In Oklahoma, a Myanmar refugee community worries about Trump's expanded travel ban

Trump's new travel ban expansion will increase prolonged family separations for this Myanmar refugee group.

Suan Mang stands inside his restaurant, Zogam Cafe, in Tulsa, Okla.Kristi Eaton

By Kristi Eaton

TULSA, Oklahoma — Suan Mang's restaurant has helped establish a sense of community for him and fellow refugees from Myanmar's persecuted Zomi minority group living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but President Donald Trump's newly expanded travel ban has caused panic over prolonged family separations in the ethnic enclave.

The refugees and those who help them start over after they arrive in the United States are worried what the expansion of the ban to six more countries including Myanmar (formerly Burma) could mean for the families already facing extreme hardship due to the long separations.

Under the order which goes into effect Feb. 22, immigrants from Eritrea, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania, in addition to Myanmar, will face travel restrictions. The administration said the countries did not meet minimum security standards; all of them, except Myanmar, have Muslim populations of 35 percent or more. An original travel ban targeted Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen -- all predominantly Muslim nations, in addition to North Korea and Venezuela.

Mang, 27, opened Zogam Café, a Thai-Malaysian restaurant, a few years ago, with support from his local community and an entrepreneurial attitude, after resettling in the U.S. in 2012.

“There was a lot of our Zomi community, a lot of the Zomi population is around here,” he said during an interview at his restaurant, located in south Tulsa, on Feb. 3. “Whenever we need help, we can go to the community and ask for help, especially at the church.”

The Zomi people, who also hail from India and Bangladesh, have been known to face persecution for their Christian religious beliefs in Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country.

In September, Trump signed an executive order allowing states and local governments to reject refugees. In January, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott became the first governor to announce the state will not accept refugees, but a judge has temporarily blocked the order. And the Trump administration has also severely limited the number of refugees who can be settled in the U.S. in the current fiscal year, capping it at 18,000.Around 30,000 refugees were resettled the previous year. By comparison, in fiscal year 2016, nearly 85,000 refugees were resettled in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.

There is a lot of speculation and worry about the new travel ban among the Zomi community in Tulsa and beyond, as a lot of young people have loved ones, including spouses, aged parents and young siblings, still residing in Myanmar. Many of them are in the process of reuniting their families in Tulsa, said Hau Suan Khai, the chair of Zomi Innkuan Oklahoma, an organization that advocates for Zomi people.

“We're really concerned about its effects for the community and the information we access is very limited,” he said, adding that the community is full of panic and confusion regarding the travel ban.

In 2019, nearly 5,000 refugees from Myanmar were resettled in the U.S., according to the Refugee Processing Center, which is operated by the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. This is down significantly from 2015, when more than 18,000 refugees from the Southeast Asian country were resettled in the U.S.

Although the new travel ban doesn’t affect refugees directly, Olga Byrne, director of immigration with the International Rescue Committee, said they could still feel the implications.

“There’s no direct impact on resettlement in terms of how that process works and that program. However, refugees absolutely could be impacted depending on how and at what point after their arrival in the U.S. they would be able to petition for a family member,” she said, adding that oftentimes, a refugee is able to petition immediately for a spouse or a minor child. “Sometimes, family members haven’t been located if they were separated in camps.”

She said the travel ban will increase prolonged family separation for the Zomi community and other communities.

“There is a waiver process … but it’s a very high burden that you have to meet,” Byrne added.

Locally in Tulsa, organizations working with the Zomi and the Burmese communities plan to get out the word about the ban through handouts at churches and schools. The YWCA Tulsa, which offers a variety of services, said it has held community meetings in the past.

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Read full history - In Oklahoma, a Myanmar refugee community worries about Trump's expanded travel ban

Why a ‘Black Act’ Needs To Go

By Patricia Mukhim
The debate on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has always been trapped in a binary of “for and against”. Army generals are pitted against those who live under the shadow of the Act in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir. Other Indians do not seem to want to engage in this problematic discourse. Those who believe the Act should be repealed and make their views public are termed “over-ground sympathisers of militant outfits”.

