Archive for July, 2017

July 9th, 2017 Breaking News

Massive Istanbul crowd protests Erdogan’s crackdown on rights

(VOA) — By Ken Bredemeier

Tens of thousands of people massed in Istanbul Sunday to protest Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on critics of his government in the wake of last year’s failed military coup.

The demonstrators chanted “Rights, Law, Justice” in support of the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who was completing a 450-kilometer walk from the capital Ankara after a lawmaker from his party was imprisoned in June.

It was the biggest protest in several years against Erdogan, whose government has arrested more than 50,000 people and dismissed at least 100,000 civil servants he has characterized as supporters of the aborted coup. Turkey claims the coup was led by a cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States for nearly two decades. Gulen denies any involvement.

The 68-year-old Kilicdaroglu’s 25-day march at first drew modest support, about 1,000 people who walked alongside him. But the crowds swelled in recent days as he neared Istanbul.

Kilicdaroglu, the head of the secularist Republican People’s Party, said that his march “cast off a shirt of fear” of Erdogan’s rule. “If only there was no need for this march and there was democracy, media freedoms, if civic society groups could freely express their opinions.”

Erdogan criticized Kilicdaroglu when he embarked on the march, saying justice should be sought in parliament, not on the streets.

The Turkish opposition says that Erdogan’s government has been moving toward authoritarianism, while the Turkish leader says that the crackdown on rights is necessary to thwart security threats to the ruling government.

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July 3rd, 2017 Related News

Marawi battle only latest chapter in long, fraught history of Islam in Philippines

(REAR VISION) By Annabelle Quince and Patrick Carey

The occupation of the Philippine city of Marawi by Islamic militants has been a regular fixture in the news cycle for over a month now.

The recent shooting of ABC journalist Adam Harvey by militants linked to ISIS brought it brutally close to home for many Australians, but conflicts of this nature are not a new phenomenon in the Philippines.

Islam has been a potent force in the country since the 1400s, predating even Christianity’s arrival.

So, as tensions in the predominantly Catholic nation are reaching boiling point, we take stock of the long and volatile history of Islam in the Philippines.

Islam’s arrival

Islam officially arrived in the province of Sulu, a small archipelago in the south, in the 13th Century. Some insist it came even earlier with the rise of Arab traders in the 10th Century.

Either way, there were well established sultanates (periods of time when sultans ruled) in Sulu and Mindanao by 1450.

As commentator Victor Taylor, who’s worked in the Muslim majority areas of the Philippines for the last 50 years, puts it:

“The country we know as the Philippines did not come into existence until the end of the 16th Century. So Islam, not just as a religion but as a political force … antedated the Philippines by a century or more.”

Patricio Abinales, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii, says the sultanates were relatively civilly advanced for the time.

“The sultans that dominated this period spoke six languages, were trading with China and familiar with other sultanates in the maritime South-east Asia region,” he says.

But Filipino writer and journalist Criselda Yabes argues this progress came at a cost. “They were an economic superpower, they were wealthy, because of slavery,” Yabes says.

Invasion by the Spanish

When the Spanish arrived in 1521, they quickly became established in the central and northern regions of what is now the Philippines. They faced strong resistance though, when they attempted to move south.

As Dr. Abinales says, the Spanish were essentially “in a defensive position vis-a-vis the Muslim sultanates, especially because the sultanates were conducting so-called slave raids into central and the northern Philippines very frequently, and the Spanish couldn’t stop it”.

Only towards the latter part of 19th Century did the Spaniards get a foothold in certain Muslim areas — but they never had effective sovereign control.

In fact, it wasn’t until the arrival of the Americans that Sulu and Mindanao fell under foreign control.

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