“In the application of peoples’ sovereignty, the FORSEA Board Members believe in democracy, either as representative or participatory form of government as the best vehicle for fair and equitable exercise of power among peoples.” — From the Peoples’ Charter for Southeast Asia, 2018
FORSEA – or Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia – We are Southeast Asian democrats and rights campaigners committed to making our region – and the world at large – fair, just and democratic.
As members of the Managing Board of FORSEA, we are committed to pursuing, through our educational initiatives, the advancement of human welfare, the protection of vulnerable national minorities, the propagation of fundamental human rights, labour rights, gender equality, the fostering of harmony between faith-based communities, the spread of ecological consciousness, and the promotion of a democratic ethos among future generations across Southeast Asia.
FORSEA Board Members
Gill H. Boehringer
Former Dean, now Honorary Professor at Macquarie University Law School, Sydney, Australia. He received his BSocS, from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University (1955); an LLB from Hastings College of Law, University of California (1962) and an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London(1967).
Having studied at Cornell on an NROTC scholarship-and thereby avoiding the draft for military duty in Korea- he was obligated to serve as an officer in the US Navy from 1955-1958. It was peacetime duty and an invaluable learning experience about inequality and privilege in society, and about US imperialism.
He is a human rights and environmental activist. In recognition of his activism and academic work, he has appeared as a Judge or Expert witness or as an Observer in more than a dozen People’s Tribunals/Citizen’s Inquiries/International Fact Finding Missions in Europe, the Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Australia.
He is Co-Chair of the Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers of the International association of People’s Lawyers; a member of the Judges Panel of the Permanent People’s Tribunal; Deputy Chair, International League of Peoples Struggles (Australian Branch); a member of Philippine Australia Union Link;, Action for Peace and Development in the Philippines, and the Australian environmental action groups Future Sooner and WaterForRivers.
Professor Boehringer taught at the University of Maryland (Overseas); the University of East Africa (Dar es Salaam); Queens University, Belfast; the Open University of the UK (Belfast); for the Workers Education Association in England; in Long Kesh Concentration Camp, Belfast (to Republican prisoners) and at Macquarie University. Disciplines offered were in law, sociology, anthropology, criminology.
His research and publications in recent years have focused on the murderous regimes in the Philippines, in particular on the attacks on lawyers and the rule of law, and the “war on drugs” aka the war on the poor.
Michael Charney
A native of Flint, Michigan, Michael Charney is a full professor at SOAS, the University of London, in the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (School of Interdisciplinary Studies) and the School of History, Religions, and Philosophies, where he teaches global security, strategic studies, and Asian military history. Since 1 November 2022, he has assumed the directorship of the Center of Southeast Asian Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1999 on the subject of the history of the emergence of religious communalism in Rakhine and has published a number of books on military history in Southeast Asia and the political and intellectual history of Myanmar. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies at the (National University of Singapore) where he researched religion and migration, was a project professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Asia at the University of Tokyo, and has spent most of the last two decades at SOAS, where he was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2016. He is a regular commentator in the media on events in Myanmar.
Charney has been an advocate for both meaningful democratic reforms in Myanmar as well as religious and ethnic tolerance. He has participated in a number of events and debriefing sessions since the events of August 2017 to speak on the historical presence of the Rohingya within Myanmar, the legitimacy of their ethnic claims, and the validity of claims of genocide. Charney is an outspoken critic of the use and abuse of history by authoritarian states, the Tatmadaw’s abuse of ethnic minorities, the National League for Democracy’s and former icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s failures in promoting civil liberties, and the so-called transition to Democracy in Myanmar.