This is akin to the post-9/11 war cry from George Bush – those who are not with us (meaning, in attacking Iraq) are against us. Bleeding heart patriots like Arun Jaitley believe the Act should remain in all “disturbed” areas because to withdraw it would be “political ingratitude”. Jaitley has not lost any family to the Act. He does not know the humiliation of a body search, or of his home being violated and members of his family being subjected to rough treatment “on mere suspicion”.

Army honchos argue till they are blue in the face that the AF(SP)A is meant to be used with responsibility. Was that not how the Prevention of Terrorism Act was meant to be used, too? But wasn’t it misused and abused?

Until it was thought fit to be reviewed? So why is the AF(SP)A sacrosanct? Let’s get real here. How can a force trained to be absolutely ruthless and unforgiving with the enemy be asked to tone down its muscle because they are fighting their own people?

This simply does not work! Let us also remind ourselves that the Act was first used in 1958 to quell what was at the time coined “Naga secessionism”. But today the Nagas are engaging with the government of India and have gradually toned down their demands for “sovereignty”.

Things on the ground have changed but our rulers desire to hang on to a colonial Act because they can’t think of a better way of tackling internal dissensions. Indeed, it is a national shame that a country with a 5,000-year-old civilisation, a country that has experienced the pangs of repressive foreign rule, a country that has produced a Gandhi for the world, should adopt a draconian colonial law to suppress its own people long after the colonial masters have left this soil. That its Army generals and the country’s defence minister should continue to defend the Act is, indeed, pathetic.

The AF(SP)A draws its lifeblood from the Rowlatt Act enacted by the Rowlatt Commission on 10 March 1919 to curb the seditious tendency of Indians. It allowed the then British government absolute power and authority to arrest people and keep them in prison without any trial if they were suspected of being terrorists. As can be expected, all movements aimed at ousting the British from India were termed “seditious” and freedom fighters were equated with terrorists despite Gandhi’s avowed path of non-violence. Naturally, this vicious piece of legislation earned the infamous nomenclature of a “Black Act” even while Indians across the country revolted in protest against it.

While the protests in Delhi were more subdued, in Amritsar the protesters became agitated because two front-ranking Congress leaders, Dr Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, were arrested and taken to an unknown destination (in the same way many Kashmiris are made to disappear). A public meeting at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April 1919 was where the Rowlatt Act bared its fangs. A peaceful meeting attended by women and children was construed to be a conspiracy against the British. The infamous Brigadier-General Dyer entered the park, shut the gates to prevent people from exiting, and then ordered his troops to fire at the crowd. This lasted 10 minutes. Sixteen hundred rounds were fired indiscriminately. This horrific crime was committed on the plea that Indians had no right to protest, not even non-violently. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre claimed more than 1,000 lives and left at least 2,000 people injured.

In 1935, the Rowlatt Act and other repressive laws were sought to be diluted following largescale protests. But the Indian Freedom Movement had begun to gain momentum and the British sense of desperation was evident. To crush the 1942 Quit India Movement, the British enacted the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance, 1942.

British records reveal that this Ordinance was intended to be used as an instrument for furthering British imperialism. The AF(SP)A is simply a carbon copy of the 1942 British law and is as draconian and potent as the law enacted by an alien power. If the Act were effective, insurgency would have been contained only within the Naga Hills. The fact that it has replicated itself in nearly all the seven states tells us that the Act is a failure and needs to be reviewed immediately. State terror unleashed on the people of Nagaland in the late ’50s and early ’60s is, to the people of that state, no less traumatic than Hitler’s Auschwitz agenda. The largescale burning of Naga villages and crops and the brutality with which the men were handled and women raped is a saga that India should be ashamed of. The Nagas, after all, are as Indian as the soldiers who wreaked the utmost cruelty upon them.

This is where the AF(SP)A becomes indefensible. How can you have a law that allows an Indian Army NCO the right to shoot to kill based on mere suspicion and to claim that it is necessary to do so to “maintain public order”.

