Trump-bashing gets physical at China tech show

Source: Hector Retamal

@AsCorrespondent-11 Jun 2019

It might be the most low-tech item at a Shanghai consumer electronics fair, but a bash-able Donald Trump is eliciting perhaps the most physical reaction from visitors amid his tech-and-tariff war with China.

A kiosk at the centre of the Consumer Electronics Show Asia (CES Asia) bills itself as a “stress-relief” station where you can smash a life-sized bobble-head likeness of the US president with a hammer.

The not-for-sale prototype serves as a proxy for more oblique Trump-bashing heard at the annual tech fair.

“It would be better if I could use my hands and feet. I think the hammer isn’t satisfying enough,” attendee Wang Dongyue, 31, said after sending the presidential noggin lurching back and forth.

SEE ALSO: Trump delivers hard line on new China tariffs threat

“I don’t have a good impression of him to be frank, because he’s not very friendly to China now.”

The trade show, which is organised by the US Consumer Technology Association (CTA), opened this week under the shadow of the escalating trade war.

China and the United States have hit each other with steep tariffs on more than $360 billion in bilateral trade, rattling financial markets and business confidence.

Technology is a key battleground, with the United States pressing governments across the world to drop Chinese telecom giant Huawei from their 5G network development plans, saying it could be used by Beijing for espionage.

Huawei denies the charge.

On Tuesday, Huawei’s chief strategist Shao Yang said in a keynote that the company’s target of surpassing Samsung as the world’s number one smartphone manufacturer by late 2019 “may take longer” now, without elaborating.

CES Asia, which ends on Thursday, is a branch of the main CES held in Las Vegas.

There was little evidence of any gloom clouding the fair, a lively showcase of the latest in the gadget world including artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, facial recognition products, and other digital developments.

But CTA President Gary Shapiro, in an opening speech, warned that no one wins a tariff war.

“Simply put, a trade war is bad for everyone involved,” he said.

SEE ALSO: Trump’s approach to China has bad implications for global trade & world peace

A series of delighted visitors took their turns bashing Trump at the “stress-relief” station, set up by Japanese tech firm Soliton Systems.

At one point, a young Chinese girl began crying after coming face-to-face with the pouty-faced bobble-head.

“They should have a boxing glove. That would feel better,” show attendee Liu Di said after watching visitors take their licks.

Takenori Ohira, a manager with Soliton Systems’ AI robots and Internet of Things (IoT) division, said Chinese visitors were “very excited” with the display.

“The reason we chose Trump is because he is in a sense very outstanding among all the American presidents from the past,” he said slyly.

“That is why we chose him.”

© Agence France-Presse

Huawei’s Former CEO Worked for China’s Spy Agency, Current Exec Admits

BY EVA FU-June 11, 2019

A senior official at Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently admitted to having links to a top Chinese espionage agency during a U.K. parliamentary hearing.

John Suffolk, vice president of Huawei and the company’s global cyber security officer, told U.K. lawmakers on June 10 that Huawei’s former CEO, Sun Yafang, worked for 

‘Comply with the Law’

In the hearing, the Huawei official repeatedly emphasized the company’s compliance with the law.

“I don’t think we are complicit in anything, I believe our objective is to understand the law and comply with the law,” Suffolk said in the hearing. He then noted that Huawei is “a commercial organization.”

The Chinese intelligence law updated in 2017 has mandated all Chinese organizations to support, assist, and cooperate with “national intelligence efforts” and “protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.”

“The Chinese government comes to you [a Chinese firm] and requests your information, requests your data, requests access to your pipelines and your networks, the only choice you have is to comply,” Klon Kitchen, a national security research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said during a panel on March 21.

“The company is deeply tied not only to China but to the Chinese Communist Party, that connectivity, the existence of those connections, puts American information that crosses the networks at risk.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with CNBC.

Huawei has seen multiple sanctions from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Commerce barred U.S. firms from selling technology to Huawei, citing national security concerns.

“We must protect our critical telecom infrastructure, and America is calling on all our security partners to be vigilant and to reject any enterprise that would compromise the integrity of our communications technology or our national security systems,” U.S. vice president Mike Pence said at the 2019 Munich Security Conference.China’s Ministry of State Security.

Suffolk said that Sun “did have a role in that ministry,” but added that the tech provider was under no obligation to spy for the Chinese government.

“There are no laws in China that obligate us to work with the Chinese government with anything whatsoever,” Suffolk said.

According to Ifeng, the online news site of the Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing media Phoenix TV, Sun worked in the telecom field in the state espionage department, and used her connections to help “salvage” Huawei when it was struggling to make a profit.

Earlier in the hearing, Suffolk stated that it was part of Huawei’s duty to observe local laws in each of the 170 countries in which it has a presence.

