BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Wednesday said it looked forward to better relations with the United States under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden, and expressed hope the presidential transition will not be “bumpy.”
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warmly congratulated “Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for their historic victory” and said the 27-nation bloc looked forward to better relations than under President Donald Trump.
“It is not a secret, (either), that in the past 4 years things have become complicated,” Borrell told legislators at the European Parliament. Both sides, despite being longstanding allies, disagreed over key topics from trade and security to the fight against climate change.
The EU is expected to invite Biden soon to videoconference talks in an attempt to give new impetus to the trans-Atlantic alliance.
“You can rest assured that we are ready to engage fast with the new administration,” Borrell said. But he also alluded to the political problems remaining in the U.S. where Trump has yet to concede defeat. Biden is steadfastly pushing forward with preparations for his presidency.
“We still have to wait until (the) 20th of January because as you know very well it is a quite long transition ahead. Let’s hope it is not going to be a bumpy transition,” Borrell said.
Trump has variously stunned and disappointed the Europeans — most of them members of the NATO military alliance that America leads — by slapping tariffs on EU exports and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
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President-elect Joe Biden is heading for the White House. A litany of domestic crises will crowd his in-tray, but when he is able to mull foreign policy it’s relations with China that will require immediate attention.
The world’s number two economy, and America’s top trade partner, was cast as a boogeyman by the Trump administration, which blamed the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the coronavirus pandemic, the trade deficit, IP theft, opioid addiction, spying, military aggression and much more besides.
Many issues will remain hotly contested, and some Biden might target more severely—such as a human-rights abuses in western Xinjiang province and the erosion of freedoms in semi-autonomous Hong Kong. But trillions of dollars, and global stability, hinge on the estranged superpowers finding common ground wherever possible.
“China and the United States are competitors, of course, but competition in itself should not be viewed as a destructive force,” says Victor Gao, a Chinese expert on international relations who served as translator to reformist leader Deng Xiaoping. “Competition can actually bring also good things for both countries and for mankind as a whole.”
1. The U.S. and China need to start talking
Biden lambasted Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “thug” on the stump but he has previously boasted of having spent “more time in private meetings” with Xi “than any world leader,” amounting of “25 hours of private dinners.” Xi, in turn, lauded Biden as “my old friend” in 2013—gushing praise in CCP-speak.
Cordiality is sorely needed. Communication channels between U.S. and Chinese officials are currently “zippo,” according to one top U.S. diplomat, while China’s ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, has been completely frozen out of discussions with even junior Trump administration officials.
This is dangerous on many levels—not least because it creates a lack of a de-escalation mechanisms, should there be an accident, or miscalculation, between each nation’s navies in the contested South China Sea, where Beijing and Washington have been ramping up military drills and freedom-of-navigation sorties respectively.
An early first summit between Biden and Xi will help set the tone for relations. Biden’s easiest win may simply be the fact that he is not his predecessor. “Trump is fundamentally a person without decency, and you cannot have a friend without decency,” says Gao. “Biden is a person with decency—that’s very, very important.”
Trump focused on reducing America’s $345.6 billon trade deficit with China, but it actually grew during his tenure. It also provided an excuse for Xi—a self-proclaimed (albeit reluctant) free-market globalist—to chart a more domestic course.
Last week, Xi published the rationale behind his so-called Dual Circulation Strategy (DCS), which aims to maintain China’s export economy while bolstering domestic consumption through state assistance to local firms. “[As] anti-globalization has intensified, some countries have practiced unilateralism and protectionism,” Xi said. “Under such circumstances, we must … rely more on the domestic market.”
A Biden administration can help torpedo these arguments by returning to rules-based, free-market trade relations. There are inklings of hope, even in areas that have long been a sticking point between China and its trading partners—such as access for foreign firms to the domestic market.
At a major CCP policy forum last month, China unveiled plans to rollback red tape on financial services, of which U.S. firms are market leaders. Although such reforms have been promised many times before, bankers tell TIME that the new proposals are more tangible. Such concessions can be built upon by a determined White House.
Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty ImagesAerial photography of Yangshan deep water port terminal ships for lifting operations, including many of the world’s container ships carrying exhibits for the third China International Fair. Shanghai, China, October 25, 2020.
3. Building U.S.-China Cooperation
The space for collaboration between the U.S. and China shrank precipitously over Trump’s tenure. The most obvious area for Biden to look for common ground would be climate change, which Trump lambasted as a “hoax,” withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and stripping back regulation on polluting industries.
“Biden has made clear that climate change will be a big part of his administration, but you can’t do anything on climate change unless you bring China with you,” says Prof. Nick Bisley, an Asia specialist at Australia’s La Trobe University.
China remains the world’s worst polluter but has recast itself in recent years as an environmental champion, unveiling ambitious new targets to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2060.
There are also opportunities to build consensus on issues like coronavirus vaccine development, education, cultural ties, nuclear proliferation, trade and investment. Despite the pandemic and the specter of economic decoupling, Chinese firms are also heading for a record number of IPOs in the U.S. this year. Given the turmoil roiling the U.S., picking more fights with Beijing is unlikely to feature high on Biden agenda.
“Biden’s China policy certainly has a hard edge to it,” says Prof. John Delury, an Asia expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. However, he adds, it will likely be “more coherent and predictable, seeing ways in which to cooperate … and there are elements within Beijing that will be relieved to get back to that.”
Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesSmoke billows from a large steel plant as a Chinese labourer works at an unauthorized steel factory, foreground, on November 4, 2016 in Inner Mongolia, China.
4. Reducing tensions
The Trump administration’s ideological beef with China was spelled out by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who challenged the legitimacy of the CCP and called for regime change. In this light, every aspect of bilateral relations came under attack, including visas for Chinese students, seemingly innocuous social media platforms like TikTok, and the sale of U.S. tech components to Chinese firms.
A lot of these battles were self-defeating, such as a crackdown on Chinese journalists in the U.S., which simply prompted a retaliation against journalists, and local staff, at U.S. media organizations in China. Ordering China to close its consulate in Houston also prompted the shuttering of the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, severing a vital conduit for intelligence on human-rights abuses in nearby Tibet and Xinjiang.
