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All animals are equal, but some animals are more
equal than others.
-George Orwell 1955
In this paper, I want to examine the state policy
toward ethnic minorities to assimilating and
controlling and the negotiation and resistance of
minority to state’s marginalization, with the case
studies in Southeast Asia. I want to explore why
state marginalized to ethnic minorities in various
sectors, even in the name of development programs
and how ethnic minorities can negotiate and against
to state.
Assimilation: State Control to Ethnic Minorities
Although ethnic minority and
indigenous groups are exist before national state,
they are objective of control by state policy when
nation state become exist to exploit natural
resources in their region and to assimilate their
culture to majority group. Today, the state is in
fact the modern nation-state which entered the world
scene only after the treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
The treaty offered formal institutional status to
the emerging concept of the state in Europe although
a contractual factor had already entered the civic
space by the thirteen century in parts of Europe.
However, the concept would have never attained the
power it later did if the French Revolution has not
underwritten it by linking up the story of the state
to that of nationalism. The idea of the nation-state
arrived to Southern societies through the colonial
connection. After decolonization, local elite adopt
control over the state apparatus, learned to seek
legitimacy in a native version of the civilizing
mission. They established similar colonial
relationship between state and society. The
relationship between state and society are the
direct links which the modern state has established
with mega-technology on the one hand and doctrines
of national security and development on the other
hand. The modern state can always ask the citizen to
make sacrifices in the name of security; but it
cannot always deliver that security. Likewise,
state-controlled development processes in a society
are no guarantor of the development of the society.
In some case, state control policy
was seen as follow the colonial practice. In the
case of Indonesia, to control populations, to
extracting labor and tax revenues, Dutch colonial
authority attempted to relocate to indigenous people
through the threats of military force or through
missionaries. After independence, build the
‘Directorate for the Development of Isolated Tribal
Communities’, to gathering ethnographic data, that
later renamed as ‘Program for the Development of
Social Prosperity of Isolated Communities’, the name
it retained until 1999. The goal of this program was
to incorporate these groups into the larger
nation-state as Indonesia citizens.
During Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime,
attempt to incorporate them, by government
intervened their every aspect of lives,
resettlement, try to changing agricultural system,
religion and even eating habits. For many years, one
of the program attempts was to stop ‘simple’
shifting agricultural techniques, while government
opened up the forests for logging, mining, or
transmigration. Indonesia has no official policy
concerning the rights of indigenous ethnic
minorities. Since independence, government avoids to
handle these issues. The issues of tribe, religion,
race and intergroup relations are believed by
government that can destroy national unity. Under
the Suharto regime, these issues are forbidden to
discussion. The government provides a set of
characteristics that exemplify isolated group based
on kinship, geographically, economy and using tool
and technology (Duncan 2004).
Here I want to compare the over three
decades of “New Order” regime of General Suharto in
Indonesia (1967-1988) and current four decades-long
Burmese military regime in Myanmar (1964-up to now),
especially their respected development program
concerning with minorities group. Behind the
development processes, Suharto’s interested were to
build nation-state, Javanization, to protect form
communism in cold war era and to nationalized
natural resources. The similar to Myanmar military
regime, they try to have national reconciliation,
Burmanization, reluctant to follow federalism and
democratization process, and exploit natural
resources for the profit of handful Generals rulers.
Ethnic minorities groups are subjects and victims
for their politic of development. I notice that the
main different thing between two countries is that
in Indonesia, strong civil society can advocate for
minority group, while Myanmar lack of such civil
society to end or prevent dictatorship. So Indonesia
has changed after Suharto, but Myanmar remains in
its four decades-long status.
In Myanmar context, Robert Taylor
(1987) and Michael Adas (1974) revised Furnivall’s
concept of plural society. Understanding of
Furnivall’s concept was the social structure of
British Burma and multi-ethnic society organized to
create and free wealth. But Furnivall had failed to
demonstrate the complexicities and dynamics of a
plural society. Furnivall’s plural society comprised
‘separate racial groups’ (Europeans, Indians,
Chinese and native Burmese) by economic function.
But ethnicity and social class relations are much
more complex. Lowland Burmese formed middle class,
mainly urban-based white-collar worker, under
British rule, while another Burmese middle class was
rural-based, comprising larger lowlanders,
money-lenders, agricultural creditors and rural
shopkeepers. Adas argues that the plural society is
‘an extremely vulnerable and unstable form of social
organization’, and requires direct political control
to keep it in being (King & Wilder 2003).