What makes the Act so offensive is that it gives such overriding powers to Armymen to shoot, arrest, search individuals and homes on mere suspicion and on the plea of “aiding the civil administration”. Over the years the AF(SP)A has been identified with arbitrary detention, torture, rape, looting by security personnel and, in the case of Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur, the unexplained disappearances of alleged terrorists or their relatives. Can an enlightened democracy such as ours continue to have such cruel laws in place without allowing for a review?

The standard argument trotted out by Army bigwigs is that extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary laws. But insurgency in this country is old enough to have brought forth more creative ways of dealing with the issue and without the need to use the Army on a continued basis. The Army, as has been oft argued, is best left to deal with an external enemy. Let the soldiers reserve their brutality and sheer might to tackle India’s enemies, not other Indians.

The latest debate on the Act vis-à-vis Kashmir appears to be posited not so much on its repressive facets but on the political expediency to bail out Omar Abdullah. Why do so many hearts in Delhi beat with empathy for Kashmir while the voices in a region that has faced the worst brunt of the AF(SP)A are completely blacked out? And mind you, the North-east has shown by example that it has the strength of character to raise a non-violent protest against the Act in the person of Irom Sharmila, who completes her 10th year of fasting this November.
Does this count for nothing in the average Indian psyche? Do we want people in some parts of the country to live without some of the rights enshrined in the Constitution? Which is more sacrosanct – the AF(SP)A or the Constitution? Let us also not forget that there are other parts of this country that are as violence prone as the North-east and Jammu and Kashmir. So the Act truly has no legs to stand on!

The writer is editor, The Shillong Times, and can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com
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Read full history - Why a ‘Black Act’ Needs To Go

Delhi Meet Backs Repeal of a ‘Holy Book’

By Yambem Laba

Organised under the banner of the North East India Women’s Initiative for Peace, it was slated as a “high profile meet on the AF(SP)A” and it took place on 8 September 2010 at the India International Centre, New Delhi. According to Binalakshmi Nepram, conference organiser, “the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has entered its 52nd year of implementation. Government panels, the United Nations and hundreds of civil society organisations across India have called for its repeal, but the issue continues to remain deadlocked”. Activists, scholars, soldiers and policemen attended and drew parallels between the North-east experience and that of Kashmir.

It all began on a very solemn note, with Sinam Chandrajini Devi lighting the inaugural lamp. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she recollected how two of her sons were shot dead by the Assam Rifles on the afternoon of 1 November 2000 at Malom along with eight others. The screen behind her, showing her younger son receiving the National Child’s Bravery Award from Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and being feted by President R Venkataraman, added to the poignancy. In fact, it was the Malom massacre that prompted human rights crusader Irom Chanu Sharmila to embark on her fast to death, calling for the Act’s repealment. Her protest has entered the 10th year.

Thokchom Meinya Singh, Congress Lok Sabha member from Manipur, minced no words when he said the Act must go in its totality. He said that in spite of it being enforced in Manipur for nearly 50 years now, the number of insurgent groups had increased from one in 1958 to more than 40 now, rendering the Act redundant. He also cited how the Administrative Reforms Commission headed by current Union law minister Veerapa Moily, the Hamid Ansari-led Working Group on Kashmir and the Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission initiated by the Prime Minister had all recommended the Act’s repeal. He also reiterated that “this is a colonial act and we do not require it” and lamented the fact that although Parliament repealed Pota, it retained the AF(SP)A.