Keeping confrontation limited to the areas that matter most—with human rights front and center—will help dispel notions that the U.S. is determined to undermine China at every turn.
“Ultimately, I think we are going to see a more sophisticated approach to competing with China that doesn’t say everything’s black and white,” says Bisley. “But high-tech competition and the risks of two Internets, will continue to be a challenge.”
Ganging up on China might not seem like a great way to mend ties, given that Beijing has traditionally preferred dealing with individual states instead of multinational groupings like the European Union. But Biden was key to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a sprawling trade pact including the U.S. and 11 other countries from Asia and the Americas.
It was designed to coax better trade practices out of China, but Trump nixed the pact on his first full day in office. The remaining 11 members eventually moved forward with a modified agreement while freezing 22 provisions insisted upon by Washington, including protections for U.S. workers. Whether Biden would be willing to rejoin TPP is an open question—his “Buy American” policy might preclude membership, while existing members may be reluctant to renegotiate terms with Washington. But it’s the kind of consensus-based approach that gives Beijing a migraine.
There is, of course, safety in numbers, especially when China has unleashed unilateral economic retaliation for various grievances. After Australia called for an independent probe into the origins of COVID-19, for example, Beijing hiked tariffs on Australian barley by 80% and cut back meat and wine imports. Canada, Argentina, New Zealand, South Korea are among many nations to have felt similar measures.
State Department sources say they are considering a possible economic equivalent of NATO’s keystone Articlle 5, which states that an attack on one member state is an attack on all. Such a pact is farfetched—economic interests are more divergent than security—but a renewed multilateral approach could be a smart card to play.
“As China gets bigger and stronger, even non-allies and former enemies like Vietnam want the U.S. to play a more active role in the region,” says Delury. “Even Kim Jong Un worries about being beholden to Xi Jinping.”
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In pigtails and a bright red letterman jacket, Carmen looks just like any other 7-year-old girl. But she suffers from a rare brain disorder called lissencephaly, and can experience seizures at any moment.
Up until about two months ago, Carmen and her mother Jenny, asylum seekers from Honduras, lived in a makeshift refugee camp in Matamoros for a year, an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande river across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Despite official guidelines to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that anyone with “known physical/mental health issues” are exempt from the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), otherwise known as “Remain in Mexico,” a policy that keeps asylum seekers in Mexico throughout the duration of their legal proceedings, they are still being forced to wait in Mexico for their case to be heard.
Carmen is listed as one of 22 individual plaintiffs named in a class action lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego Monday against the federal government. Additionally, the nonprofit legal aid organization Al Otro Lado has joined as a 23rd plaintiff. The lawsuit alleges the government has violated laws that protect people with disabilities from discrimination and administrative procedure laws. Lawyers involved in the case hope the lawsuit could allow hundreds of asylum seekers with physical disabilities or mental health conditions to wait out the remainder of their asylum proceedings in the U.S. rather than in Mexico.
Jenny spoke to TIME on the condition that their names be changed for fear that speaking to the media could impact their pending asylum case. They, along with all other asylum seekers involved in the lawsuit, are being identified in the legal documents by their initials.
After COVID-19 began to spread in Matamoros, Carmen and Jenny moved into a shelter farther away from the port of entry to the U.S. to try to provide a more stable environment for Carmen and limit her exposure to others. They are among more than 24,500 asylum seekers waiting to have their cases heard, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. COVID-19 has slowed down hearings and many are waiting in dire conditions, living in shelters or in tent encampments exposed to floods, extreme weather and violence in the region.
“This population of folks are clearly delineated in CBP’s own policy,” says Erin Thorn Vela, a senior attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) that has assisted with locating plaintiffs for the lawsuit. “It says explicitly, do not place these people in MPP, and [CBP] continuously, with this group of people, do it over and over again.”
A CBP spokesperson tells TIME the agency does not comment on pending litigation. Along with CBP, the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, and Mark Morgan, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner of CBP, are named as defendants in the case.
For Jenny and Carmen, winning this lawsuit could mean a chance for them to reunite with family already in the U.S., and for Carmen to have access to American doctors and special education she hasn’t been able to receive so far in her home country of Honduras or in Mexico.
In Mexico, Jenny relies on free medical services provided by American NGOs and couldn’t otherwise afford to see a doctor. She also has not been able to work because she cannot afford reliable child care for a child with a disability.
“I’m afraid to leave her alone without me because here I don’t have any family,” Jenny tells TIME in Spanish. “At times I feel very nervous, because this is hard, with children.”
Jenny and Carmen are among the individually named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, all of whom are waiting to enter the U.S. at ports of entry along the border region from Texas to California.
Though the lawsuit has been filed a day before the presidential election in the U.S., those involved say it’s a necessary step to help to asylum seekers with disabilities as quickly as possible. The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to MPP, and an additional lawsuit was filed last Wednesday arguing that MPP has limited asylum seeker’s access to lawyers. The Biden campaign has promised to end MPP, but lawyers who spoke to TIME said they were concerned that it could take months for the policy to be reversed.
Monday’s lawsuit, however, is the first to address asylum seekers with disabilities.
“These things take time and they’ll play out over time,” says Robert Shwarts, a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, the law firm representing all of the plaintiffs and is lead council in the lawsuit. “The thing is we’re hopeful that we can reach a resolution with the government, an amicable resolution that provides relief for our clients. Ultimately that’s the goal, whether that’s through settlement, or through ultimate success in the litigation…but the election may well bring a successful conclusion to our litigation faster.”
The lawsuit originated as part of an ongoing effort by immigration lawyers to get asylum seekers paroled out of MPP and admitted into the U.S because of their disabilities. For months, Charlene D’Cruz, an immigration attorney who also has a background in disability law, made it a part of her practice to present asylum seekers with health conditions to CBP officials at the port of entry to the U.S. armed with a copy of CBP’s MPP guidelines. When she was successful, her clients would be allowed to wait out the remainder of their asylum proceedings in the U.S. and get access to the medical treatment they needed. However, many times the clients would be sent back to Mexico.
