The Chechens wanted independence and they only got “autonomy.” There’s a big difference between independence and autonomy.
Why don’t you read up some background facts about Chechnya.
The latest election was a farce orchestrated by Putin in which a Kremlin handpicked candidate was chosen as its leader.
If you bother reading a little about Chechnya you’d find that they have been resisting occupation. Your bit about who’s firing the first shot may or may not be true but clearly it isn’t the point as the first shot was fired in Chechnya.
The Chechen and Acehese situations raise a fundamental issue here. The autonomy offered by the Russians and the democracy offered by the Indonesians were/are a sham but even then they are beside the point. Autonomy and democracy are a little like national security in that they are offered up as justification for myriad abuses. For example, in the US all kinds of freedoms are being whittled away in the name of national security as the primary objective. Freedom of speech, association and expression cultural identity (amongst others) are primary objectives.
We usually accept that autonomy and democracy are the best way of ensuring self-determination and freedom from oppression and we can look around the world for confirmation of this. But as we can see in Central and SE Asia, these guarantees have been worthless in truly liberating the oppressed. Having a Chechen born president or Acehenese voting for a parliament over a thousand miles away counts for zilch when the Russians still napalm you and the Indonesians still burn your schools.
In the case of Aceh, a status of ‘special region’ was offered and accepted in the early 60’s. The problem was that all the promises were just a sham. Aceh, which is rich in natural resources, was pretty much there as a cash cow to the central gov’t in Jakarta. The region has been relatively poor compared to other provinces in Indonesia.
With the fall of Suharto in 1998–it was during his regime that the most horrible atrocities were committed by TNI–and the subsequent independence of E. Timor, it seemed that there was hope to end the conflict. Especially that TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces) did seem to have lost some of its political power in the parliement.
However, it wasn’t to be. Abdurrahman Wahid, the previous president, seemed to have good intentions but he miscalculated the apparently still strong elements of TNI. When Megawati came to power, things got worse as she does have strong support from TNI. With the Indonesian national election looming, she probably thought that she would gain popularity by launching an all out war a few months ago. Things, however, have dragged on without an end in sight (reporters have been banned from the area after actually being embedded with Indonesian troops at the start of the war).
To make matters worse, GAM (the Acehnese rebels) haven’t been behaving in the most positive ways either. The political leaders are nationalistic and idealistic but they all live in exile in Sweden (most are Swedish citizens by now). They don’t seem to see what’s really happening on the ground. Some rebels do commit atrocities against their own people; some are just thugs. Of course their acts are nothing compared to the atrocities committed by TNI.
The Acehnese are caught in the middle and they are basically just fed up by the worsening situation. I do think that the gov’t would soon run out of money and wil be forced to negotiate. Such are the sad facts of this conflict.
I think that the Sahrawi peoples of the Western Sahara sadly deserve a mention in this context.
They have been occupied for centuries either by France or Spain as the centuries have passed, being used as a source of slaves in the colonies of those nations or second rate peoples in thier own land.
Currently Morocco is continuing the same unpleasant colonial role as the previous tenants, but due to the poor showing by their military against the main resisitance group - the Polisario Front, Morocco is simply bulldozing the peoples into the sea.
What is happening is that a huge barrier is being raised, and this is being used to push the Saharawi living on the land off it.
Naturally this causes resentment an unrest and simple tribesmen are giving the Moroccan army a hard time, but withou subsistance land to sustain them they could well be doomed as they as slowly but surely dispossed.
When the Israeli ‘fence’ is seen on news reports, where there is enclosure of former Palestinian land taken by settlers, it has a pretty unpleasant echo of what has been happening in Western Sahara for 20 years or more.
The following is a rather dry account of what is going on,
Unfortunately when you look for information on this issue you tend to get a lot of Marxist groups, along with assorted nutjobs, and not enough factual information, the situation is pretty horrific there but you will need to sift through an awful lot of crap to find thoughtful reports.
i’d say north korea. Intense repression and starvation are rampant. North korea is so bad people try to escape into China. Considering China is considered one of the worst countries on earth in regards to freedom by Freedom House that is saying alot.
Anybody think about the caste system in India? I wonder what is like to be on the bottom of the bottom? Absolutely no chance? How many tens of millions?