In case of Malaysia, Malays, Chinese
and Indians were categorized as macro-level ethnic.
After independence in 1957, ethnicity became
increasingly interrelated with political identity in
that the Malays, Chinese and Indians all formed
their own ethnic- based or communal parties. Nagata
(1979) point out that it is urban areas of Malaysia
where ‘ethnic categories and relations have come to
be most conspicuous and most problematic’. The
colonial state also separated ethnic identities
economically and administratively. Today at the
local level the bases of intra and inter-ethnic
interaction are much more complex and variegated
than at the national level. The definition of Malay
in terms of religion, language and custom, has
become increasingly fixed and is now set firm in
constitutional terms. Judith Nagata explored the
concept of pluralism in Malaysia (King & Wilder).
In terms of status ranking within the
wider Malaysian society senior government officers
occupy the highest position followed by businessmen
and professionals, yet, when other ethnic groups are
included, the Chinese are placed overall above the
Malays and Indians. In the Wider society the Malay
political elite and the Chinese economic elite are
placed above the Indians who are seen to be at the
bottom of the hierarchy. How a sense of nationhood
is created in Malaysia from a situation of ethnic
diversity? Nagata indicated four possible directions
that Malaysian government pursuit national unity:
(1) assimilation to Malayness; (2) the creation of
hybrid Malaysian culture; (3) a pluralistic
arrangement; or (4) assimilation to a ‘neutral’
Westernized culture transcending individual
identities (Nagata 1979).
There were also different versions of
origin myths and oral histories of migration which
were employed as a means of supporting particular
claims to cultural and historical ascendancy. Since
the 1970s the issue of ethnic labeling has become
much more contentious. Classifications of ethnic
labels are subject to dispute, negotiation,
rejection and replacement. The ethnic categories are
best seen as constituent parts of the same society
or social system; each depends on and is integrated
with the other (King & Wilder).
In the case of Vietnam, Rie Nakamura
(1999) point out that South Vietnam’s minority
policy had been influenced by two factors – the
first was to isolated minorities from communist
propaganda and influence to prevent them from
supporting communists and the second was to pacify a
series of ethno-national movements. The continuous
ethno-national movements indicate that the Southern
government never gained support from its minority
population.
After 1985, the state of Vietnam made
a shift in its minority policies. State switched
from a controlled economy to a free market economy.
A new minority policy admitted that there was a
multilineal path toward socialism. People can follow
different paths appropriate to their ethnic
backgrounds. The main objective of the ethnic
minority policy become to create conditions for
socioeconomic growth which are appropriate to the
characteristics of each area, nationality, religion,
and spoken and written languages with regard to the
minorities. However the state claimed the necessity
of stopping of the minorities’ backward and
traditional modes of production.
The Vietnamese minority policy, which
has an aim to pursue its civilizing project,
contains a contradiction in its supposing. By the
state civilizing project, the entire ethnic group in
Vietnam should be able to make their own progress in
their particular ways which are suited to their
cultures and traditional to reach the same goal
where all the ethnic groups will meet at the same
level of development, and their ethnic differences
will be removed. However, in practice, progress or
advancement is equated with assimilation to the Kinh
majority group (Rie Nakamura 1999).
Exclusion: State Control to Natural Resources
In many countries, why governments try
to control in the ethnic region? The rich of natural
resources in ethnic regions is a main reason. Many
academic studies can prove for that cause. Land
access for indigenous peoples can of course occur
through various channels, but given the close
relationships between indigenous groups and land
resources, the main focus has been provision of
secure rights through collective titling. Land
allocation and resource management by groups with
strong cultural identities and customary practices
tends to be self administering, reducing the need
for intervention by the state to guarantee rights of
land access for group members. However there remain
considerable constraints to secure land for
indigenous peoples.
Some Asian countries, such as the
Philippines, have undertaken constitutional reforms
to safeguard indigenous land rights but communities
still face major financial obstacles in doing so. In
the Pacific Islands, customary rights are also
treated as equivalent to ownership (James F. Eder
and Thomas M.Mckenna 2004). However in most Asian
countries governments have argued against the
applicability of the concept of indigenous peoples.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, governments have widely
sanctioned private sector development of indigenous
land for forestry, oil palm and in Indonesia
transmigration programs to settle Javanese
overriding indigenous land rights. A desire to
eliminate shifting cultivation and encourage more
modernized agriculture has also impacted negatively
on indigenous peoples and been used to justify their
forced resettlement throughout South and Southeast
Asia.