Jenny, for example, says she has tried at least four times to present herself and her daughter to CBP officials at the port of entry with a lawyer and a doctor to explain Carmen’s medical condition, but they were turned away each time despite being eligible under the guidelines to be allowed into the U.S.
COVID-19 put a halt on even this possibility. Most lawyers aren’t able to visit with asylum seekers in person anymore, and even if they tried presenting clients with disabilities to CBP officials at the ports of entry, the implementation of “expulsions” at the border that began as a response to COVID-19 mean that anyone trying to enter the U.S. could immediately be sent back to their last country of transit without a hearing.
So together with TCRP, D’Cruz began planning a lawsuit. “We reached out to our other partners along the border in California, in El Paso, and we realized that there were so many people,” D’Cruz tells TIME. “MPP is using Mexico as a detention center, essentially…Here, out of sight is out of mind, and that is what the Administration wanted.”
Asylum seekers in Mexico under MPP can access to the Mexican health care system when they can afford it, but lawyers including D’Cruz, and several asylum seekers who have spoken to TIME say they can’t afford health care or are discriminated against by doctors because of their refugee status (the Mexican Department of Health did not respond to TIME’s request for comment).
Juan, 52, an asylum seeker from Cuba who now lives in Matamoros, has hypertension and a growth in his heart that requires him to wear a pacemaker that he has not yet been able to access in Matamoros. “The days have been really hard during this pandemic,” Juan says in Spanish. Juan also spoke on the condition that TIME withhold his true name for fear that speaking publicly could harm his asylum case. Juan and his wife are now also plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit filed Monday. “We’re stuck inside a house day after day… We don’t want to come into contact with the coronavirus, any of us, because if any one of us get it, the person who would suffer the most would likely be me.”
The family depends on money sent from relatives in the U.S. to make ends meet in Matamoros. “With the right treatment I could work—not anything physically intensive—but I could work,” Juan says. “Here in Mexico I can’t get that treatment. I’ve tried, I’ve gone to the hospital here, but then they say, ‘no, we can’t do anything for you.'”
Juan and his wife spoke to TIME via Zoom from D’Cruz’s office in Matamoros, an office space she rented across the street from the tent encampment. Juan chose to wear a pull over sweater decorated in bald eagles and the American flag.
“We do feel happy. We think we’ll get a positive result,” Juan says of the lawsuit. “Because here, if I can’t get the treatment I need, my condition will get worse.”
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, but preliminary results released Friday showed they likely would not legalize marijuana.
With about 83% of votes counted, New Zealanders emphatically endorsed the euthanasia measure with 65% voting in favor and 34% voting against.
The “No” vote on marijuana was much closer, with 53% voting against legalizing the drug for recreational use and 46% voting in favor. That left open a slight chance the measure could still pass once all special votes were counted next week, although it would require a huge swing.
In past elections, special votes — which include those cast by overseas voters — have tended to be more liberal than general votes, giving proponents of marijuana legalization some hope the measure could still pass.
Proponents of marijuana legalization were frustrated that popular Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wouldn’t reveal how she intended to vote ahead the Oct. 17 ballot, saying she wanted to leave the decision to New Zealanders. Ardern said Friday after the results were released that she had voted in favor of both referendums.
Conservative lawmaker Nick Smith, from the opposition National Party, welcomed the preliminary marijuana result.
“This is a victory for common sense. Research shows cannabis causes mental health problems, reduced motivation and educational achievement, and increased road and workplace deaths,” he said. “New Zealanders have rightly concluded that legalizing recreational cannabis would normalize it, make it more available, increase its use and cause more harm.”
But liberal lawmaker Chlöe Swarbrick, from the Green Party, said they had long assumed the vote would be close and they needed to wait until the specials were counted.
“We have said from the outset that this would always come down to voter turnout. We’ve had record numbers of special votes, so I remain optimistic,” she said. “New Zealand has had a really mature and ever-evolving conversation about drug laws in this country and we’ve come really far in the last three years.”
The euthanasia measure, which would also allow assisted suicide and takes effect in November 2021, would apply to adults who have terminal illnesses, are likely to die within six months, and are enduring “unbearable” suffering. Other countries that allow some form of euthanasia include The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium and Colombia.
The marijuana measure would allow people to buy up to 14 grams (0.5 ounce) a day and grow two plants. It was a non-binding vote, so if voters approved it, legislation would have to be passed to implement it. Ardern had promised to respect the outcome and bring forward the legislation, if it was necessary.
Other countries that have legalized or decriminalized recreational marijuana include Canada, South Africa, Uruguay, Georgia plus a number of U.S. states.
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On China’s National Day this year, Thai student Bunkueanun “Francis” Paothong performed a song outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. “Arise! Ye who would not be slaves again,” a video posted on Twitter showed him operatically singing into the humid evening.
The words famously open China’s national anthem, “The March of the Volunteers.” But they also appear in “Glory to Hong Kong”—the unofficial anthem of Hong Kong’s democracy movement—and it was this that Francis was singing at the Oct. 1 protest. “For Hong Kong, may glory reign!” he intoned.
Written and composed anonymously last year, the song has come to represent Hong Kong’s youth-driven rebellion against Beijing. But its four stanzas are now also sung in Thailand where protesters against the military-backed government and the monarchy are not only adopting tactics of resistance from their Hong Kong counterparts but are also cross-promoting causes.
Though their demands may be different, solidarity between the movements has been building for months. Activists have now joined forces in a so-called “Milk Tea Alliance,” a loose, transnational network of youth who see themselves as engaged in similar fights against authoritarianism and who have mostly come of age amid China’s growing influence in the region.
Named for a beverage popular in Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the #MilkTeaAlliance was forged in the crucible of a meme war in April that pitted Chinese nationalists against democratically minded young people in those places. But it has since spilled into something bigger.