This writer, in his address, spoke of the history of the Act beginning from 1942 when then India Viceroy Lord Linlithgow signed the Armed Forces Special Powers Ordinance whereby officers of the rank of captain and above, of the then British Indian Army, were given powers to shoot to kill with no questions asked. It had taken the British some 84 years of misrule to employ such draconian measures whereas the Indian Republic had taken only eight years to do the same, with Parliament enacting the AF(SP)A 1958 and the powers hitherto given to captains and above were now given to havildars and above. Such powers were not given to personnel of the white regime in apartheid South Africa or even in neigbouring Pakistan during its days of military rule, he added. He also recalled how he was arrested by the Assam Rifles despite being a member of the Manipur Human Rights Commission, with an Army officer telling him that “he does not recognise the Governor of Manipur” when shown the Warrant of Appointment confirming the membership. He also related how he and a group of other activists had, for the first time in 1980, challenged the AF(SP)A in the Supreme Court and had to wait 17 years for the apex court to pass its verdict.

Sanjoy Hazarika, who was also a member of the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee, said that “there is nothing afresh that we can say about the AF(SP)A, the story is unending and the tragedy is still going on”. He added that the daily killings in Srinagar was a dilemma between civil liberties and the right of the state. He told the gathering of a Union home ministry “cabinet note” that had not been put up to the cabinet because of pressure from the Army. “Who runs the place in these parts of the country – is it the Army or the civil authorities?” he asked.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, countered the theory that repealment of this Act would enhance anti-national elements and the Army would then have to be deployed to meet a political situation. The Act, she said, could not be amended but had to be repealed. “There is a woman who has been on a hunger-strike for 10 years and there are kids screaming in Kashmir because their parents have been killed.”

Yaruigam, a Naga academician from Manipur who teaches at Delhi University, spoke of the collusion of three entities behind the continued existence of the Disturbed Area status — politicians, bureaucrats and the underground. It was the interplay of these three elements that was behind the mess, and not the Army, per se, he said.

Ram Mohon, former BSF Director-General and advisor to the Manipur governor in 2001, said the Act in itself was not draconian but it was the leadership at the ground level that mattered most. He cited the case of Lt-General VK Nayar (retd) who later became one of Manipur’s most popular governors, who, during his earlier stint as GOC of the 8-Mountain Division, while combating the PLA and Prepak in the Manipur Valley, did not experience single complaint of human rights abuse being levelled against his troops. He then mentioned the Tonsem Lamkhai massacre in 2002 when a CRPF patrol was ambushed and seven personnel and a militant were killed. Half an hour later, the CRPF fired at a bus carrying polling personnel who had arrived on the scene and seven civilians were killed. It was the lack of leadership amongst the CRPF troops that made them resort to killing, and not the Act, Ram Mohon said.

General BS Malik, president of the Control Arms Foundation of India, said that “if you have been just at war or insurgency — then no harm can come to you”, and added that the “Tughlaqs of Kashmir and the Northeast sitting in the airconditioned comforts of Delhi would lead to the collapse of the Indian Republic in those regions”.

General-secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties Pushkar Raj said that history proved that draconian laws could not quell public-based insurgency and cited how the success in Punjab, which was a pseudo insurgency, gave a kind of confidence to the Indian state. The same could be applied to the rest of the country.

On the question of Kashmir, Raj said New Delhi could have solved the problem in 1953, ’54 and ’55 but did not and now, in 2010, the situation was different. The AF(SP)A was a trigger-happy law, he added. How else could one explain children between 14-18 years taking to the streets to defy the Indian state, he asked. The question, he added, was now of national security versus human security; the latter was real while the former was illusionary.

Iftikar Gilani, editor of the Kashmir Times, presented the Kashmiri perspective of the AF(SP)A. He said that under the Act anyone with a uniform was an angel who could do no wrong. He recollected how the BSF had, in 1993, “roasted” 62 people alive in Sopore, and though a judicial commission inquiry followed, nothing came of it. He also cited the case of a Major Avtar Singh of 35 Rashtriya Rifles who, after killing a fellow officer, had fled to Canada and although the CBI had been requested to put out a “red corner” notice for him, this had not been done as yet. Gilani also said that “national security” was a much-abused term and likened it to a holy cow, citing how, in 2002, he had been arrested in the “national interest” and later released in the “public interest”. This gap between national and public interest was widening by the day, he said.