Penny Green FAcSS
Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation at Queen Mary University of London, and has been appointed as Head of the Law Department from September 2018 – September 2022. She joined Queen Mary University of London in September 2014 following seven years as Professor of Law and Criminology at King’s College London. She studied Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology at the Australian National University before undertaking graduate studies and a doctorate in Criminology at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Green has published extensively on state crime theory (including her monograph with Tony Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption), state violence, Turkish criminal justice and politics, ‘natural’ disasters, genocide, mass forced evictions, and resistance to state violence. She has a long track record of researching in hostile environments and has conducted fieldwork in the UK, Turkey, Egypt, Kurdistan, Palestine/Israel, Tunisia and Myanmar. She has secured over £1.5 million of Research Council funding, including four major grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Professor Green is Founder and Director of the award winning International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) – a multi-disciplinary international initiative to collate, analyse and disseminate research-based knowledge about criminal state practices and resistance to them. ISCI is based at QMUL and partnered with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Ulster University and the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Professor Green’s most recent projects include a comparative study of civil society resistance to state crime in Turkey, Tunisia, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya and Myanmar; Myanmar’s genocide against its Muslim ethnic Rohingya population; and forced evictions in Palestine/Israel. Her seminal work, with ISCI colleagues, on the Rohingya genocide (Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar 2015; and Genocide Achieved, Genocide Continues: Myanmar’s Annihilation Of The Rohingya 2018) has drawn widespread global attention.
She has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at UNSW and Ulster University, and Adjunct Professor at Birzeit University. She has also held visiting fellowships at the University of Melbourne, Latrobe University, Monash University, and Bosphorus University; is a Trustee of the People’s Palace Projects, the Democratic Progress Institute and was a Trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform for eight years. She is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, co-editor in Chief of the international journal State Crime and Editor of the Routledge State Crime monograph series.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/people/academic-staff/items/green.html
Omar Haramy
Omar Haramy is a Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem. He is the director of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, which is dedicated to the development and practice of Palestinian liberation theology. Omar also serves on the board of Kairos Palestine and the Arab Orthodox Club.
He is a strong believer in human rights and international law, with a deep commitment to nonviolence as the ethical, practical, and effective tool for resisting oppression. Omar was educated in Palestine and Cyprus.
Azeezah Kanji
Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and writer. She received her Juris Doctor from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Masters of Law specializing in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Azeezah’s work focuses on issues relating to racism, law, and social justice. Her writing has appeared in the Al Jazeera English, Haaretz, Toronto Star, TruthOut, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, OpenDemocracy, Roar Magazine, iPolitics, Policy Options, Rabble, and various academic anthologies and journals.
Azeezah also serves as Director of Programming at Noor Cultural Centre.
https://cfe.torontomu.ca/people/azeezah-kanji
Toru Kubota.
Toru Kubota, born in 1996, is a documentary filmmaker. While he was a bachelor student in political science, he documented the situation of the Rohingya internment camps located in western Myanmar and created “Light up Rohingya” (2016), which solidified his decision to use his camera to give voice to the voiceless. Later, he collaborated with media companies such as the BBC, NHK World, and Al Jazeera. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Tokyo, he earned acclaim for co-directing the NHK program “Tokyo Ritornello (2020)” which shed light on the often overlooked and marginalized immigrant communities facing hardship in Japan.
In July 2022, after the military coup in Myanmar, he went to Yangon, the city ruled by the Myanmar military junta. While filming the anti-military protests in Yangon, he was arrested by the junta and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment; however, he was released after 111 days. After he returned to Japan, he co-founded the Docu Athan project with Yuki Kitazumi, an initiative dedicated to supporting journalists in Myanmar.
https://www.torukubota.com/
Máiread Corrigan Maguire
Mairead Maguire is a Nobel Peace Laureate and Co-founder of Peace People – Northern Ireland 1976. Mairead was born in 1944, into a family of eight children in West Belfast.
At 14 she became a volunteer with a grassroots lay organization and began in her free time to work in her local community. Mairead’s volunteerism, gave her the opportunity to work with families, helping to set up the first centre for disabled children, day care and youth centres for training local youth in peaceful community service.
When Internment was introduced by the British Government in 1971, Mairead and her companions visited Long Kesh Internment camp to visit prisoners and their families, who were suffering deeply from many forms of violence. Mairead, was the aunt of the three Maguire children who died, in August 1976, as a result of being hit by an IRA getaway car after its driver was shot by a British soldier. Mairead (a pacifist) responded to the violence facing her family and community by organizing, together with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, massive peace demonstrations appealing for an end to the bloodshed, and a nonviolent solution to the conflict. Together, the three co-founded the Peace People, a movement committed to building a just and nonviolent society in Northern Ireland.