Rie Nakamura (1999) highlights state
control to ethnic region for the cause of natural
resources in Vietnam. During the French colonial
Period, there were two kinds of colonization
–political and strategic colonizing and economic
colonization. The highlanders were taxed as a form
of currency by French. Leopold Sabatier (1913 –
1926) period, the political administration and
indigenous law court were established. Shifting
cultivation practiced by highlanders was protected.
While French colonial administration set up a
different administrative system for highland
minority in the South, they to leave the
administration of the Cham communities in the hands
of Kinh people. A rubber boom created pressure to
change the colonial administration of the highlands
‘economic colonialism’ thus became a principle in
highland management. The highlander’s rights to
their lands were disregarded and the land grabbing
by French colonists began. The highlanders’
resentment against French control emerged in 1937
called Python God movement.
After the Republic of Vietnam was
established in 1955, President Ngo Dinh Diem took an
assimilation policy towards the minorities. The
government tried to expel French influence from the
highlands and to plant Vietnamese culture among
them. In 1959, most of the highlanders were forced
to move into the new settlements by new policy. The
resettlement projects had the most negative effect
on the minority people. The government did not
provide sufficient aid for them to start a new life
in their new settlements. There was growing anger
amongst highland leaders. And then these anger lead
to social movement.
In the case of Indonesia, government
forestry laws undermined the rights of local
communities and threatened their economic livelihood
and viability. Over 75 percent of the land areas are
designed as forest. Government has forbidden swidden
practice which considers destructive environment,
while they permit to timber companies to logging.
The demarcation of new parks and reserves often
comes after all of the flat lowland areas have been
utilized for transmigration, the timber concessions
exhausted, and the mining surveys undertaken.
Government relocated people to provide cheap labor
for the timber estate rather than an attempt to
protect the park.
Indigenous people have to learn to
become model Indonesian citizens, from religious
proselytization to
agricultural training. The social settlements have
three main strategies: to help in ‘ecological
adaptation, to assist in social integration, and to
encourage and maintain their desire to join the
Indonesian mainstream. In resettle program,
government created ‘forbidden location’ includes
area of disaster, a cultural reserve and especially
conservation forest area.
Under the Suharto regime, numerous
laws were passed. According to his law, village
leaders become civil servants, responsible to the
central government rather than to the local
population. The Law on Village Administration also
had a negative affect on the ability of local groups
to control resource use and preserve local system of
land management (Duncan 2004).
In their studies, Peter Vandergeest
and Nancy Lee Peluso (1996) express that the
government also makes commoditization of space - the
creation and mapping of land boundaries, the
allocation of land rights to private actors, and the
designation of specific resource uses by both state
and ‘private’ actors according to territorial
criteria. Thailand borrowed the specific forms of
strategies from Australia and British colonies in
the region. In 1994, civilian government made
conciliatory approach to forest settlers, including
the degazetting of some forest reserve for land
reform. Territorial sovereignty defines people's
political identities as citizens and forms the basis
on which states claim authority over people and the
resources within those boundaries. The territories
are created by mapping; thus modern cartography
plays a central role in the implementation and
legitimating of territorial rule.
Territorialization is about excluding
or including people within particular geographic
boundaries, and about controlling what people do and
their access to natural resources within those
boundaries. According to Sack, territoriality is the
attempt by an individual or group to affect,
influence or control people, phenomenon and
relationship by delimiting and asserting control
over a geographic area. Territorialization involves
classification by area, theoretically eliminating or
altering the need to regulate specific resources or
individuals within a territorial zone, and the
communication of both the territorial boundaries and
there restrictions on activities within the
territory. The enforceability of territorial claims
is achieved by their recognition by a relevant
audience, by social pressure, and by the threat and
use of violence.
The territorialization of the modern
state is based on abstract space which dimensions
are linear and they can be cut up into discrete
unites and measured. Abstract space is homogeneous
in that it is represented as uniform within any
given territory, any unit can be compared and
rendered equivalent to another unit by spatial
categories. For example the territory of national
park in nested in national territory, which is
nested in a global territorial grid.