Siddharath Varadaranjan, chief of the national bureau of The Hindu, recalled how he had to leak the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee report after it lay rotting in the Union home ministry after it had been submitted because the defence ministry and the military top brass had objected to it. He also spoke of how, in the post-Jammu and Kashmir scenario, both the Prime Minister and the home minister needed to take another look into the Act. He also noted how the Army chief had said the entire move against the AF(SP)A was political and how Lt-General Jaiswal had spoked of the Act as the Army’s “holy book”. Other speakers included Anjuman Ara Begum, who spoke on the Assamese experience; Zothanpari, who recalled the Mizoram experience; Ravinder Pal Singh, defence analyst; Lourenbam Ngangbi; and KS Subramanian, a retired IPS officer.

The meeting adopted the resolution that the Act should be repealed in its entirety.

The writer is a former Imphal-based Special Correspondent of The Statesman

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Hams & Scams And Dubious Deals

By JB Lama

A recent report says corrupt Indian politicians and corporate officers have siphoned off public money worth $12.3 billion between 2000-08.

According to Kordy Cuscio, a junior economist with Global Financial Integrity (Washington), “corruption is rampant in India as in almost all developing countries... as the economy grows so do illicit flows.

This positive correlation exhibits the increasing incentive to conduct illicit flows mostly because money is flowing within the system to steal away…”

This rings true particularly for the Northeast, where the Centre has been generously pumping in funds for its development in the absence of commensurate results.

Politicians and bureaucrats of the region have long ceased to be the paragons of simplicity and honesty they were before the creation of new states, beginning with Nagaland in 1963.

Scams were unheard of then, but since the ’80s there has been any amount of diddling, with that all-too-familiar ring of ministers and officials being involved. Needless to say, they must have had good tutors from outside.

In Assam, it was the veterinary Letter of Credit scandal in which Rs 175 crore was fraudulently drawn from the state treasury between 1989-93. In Manipur, fraud in the power department came to light when Rishang Keishing was chief minister.

Earlier, a “chota Harshad Mehta”, as our Imphal correspondent described him, tried to swindle a cooperative bank of  Rs 2 crore. Former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Gegong Apang was allegedly involved in a Rs 124-crore power department scam. Meghalaya was rocked by a Rs 50-crore rural electrification scandal. There was yet another Rs 294-crore forest racket.

The Meghalaya Forest Corporation  allegedly sold  1,777 teak and sal trees for just Rs 67.85 lakh when the market value was more than Rs 2 crore. About 120,000 valuable trees reportedly disappeared from the Chimabangnshi reserved forest in the Garo Hills, the explanation being that these were “uprooted by storms”.

The disease has also percolated to autonomous bodies run by tribals. There are reports of some of them openly cultivating insurgency with the help of funds allocated for economic development. Last year, the newly-formed National Investigation Agency brought to light politicians being hand in glove with the Jewel Garlosa faction of the Dima Halam Daoga in Assam’s North Cachar Hills district. It has allegedly been procuring arms with money supplied by the council. Its chief executive is under arrest.

In 2008, the Justice RK Manisana Commission that probed the alleged misappropriation of funds by the North Cachar Hills Autonomous District Council said there was an understanding among politicians before the 2007 council elections to pay a certain amount to a rebel group. There are allegations that one of the ministers in the Tarun Gogoi government is involved in the Rs 1,000-crore scam. An NGO, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samity, has called for a  CBI probe and the Centre, too, is said to be in favour of this inquiry. Hopefully Dispur will act.

In October last year, Niranjan Hojai, commander-in-chief of the Jewel Garlosa faction, formally surrendered to the authorities with 460 others in the aftermath of their chief’s arrest in June last year from Bangalore. But after a month, he disappeared from the designated camp and was arrested in July this year from near the Indo-Nepalese border. How he escaped from the designated camp was puzzling. Could it have been a deliberate act, given that he is said to be in the know about the extent of the politician-rebel nexus in the council? Last year when the Army went into action in the North Cachar Hills, the intelligence  network did not even know that Jewel Garlosa was holidaying in Kathmandu.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has promised to not only resign but even quit politics if the charges against his minister is proved correct. Hopefully, the truth will be not be a long time coming.