“We do not create any moral judgments on what is right or wrong, that is for lawmakers to do … The law defines the ethics as far as we’re concerned, because in essence, it’s for governments to define what is right and wrong,” Suffolk said.

Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer, has branded itself as the front-runner in the 5G race to provide ultra-fast wireless services. It claimed to have 5G contracts with over 30 countries as of late January. But the company’s 5G infrastructure has been under heightened scrutiny as a handful of governments such as the United States and the U.K. question Huawei’s security practices.

Questionable Independence

Huawei has repeatedly refuted concerns from U.S. authorities and experts over its close ties with the Chinese state. The company has claimed to be 100 percent owned by employee shareholders and that it operates independently of the government.

But according to an April report by two scholars, the employees don’t have real ownership rights; the company belongs to Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and a trade union committee called Huawei Investment & Holding Company Trade Union Committee, with the latter holding 99 percent of the shares.

Similar to Sun, Ren had worked for the Ministry of State Security and was a director at the Information Engineering Academy in the Chinese military, an institution overseeing telecom research.

“What have been called ‘employee shares’ in ‘Huawei’ are in fact at most contractual interests in a profit-sharing scheme … Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not,” the researchers wrote in the summary.

“Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned,” they further stated.

At the U.K. parliamentary hearing, Suffolk was confronted by Norman Lamb, British Liberal Democrat and chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, on the amount of funding Huawei received from the Chinese government.

Suffolk denied that the company was lent $40 billion from the Chinese regime, but admitted that they have received loans from the state-owned China Development Bank.

“My understanding is less than 10 percent of $30 billion has been used in the last 30 years,” Suffolk said.

Follow Eva on Twitter: @EvaSailEast

Freedom of the press, security of the nation

Australia must not pit the pillars of liberal democracies against each other

While debates around freedom and security are crucial to democracy, there are bigger issues around the role and behaviour of Australia’s government at stake, James Mortensen writes.

11 JUNE 2019

Over the last couple of weeks, the eyes of both national and international journalists have been firmly set on Australia. The latest string of raids cements the government’s newfound reputation for absolute information control, especially when the information in question impacts national security.

Tighter restrictions on whistleblowing, journalism, and public statements made by government employees have been rolled out over the past five years, with the resultant prosecutions usually justified by concerns for national security.

Beyond the inevitable scrutiny from domestic journalists, it’s worth noting that this trend has made headlines overseas. High profile international media outlets have taken a keen interest in the government’s recent behaviour.

The New York Times suggested that the raids were the latest acts of a government that “seems determined to frighten whistle-blowers into silence,” while the BBC and Washington Post both reported that the government’s actions demonstrated a lack of whistle-blower protection and raised questions around press freedom.

The unfolding events in Australia have captured the world’s imagination as they represent the front lines of the battle between freedom and security – especially the freedom of the press.

But this ideological battle helps very little in reaching an understanding, especially considering that the argument rests on pitching the two pillars of liberal democracy against each other.

While arguments regarding the realisation of these ideals are crucial to our democracy, in any given moment, Australians want and deserve as much of both as they can get. Arguably, it is the responsibility of every citizen and their representative governments to ensure that this happens.

It is crucial, therefore, that we strive for both freedom and security at all points, and if they are mutually exclusive, resist the urge to retreat to a rhetorical battleground in which the two are pitted against each other.

Not only does the allure of rhetoric polarise our discourse and hamper our chances of enjoying both, but it also distracts us from the more nuanced issues at stake in moments of decision. This is certainly the case today; while journalists and politicians argue over freedom and security, there is a more concerning argument sitting below the surface.

Beyond these raids and prosecutions sits a basic proposition: the Australian Government should decide the public interest. Journalists and whistle-blowers argue that the information they seek to report on is vital to the Australian people.

However, not only does the government disagree with this, but it also believes that the release of such information harms the interests of the nation. By prosecuting individuals and institutions on this view, the government is not simply limiting the capacity of the press, but it also claims the right to decide the public interest.

There is a strong argument to support the idea that the government has the greatest capacity and responsibility to determine and manage the public interest. As the keeper of secrets and classified information, it is easy to argue that it is best positioned to judge the impact of sensitive information, and as the ordained protector of the people, it has the most to lose by their insecurity.

There are, however, strong arguments to the contrary. The government – or the individuals that constitute it – has the most to lose from the dissemination of such information. As such, it is hard to trust that instances of harsh punishment for those who bring light to events that involve the abuse of power are not simply attempts by politicians and bureaucrats to save their own skins.

Further, the quality and authority of a government is severely hampered if the people who have elected it are unaware of its actions and capabilities. The more control a government has over information in the public space, the less democratic authority it can enjoy.

Lastly, and most simply, believers in self-determination would argue that the only legitimate interest a country’s people can have is one they choose for themselves. If the government, on the other hand, stands separate from the public – which Australia’s current government seems to believe it does – then it can no longer make a legitimate judgement on what the public interest is.

