Communal and Ethnic conflict

Comment

Comment by LALIT on September 4, 2009 at 1:19am

Correction of Previous posting:
take action to KILL the land lords or contractors

Comment by LALIT on September 4, 2009 at 1:17am

Hi Friends,
I feel the need of sharing cases of conflicts and solutions to such issues. This shall help peace workers. Attending conference seems to be me is always the place for brain stroming not for deeper enlightments. Therefore I would request all peace workers and orgs to share the dynamic of conflicts and share solutions through case analysis.

In India , the ultra- left maoist groups are working against the STATE for what they call liberation of masses from oppression of capitalist forces. At the ground level , they pick up volunteers and train them in arms. They take up local issues like exloitation of wage laboueres , land grabbing by money lenders etc. and take action to kiss the land lords or contractors. Slowly police take action against them and they keep killing police personnel. Slowly people get caught between police and the militatnt groups. Thus the conflict gets imbedded into social fabric.

Some political leaders support the ultra groups for sake of votes.

The solutions are not difficult. Where land reforms are implemented and eduction level is improving , the ultra-groups are finding lesser base. Similarly , where the civil society organisations organises people well and link them to local self govts , the inclusion starts and the ultra-groups are finding less space.

I would like to listen to experiences from you all.
Regards.
Lalit

Comment by LALIT on September 2, 2009 at 6:42am

Hi All,
It is great that the members are increasing in the group. We should keep starting discussions .

I will volunteer to offer a case for resreachers.

This is small district in Orissa state of India consisting of nearly 1.5 million people consisting of 2 different ethnic groups divided on 2 religiuos lines viz. hindu and christians. But one ethnic group is legally accepted as tribe and the other as the scheduled caste. There is competiton between 2 groups with regard to resource sharing , govt. jobs , political posts. The christianity was spread during colonial and post-colonial era. There is competiton between hindu seers and christian priests to infleunce people. After the emegence of of BJP in india , this party supports hindu seers and temple issues.

This district had 2 rounds of communal cum ethnic clahses in 93 and 2007. But the 93 clash was spread over the district having low scale as they could be controlled by police.

In august 2008 , on a hindu festival day , a hindu seer was assasined at his cottage by undientief gun men. The hindu religiuos organisations suppoted by a political party swung into action and spread riots . The christian missionaries were attacked and churches vandalised. Slowly , the religious riot also got in line with inter-ethnic riots where there was conflict with regard to natural resource acces and acess to jobs.

The riot continued over 3 months. Out of 1500 villages , 1000 were affected. Nearly 100000 people were directly affected and 1.5 million was affected partially.

The riots took the shape of looting , beating , rape and murders.

Th honurable supreme court of India had to intevene on a petition filed by a minority to monitor the situation.

Slowly , the riot phase was over. But the social fabric was broken.

As civil society organisations , we could moblise school teachers , social activists to do peace marches and meetings. Inter-faith leaders meetings were also organised. We faced resource constraints. Interestingly , the donot agencies could not be open in fudning peace activties . Though they are rasiing christian people's funds but they could not come openly due to fear of future govt. action.

From my organisation , i have wrtten to individuals and organisations for technical persons for peace training and for some small funds support , but i was not sucessful.

I have not yet completed the work esp. study on impact on children and women , peace trainers training and counselling centers for the victims. Still now also , i am looking for mentors.

So i decided to start the forum so that people should not suffer due to lack of expertise and resources.

Even many social agencies could not be open due to fear. But there are secular agencies who could stepped in.

This is a case how a conflict has started for the first time in India between hindu and christian groups.

regards.
lalit

Comment by Ping Ping Worakate on September 1, 2009 at 3:35am

Please take few minutes to read and share with your friends and network if you think it would benefit them.

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Comment by Michelle Garred on August 18, 2009 at 10:53am

Hello, this is a comment for Worku. I am also working on ethnicity, religion, and conflict, in the context of civil society, for PhD dissertation. This is a big area of study. Maybe I could email you a bibliography - would that be of help?

Comment by Michael Donahue on August 15, 2009 at 4:09pm

I invite you all to visit www.boldleaders.com We have been working on the island of Cyprus since 2003, with teens and adults from the two main communities, Turkish Speaking Cypriots and Greek Speaking Cypriots, ( over 350) and have, over the years, unconcealed some interesting distinctions. We also have worked with teens from Kenya, and sent them home days before the election violence of 2007. You can read some of their experiences on the community site, ( a ning location) reached through our community link. We recently returned from Central Europe, ( Hungary, Republic of SLovakia and Czech Republic) with USA teens, (check out their blogs), and in two days we will have 18 teens and three educators from the Romani society of those countries here in Denver, Colorado and in December we begin a project with 44 teens and educators form Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

Our work has also been presented to organizations working with at risk teens in Russia and South Africa as well as young teens and adults in the USA and has been demonstrated to be effective with teens in Cambodia, Northern Ireland, and Iraq.

I would propose that one major dynamic of most communal and ethnic conflicts often times ignored is to distinguish the conversational domain of time informing the conflict between the two groups. Example: If you follow the conflict conversations on the island of Cyprus you will discover that the Greek speaking Cypriot community, ( most of the Republic of Cyprus) tends to be driven by conversations that are rooted in the past. . .while the Turkish Speaking Cypriots, (especially since the failed so called Annan plan of 2004), speak and even negotiate from the domain of the future. I would venture, (though little to no personal evidence or research), that this may show up in the Middle East.

Comment by Maneshka Eliatamby de Silva on August 15, 2009 at 11:44am

I would recommend researching Dr. Marc Gopin's work on religion, conflict, and peace - you will be able to find a listing of his books at www.gmu.edu/departments/icar

Also, I would research some of Donalnd Horowitz's work such as his book "Ethnic Groups in Conflict."

Comment by Worku Menamo on August 15, 2009 at 9:16am

Does anyone have or know about documents, books, and articles about ethnicity, religion and conflict. Please share with me. I wanted to see the interaction of both ethnicity andconflict as well as religion and conflict at the same time, which is my area of PhD dissertation.

Comment by Andria Durney on August 15, 2009 at 8:43am

So far, the main approach which I have come across for inter-ethnic, inter-faith, and internal community violence which seems to work very well at the grass roots level (and builds momentum, but this can take up to seven years) is Joy Balazo's "Young Ambassadors for Peace" program. She works for the Uniting Church in Sydney, Australia, but does not impose her own religious beliefs in the way she conducts these workshops. These conflicts can have been going on for eigth generations and young people today don't know how they started. They just know that with all the violence they have no future, can not get an education or raise their families in safety. So it is the young people who are wanting things to change. At the beginning of the 7-10 day workshop the conflicted parties will be standing at opposite sides of the room, standing guard over each other at night. By the end of the workshop, people are hugging and crying and making action plans to do joint activities to build the momentum for peace. Joy has done these workshops in the Solomon Islands, PNG, Bougainville, Sri Lanka, Tari, Indonesia, and I think is planning one in an African country. If anyone knows of anything that they have come across which has been successful, at least in some way, i would love to learn about it.

Comment by RAHEEM MUTIU on July 18, 2009 at 9:04am

Julia, We truly believe in help that is why we are all in this forum, but we seem to be yet active. If serious and concerted efforts are not taken, we may continue to pay lip service to issues! Back to your request now, how do we really help the East European people?

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