research explores the ways in which Buddhist and Marxist thought have mutually constructed each other in colonial and postwar Burma (Myanmar). I look at the multiple ways to be “Buddhist” in colonial and postwar Burma and how each person’s Buddhist worldview orients them differently toward understandings of freedom and justice. Exploring the dynamic interactions between Burmese understandings of Buddhism and foreign forms of thought like Marxism, my research highlights that there does not exist a monolithic, “militant” Buddhism in Myanmar. Instead political actors in Myanmar through different historical periods have selectively referred to elements of Buddhist thought to make sense of their reality.

SEARG:

Again, thank you so much, Khine, for sharing us your knowledge. Now, let's hear from our field correspondent in Rakhine state... Oh wait, she seems to be encountering difficulties in reporting live... Sorry about that. Thanks for listening to SEARG Scripts. Until next time.