Read full history - Hams & Scams And Dubious Deals

Manipur Govt Announces Rs10 lakh For 'Magnificent Mary'

Imphal, Sep 20 : Manipur government today announced a cash prize of Rs10 lakh for star women boxer MC Mary Kom, who achieved a rare feat of five consecutive world titles in Bridgetown last week.

Manipur chief minister O Ibobi Singh announced the prize "in recognition of her (Mary Kom's) historic achievement," an official release said.

"A daughter of Manipur and sportsperson par excellence, Mary Kom has emerged as an epitome of inspiration and motivation of our youth today. Whole Manipur celebrates her achievement with indescribable joy," the release said.

Mary Kom is working as deputy superintendent of police in Manipur police department.

The 27-year-old mother-of-two clinched the fifth gold medal at the World Championships on September 18 by thrashing old foe Steluta Duta of Romania 16-6 in the light flyweight 48kg finals.

Dubbed 'Magnificent Mary' by the International Boxing Association for her historic feat, the diminutive counter-puncher is the only woman boxer to have clinched a medal in each of the six World Championships, starting with a silver in the inaugural edition in 2001.

Read full history - Manipur Govt Announces Rs10 lakh For 'Magnificent Mary'

125 Died in Road Accidents in 8 Months in Tripura

Agartala, Sep 20 : As many as 125 people died in road accidents in Tripura over the past eight months while 350 people received serious injuries, an official report said here today.
Leading public transport advocacy group of Tripura ARPAN has blamed inefficient traffic management and unprecedented increase in the number of personal vehicles, coupled with encroachment of road space for the accidents.
Problems such as inadequate parking space, improper traffic management, poor public transportation system, lack of walking space for pedestrians were being faced, but no steps were taken for enhancement of road capacity, capacity building of existing public transport system, development of new bypass roads as arterials to decongest the city.
''Due to faulty policy of the government and weak public transport system in the state, every day ten two-wheelers and cars are registered in Agartala and as a result, traffic volume has exceeded the designed capacity on more than 80 per cent of roads,'' ARPAN officials said.

Over 50 per cent of the existing road capacity has deteriorated either due to encroachment or poor maintenance, they said.
The organisation had suggested for penalising both passengers and carriers who pick up or drop from any random places and carry passengers beyond capacity. br />
'PureFit Kothanur provides dance and fitness with personal traning. This is a women led fitness and dance center providing Zumba, Aerobics, Bolly Aerobics, Power Yoga in Bnagalore. We are devoted to the job of ensuring that every member who joins the dance or fitness has the best dance experience possible.'

Read full history - 125 Died in Road Accidents in 8 Months in Tripura

Manipur Erupts in Pride and Joy For Mary Kom's Achievement

Imphal, Sep 20 : Manipur Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh led the state in congratulating pugilist Mary Kom for winning the World Women's Boxing Championship for the fifth consecutive time, while people of the state erupted in celebrations after she brought home the Gold medal.

The 27-year-old prodigy is the only boxer who has got medals in all the six World Boxing Championships. In the first championship, she had bagged the Silver medal.

''It is a matter of immense pleasure and joy that Mary Kom, Khel Ratna awardee, has won the fifth World Women's Boxing title in Bridgetown (Barbados) on September 18.

It was a moment of supreme pride for the people of Manipur when overcoming all odds Mary Kom won the World Championship for the fifth consecutive time. Her feat will be recorded in golden letters in the annals of sports history of India and Manipur,'' the Chief Minister said.

''The whole state is in awe of her for this amazing feat; people are celebrating her success with indescribable joy and happiness,'' he further said.

Numerous sports organizations and NGOs also congratulated her.

Mother of two boys, Mary Kom defeated Steluta Duta of Romania 16-6 in the light fly weight 48 kg finals.

Read full history - Manipur Erupts in Pride and Joy For Mary Kom's Achievement