Modern mapping technique is a key to
conceptualizing abstract space. Map do more than
represent reality, they are instruments by which
state agencies draw boundaries, create territories
and make claims enforced by their courts of law. So,
the use of territorialization strategies to control
people's actions by surveying and registering landed
property and by mapping and guarding forests and
other natural resources. Vandergeest and Peluso
conclude that territoriality shapes state-society
relations, the nature of internal teritorialization
characteristic of modern state rule, and the role of
natural-resource control within the
territorialization strategies. In the process of
territorialization, not all rural cultivators always
recognize state claims to limit land use and
disposition, even in areas classified as forest.
Resistance to the policies will make unstable the
territorialization control.
I think to rise of the role of ethnic
people in natural resource assessment and management
is to emphasize their knowledge in ecology.
Traditional ecological knowledge comes down from
very long time experience of indigenous people, by
adaptations. Tradition knowledge and resource
management ways may provide to the current
understanding and using a wide range of ecosystem.
Most of western experience based in the north
regions of the world, so it not fit in every cases
to practice in the south regions of the world.
(e.g., North Atlantic fishery management is not work
in tropical marine ecosystem) The first
international document that pays attention to tribal
and indigenous people’s knowledge was ‘Our Common
Future’ by World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED).
Berkes (1999b) discuss local
empowerment of natural resource management. Based on
traditional knowledge and management systems, and
local institutions, indigenous people in many parts
of the world are making similar claims - the right
to control their lands and resources, the right to
self-determination and self-governance, and the
right to represent themselves through their own
political organizations. The use of indigenous
knowledge is political because it threatens to
change the balance of power between indigenous
groups on the one hand versus government,
developers, and conventional resource management
scientists on the other. The use of traditional
knowledge not only brings local knowledge of land
and ecological processes into the assessment, but it
also forces the governments and developers to deal
with indigenous values and worldviews. Indigenous
people become actors in environment assessment. The
use of indigenous knowledge can provide both
empowerments for the local people and empowerment of
knowledge base for decision making.
The Politics of Development
After independence, in the Indonesia’s
development program, the constructed targets are
classified as “geographically isolated customary law
communities”. The government applies this label to
forest-dwelling foragers, forest clearer or shifting
cultivators, and other group it considers lagging
behind the mainstream. Government thinks these more
than one million people are obstacle to government
efforts to develop its citizens. But according to
studies, behind the government’s development
program, there are many government interests such as
potential security threats and natural resource
management. More or less, Indonesian bureaucrats’
connotations to ethnic minorities are associated
with negative view.
The Indonesian development programs
were critic as ethnocide, Javanization, and cultural
imperialism. The fall of Suharto was the hope for
many minorities, to rebirth civil society. Many law
passed by Suharto has a chance to change. But author
point out that the situation can continuous change
after post development program. Author hoped, not
only in Indonesia but also in Southeast Asia, that
marginal group to play the larger role in future.
Duncan (2004) examines and points out the
development programs are ‘almost complete failure to
develop the target population’. One thing was
corruption at the local level. Regional bureaucrat
made many profit form these programs; house, land
etc.
The gap between plan and
implementation and development policies can prove in
Timor and Indonesia. For example, in Indonesia, the
large, beautiful and ecologically sensitive dams had
been built in the best place to build dams, but
unfortunately no one lives within many miles. It
shows that there is a little link between theory,
planned development and implementation. Generally,
scientific epistemology is far less empirical than
is supposed. But many times, see traditional as
obstacles to rational progress and subject to
explain the failure of development programs. (Hobart
1993)
In Thailand, Stott mention that the dam project
would have destroyed "the combined contiguous
habitats of the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary,
the Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuary, the Kroeng Kavia
Non-Hunting Area, and the undisturbed forest across
the border in Burma possibly comprise the finest
remaining conservation area in the whole of mainland
Asia." He points out that the area contained a
diversity of habitats "from tropical semi-evergreen
rain forest, though monsoon forest, bamboo forest,
and savanna forest" which resulted in "a rich
wildlife, with rare endemics and relict species
surviving in a last stronghold." The reason of the
decision of the government to postpone the dam
project was because of the sheer rate of destruction
of the forest habitat. According to him, forest area
of Thailand goes from about 50 per cent of the whole
country in 1960 to 15 per cent (official release 30
per cent) in 1988 with the rate of forest loss as
3.15 per cent_ one of the worst rates in the whole
world.
