FORSEA Co-founder and Burmese genocide scholar Dr Maung Zarni will participate in the anti-imperialist conference “Seventy Years after Bandung: The Struggle Continues” hosted by Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, Karachi, Pakistan this weekend.
In the spring of 1955, Che Guvera and Fidel Castro were reportedly mildly amused when they learned from the Burmese journalists informing them that Rangoon’s western-educated elite learned about the Cuban Revolution from TIME magazine, an influential American propaganda publication which one finds at grocery store check-out counters and street newsstands.
Their successful revolution had just effectively ended the corrupt and repressive local dictatorship in Havana, installed and maintained by the United States’ Sugar Corporation. And they were in Rangoon, staying at the still glamorous British old colonial era Strand Hotel on their way back from the anti-imperialist conference in Indonesia where they met the then Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, a key conference organizer.
The five organizers of the Bandung Conference, the Bandung Conference museum, Bandung, Indonesia, July 2019 (photo by Zarni)
Seventy years ago this week (April 18–24, 1955), five formerly European-colonized countries –Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan – organized the Bandung Conference, the first worldwide anti-imperialist conference – in the hilly city of Bandung, Indonesia.
At Bandung, leaders and representatives of 29 countries from Asia and Africa. These newly independent nations represented more than half the world’s population and the attendees, who were bonded over their anti-colonial thought, joined hands and midwifed the non-aligned movement – out of the two big power blocs of the USSR-led Eastern European bloc and the USA-led Western bloc.
A narrative on the wall of the Bandung Hall (photo by Maung Zarni)
While most, if not all, of the participants and organizers are no more, the anti-imperialist spirit – and struggles – which they sought to nurture is still alive and kicking.
Dr Maung Zarni (and the Malaysian FORSEA co-founder Isham, with his back to the camera) at the historic hall at the Bandung Conference where the anti-imperialist gathering was held. July 2019.
This week, Pakistan’s oldest think tank, Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, is hosting a conference “Seventy Years after Bandung: The Struggle Continues”.
FORSEA co-founder Dr Maung Zarni will be among the anti-colonialist scholars, state officials and activists who will honour and keep alive the struggle against all forms of imperialist domination, control, exploitation and repression.
Dr Maung Zarni said, “Under the homegrown military dictatorship of General Ne Win (1962-1988), I grew up under the nominally socialist Union of Burma, with sprinkles of food rations and a heavy dose of political repression.”
He further stated, with no equivocation, “despite the bogus socialism of the mass murderous totalitarian state in Burma then, I remain committed to the values and aspirations for egalitarian ways of life and politics, as well as anti-imperialist thought, which my mother, a university activist from Mandalay, instilled in me.”
To belabour the obvious, the terms “socialism” and “communism” have largely lost their appeal among the world’s peoples, particularly in the formerly colonized world which embraced statist Leftist ideologies. But the growing backlash worldwide against the new class of oligarchs and the emergent oligarchy, particularly in the United States, is indicative of the living universal human desire to lead an organized social life, free from violent repression, parasitic capitalist institutions – mega-corporations and corporations – which place their mega-profits above people’s welfare, and the octopus-like oligarchs, 60% of whom are Americans.
See Democracy Now’s interview on the Bandung Conference with the writer and journalist Vijay Prashad below:
Further reading on the great power destruction of international law and peace:
The Good and the Bad Genocides: How the US-led Western Imperialist regimes playing favourites with genocidaires kills their moral facade and destroys global governance
(Abstract)
Maung Zarni
The state officials and leaders of the West led by the United States have, for decades, arrogated to themselves vis-à-vis other global actors, particularly China and Russian Federation, the role of the custodians of human rights, international accountability and the rule-based world order.
But since Israel began its genocidal destruction of the essential conditions of life for 2.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza on 8 October 2023, the decades-old façade of the West as liberal, democratic and rule-abiding polities has shattered into pieces. For they have adopted two diametrically opposite approaches to the two contemporary cases of genocide, namely Israel’s sped-up genocide in Gaza and Myanmar’s slow-burning genocide of Rohingya people.
In the case of Palestine, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the openly genocidal project are, correctly referred to as “Made in USA”: the United States and its effectively European vassal states have for decades financed, armed, and protected – the perpetrating state of Israel, literally and through their application of national and international law, as well as with a veto at the Security Council. As a matter of fact, US and UK ministries of defence are directly involved in Israel’s genocidal project on the ground, providing military advice, and logistical and intelligence support. Their mass media and cultural institutions whitewash Israel’s numerous crimes while authorities running universities, corporate and media organizations viciously attack any critics of Israel among their own citizens, on the bogus accusations of anti-Semitism. Brutal crackdowns of the US campus Encampment movement or public protests spring to mind.
On grounds of credible genocidal allegations by the Republic of South Africa and Gambia, both Israel and Myanmar have been brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’s principal judicial organ for the member states. The ICJ has also ordered both state parties to abide by the binding Provisional Measures in order to prevent further harm to the rights of the victim populations of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and 600,000 Rohingyas who survived the 2017 genocidal onslaught in Western Myanmar, as Protected Groups under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Noteworthy is the fact that the victim populations are predominantly Muslims although Palestinian people do not frontload their religious identity, but rather their indigeneity on the land being grabbed, occupied and, likely to be annexed as part of Greater Israel, using the fairy-tale (make-belief) biblical names of Judea and Samiria.
In Myanmar’s case these same Western states, their mass media and chattering classes are prepared to use the “genocide” word, and even joined the state of Gambia in its ICJ case against Myanmar. Additionally, US, UK, Canada, Australia and EU imposed on Myanmar, both state institutions and military officials, multiple waves of unilateral and coordinated sanctions. These states use Rohingya genocide to engage in accountability grandstanding.
Based on my genocide scholarship – and first-hand observations – of both Myanmar and Israeli genocides in Western Myanmar and the Occupied Territories of Palestine, I will focus my presentation on the collective moral suicide by the imperialist Western states, with devastating consequences for the global governance institutions, international law and state norms.
Maung Zarni
Event Program
Watch “Trump USA and Its Dark Consequences: FORSEA LIVE” on YouTube
Banner: Anti-imperialist activists and scholars from across Southeast Asia visited the historic hall where the anti-imperialist, pro-peace Bandung Conference was held in April 1955, Bandung, Indonesia (photo by Maung Zarni).