“In each of our countries we face different issues, but when it comes down to it, we share the ideals of democracy,” Francis tells TIME.
Online, the hashtag has been used to push a boycott of Disney’s remake of Mulan and to raise awareness about China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet. Offline, the solidarity its has inspired has increasingly driven real-world action.
Romeo GACAD—AFP/Getty Images Bunkueanun “Francis” Paothongsings during a Milk Tea Alliance protest outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok on Oct. 1, 2020.
In Thailand, demonstrators have chanted “Free Hong Kong,” and waved Hong Kong democracy and Taiwan independence flags. In Taipei, activists, dissidents and students have gathered to show their support for the Thai protests.
“The idea is that we can speak for each other’s values within a relatively safer environment,” says Ted Hui, a Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker who organized an Oct. 19 rally outside the Thai consulate in support of Thai protesters.
Other politicians have taken notice. Taiwan’s vice president has used the hashtag, as has the spokesperson from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“I think this kind of pan-Asian collaboration and solidarity will just enhance the unity of the youth movements and also help China realize their soft power expansion and Wolf Warrior diplomacy is not working,” says prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong.
The alliance, he tells TIME, has vast potential to expand. “If anyone believes in democracy and freedom and is against the authoritarian crackdown, they could also recognize themselves as part of the Milk Tea Alliance.”
The hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance first sprang up on Twitter in April, to counter attacks by pro-Beijing trolls and bots on a Thai celebrity perceived to have slighted China. Actor and teen idol Vachirawit Chivaaree, known as “Bright,” had liked a tweet showing four different cities, including Hong Kong, with a caption that referred to them as “countries.” (Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous territory but being under Chinese sovereignty is not independent.)
Soon, he was bombarded by the kind of jingoistic outrage normally reserved for foreign brands like the N.B.A., Apple and Gap that have irked Beijing. In Bright’s case, patriotic Chinese social media users surmounted the country’s internet firewall to correct the record on Hong Kong’s status.
His apology failed to mollify the internet horde. They dug up more geopolitical offenses in social media accounts belonging to his girlfriend, Weeraya “Nnevvy” Sukaram, including an Instagram post that appeared to suggest the independence of self-ruled democratic Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.
Bright and Nnevvy’s fans shot back with humorous memes and other counterattacks. Then, the Chinese trolls misfired: they focused their criticism on the Thai government, economy and monarchy, much to the delight of young Thai social media users who enthusiastically agreed. Hong Kong and Taiwanese users started chiming in too, sensing an ideological affinity with the Thais in the fight against autocracy and Beijing’s Twitter army.
“The authoritarian Thai government has censored us for decades … and now certain Chinese nationalists are trying to use [Chinese Communist Party] CCP propaganda to tell us what we can and cannot think about Hong Kong and Taiwan. That’s unacceptable to those of us who believe in freedom of thought and speech,” the Taiwan Alliance for Thai Democracy, a group of Thai students living in Taiwan, stated in an email to TIME.
Once the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok weighed in with a statement insisting “the recent online noises only reflect bias and ignorance,” the resistance solidified.
“While the movement started as a trend, state opposition to it has turned it into a cohesive movement for change which is spreading beyond young people alone,” says Paul Chambers, a Thai politics expert at Naresuan University’s College of Asean Community Studies.
What are the goals of the Milk Tea Alliance?
The preparation of milk tea varies in Thailand (where a food dye gives it its signature bright terracotta color), Hong Kong (where a combination of Sri Lankan black tea and tea dust give it extra potency), and Taiwan (where the addition of tapioca pearls was popularized). In similar fashion, the political struggles in each of these places have their own characteristics.
In Thailand, students have taken to the streets demanding fresh elections under a new constitution, as well as curbs to the powerful monarchy’s prerogatives. In Hong Kong, protesters fear the loss of their city’s political freedoms under an ever-encroaching Beijing. And in Taiwan, activists are anxious over the CCP’s pledge to reunify the island by force if necessary.
Yet each of these struggles also share in the existential battle between democracy and dictatorship.
“I think the alliance proves that democracy is a universal [not just Western] value,” says Tattep “Ford” Ruangprapaikitsere, one of the Thai protest organizers. “Democracy is the only form of government that gives the opportunity for all people to fulfill their dreams.”
Asian activists have also found a common adversary in Beijing—a key ally of Thailand’s military-aligned government.
“The milk tea alliance could potentially turn into a genuine transnational anti-authoritarian movement—a rejection of the Chinese authoritarian model,” says Roger Huang, a politics lecturer at Sydney’s Macquarie University. “There may be some repercussions for China: governments could justify any backlash against China’s more aggressive actions in the region by citing popular opinion.”
Lauren DeCicca—Getty ImagesPro-democracy protesters gather at Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thailand on Oct. 21, 2020.
The coalition has come into existence as negative views of China reach fresh highs in many advanced economies, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. While the coronavirus pandemic—which emerged in China late last year—caused a reputational hit, recent trade and diplomatic disputes with neighboring countries have also prompted anger.
According to Sitthiphon Kruarattikan, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, the formation of the Milk Tea Alliance “reflects that China is still unsuccessful in cultivating soft power or winning hearts and minds of their Taiwan compatriots and neighboring countries.”
What does China say about the Milk Tea Alliance?
China’s foreign ministry has dismissed the coalition. “People who are pro-Hong Kong independence or pro-Taiwan independence often collude online, this is nothing new. Their conspiracy will never succeed,” spokesman Zhao Lijian told Reuters.
But supporters of the alliance say they are not anti-Chinese per se—instead they are simply finding affinity in their shared pursuit of liberal democracy.
Joshua Wong, in Hong Kong, insists the aim goes beyond opposition to any one country. “It’s not about being anti-Chinese government only, but [about] anti-authoritarian rule everywhere,” he says.
Activists say the outpouring of solidarity makes them feel less alone in their struggle. Social media has also made it much easier for like-minded protesters to band together and find strength in numbers, says Veronica Mak, a sociology professor at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.