The Peace People organized each week, for six months, peace rallies throughout Ireland and the UK. These were attended by many thousands of people, and during this time there was a 70% decrease in the rate of violence. In 1976 Mairead, together with Betty Williams, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their actions to help bring about peace and put an end to the violence arising out of the ethnic/political conflict in their native Northern Ireland. Since receiving the Nobel Peace prize Mairead has continued to work to promote dialogue, peace and disarmament both in Northern Ireland and around the world. Mairead has visited many countries, including, USA, Russia, Palestine, North/South Korea, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran, Syria, Congo, Iraq.
Mairead Maguire | Biography, Nobel Prize. Betty Williams, & Facts | Britannica
Netusha Naidu
Netusha Naidu is the co-founder of Imagined Malaysia, a nonprofit education project that aims to broaden understanding of Southeast Asian – and specifically, Malaysian – history, by providing a platform to learn and critically discuss alternative historical narratives.
Imagined Malaysia has organized countless forums and dialogues, exhibitions, and published an annual journal to push historical discourse in Malaysia. Netusha hopes to participate in the effort of creating public awareness and education about the different narratives and stories that may be omitted from the official/master history. This is to not only change understanding of the nation’s history but to deepen and evolve it to have a more inclusive and rich discourse. The crucial point is to address some of the present concerns regarding historical literacy in Malaysia.
Netusha completed an undergraduate degree in International Relations in University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. Upon graduating, her dissertation “‘Sly Civility’ and the Lazy Malay: The Discursive Economy of British Colonial Power during the Pahang Civil War, 1891-1895” will be published by Amsterdam University Press as a chapter in their forthcoming edited volume Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia. During her studies, she was also the co-curator of Jalan Merdeka: Traversing the routes to independence, an exhibition held at the historic Carcosa Seri Negara in Kuala Lumpur.
Netusha was awarded the Tunku Abdul Rahman Fund in St Catharine’s College to pursue an MPhil in World History at the University of Cambridge. She recently completed a dissertation titled “In Search of Patani Raya: Malay Anticolonial Imaginaries at the Fringes of Empire, 1945-48”. Through research on the anticolonial right to self-determination in the borderlands of Southeast Asia, Netusha is determined to work towards fostering transnational solidarities for an international order characterized by decolonization and nondomination.
Hishamuddin Rais
Also known under the penname of Isham Rais, Mr Rais is a key founding member of FORSEA. After several years of break from his official involvement, Isham returned to the board at the request of his Burmese brother Maung Zarni. Isham sees FORSEA as an extremely principled democratic forum whose analytical scope is global, with the politics uncompromisingly progressive.
He has been actively involved in radical democratic political activism since his university days at the University of Malaya in the early 1970’s where he was a Secretary General of the University Student Union, working alongside the current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Isham spent a long period in exile and eventually returned to Malaysia in 1994. He organised several street demonstrations from 1998 to 2000 following the ouster of the deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim. In 2001, the Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s reign, Hishamuddin was arrested under the section 71(3) of the Internal Security Act 1984 on the charge of conspiracy to overthrow the government with threats and violence, during the reign of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad with whom he reconciled and became a close friend and confident.
Even a deeply anti-imperialist, humanist, Isham opposes myopic ethno-nationalism and faith-supremacy ideologies, including Malay and Islamic supremacy in his own country, and advocates for universal solidarity among the oppressed around the world.
Isham lives in Kuala Lumpur with his dog. He received his further education in France, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Hishamuddin Rais – Biography – IMDb
Arash Sedighi
Arash Sedighi obtained his doctorate in Politics and International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He also completed his MA History at SOAS, writing his Masters thesis on scientific literature in Colonial Burma in the 18th and 19th century. Arash has worked as a Teaching Fellow at the Centre of International Studies and Diplomacy, and at the University of Westminster.
He has written and produced two short movies, produced and hosted the podcast “Mansplaining Feminism” [ https://www.listennotes.com/fil/podcasts/mansplaining-feminism-arash-and-billy-VE3nbNDAh2C/ ] about the history of feminism and spends his free time in the Lake District.