While arguments over control of the public interest may be as irreconcilable as debating freedom and security, it holds the great benefit of practicality.

Instead of attempting to pit two absolute ideals against each other, we can instead ask specific and practicable questions. Who should determine what is or isn’t in the public interest? Can the government be trusted to regulate what its people know about it? Can the media, researchers, and public servants be trusted to determine that interest without adversely affecting the government’s capacity to secure the people?

The gravity and intensity of recent events, evidenced by the wide international scrutiny they have received, demand a thoughtful and convincing response. Australia needs to turn from the temptation to play tug-of-war with the concepts of security and freedom, instead examining more practical questions.

This is the case considering the pace and reach of government efforts to control public discourse moving forward. Not only that, but it has been punishing ‘breaches’ long forgotten – an ironic effort considering the Liberal government’s own tendency to lose classified information to second-hand shops, and the responsible and measured reaction of the public and journalists who uncovered it.

Britain Failed Hong Kong

The U.K. owes Hong Kongers fighting for democracy a moral debt.

Demonstrators take a rest the night after a protest against a controversial extradition law proposal in Hong Kong on June 12, 2019. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY MILIA HAU- JUNE 12, 2019

Hong Kong is awash with protest—and facing a dangerously uncertain future, as Beijing looks to extend mainland law’s grip on the territory. The region, once a rare shelter for dissenting voices in China, is seeing protections for freedom of speech stripped away one by one. That leaves Britain, once Hong Kong’s colonial master, with a particular obligation to the Hong Kongers it has let down in the past.

In 1984, British parliamentarians across the House of Commons were informed of the Hong Kong governor’s proposals for democratic reforms when they attended debates on the future of Hong Kong during the Anglo-Chinese negotiations. Based on these proposed reforms, parliamentarians approved the U.K. government’s intention to sign the Joint Declaration that would ensure Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997. These reforms never materialised, and the PRC inherited an executive-led system in Hong Kong—one that it has used to push through its own agenda, despite resistance from the Hong Kong public. Today, as a recent report by the Henry Jackson Society I helped compile argues, Britain has both legal and moral responsibilities toward Hong Kong.

The legal obligations come because the United Kingdom is one of the two signatories of the Joint Declaration, an international agreement registered at the United Nations, which promises the ways of life in Hong Kong—including the freedom of expression, guarantee of human rights, and rule of law—would be unchanged for 50 years, until 2047, under the principle of “one country, two systems.”

The moral obligations, because Britain handed over the whole of Hong Kong: not only the New Territories that were leased from the Qing empire for 99 years, but also Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula, which were permanent British territories. Along with them came all the people, subjects of the Queen who called Hong Kong their home. Some of these people were refugees who risked their lives to escape Communist rule in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). That puts a particular burden on Britain to back democracy in Hong Kong—or, more practically, to support the rights of individual Hong Kongers.

Although the United Kingdom bears the heaviest burden of responsibility, the handover would not have been possible without some kind of international consensus. At the time of the negotiations over the future of Hong Kong, some in the West supported a handover of Hong Kong because of Britain’s imperial rule, and because Hong Kongers’ ethnic heritage was put over their beliefs and values. Anti-imperialists in the West failed to realize that to many Hong Kongers, being a British subject was preferable to being a subject of the Chinese Communist Party.

More critically, in those days, it was popular to think that ideas about individual liberty, democracy, and human rights would spread from Hong Kong to other parts of China after the 1997 handover.
 There was a strand of thinking in the West that as China became more prosperous, a higher level of economic prosperity would translate into greater individual freedoms and democratic developments. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, it was clear to many that this was unlikely to be the case (although, bizarrely, that optimism returned in the 2000s). After 1989, English-speaking countries partially opened their doors to those who were lucky enough to be able to afford emigration from Hong Kong; Britain had an oversubscribed scheme to offer citizenship to 50,000 Hong Kongers in 1990. Between 1984 and 1997, 10 percent of the population of Hong Kong emigrated.

Hong Kongers do not see themselves as citizens of the PRC, as surveys by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong have repeatedly shown, but put local identity first. However, their ability to defend their identity and to aspire to democracy has been crippled by the dominance of Beijing. Rather than having any avenues for potential policy change, like citizens in a democracy, Hong Kongers’ efforts have only enabled them to delay policies that officials in Hong Kong or Beijing are determined to implement.

This has been the case since the demonstrations against the introduction of the national security bill, seen as a weapon against dissent, under Article 23 in the Basic Law back in 2003. It was delayed then, but issues that infringed on the principles of “one country, two systems” and “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong”—which are the foundation of the Joint Declaration—kept coming back, from introducing compulsory PRC national education in schools to “one location, two checkpoints” customs and immigration arrangements, which allow PRC security officers to exercise PRC law at the high-speed train terminus in the heart of the city.