“The young people know that their political capital is weak because they don’t have money, and not many of them have political connections. But they have found support and political resonance online,” she says, and that has given them more influence.
Photo by Isaac Wong/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesA man wearing a face mask walks past “#StandWithThailand” graffiti in Hong Kong on Oct. 18, 2020.
Their camaraderie has also opened up a vital pipeline for sharing tactics.
“[We’re] not only talking, we’ve also gotten a lot of knowledge and information from the movement in Hong Kong,” says Ford, the Thai protest organizer.
From tips on staying safe on the barricades to extinguishing smoking tear gas canisters and conducting leaderless rallies that melt away before police can effectively counterattack, Hong Kong has exported its decentralized protest techniques around the world. Activists in the United States, Catalonia, Nigeria and Indonesia have all borrowed from Hong Kong’s playbook.
Some supporters of the Milk Tea Alliance see an opening to join forces across all these movements.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” self-exiled Hong Kong activist Nathan Law recently tweeted, quoting Martin Luther King while expressing support for Thailand and the Milk Tea Alliance.
And while the alliance remains a fledgling movement for now, it has potential for growth.
“We are connected via these common dreams,” says Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, a prominent Thai activist. “It empowers us to have more energy to fight.”
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In a speech last week to commemorate 70 years since China’s entry into the Korean War, President Xi Jinping launched a thinly-veiled attack on the U.S. “No blackmailing, blocking or extreme pressuring will work” for those seeking to become “boss of the world,” Xi told veterans and cadres crammed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The 1950-53 Korean War, he went on, “broke the myth that the U.S. military is invincible.”
With U.S.-China relations at a decades-long nadir, it was fitting that Xi threw down the gauntlet on the anniversary of one of the only times the People’s Liberation Army and U.S. troops have faced off on the battlefield—a conflict still known in China as the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”
The upcoming U.S. election on Nov. 3 could be a turning point for American foreign policy, particularly regarding Beijing, which has borne the brunt of the Trump Administration’s sledgehammer approach to diplomacy. Chinese trade practices, tech companies, diplomats and even students have been in the crosshairs, feeding Beijing’s paranoia that the U.S. is pursuing a Soviet-era policy of containment.
Much hangs in the balance: economics, nuclear proliferation, the climate crisis, human rights as well as possible military confrontations. Whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden controls the White House may decide if the last four years of rancor was an aberration or the new normal for relations between the world’s top two economies.
“China, of course, is very concerned about the election,” says Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing. “If Biden wins, he may take a multilateral approach, more coherence with U.S. alliances. If Trump wins, he’ll definitely continue harsh policies toward China.”
But whoever sits in the Oval Office in January, a return to fulsome engagement appears off the table.
AFP via Getty ImagesContainers are stacked at the port in Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province on November 8, 2019. – China’s exports suffered their third month of decline in October, and while the drop was less than expected there were warnings on November 8 of more pain to come as the US trade war rumbles on.
Global rivalry between the U.S. and China
Washington’s attempts to isolate Beijing from an integrated and interconnected global economy have forced U.S. companies to relinquish established supply chains in China. Senior administration hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also openly questioned the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and called for regime change.
As a result, the U.S. is losing the goodwill of ordinary Chinese, with moderate voices within society replaced by resurgent nationalism. Meanwhile, the vacuum created by the Trump Administration’s America First approach has allowed Beijing to co-opt international institutions. China now sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council despite detaining one million Muslims in its far west region of Xinjiang. It champions the Paris Climate Accords and free trade despite, being the world’s worst polluter and propping up key industries with state funds.
This has allowed China to develop a narrative that it is reasserting its rightful place in global leadership while the U.S is in terminal decline—riven by income inequality, political polarization, racial injustice and toxic nativism. That has been strengthened this year by Trump’s inability or unwillingness to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. while China has successfully controlled the coronavirus within its borders and is the only major economy heading for growth this year.
At the same time, China has torpedoed some of its relationships around the world as it seeks to swell its influence. When the normally urbane Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Europe late August—ironically to smooth trade tensions—he threatened Norway with reprisals were it to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Hong Kong protesters, and swore that the president of the Czech senate would pay a “heavy price” for visiting the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province. (The affront prompted the Mayor of Prague to brand Chinese diplomats “rude clowns.”) On Oct. 21, China responded to Sweden’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G network by threatening a “negative impact” on Swedish companies.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, shake hands during a news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017.
China’s military capability
Worryingly, Beijing’s hawkish Wolf Warrior diplomacy has gone beyond rhetoric and strayed into saber-rattling with U.S. allies. In recent months, China has ramped up military drills around Taiwan, sailed a record number of sorties into Japan’s territorial waters and engaged in deadly Himalayan border clashes with India. This appears to be more than mere chest-thumping; analysts suspect that China may be pitting its formidable yet untested military against unprepared foes in order to better gauge its own capabilities as well as the likelihood of an international backlash.
“India is a perfect target because it’s not a treaty ally of anybody,” says John Pomfret, a former Beijing bureau chief for the WashingtonPost and author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. “You push the Indians around a little bit, declare victory and leave. That would signal the rest of the world that China’s big and bad and can do this type of stuff so watch out.”
Beijing insists that it is the victim of Indian aggression in the recent Himalayan skirmishes. But it is less meek about designs for Taiwan, which split politically from the mainland following China’s 1927-1949 civil war and is by far the CCP’s most coveted prize. Xi considers reuniting the island with the mainland a historic “mission” and analysts agree it is the most likely issue to force a military confrontation between the superpowers.
In an Oct. 10 speech, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called for “reconciliation and peaceful dialogue” with Beijing. Instead, Beijing responded within hours by releasing previously unseen footage of a large-scale military exercise simulating the invasion of an unidentified island, as well as video of a staged confession from a Taiwanese businessman charged with spying on the mainland.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, a specialist on China’s military at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, says that up until 2015 the main consideration of Chinese military leaders was Washington’s resolve to defend Taiwan. Now, however, she says they tell her: “It doesn’t matter. We would still win.”
