Author: Mr. Lakhaney

TOK Teacher

Demography and destiny: blessing or time bomb?

April 23, 2021

But the world of work has changed, and that could be bad news for still-emerging countries like India, Indonesia, and Africa’s largest economies. Manufacturing, central to China’s boom over the past few decades, is now often performed by smart machines. New jobs for people often demand digital-age education and training that relatively few workers in poorer countries have access to.

https://www.gzeromedia.com/demography-and-destiny-blessing-or-time-bomb

The Roots of Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang ($)

March 28, 2021

China’s actions against the Uyghur people over the last four years recall the cultural genocides carried out by other settler colonial powers in previous eras. Much like indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australasia, Uyghurs have faced mass incarceration and internment, the destruction of cultural sites and symbols, displacement, family separation, and forced assimilation. Beijing’s recent policies in Xinjiang represent the culmination of a long and gradual colonization of the Uyghur homeland.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-02-10/roots-cultural-genocide-xinjiang

 

China Has Chosen Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang—For Now

Some members of the Uighur community say the abuse goes further. They allege that China is committing a cultural genocide. Cultural genocide means the elimination of a group’s identity, through measures such as forcibly transferring children away from their families, restricting the use of a national language, banning cultural activities, or destroying schools, religious institutions, or memory sites. Unlike “physical” genocide, it doesn’t have to be violent. Uighur activists point to the forced separation of families, the targeting of scholars and other community leaders for detention and “reeducation,” the bans on Uighur language instruction in schools, the razing of mosques, and the onerous restrictions on signifiers of cultural identity such as hair, dress, and baby names as evidence that China is trying to eradicate the Uighur identity.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/19/china-has-chosen-cultural-genocide-in-xinjiang-for-now/

RETHINKING SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CONEXT OF CYBERSPACE

March 27, 2021

Does the concept of sovereignty apply to cyberspace? Is the maintenance of territorial and conceptual boundaries associated with national sovereignty compatible with an interconnected, independent cyberspace? If not, is the default alternative a reinterpretation of the power and authority of nation-states? Must reconstruction or deconstruction of politically sovereign entities occur in order to conform to the inherently “free” nature of a digital era?

Link to a larger pdf discussing the issue of sovereignty in cyberspace.

RETHINKING SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CONEXT OF CYBERSPACE

An Old Legal Doctrine That Puts War Criminals in the Reach of Justice

March 1, 2021

Universal jurisdiction, the idea that any nation’s courts can try people for atrocities committed anywhere, has gained as a tool of human rights lawyers battling impunity.

Why is universal jurisdiction needed?

Some countries lack adequate judicial systems to prosecute crimes of this magnitude committed on their own soil. And some nations simply don’t want to prosecute them — especially if their leaders or other powerful figures would be implicated.

That poses a threat to a core tenet of the rule of law everywhere, legal advocates say.

 

The Extraordinary Trial of the Child Soldier Who Became a Brutal Rebel Commander

February 18, 2021

Kidnapped at 9 by Joseph Kony’s notorious guerilla army, Dominic Ongwen was groomed to kill. Is he a lost soul deserving of mercy, or a cold-blooded war criminal who must face justice?

He didn’t look at her for a long time. He stared at the edge of the table in front of him, holding his hands in his lap as if he was praying, visibly tense as this small woman with dark blonde hair spoke in a confident, cool, posh English accent. It was March 19, 2018, as Gillian Mezey testified before the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the trial of Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, the LRA, one of Africa’s oldest and cruelest rebel groups. Mezey, a professor of psychiatry in London, was testifying because nothing was more important and more controversial in this trial than the mental state of the accused, a former child soldier.

The Extraordinary Trial of the Child Soldier Who Became a Brutal Rebel Commander

Book: The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel

February 18, 2021

This book covers a lot of ground but Chapter 1, titled “Winners and Losers,” makes an interesting case that the use and abuse of the concept of “merit” is what led to populist backlashes of Donald Trump’s election and Brexit. 

You can actually read the whole introduction and first chapter on Amazon by clicking the “Look Inside” image of the book.

 

Below are a couple of links to reviews or interviews with Sandel in which he outlines his basic ideas.

Click to access tyranny-of-merit-transcript.pdf

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/06/michael-sandel-the-populist-backlash-has-been-a-revolt-against-the-tyranny-of-merit

 

 

The International Criminal Court’s new chief prosecutor is controversial ($)

February 16, 2021

The ICC badly needs such a champion. Victims of human-rights abuses around the world have been ill-served since the court began operating in 2002. Mr Khan’s two predecessors, Luis Moreno Ocampo and Fatou Bensouda, managed to secure just five significant convictions between them in 18 years. 

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/02/16/the-international-criminal-courts-new-chief-prosecutor-is-controversial

 

“Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang ($)

February 12, 2021

To confront evil, the first step is to describe it accurately

It accomplishes nothing to exaggerate the Communist Party’s crimes in Xinjiang. Countless true stories of families torn apart and Uyghurs living in terror appal any humane listener. When ordinary Han Chinese hear them, as a few did on Clubhouse, a new social-media platform, which China has rushed to block, they are horrified (see article). By contrast, if America makes what sound like baseless allegations of mass killing, patriotic Chinese will be more likely to believe their government’s line, that Westerners lie about Xinjiang to tarnish a rising power.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the-wrong-word-for-the-horrors-of-xinjiang