Hong Kong is not a democracy. It is led by Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who, like her predecessors, was prescreened by a nominating committee before being elected by a 1,200-member electoral college of the city’s political elite, then appointed by Central People’s Government on the basis that she is “a person who loves the motherland and Hong Kong.” The fundamental problem, then, is that the government of Hong Kong is not accountable to the people of Hong Kong. It responds to the wishes of Chinese Communist Party officials in Beijing.

The Umbrella Movement five years ago aimed to achieve genuine universal suffrage in choosing the chief executive is chosen, but failed to secure any changes. Hong Kong is a rare example of an area with a largely liberal population, yet with an undemocratic system. The United Kingdom had a window to change that before 1984. Having failed to do so, it has greater obligations now.

The questions on the rights of Hong Kongers born under British rule, the “British nationals (overseas),” is a particularly tricky policy issue. Today, more than half of young people in Hong Kong wish to seek a better and freer life elsewhere.

 

Naturally and understandably, British nationals (overseas) want British citizenship. In a United Kingdom already torn by immigration issues, handing citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people, however strong the moral case, is a political impossibility. There are, however, intermediate steps that can provide real aid for Hong Kongers. Britain should prioritize asylum applications from Hong Kongers who face political persecution. Pro-independence activists Ray Wong and Alan Li, likely the first political asylum seekers from Hong Kong, were born as British subjects. Now in Germany, they faced persecution in Hong Kong due to their pro-democracy activism.

Wong led Hong Kong Indigenous, a group that sought to defend Hong Kong’s identity and raised proposals of a Hong Kong independent from China, and Li was a member of the group. They are wanted by the Hong Kong authorities on charges of rioting at a 2016 clash between protesters and police officers under the Public Order Ordinance, which is another legacy of British rule in Hong Kong. Wong commented that he would not enjoy refugee protection by Germany if the German government did not think that “Hong Kong uses the judiciary to persecute Hong Kong people.”

One minor policy adjustment that the United Kingdom could make is to lower the requirements for British nationals (overseas) to permanently reside in Britain, putting them in line with the current requirements for EU nationals. British nationals (overseas) are currently subjected to the same immigration restrictions that apply to other nationals outside the European Economic Area. An EU citizen who completed her three-year undergraduate studies and works for two years currently qualifies for indefinite leave to remain in Britain, and can apply for British citizenship a year after acquiring that status. A British national from Hong Kong who has spent exactly the same amount of time residing legally in the United Kingdom and paying taxes does not get this benefit.

Britain must take a leading role internationally and communicate the case for Hong Kong clearly, bilaterally with like-minded free countries, and multilaterally in organizations such as the Commonwealth and the United Nations. Britain needs to show it cares and that it is serious about Hong Kong, beyond the routine exercise of six-monthly reports and responding to occasional debates and questions in the chamber of the House of Commons. The joint statement by U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on the proposed extradition law changes in Hong Kong was a healthy sign of renewed and refreshed policy. Britain must step up this effort to truly become “an invisible chain linking the world’s democracies,” because that is the right thing to do—and because if not us, then who?

Hong Kong protests: government leader Carrie Lam condemns 'blatant riot'

Lam denies she is ‘selling out’ to Beijing as Chinese state media say protests are pushing the city ‘towards backwardness’


A protester makes a gesture during protests against a controversial extradition bill in Hong Kong Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images


Lily Kuo -Thu 13 Jun 2019

Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam has condemned protesters for “dangerous and life-threatening acts” during a mass demonstration over a controversial bill that allows extradition to the Chinese mainland. Only a handful of protestors remained on the streets on Thursday as Chinese state media said demonstrators were pushing the city “towards backwardness”.

Lam, who is championing the proposed law’s passage, noted that some young people in the crowd had expressed their views peacefully, but said the protest had devolved into a “blatant, organised riot.”

“Since this afternoon, some people have resorted to dangerous, or even potentially fatal, acts. These include arson, using sharpened iron bars and hurling bricks to attack police officers, as well as destroying public facilities,” she said.

Her comments came after riot police used rubber bullets, batons and teargas against people in Hong Kong protesting against the bill that would tighten Beijing’s grip on the semi-autonomous territory.

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam speaks at a press conference in Hong Kong Photograph: Jérôme Favre/EPA

Unable to drive away the crowds paralysing the central business district on Wednesday, authorities were forced to delay a debate over the bill. A new date for the debate has not been set.

On Thursday morning a handful of protesters remained, milling about as a widespread cleanup around the city’s legislature took place. Many roads had reopened around the central business district, but Pacific Place mall next to the legislature remained closed. Government offices in the financial district were closed and would be for the rest of the week.

Ken Lam, a protestor in his 20s who works in the city’s food and beverage industry said he would remain on strike until the bill was scrapped.

