migrant workers

Academic Version: Applying my personal experiences and academic research as a professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies to provide a more complete understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues and current events related to American race relations, and Asia/Asian America in particular.

Plain English: Trying to put my Ph.D. to good use.

April 10, 2009

Written by C.N.

Miscellaneous Links #9

Here are some more links out that have come my way relating to Asians or Asian Americans. As always, links to other sites are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of their contents:

JACL Asks Support for Veterans Commemorative Stamp:
The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil and human rights organization, is asking its members and friends to write letters of support for the Japanese American (Nisei) WWII Veterans Commemorative Stamp proposed to the United States Postal Service.

The Postal Service has announced that its stamp committee will review letters of support for the Japanese American (Nisei) World War II Veterans Commemorative Stamp at its next meeting on April 23-24. Though the proposal will apparently not be officially reconsidered for issuance at the meeting, the Postal Service has acknowledged that they would review recent letters of support for the proposal.

The campaign is hoping to sway the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC), which oversees stamp selection for Postmaster General John Potter, to change its stance on the internal, non-public guideline that prohibits stamps that honor sub-branches, units or divisions of the military. Previously, the Postal Service had said that the proposal would not be looked at until the July meeting.

Should you, your organization, or a group of supporters wish to send a letter of support that might be reviewed at the April meeting, please send it as soon as possible. The Committee must be convinced that the proposal is worthy of consideration and that there is widespread public support. Letters of support can be sent to CSAC Chairperson Jean Picker Firstenberg (address below). If you or your organization have already sent a previous correspondence to the Postal Service asking for issuance of the stamp, a follow-up letter may also be sent. Personal letters are best, and a past 2007 sample letter can be found at the campaign’s website, www.niseistamp.org .

Send letters to:

Chairperson Jean Picker Firstenberg
Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Development
U.S. Postal Service
1735 North Lynn Street, Suite 5013
Arlington, VA 22209-6432

The JACL thanks you for your support.
Online Petition to Support Asian Workers in Saudi Arabia:
Dear Sir,

I need your support on the campaigning signature drive on the eploitation of Asian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and to stop at once the modern day slavery by their employers who bar their rights and welfare.

For more background information, please visit http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/01/exploitation-of-asian-workers-in-saudi.html.

To sign the petition, please go to http://gopetition.com/petitions/stop-exploitation-of-asian-migrant-workers.html

Prabal Rai
paulrai2004@yahoo.com

February 4, 2009

Written by C.N.

Democracy and Human Rights Abuses in Thailand

Many of us know that politics in Asia can be a rough-and-tumble affair. Criticisms against China have been documented and continue to make the news. The nuclear threat from North Korea still hovers over much of the world also. Unfortunately, we now have to add Thailand to this list.

In recent months, more stories and examples of democratic and human rights abuses taking place in Thailand have made the news. This includes writers jailed and prominent international magazines banned for criticizing the Thai monarchy, and perhaps most disturbing of all as my colleague Andrew Lam reports, the Thai military directly responsible for the drowning of refugees:

For a country steeped in Buddhism, Thailand is accruing terrible karmic debts. News reports, including those by the Thai press itself, indicate systematic abuse of refugees fleeing from its neighbor, Myanmar.

Tourists have seen and photographed Thai troops abusing members of a Muslim minority group who were fleeing Myanmar by boat to Thailandâ€™s southern shores. . . . CNN recently confirmed with a Thai military source that Thailand is practicing a dump-at-sea policy: towing boats back to the sea, often without giving refugees food or water.

UN refugee agency spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey expressed the gravity of the situation: “The reports that we are hearing are very alarming. That the [boat people] were detained in Thailand and then towed out to sea on unseaworthy boats and left to die basically.” . . .

Thailandâ€™s long antipathy toward its neighbors is notorious. UN records are full of documents, describing how Thai pirates used hammers, machetes, and guns to massacre entire boats of refugees, including children and women [in the wake of the Viet Nam War]. . . . Despite international protest, the Thai government made few attempts to prosecute those accused.

During the Cold War, Thailand also supported the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime responsible for the death of more than 2 million Cambodians. . . . Last year, when the world condemned Myanmar for its inaction after the cyclone Nargis devastated half of its country, Thailand spoke in favor of the junta.

I must admit that I had not heard of these developments until now. Like most everybody else, I presume, much of my attention regarding news and current events in Asia center around China, Japan, and/or North Korea and the mainstream media doesn’t seem to mention much about Thailand, besides the occasional reports of popular uprisings and political instability.

If anything, the picture that many Americans have of Thailand is of a tourist vacation hotspot with warm, sunny beaches and a teeming nightlife in its large cities such as Bangkok. But news like this is a wake-up call for us to look beneath the surface and to examine Thailand’s history in more detail. In doing so, we see that Thailand is not always the tropical paradise we had imagined.

In fact, the incidents described are rather disturbing and prompts me to drastically alter my idea of Thailand as a true democracy. On top of that, as Andrew Lam points out in his article quoted above, as Buddhism is the official state religion, the Thai government and military seem to be failing miserably in living up to their Buddhist ideals of compassion and non-violence.

I hope its leaders find their way out of this karmic jungle soon, for everybody’s sake.

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April 10, 2009

Written by C.N.

Miscellaneous Links #9

February 4, 2009

Written by C.N.

Democracy and Human Rights Abuses in Thailand