Bradley Simpson
Bradley Simpson is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of History, University of Connecticut, USA. Currently he is researching a global history of self-determination, exploring its political, cultural and legal descent through post 1945 US foreign relations and international politics. He’s founder and director of a project at the non-profit National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998). This project will serve as the basis for a study of U.S.-Indonesian-international relations from 1965 to 1999, exploring how the international community’s embrace of an authoritarian regime in Indonesia shaped development, civil-military relations, human rights and Islamic politics.
https://history.uconn.edu/person/bradley-simpson/
Hafsar Tameesuddin
Hafsar Tameesuddin is a former Rohingya refugee from Myanmar. Hafsar has been involved in different advocacy and activism spaces on statelessness, refugee rights, asylum seekers, detention of migrants and refugees, and prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) for over a decade. She had worked with refugee communities on the prevention and response to SGBV (Sexual Gender-Based Violence) and child marriage in Malaysia for 8 years. She now works as a community development navigator at Change Makers Resettlement Forum. In her volunteer capacity, she is the chair of Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), a Steering Committee Member of Asia Pacific Network of Refugees (APNOR), a member of Global Refugee-Led Network (GRN), the New Zealand Country Coordinator of Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC), and an Advisory member of UNHCR Advisory Group, interim working group member of the Global Movement of Statelessness and steering committee member of Rainbow Path New Zealand.
Sunita Viswanath
Sunita at a peace vigil at Kerem Shalom Crossing, Gaza, 29 Aug. 2024
Sunita Viswanathis is Co-Founder of Hindus for Human Rights. A native of India, Sunita spent her formative years in the United Kingdom from which she immigrated to the USA in her early 20’s.
Sunita has worked for over 30 years in women’s rights and human rights organizations. Sunita co-founded Hindus for Human Rights in June 2019. Aside from her mainstay faith-informed activism with HfHR she serves as a board member of Amnesty International USA.
In 2001, Sunita co-founded the international women’s human rights organization, Women for Afghan Women (WAW), and served as Board Chair of WAW until January 2022. She has been an advisory board member to Unfreeze Afghanistan since its inception in September 2021, and cofounded Abaad: Afghan Women Forward in August 2022. Sunita has edited “Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future” (Palgrave McMillan, 2003), a book of essays. For her work with WAW, Sunita was awarded the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Global Women’s Rights Award in 2011. Sunita co-founded Sadhana in 2011 in order to mobilize Hindu Americans to connect their faith to social justice and human rights and serves on Sadhana’s Advisory Board.
She was honoured by President Obama at the White House in 2015 as a “Champion of Change” for her work with Sadhana. In 2021, Sunita was recognized by Center for American Progress as one of 21 “faith leaders to watch.” Previously, Sunita worked with The Sister Fund and Funders Concerned About AIDS. Sunita is a board member of Amnesty International-USA. She is an advisory board member of Population Media Center, which uses entertainment-education and mass media to promote social and cultural change.
Sunita is a board member of Dalit Solidarity Forum. Sunita served on faith advisory committees during the tenures of both NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and Mayor Eric Adams. Sunita lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Maung Zarni (aka Zarni)
Zarni at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Sept. 2024. Photo: Will-Allen Dupraw.
Exiled in UK, Maung (or Mr) ZARNI is a leading scholar of Rohingya genocide and a well-known peace and rights activists. He is a non-resident fellow with the (Genocide) Documentation Center – Cambodia, co-founder of FORSEA.co, a progressive activist and intellectual platform for Southeast Asian activists and scholars of the region, and Burmese coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition. In the 1990’s, Zarni was a pioneer in using the then emerging InfoTech for building an international human rights movement, known as the Free Burma Coalition, in support of his country Burma’s struggle against the military dictatorship. Zarni earned a BSc in chemistry from the University of Mandalay (1985), an MA in education from the University of California at Davis (1991) and a PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1998). He has taught and/or held research fellowships in universities in USA, UK, Thailand, Malaysia, and Brunei. For his 3-decades of activism and scholarship devoted to peace and human rights both in his country of birth and beyond, he was nominated for 2024 Nobel Peace Prize by N. Irish Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire.
For his global activism on peace among faith-based communities, the Parliament of the World’s Religions recognised Maung Zarni with its Cultivation of Harmony Award for 2015 ((https://youtu.be/fQvrtXngea4?
Zarni blogs at www.maungzarni.net .