“I don’t know what the plan for protesters is today, we will just go with the flow, but we think the turnout will be smaller than yesterday and it will be peaceful, after what happened yesterday,” he said.

Banks based in the central district – the financial heart of the city – emphasised it was “business as usual” but many offered staff, where possible, the option of working from home.

HSBC, whose ground-level public space at its headquarters had previously been a focal point for protests, said it was operating as normal, but gave staff the option of working remotely.

“As a precaution, we shut two outlets early where the protests were taking place. Our priorities are the safety of our employees and supporting our customers,” the bank said in a statement.

On Thursday, Chinese state media said in editorials the protests were “hammering” the city’s reputation, with outbreaks of “lawlessness” undermining the rule of law.

The English-language China Daily said the new amendments were in line with international conventions but “the opposition camp and its foreign masters seem willing to oppose it for their own purposes at the expense of the city’s rule of law, public safety and justice”.

“It is lawlessness that will hurt Hong Kong, not the proposed amendments to its fugitive law,” it said.

The state-owned tabloid The Global Times blamed “radical opposition forces” and “the western forces behind them” for hyping up and politicising the amendments. “Playing with uncontrolled street politics is to push Hong Kong to backwardness and disturbance,” it said. “This is not a wise direction for Hong Kong.”

Protesters worry Beijing will exploit the law to extradite political opponents and activists to the mainland, where they would be subject to a Chinese justice system criticised by human rights activists.

The violence marked an escalation in the biggest political crisis to hit the city in years. After the police crackdown, a group of protesters made a failed attempt to storm government offices. In several cases, crowds charged at armed officers, throwing bottles and other debris.

Hospital authorities told broadcaster RTHK that 72 people had been taken to hospital and two were in a serious condition. Pictures and videos on social media appeared to show people wounded by rubber bullets or bean-bag rounds, which police fired from shotguns.

Police chief Stephen Lo defended his officers, saying they had shown restraint until “mobsters” tried to storm parliament.

“These violent protesters kept charging at our line of defence, and used very dangerous weapons, including ... throwing metal barricades at us and throwing bricks,” he said.

But Amnesty International said police “took advantage of the violent acts of a small minority as a pretext to use excessive force against the vast majority of peaceful protesters.”

Activists have vowed to keep up the pressure against the extradition bill. College student Louis Wong said the demonstrations had so far been a success.

“This is a public space and the police have no right to block us from staying here,” Wong said. “We’ll stay until the government drops this law and (Chinese President) Xi Jinping gives up on trying to turn Hong Kong into just another city in China like Beijing and Shanghai.”

Lam said she had never “felt guilty” over the issue and believed she was doing the right thing. She said she felt “worried and sad” about the young protesters.

Protester try to use water to put out tear gas which the police used against them in Hong Kong Photograph: Geovien So/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

“To use a metaphor, I’m a mother too, I have two sons,” she said. “If I let him have his way every time my son acted like that, such as when he didn’t want to study, things might be OK between us in the short term.

“But if I indulge his wayward behaviour, he might regret it when he grows up. He will then ask me: ‘Mum, why didn’t you call me up on that back then?’”

In an interview with Hong Kong broadcaster TVB, Lam denied she was “selling out” the city.

“It’s time to let lawmakers with different opinions express their views under the legislative process,”
she said. “On whether to retract or push it through ... our consideration is this: There is no doubt this issue is controversial. Explanation and dialogue are useful but perhaps that has not entirely dispelled worries.”

Right Wing surge in India’s Left Wing stronghold

 

Hindutva brigade displays its power in West Bengal

• BJP claims 130 of its supporters were killed
• 15 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are in West Bengal
• Jai Hind Bahini and Banga Lallona Bahini set up to counter the RSS and BJP with “Bengali culture”

11 June 2019

The Eastern Indian State of West Bengal, which has been a stronghold of the secular Centre-Left/Left Wing parties from the time India gained independence in 1947, is now experiencing a non-secular Right Wing surge. 

There is every possibility of the Right Wing “Hindutwite” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) capturing power in West Bengal through the next State Assembly elections due in 2021.   
It was the April-May 2019 parliamentary elections which showed the new trend. The tally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (BJP-NDA) in the parliamentary elections in West Bengal went up from two out of 42 seats in 2014 to 18 out of 42 in the 2019 polls. The tally of the Centre-Left Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went down from 34 out of 42 to 22 out of 42. The vote share of the BJP-led NDF went up from 17% in 2014 to 40.25%. The TMC was only slightly ahead with 43%. 

Charges of political violence are now being slapped against the TMC government. These sound ominous in the context of the emergence of the BJP-NDA as an unassailable power in the Central government following the April-May parliamentary elections. There is even talk of President’s rule being imposed on West Bengal and the State Assembly elections being advanced to 2020 to take advantage of the prevailing anti-TMC/Congress/Left sentiment in the State. 