The veracity of those sentiments is a matter of hot debate, but concerningly, “China has a remarkable tendency to overestimate its power,” says Pomfret. In September, the PLA Air Force released a video on its official social media showing nuclear-capable H-6 bombers carrying out a simulated raid on what looks like Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam. In a clear reference to U.S. support for Taiwan, Xi told the Great Hall of the People last week that any attempt to invade or separate China’s “sacred territory” will be met “with a head-on blow!”
Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty ImagesSoldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march during a parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China.
Sino-U.S. relations after the election
It’s a precarious situation in need of deft diplomacy. Some China hawks in the Trump Administration are calling for Taiwan to be provided with an explicit U.S. defense guarantee. But that would be “provocative and expensive,” says Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director for the nonpartisan Defense Priorities think tank. “I’m not in favor.”
Trump’s distaste for multinational institutions like NATO, and dislike of U.S. troop deployments overseas, has made America’s allies take their own security more seriously. On Monday, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 100 Boeing-made Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems to Taiwan in a deal worth as much as $2.37 billion, prompting China to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies involved.
“Taiwan could do more, Japan could do more,” says Friedman. “They could buy more defensive systems, particularly mobile missiles and radar that will make it harder to be invaded.”
Biden, by contrast, has voiced support for a multilateral approach in the region, restoring America’s role in global governance and re-establishing a liberal democratic order. Writing on Oct. 22 in World Journal, America’s largest Chinese-language newspaper, Biden vowed to “stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity and values in the Asia-Pacific region … That includes deepening our ties with Taiwan, a leading democracy, major economy, technology powerhouse—and a shining example of how an open society can effectively contain COVID-19.”
Biden has railed against Trump’s trade war—which studies estimate has trimmed 0.7% from U.S. GDP—and would likely rollback many tariffs. He also said that he would organize and host a global Summit for Democracy to “renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world” during his first year in office.
Reasserting such historic alliances could cause Beijing much heartburn. “We are 25% of the world’s economy,” Biden told the audience at the final presidential debate Oct. 23. “We need to have the rest of our friends with us saying to China, ‘These are the rules, you play by them or you will pay the price for not playing by them, economically.’”
While there’s no doubt that Biden would be tougher on China than Obama, many in diplomatic circles hope he could reopen lines of communication with Beijing to seek pragmatic solutions on trade, the environment, human rights and other issues. America still has many tools. The dollar’s role as global reserve currency has become more important during the pandemic. And the U.S. still boasts the world’s biggest economy, spearheading innovation.
But the U.S. has never faced a rival that can compete economically and militarily as China can. In the week before his Korean War anniversary speech, Xi addressed the nation on state-run television: “We Chinese know well we must speak to invaders with the language they understand,” he said. “So we use war to stop war, we use military might to stop hostility, we win peace and respect with victory. In the face of difficulty or danger, our legs do not tremble, our backs do not bend.”
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WARSAW, Poland — Women’s rights activists and many thousands of supporters held a fifth day of protests across Poland on Monday, defying pandemic restrictions to express their fury at a top court decision that tightens the predominantly Catholic nation’s already strict abortion law.
In Warsaw, mostly young demonstrators — women and men — with drums, horns and firecrackers blocked rush-hour traffic for hours at a number of major roundabouts. Some of them took off their shirts and stood topless on top of cars. Many held banners with an obscenity calling on the right-wing government to step down.
A group of far-right supporters held a counter-protest in front of a church and police in riot gear kept the two groups apart, using pepper spray at one point. Some of the people protesting the court ruling were detained and others sat down in the street to stop the police van taking away the detainees.
A protesting woman was taken to hospital with slight injuries after she and another woman were hit by a car. The other woman was not injured.
Organizers said people joined their protests in more than 150 cities in Poland, including Poznan, Lodz and Katowice. It was one of the biggest protests against the government in recent years.
In Krakow protesters chanted “This is War!” — a slogan that demonstrators have repeated often in recent days. They also shouted obscenities against the country’s traditionally respected Roman Catholic bishops.
Krakow archbishop Marek Jedraszewski said the protests were marked by “aggression unknown so far in Poland, when the sanctity of churches, of sacred places is being violated.”
Protesters defied a nationwide ban on gatherings intended to halt a spike in new coronavirus infections.
They have taken to the streets each day since the Constitutional Tribunal ruled Thursday that it was unconstitutional to terminate a pregnancy due to fetal congenital defects. The ruling effectively bans almost all abortions in the country.
The ruling has not taken effect yet, because it has not been officially published, which is a requirement of a law’s validity.
The head of a doctors’ group, Dr. Andrzej Matyja, speaking on Radio Zet, criticized the ruling’s timing during the pandemic, saying it amounted to an “irresponsible provoking of people to rallies” where social distancing cannot be maintained.
Poland’s conservative leaders have also come under criticism from professors at Krakow’s reputed Jagiellonian University who said that announcing such a ruling during a pandemic was an “extreme proof of a lack of responsibility for people’s lives.”
In a letter to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and to President Andrzej Duda, who is infected with the coronavirus, the professors appealed for a “way out of the situation … to be urgently found.”
Many gynecologists have also criticized the ruling. Dr. Maciej Jedrzejko said the ban will result in a rise in the number of dangerous, illegal abortions, arguing that sex education and access to contraceptives are the best ways to limit abortions.
The ruling by the government-controlled court overturned a provision of the 1993 law forged by the country’s political authorities and church leaders after the fall of communism. That law permitted abortion in only limited cases, becoming one of Europe’s strictest abortion regulations.
When the ruling takes effect, the only permitted abortions will be if a pregnancy threatens the woman’s health or is the result of rape or incest.
Among those who support the ruling is European Parliament lawmaker for the conservative ruling party, Patryk Jaki, who is the father of a child with Down syndrome. He warned on Twitter that abortions can also eliminate healthy children “because you rarely are 100% sure.”
Jaki also argued that abortions contribute to the nation’s low birthrate and said that they could be a “threat to Poland’s state.”