(Philip Stott 1991)
Globalization and Ethnic Minority
Globalization is becoming inevitable
for all the nations of 21st century and it makes
various changes in the politics, economics, culture
etc in the world. Combining authoritarian and
economic liberal features, Asian tiger states, here,
Aihwa Ong means Indonesia and Malaysia, are not pure
neo-liberal states but their insertion into the
global economy has required some adoption of
neo-liberal norms for managing populations in
relation to corporate requirements. To remain
globally competitive, these tiger states make
different kinds of biopolitical investments in
different subject populations such as privileging
one ethnicity over another and the professional over
the manual worker and different sectors of the
population are subjected to different technologies
of regulation and nurturance, and in the process
assigned different social fates.
Malyasia has favored the political
rights of Malays on grounds of their status as an
indigenous majority population and their general
economic backwardness when compared with the ethnic
Chinese and Indians who are descended from immigrant
populations. The system of graduated sovereignty has
become effective by putting more investment in the
biopolitical improvement of the Malays, awarding
them rights and benefits. So, its ethnic-based
governmentality has come to racialize class
formation and naturalize racial differences.
Malaysian state gained control of Islamic law as an
instrument of and rationale for national growth that
weds a religious re-flowering to an unswerving
allegiance to the state (Aihwa Ong 2000).
The resent development of ethnic and cultural
tourism in Southeast Asia has had important
consequences for the ways in which those populations
targeted as objects of tourist interest perceive
themselves and others, and particularly how they
have responded to national programs of development
and identity formation. Interest in the positive and
negative effected of tourism development on local
cultures and identities have subsequently led to
attempts to re-evaluate the notion of culture. State
may officially support certain cultural makers and
labels of local ethnicity and discourage or prohibit
others in relation to the construction and promotion
of national identity. Wood has argued that what we
call ‘traditional culture’ is subject to continuous
reformulation and ‘on-going symbolic construction’.
Cohen argued that authenticity like the notion of
‘traditional culture’ and ‘ethnic identity’ is not
fixed but negotiable (King & Wilder).
Negotiation and Resistance of Ethnic Minorities
There are some extents of social
heterogeneity and inequality in communities without
weakens to their effectiveness. If there are obvious
divisions between relatively powerful and relatively
powerless groups, the substantive content of the
emerging institutions is seem to favor the powerful,
while other argue the ‘weapons of the weak’ by the
less powerful. Economic inequality creates many
barriers to the resolution to common problems,
including overexploitation and overcapitalization
(Sara Singleton 1999).
In Indonesia, in the 1990s
international aid agencies began to pay more
attention to the plight of indigenous minorities
throughout the world. In 1993, the Indigenous
People’s Advocates Network founded and start
movement. This group decide to use ‘customary law
communities’ rather than government’s label of
‘isolated communities’. In 1999, they organized to
hold National Congress of Indigenous People in
Jakarta. Advocate organization mention their beliefs
that ‘customary communities were the main group that
was harmed the most and was victimized by politics
of development over the last three decades’.
In Thailand, after centralized power
by Bangkok, there were many conflicts between
central government and ethnic groups on access of
natural resources in the northern Thailand.
Activities and intellectuals have joined voices in
the Karen claim for community rights to the forest,
pointing to the sustainability of Karen swidding
practices based on indigenous knowledge.
Being sensitive to indigenous culture
is an important first step in correcting some
limitations of development efforts. Second issue is
equally problematic – power. It relates to questions
of authority and legitimacy. Even the most
supportive government ministry or development agency
will hesitate to share power with ethnic people. The
retention of their authority to make policies and
carry out development based on their expertise and
presumed mandate is fundamental to their existence.
Government policy towards ethnic peoples has tented
to emphasize the need to assimilate them into
economic and social life of larger society. The
impact of these policies on ethnic peoples has been
significant. Worsley suggest that nation states have
three way relationships between state and ethnic
people – hegemonic, uniformity and pluralism. When
culture differences have the potential for conflict,
there are three categories of long-term goals – to
pluralize their society, to maintain existing
patterns of pluralism and to reduce the political
silence of minority group solidarity. McCaskill
points out that indigenous people have little chance
of legitimating meaningful aspect of their
traditional culture in the evolution toward
development and modernization (Don McCaskill 1977).
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