Last week, three BJP workers and a TMC supporter were killed in Bhangipara village in the 24-Parganas district. Not surprisingly it was a communal clash also, as the TMC worker killed was a Muslim and the BJP dead were Hindu. 

In the run up to the General Elections, the BJP claimed that 130 of its supporters were killed while during the elections 12 lost their lives in poll-related violence   
As expected, the BJP-led government at the Centre sought a Situation Report from the West Bengal government, a step which could be viewed as the first towards the imposition of Central or Presidential rule.   

Chandra Kumar Bose, vice president of BJP’s West Bengal wing has said the party’s focus ahead of the State Assembly elections would be on the restoration of Rule of Law and the identification of “illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh through the controversial National Register of Citizens.   

The BJP’s electoral promise to identify “illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants” was a crucial factor in ensuring its victory in the border districts and North Bengal. The party claims that more than 15 million illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh are in West Bengal. 

That the BJP is shaking the TMC is evident from the fact that more than 60 Local Body level Councilors from the TMC camp as well as some Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) belonging to the TMC and other parties have defected to the BJP. 

Poison of divisive politics 

Reacting to the adverse situation, anti-BJP West Bengal intellectuals are to launch a citizens’ movement to curb the “poison of divisive religious politics” in West Bengal. CM Mamata Banerjee has dubbed Hindutvaas “alien to Bengali culture.”   

Harvard History Professor Sugata Bose, has proposed the formation of an apolitical secular and liberal citizens’ forum that would be rooted in Bengal’s great liberal and secular intellectual and political tradition.   

Bose told the media that the movement against Hindutva should be driven by the cultural ethos of renowned Bengali poets like Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam and the political legacy of Deshabandhu ChittaranjanDas and Nethaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose said that Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is “very concerned” about the possible extinction of secularism in West Bengal politics.   

For her part, CM Mamata Banerjee has called for the setting up of two cadre-based organizations: the male organization to be called Jai Hind Bahini and the women’s group will be called Banga Lallona Bahini. These organizations will counter the RSS and BJP with “Bengali culture” and educate the people about the dangers of the BJP’s divisive religious politics.   
“Bengali cultural traditions run very deep. Our Muslim brothers fought Pakistan with Tagore and Nazrul Islam on their lips in 1971. It is time we did the same here now,” singer Suchetona Majumder, a specialist in Rabindra Sangeet, told Subir Bhaumik of ‘South Asian Monitor’

Bengal’s liberal and secular intelligentsia largely supported the Left until many of them shifted allegiance to Mamata’s Trinamool which displayed a more pronounced Bengali ethos, Bhaumik recalls. 

Many Bengalis have memories of partition-time in 1947 when Bengal was divided into a largely Hindu West Bengal and a largely Muslim East Pakistan (which eventually became Bangladesh in 1971).   

According to Bhaumik, political commentator Sukhoranjan Dasgupta said that Bengalis don’t want divisive religious politics again and novelist Samaresh Majumder said that Bengali culture is syncretic with a mixture of the Hindu and Muslim.   
The shrill anti-Bangladesh rhetoric of the BJP and threats to implement the National Register of Citizens or NRC in West Bengal have not gone down well with many Bengalis observes Subir Bhaumik. 

“That it has led to the exclusion of nearly four million Bengalis, more Hindus than Muslims, in Assam, is something Mamata Banerjee seems destined to play up as she prepares to resist any imposition of NRC on West Bengal,” Bhaumik adds. 

Any attempt to push the four million so-called Bangladeshis from Assam and 15 million from West Bengal to Bangladesh will spoil the current good relations with Bangladesh, he warns.   
BJP supporter and top model PayelRohtagi’s description of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the father of Bengal renaissance, as a “British stooge” created a furore in West Bengal. 

Hindutwa; not alien to Bengal 

However, pro-BJP commentator, Swapan Dasgupta says that contrary to the leftist/elitist view, Bengal has been traditionally hospitable to pro-Hindu and Right Wing politics.   
Writing in The TelegraphDasgupta says: “From the 19th to the mid-20th century, in the period that witnessed the birth and the flowering of Indian nationalism, Hindu-ness was an important current in Bengal’s intellectual thought and politics. Most nationalist thinkers were concerned with trying to come to terms with the reasons for the loss of national sovereignty and exploring ways of overcoming it. In this scheme of things, the reform and re-crafting of Hindu society occupied a key position.”   

“Tapan Raychaudhuri’s study of Bengal’s responses to the West in the 19th century dealt with three intellectual stalwarts - Bhudeb Mukherjee, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda. All three focused on issues that related to Hindus as Hindus. To them, modernity did not mean discarding the Hindu inheritance but reshaping the Hindu inheritance,”Dasgupta pointsout.   

