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Category: Geweld & terrorisme

Two years after Myanmar’s military coup survivors of Rohingya genocide and victims of post-coup atrocities file joint complaint

By Maaike Matelski – On 8 December 2022, Nickey Diamond visited the VU for two lectures. Nickey is an activist from Myanmar who recently started a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Konstanz, where…

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In the meantime on the other side of the world…

By Marina de Regt     While we were all busy watching the US elections in the first week of November, an armed conflict broke out on the other side of the world, in the already turbulent and instable Horn of Africa. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts to bring about peace between the almost 20-year stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ordered a military offensive in response to an attack launched by the TPLF (the Tigray People’s Liberation Front) on the national defence force. It resulted in hundreds of deaths amongst whom many civilians and thousands of refugees fleeing their homes in the northern part of Ethiopia crossing the border to Sudan. Last week, when the results of the US elections were finally clear, the conflict has caught the attention of the Western media. Within a very short time Abiy Ahmed’s image as a peacemaker is receding in the eyes of the international community, and he is being pressured to stop the military attacks. But what is really going on in Ethiopia, and how can we explain the fact that this young and promising Prime Minister felt forced to use violence?

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Unpicking an (A)moral Anthropological Stance: Ongoing Violence in Myanmar

Introduction by Maaike Matelski In June 2015 the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology organized a seminar on account of the increasing number of Rohingya refugees in South East Asia. Since 2016 and in particular since…

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Conferentie in Marokko over Feminisme, radicalisering en extremisme

Paintings: Khadija MADANI ALAOUI, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez

Door Edien Bartels en Lenie Brouwer
Feminisme, radicalisering en extremisme zijn grote woorden. Hoe breng je die bijeen en… waarom zou je die bij elkaar brengen? Dat zijn de vragen die behandeld werden op het congres Women’s Voices in the Mediterranean and Africa: Movements, Feminisms, and Resistance to Extremisms dat op 5, 6, en 7 mei werd gehouden in Fez, Marokko. De organisatie was in handen van het Centre ISIS pour Femmes et Développement, Fez, met als drijvende kracht Fatima Sadiqi, bekend van publicaties over gender, migratie en islamitisch feminisme.

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Ramadan Kareem, my beloved Yemen

Sana'a
Dark clouds over Yemen

By Marina de Regt    Last Saturday the holy Muslim month of Ramadan started. Ramadan, a month of fast-ing and feasting, a month of contemplation, a month that should be full of joy and happiness. In Ramadan Muslims experience what it means to be hungry which will make them cherish what they have and feel compassion for those who are poor and hungry. Who will fast Ramadan in Yemen this year? Are there still people left who are not starving to death? Are there still Yemenis who need Ramadan to know what it is like to be poor and hungry?

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