Health Ministry figures show that 1,110 legal abortions were carried out in Poland in 2019, mostly because of fetal defects. The non-governmental Federation For Women and Family Planning estimates that Polish women undergo some 100,000 to 150,000 abortions a year, some illegally in Poland and others abroad.
Women’s Strike, the key organizers of the past day’s protests, says that forcing women to carry through pregnancies involving fetuses with severe defects will result in unnecessary physical and mental suffering for the women.
Group leader Marta Lempart said there will also be a nation-wide strike Wednesday and a protest march Friday in Warsaw, the seat of the government, the constitutional court and the right-wing ruling Law and Justice party behind the court’s decision.
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(BEIJING) — China’s economic growth accelerated to 4.9% over a year earlier in the latest quarter as a shaky recovery from the coronavirus pandemic gathered strength.
Figures announced Monday for the three months ending in September were in line with expectations after the ruling Communist Party declared the outbreak under control in March and began reopening factories, shops and offices.
Factory output rose, boosted by foreign demand for Chinese-made masks and other medical supplies. Retail sales, which had lagged behind the manufacturing rebound, finally returned to pre-virus levels.
The economy “continued the steady recovery,” the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report. However, it warned, “the international environment is still complicated and severe.” It said China still faces “great pressure” to prevent a resurgence of the virus.
China, where the pandemic began in December, became the first major economy to return to growth with a 3.2% expansion in the quarter ending in June. Output contracted 6.8% in the first quarter after Beijing shut down the world’s second-largest economy.
Authorities have lifted curbs on travel and business but visitors to government and other public buildings still are checked for the virus’s telltale fever. Travelers arriving from abroad must be quarantined for two weeks.
Last week, more than 10 million people were tested for the virus in the eastern port of Qingdao after 12 cases were found there. That broke a streak of almost two months with no virus transmissions reported within China.
Industrial production rose 5.8% over the same quarter last year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, a marked improvement over the first half’s 1.3% contraction.
Chinese exporters have benefited from the economy’s relatively early reopening and global demand for masks and other medical supplies. They are taking market share from foreign competitors that still are hampered by anti-virus controls.
Retail sales returned to positive territory in the latest quarter, rising 0.9% over a year earlier.
That was up from a 7.2% contraction in the first two quarters as consumers, already anxious about a slowing economy and a tariff war with Washington, put off buying. In a sign demand is accelerating, sales in September rose 3.3%.
China has reported 4,634 coronavirus deaths and 85,685 confirmed cases, as well as three suspected cases.
Economists say China is likely to recover faster than some other major economies due to the ruling party’s decision to impose the most intensive anti-disease measures in history. Those temporarily cut off most access to cities with a total of 60 million people.
Private sector analysts say as much as 30% of the urban workforce, or as many as 130 million people, may have lost their jobs at least temporarily. They say as many as 25 million jobs might be lost for good this year.
The ruling party promised in May to spend $280 billion on meeting goals including creating 9 million new jobs. But it has avoided joining the United States and Japan in rolling out stimulus packages of $1 trillion or more due to concern about adding to already high Chinese debt.
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On Sept. 29, a 19 year-old woman died of injuries after she was allegedly gang raped by a group of men in a field in Hathras district, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. She was a Dalit, member of a community at the bottom of India’s rigid caste hierarchy, while the four alleged perpetrators, who have been arrested and charged with murder and rape, are members of a dominant upper caste.
The woman had spent two weeks fighting for her life in a Delhi hospital after the alleged gang rape on Sept.14, which left her with severe damage to her spinal cord. (The woman has not been named in the Indian press due to a law that prohibits identifying the victims of sexual violence.)
The night of her death, police returned to the family’s village with her body. But instead of handing her over to her mourning family, the family has said the police insisted she be cremated there and then. When the family refused, saying they wanted time to say goodbye, police locked them in their home and took her to a field where they burned her body using gasoline, the family said.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power with a pledge of “zero tolerance” toward violence against women, after the gang rape and murder of a 23 year-old woman in Delhi in 2012 shocked the nation. But India is still the most dangerous country in the world to be a woman, according to a 2018 survey of experts by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, citing sexual violence, cultural traditions and human trafficking as the main reasons for the ranking. In 2019, there were an average of 87 reported rape cases per day, according toofficial statistics.
The problem is even more pronounced for Dalits. More than 3,500 were raped in India in 2019, an increase of 18.6% compared to 2018. But the real number is likely far higher, says Kiruba Munusamy, a Dalit lawyer who works on caste discrimination and gender violence cases. “The upper caste groups use sexual violence as a tool, to reinforce their caste hegemony, and their caste supremacy,” Munusamy says. “And for that reason, many families are afraid to go even to the police station.”
The Hathras case sparked protests across the country, including in Delhi.
Dalits
Once known by the outdated term “untouchables,” Dalit is a broad term for the communities at the very bottom of the Hindu caste system. There are 200 million Dalits in India, and although caste discrimination was legally outlawed in India’s 1950 constitution, systemic discrimination against them remains widespread. The Hathras victim was reportedly from the Valmiki community, a caste which is considered “lowest in hierarchy” even among Dalits in Uttar Pradesh,accordingto Suryakant Waghmore, author ofCivility Against Caste.
Many Dalit activists see the Hathras case as a particularly brutal example of how Dalit women are not only regular victims of sexual violence in India, and an example of how the state is often complicit, making it difficult for victims to get justice.
David Talukdar—NurPhoto/Getty ImagesA protester holds a sign reading “Dalit Lives Matter” at a protest against the Hathras gang rape, in Guwahati, Assam, India on October 3, 2020.
The victim first told police she was raped on Sept. 14, shortly after the attack, according to videos taken shortly after at the scene of the crime,seen by the BBC. But her allegations of rape were only recorded by police eight days later on Sept. 22, after she made what’s known in India as a “dying declaration,” identifying the four men she said had assaulted her. After her death on Sept. 29 police cited a forensic report, later discredited by doctors, that said the girl was not raped. A PR firm working for the Uttar Pradesh state government pushed the line to the media, calling the case a “conspiracy to push the state into caste turmoil,” according to Indian mediareports.