“In the realms of political activism too, the movement against the Partition of Bengal in 1905 had explicitly Hindu overtones, take Aurobindo Ghose and Bipin Chandra Pal as foremost examples. And this religio-political aspect was embraced by Rabindranath Tagore.”

“From the late 1920s till Independence, there was often very little to distinguish the Bengal Congress from the Hindu Mahasabha,” Dasgupta says.   

“The Hindu Mahasabha boasted of the involvement of intellectual stalwarts such as Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee and even RamanandaChatterjee. The pressure built up by Shyama Prasad was a key factor in ensuring that the Hindu majority districts of Bengal were not included in East Pakistan,” he adds.   

However, with the death of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee in 1953 and the adoption of the parochial “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan” slogan by the Hindu Right Wing then led by the  Jana Sangh party, the Hindu Right Wing’s influence waned in West Bengal. 

But now, the BJP is seen in West Bengal as a Hindu party which accommodates local identities, and therefore perfectly in tune with Bengal’s ethos based on Bengali-based Indian nationalism, Dasgupta feels.   

Australia: Who identifies as non-heterosexual varies on who, what & when you ask

Who identifies as non-heterosexual varies on who, what & when you ask. Source: Shutterstock

11 Jun 2019

ALMOST two years after the heated discussions accompanying the 2017 marriage equality postal survey, LGB Australians remain at the centre of public debates.

For example, there are ongoing issues around religious freedoms, and homosexuality was at the centre of Israel Folau’s controversial statements.

But one aspect about the Australian LGB populations that is often ignored is who, and how many, belong to them.

In fact, there is a large degree of uncertainty internationally about the share of the non-heterosexual population. The accuracy of early US studies by Alfred Kinsey has been largely discredited. More recent work by demographer Gary Gates provided more robust information, but left many questions unanswered.

In Australia, there is comparatively less information – notwithstanding recent research efforts. Understanding the prevalence of non-heterosexuality — as well as how this varies according to who, what and when we ask — is an important endeavour.

It can contribute to more inclusive social policies and services. It also allows us to reflect critically on traditional narratives about sexual orientation and their applicability to current debates within Australian society.

Here, we collate and discuss estimates of the prevalence of sexual-minority status in contemporary Australia, leveraging recent information from several major social and health surveys.

SEE ALSO: Taiwan holds first gay marriages in historic day for Asia

Dimensions of sexual orientation: what you ask

Academic scholarship usually distinguishes between three dimensions of sexual orientation: behaviour, attraction, and identity. These lead to different definitions of non-heterosexuality:

• engaging in same-sex sexual behaviour;
• feeling some degree of sexual attraction towards people of the same sex; and
• self-identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or other smaller sexual-orientation groups (for example, asexual, pansexual, demisexual).

Few Australian studies collect information on the three domains of sexual orientation from the same sample. But those that do provide an interesting picture: the prevalence of non-heterosexuality varies drastically depending on the domain asked about.

Take, for example, the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, a long-running health survey tracking several cohorts of women over time. Its youngest cohort, comprising roughly 17,000 women, was asked about sexual orientation at ages 22-28 years in 2017. When sexual-minority status was defined on the basis of identity, 38 percent of these young women fell into a category other than “exclusively heterosexual” (that is, “mostly heterosexual”, “bisexual”, “mostly lesbian” or “lesbian”).

However, the “mostly heterosexual” category accounted for the bulk of this figure, and some might question whether these women should be counted as non-heterosexual. Excluding the “mostly heterosexual” category, the share of sexual-minority women falls to about one in eight (12.4 percent).

If sexual-minority status was defined using same-sex sexual behaviour (having had sex with other women at some point of their lives), about a third (32.9 percent) of the young women in the study would fall into this group. Yet only 3.7 percent of them reported that their sexual experiences with women were at least as frequent as those with men.

Finally, 43.5 percent of women in this sample acknowledged feeling some sexual attraction to other women. But again, a more conservative measure — feeling as intense a sexual attraction for women as for men — reduces this statistic to 1 in 10 (9.9 percent).

Interestingly, the degree of overlap between measures is not as large as could be expected. While 52.9 percent of the young women reported some non-heterosexuality on at least one dimension (identity, attraction or behaviour), only 23.4 percent did on all three dimensions.

SEE ALSO: The risks of being gay in a humanitarian crisis

Gender differences: who you ask

Some surveys ask sexual-orientation questions of both men and women, which allows comparisons by gender.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, for example, asked a sexual-identity question of approximately 16,000 men and women aged 15 years or older in 2016. A greater share of women (1 in 25, or 3.9 percent) than men (1 in 33, or 2.9 percent) identified as gay/lesbian or bisexual.