Not only silly, but also insulting to those who are truly oppressed. No matter what perceived indignities American teenagers face, it aint oppression, like the North Koreans face, to pick just one of many examples given in this thread.
I agree with Even Sven that youth are oppressed in the US (and FTR, I’m coming up on my never-to-be-trusted-again thirtieth birthday). I agree with other people that they’re nowhere near as oppressed as your average peasant in your average dictatorship.
North Korea would win my vote.
I was going to make a snarky comment about how some US Conservatives (and Libertarians) are convinced that Christians are the most oppressed group, but I see Dogface has already made this thread’s mandatory obnoxious irrelevant partisan attack, so I’ll forbear, and apologize for this elided reference.
Actually, the untouchables were saved not by religion, but by Ghandi- who devoted a good part of his energy eliminating the idea of Untouchables, the Indian government who abolished the caste system, big cities where nobody has room to care what caste you are, and finally one of the world’s best and most extensive affirmative actions programs. There is still class prejudice to be sure, but it is gone as official policy, pretty much elminated economically and culturally negligable in this cities.
I still stand by youth. What class cannot vote, anywhere? What class does not have the integrity of their body, health, and sexuality? Which class can (in some places) be married off, indentured to work, deprived of money they have worked for, restricted from movement, banned in many places, not allowed to buy many things, hit, sent to private prison camps for commiting no crimes- with no judge and no jury (that happens in the US), and otherwise made to suffer indignities and lacking in self-determination.
OK, sven, but where do you draw the line at youth which should have all these rights. 2, 10, 14, 17?
The number itself does not matter too much. It has to be drawn somewhere. The alternative is some sort of means test whereby you prove you are able to handle your affairs before you are allowed to.
You can’t be arguing that all 13 year olds are sufficiently educated to vote?
Meanwhile, this really is nothing more that teenage hubris. Young people in this country are more free than most of the worlds population.
I’ll agree that we do not do the best possible job of preparing our youth for adulthood, but to suggest that they are oppressed (in the same sense that christians are in china for instance) because they cannot vote at 13 is just silly.
Don’t you love when a sarcastic post gets a serious discussion going?
No, Ocktoberfest, not too many people really believe that the US policy for military intervention and spending Billions of dollars is liberating oppressed people. As you obviously intended, the well informed members of this board can come up with many examples of oppressed peoples (and a quick purusal of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch’s sites can find many more) and many of them committed by our allies with our support. When running Bush was quite clear that the US should not be in the business of solving humanitarian problem across the world with our military power, but that instead US power should be applied exclusively for the furtherance of US interests. Period.
Lots of peoples more oppressed than the Iraquis were, as awful as their treatment was. But no oil.
Seriously, this position is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, voting is a civil right, not a natural right, meaning it exists as part of a system which ultimately protects people and their natural rights. It would be absurd to allow the young to vote, since the younger they get, the less capable they are of making intelligent decisions about themselves, certainly about politics. Some of arguments have some merit, but I would generally say that the rights of children can be controlled for them for their benefit. I think abortion should be legal, but a 13 year-old girl should not have an abortion without her parents knowing, since she cannot be expected to act in a fully rational manner, with all medical and ethical considerations in mind. So children’s rights are denied in some cases around the world, but would you rather be a randomly selected child or a randomly selected North Korean?
I was mostly referring to the current stated justifications for this particular war by this particular administration. Since there have been no WMDs found a lynchpin of the retroactive rerwrite is that we did it mainly to liberate an oppressed people. Aren’t we great?
Historically we have had our moments. I don’t really know how much we should be in the business of using our military might to achieve putative human rights gains, and when we should do so if it is not also in our own percieved national interests. I think that it has been the exception when human rights was a prime motivating force. Generally it is added on after our leadership has decided upon military intervention for other reasons. But exceptions have occurred.
I would love it if human rights was more of a consitent motivating force behind our foreign policy and if that policy was implemented without the use of force excpt under extreme exceptional circumstances when there is no other option and then with international backing even if that means you wait a while to do it. But I see a long term track record of supporting despotic governments if our leadership believes it is in our short term best interest to do so.