The behavior of the police and state government, activists say, is a clear example of systemic discrimination. “People don’t really accept when you say that Dalits are discriminated on a day to day basis because of caste,” says Munusamy. “But the Hathras case is something tangible.”
India’s rape problem
India’s rape problemgained international attentionin 2012 whena woman was violently gang-rapedand murdered on a bus in Delhi. The victim, named “Nirbhaya” (fearless) by the Indian media due to laws against identifying rape victims, died in a hospital in Singapore two weeks later, after being flown there by the Indian government.
Dalit rights activists say that while both cases were terrible crimes, the difference in the state’s treatment of the two victims reveals something about caste. “The Hathras offense was very similar to Nirbhaya,” says Munusamy. “In the case of Nirbhaya, the state tried its best to make her survive. But in the case of Hathras, she was admitted to a local hospital. Even after she died, she was not given the respect of her body.” (The Hathras victim was treated in Aligarh hospital in Uttar Pradesh; she was transferred to the same hospital Nirbhaya was treated at in Delhi one day before she died.)
In the aftermath of the Nirbhaya case, many called for sentences for rapists to be made more stringent. Four of the six accused in that case were executed by hanging in March 2020.
But activists say stricter punishments have failed to address the root cause of the crime. “All too often lawmakers in India hold up the death penalty as a symbol of their resolve to tackle crime. But what is actually needed are effective, long-term solutions like prevention and protection mechanisms to reduce gender-based violence, improving investigations, prosecutions and support for victims’ families,” said Avinash Kumar, the executive director of Amnesty India, in a statement in March. (In September, Amnesty India was forced, by legal pressure from the Indian government, to halt all its human rights operations. It had released many reports criticizing the government for human rights violations.)
The aftermath of the Hathras victim’s death
Tanushree Pandey, a journalist from India Today, was at Hathras when police returned to the village with the victim’s body. Her videos from the scene, posted in real time to Twitter as police cremated the victim without her family present, brought wider attention to a case that activists say would likely otherwise have gone unrecognized.
ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE – Right behind me is the body of #HathrasCase victim burning. Police barricaded the family inside their home and burnt the body without letting anybody know. When we questioned the police, this is what they did. pic.twitter.com/0VgfQGjjfb
The following day, Uttar Pradesh chief ministerYogi Adityanathsaid he had spoken with Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the case. In a Sept. 30tweet, Adityanath reported that Modi had “said that strict action should be taken against the culprits.” Meanwhile, however, police officers (who report to Adityanath’s office) had barricaded entry to the village where the rape took place.
Amal KS—Hindustan Times/Getty ImagesPolice barricading on the way to the home of the victim in the Hathras gang rape case on October 1, 2020 in Hathras, India.
The next day, when the leaders of the main opposition party, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, tried to travel to the village to meet with the family,video showed police pushing Rahul to the ground. The pair were brieflyarrested. The same day, Uttar Pradesh policeclaimedthat according to a forensic report, no rape had taken place and that the victim had died from being strangled. The state government pushed this line to media through a PR agency. But the forensic examination was only conductedeight daysafter the assault—too late,according to guidelines, for an accurate conclusion of rape to be drawn.
On Oct. 2, police allegedly assaulted the victim’s uncle and intimidated the family in an attempt to stop them speaking to the press,according to the victim’s cousin. Amid outcry, the superintendent of police in Hathras was suspended for “negligence and lax supervision” by the Uttar Pradesh government, along with four others.
Despite the suspensions, a lawyer for the victim’s family said the intimidation has continued as national attention on the case has grown. “The family is receiving open threats, their phones are being tapped by the police,” the lawyer said,according to an Oct. 9 Indian Expressreport. “Is this the way to treat a victim’s family? They feel unsafe, their neighbours are rude to them. They don’t want compensation, they want justice.”
Caste in Uttar Pradesh
Activists say that, as with institutional racism in U.S. police forces, the Hathras case indicates the problem with India’s police is not caused by a few bad apples but because of a systemic problem with caste.
Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state with more than 200 million people. Thakurs are a dominant caste there, making up just 8% of the population but owning more than 50% of the land, according tothe Print.
The four alleged rapists are Thakurs. Thakurs have a large presence in the police and state government, including the state’s chief minister, Adityanath, a senior figure in India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Thakur supremacy, landowning, and the power Thakurs play in electoral politics are very significant. The police officials, magistrate, are all from the Thakur community. Grave ignorance of law comes from the fact they are all Thakurs and they want to maintain their supremacy. It is something embedded in the culture of Uttar Pradesh,” says Munusamy. “Most Dalits in rural areas work on the agricultural lands of upper caste groups. So if they lodge a complaint they have to risk their very livelihoods and safety.”
Activists say that the power dynamics of Uttar Pradesh are key to understanding the context of the state response to the Hathras case. “The fact that the perpetrators of this brutal and horrendous act belong to the same caste as Adityanath’s, gives a clue as to why his government failed to protect the girl,”saidAhsan Khan, president of the Indian American Muslim Council, in an Oct. 4 statement.
What does the Hathras case mean for Dalit rights?
The Hathras case is one of the most prominent examples of the rape of a Dalit woman receiving sustained national attention in India. “For us, this is very important because it is a milestone in the Dalit women’s movement. It has brought us into center stage. And it has created spaces for the issues of Dalit women and girls, which have most of the time been marginalized, not only by the feminist women’s rights movement, but also by by the Dalit movement, which is quite male dominated,” says Manjula Pradeep, a Dalit human rights activist and former executive director of the Navsarjan Trust, one of the largest Dalit rights organizations in India.
But activists say that there is a long way to go before they achieve lasting cultural change. “I think the mind of the people has to change,” Pradeep says. “India is a very caste-based society and it’s also a patriarchal society. People’s minds are very narrow, and they are into this idea of purity and pollution, where they don’t see others as equals. That mindset has to be changed, and that is the biggest challenge for us. Because people don’t want to change, because there’s power.”
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