However, these figures are likely to be underestimated, as 6.1 percent of women and 4.8 percent of men chose uninformative response options – “other”, “don’t know”, and “prefer not to say” — which suggests that many of them may not be heterosexual.

Estimates of non-heterosexuality from the 2014 General Social Survey for the Australian population aged 18 years and older are slightly lower, at 2.5 percent for women and 2.4 percent for men.

The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children asked a sexual-attraction question to a sample of about 3,500 boys and girls aged 14-15 years in 2014. In this youth sample, 1.2 percent of girls reported feeling sexually attracted to other girls exclusively, 4.4 percent feeling attracted to both boys and girls, and 4.4 percent being “unsure” about their attractions.

Among boys, 0.4 percent reported feeling sexually attracted only to other boys and 2 percent to both boys and girls, while 1.7 percent were “unsure”. Therefore, as for the adult population, more adolescent girls than boys fell into the combined sexual-minority category — 1 in 18 (5.6 percent) compared with 1 in 42 (2.4 percent), excluding the “unsure” group.

The higher propensity for women (and girls) compared to men (and boys) to fall into the sexual-minority group has also been observed in other countries, such as the US, and attributed to lower acceptance of male than female homosexuality and greater erotic plasticity and sexual fluidity among women.

SEE ALSO: UN rights chief bemoans ‘extremist’ anti-LGBT views in Indonesia

Sexual fluidity: when you ask

This phenomenon of sexual fluidity gives rise to other fascinating statistical patterns surrounding the prevalence of non-heterosexuality. For example, our recent research demonstrates that women’s sexual orientation should not be assumed to be static.

Rather, some women experience shifts in their sexual orientation over time, responding to changes in their personal and social circumstances. Thus, the prevalence of non-heterosexuality also varies as a function of age and life-course stage.

We used Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health data to track a cohort of women born between 1973 and 1978 from ages 22 to 27 years in 2000 to ages 34 to 39 in 2012. Approximately one in eight (12.5 percent) changed their response to the sexual-identity question on at least one occasion. The most common changes involved movements from “exclusively heterosexual” to “mainly heterosexual”, and vice versa.

However, the results were very different when we repeated this exercise using data from a younger cohort of women, born between 1989 and 1995 and followed from ages 18 to 23 years in 2013 to ages 22 to 28 years in 2017. Approximately one in three (32.8 percent) of these young women changed their response to the sexual-identity question at least once.

The most common changes involved moving away from the “exclusively heterosexual” and “mainly heterosexual” categories.

Societal change

Less is known about change over the time in the number and share of Australians who are non-heterosexual. This is because most data collections only began asking about sexual orientation in recent years.

Estimates based on the 2001/2002 and 2012/2013 instalments of the Australian Study of Health and Relationships (each canvassing about 20,000 men and women age 16-59), suggest an increase in the prevalence of non-heterosexuality across different measures.

The share of men identifying as homosexual or bisexual went up from 2.5 percent to 3.2 percent. The share of women identifying as lesbian or bisexual also rose, from 2.2 percent to 3.8 percent.

While the share of men expressing some same-sex sexual attraction increased slightly (6.8 percent and 7.4 percent), this increased more markedly for women (12.9 percent and 16 percent).

Similarly, the prevalence of lifetime same-sex sexual experience increased for both sexes, with the increment being more pronounced among women (8.5 percent to 14.7 percent) than men (6 percent to 6.6 percent).

Similarly, Australian Census data suggest a marked increase in the number of same-sex couples — from about 10,000 in 1996 to about 47,000 in 2016. The 2016 figure means that, on that year, approximately one in 100 Australian couples was a same-sex couple.

What does it all mean?

The variability in estimates of sexual-minority status according to who, what or when you ask might come as a surprise to many. It also casts doubts over traditional “us and them” narratives about sexual orientation.

Using certain definitions, Australian sexual minorities appear in fact pretty “major”. While only one in 25 Australians identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, feeling some attraction to members of the same sex or seeing oneself as “mainly heterosexual” is fairly common—especially among women.

Which of these indicators of sexual orientation is a better predictor of life outcomes in contemporary Australia? How does structural stigma affect these different groups? Which domains of sexual orientation should we ask about in official statistics? How should we ask these questions to elicit accurate and unbiased responses?

More broadly, the nuances here serve as an important remainder of the complexity of human sexuality. Large-scale quantitative studies have only scratched the surface. More information on, for example, less socially salient but clearly emerging sexual-orientation and gender-identity groups (for example, asexual, pansexual, demisexual, transcurious, and bigender) is needed to fully map gender and sexuality in our society.

Then we can better understand how these personal traits contribute to shaping the lives of everyday Australians.

Francisco Perales, Senior Research Fellow (Institute for Social Science Research & Life Course Centre) and ARC DECRA Fellow, The University of Queensland and Alice Campbell, PhD Student, Life Course Centre and Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.