Inside Asia

After a hiatus, CAD’s podcast is back, with dynamic voices spotlighting democracy in Asia. Our first featured guest is Dr. Ishani Dasgupta!

Ishani Dasgupta is the Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Asian Democracy. In her research, she centers the refugee as the key political figure of our times, whose actions both indict the global order of nation-states that creates regimes of violence and exclusion; and reveal the possibilities of alternate political projects. Ishani’s thesis, “Emergence of a Deterritorialized Nation: How Tibetan Political Practices Confront the Precarity of Statelessness,” has been awarded a distinction jointly by the departments of Anthropology and South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her field research has been supported by fellowships from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies. Her essay, “The Burning Body and the Withering Body: Embodied Resistance Practices in the Tibetan Community,” won the 2019 Best Graduate Paper Prize from the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology. At Penn, she has been a graduate fellow at the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy (2020–21), and the Wolf Humanities Center (2021–22).

Originally uploaded to Soundcloud in 2016.

On Monday, May 9th a record 40 million Filipinos went to the polls in elections to determine the Presidency, Vice Presidency, the Senate, and Congress. The results were a blow to the country’s ruling elite as maverick independent Rodrigo Duterte defeated his closest rival by over 6 million votes. Dubbed ‘the Punisher’ Duterte has pledged to introduce the controversial death squads that he used to reduce crime when the mayor of the city of Davao nationwide vowed to kills tens of thousands of criminals. Many have pointed to the similarities between Duterte and the candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States Presidential election. Duterte like Trump has won support with his populist appeal and tough-talking, foul-mouth tirades against his opponents. Duterte even attacked Pope Francis in a country that remains staunchly Catholic. Joining me to discuss these election results and their significance is Professor David Buckley, the Paul Weber Chair in Politics, Science and Religion, and specialist in Filipino politics.

Originally uploaded to Soundcloud in 2015.

Earlier this year a humanitarian crisis took place across Southeast Asia, as upwards of 25,000 Rohingya tried to escape from Burma by cramming onto boats bound for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The Rohingya are an ethnic group of some 1.3 million from the Rakhine (Arakan) state in western Burma. Despite the fact that most Rohingya have lived in the country for generations the majority are denied citizenship and not recognized as one of the country’s official minorities. This crisis, however, was only the latest episode of ethnic violence in Myanmar. Since independence in 1948 Myanmar has been wracked by violence against the country’s myriad ethnic groups often resulting in civil conflict and insurgency. While the Rohingya crisis is the latest example of this there have been orchestrated campaigns against other groups including the Chin, the Kachin, the Karen, and the Shan.

One of the most vocal proponents of rights for the Rohingya during this recent crisis has been the 29-year-old activist Wai Wai Nu. Despite her relative youth, Wai Wai spent seven years in jail as a political prisoner in Burma’s infamous Insein prison between 2005 and 2012. Her crime was that her father was Kyaw Min, a member of the Committee Representing the People's Parliament, a group of MP-elects from the 1990 vote led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In a closed trial Wai Wai’s father was sentenced to 47 years in jail, while Wai Wai herself received 17 years. Released in 2012 as part of the prisoner release program that accompanied the beginnings of reform in Burma Wai Wai founded the Women's Peace Network Arakan, to promote better understanding between Burma’s ethnic groups and Justice for Women, a network of female lawyers providing legal aid for the women of Burma.

Originally uploaded to Soundcloud in 2016.

With the world watching Myanmar's process of democratization with the elections in early Nov., Malaysia appears to be going in the opposite direction. Join us as we talk with Dr. Surain Subramaniam from UNC-Asheville about the current state of democracy in Malaysia and in Singapore.