Peace Library, Meiktila, Myanmar


ACTIVISM

 

In 2016, ADI organized a community project for victim-survivors of the massacre in Meiktila, Myanmar.  We worked in cooperation with regional theater organizations to hold performances for children and conducted arts therapy sessions with the children. The Peace Library Project - aimed at empowering children and adolescents as peacemakers to transform fear and tension into empathy and understanding - has been underway since 2017.  Upon completion of construction, we will introduce educational programs and projects for peacebuilding customized for the local context of Meiktila. The library will provide opportunities to augment children’s critical thinking skills and cultivate sensitivity for peace within the community. 

 

BACKGROUND

 

On March 20, 2013, violence occurred in Meiktila township of Mandalay Province in central Myanmar, triggered by a dispute between a Muslim jewelry shopkeeper and a Buddhist civilian.  The incident quickly snowballed into a massacre of the Muslim population by extremist Buddhist leaders and the military, leaving 43 dead, 86 injured, and 13,000 new refugees over three days.  Perpetuated by the anti-Muslim movement of the extreme right and by the government of Myanmar, the aftermath of the massacre led to increased tensions and conflict between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Meiktila.





 

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Palestine, Solidarity for Peace


ACTIVISM

 

Various claims by different stakeholders surrounding Palestine often obscure an objective evaluation of the conflict.  We propose field-based documentation to investigate the current state of human rights abuses, thereby promoting a more humane perspective to the conflict. 

  • Research Team for Palestinian Peace: The team studies the history, society, and culture of Israel and Palestine within the context of the conflict around resettlement areas.

  • Human Rights Report Team: The team listens to and records the voices of the most alienated victims of the dispute between the two sides.  In 2018, Status of Israeli Settlement According to International Law and Report on the Damage was published.

  • Peace Trip: Anybody who is interested in Palestine can join.  Rather than a pilgrimage, the trip offers participants experience of the present situation from the perspective of civil society. The first Palestine Peace Trip will be held in September 2018.

 

BACKGROUND

 

The conflict between Israel and Palestine, which began with the foundation of Israel in 1948, is one of the oldest disputes in existence. The vicious cycle of violence in Palestine has continued for decades despite efforts by the international community. ADI is a leading civil organization in Korea to address the history and content of the strife, shedding light on the connections among the conflicts.




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Psychosocial Support for the Rohingya


BACKGROUND 

 

Beginning February 2017, ADI regularly visited the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, to interview victim-survivors and collect testimony for human rights documentation.  In the process of conducting the interviews, it became obvious that the Rohingya refugees were living in terror of forced repatriation and that their settlement in Bangladesh was greatly affected by their experience of crossing the border from Myanmar.  To respond to their needs and support them, we designed psychosocial support projects for women and children in Hakim Para Camp, a camp that spontaneously developed in August 2017. 

 

 

PROGRAMS

 

From May through August 2018, thirteen Rohingya refugee female householders participated in the Women's Peer Support Project.  They were trained as peer supporters to provide psychosocial support to other women in the camp and to create a supportive network amongst them.  The project was developed by Jungshik Shin, a psychiatrist, who used a picture-based storybook as a medium of narrative practice. Thirteen women were grouped into six teams, each providing psychosocial support by visiting women door-to-door daily for 14 weeks.  In addition to counseling, peer supporters provided the participants with three kinds of vegetable seeds and bamboo to make fences.

 

In June 2018, the organization conducted the “Music Meets Mind” project in the Rohingya refugee camp. “Music Meets Mind” supports the refugee community by creating an environment of safety, empathy, and creativity through music.  For three weeks, Jungin Hwang, a community music facilitator, conducted music workshops on a daily basis in Hakim Para Camp, for children between five and ten years old.


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Human Rights Documentation for the Rohingya


Human Rights Documentation Project

 

ADI's human rights documentation project aims to deliver to the world the stories of victim-survivors from an objective point of view.  The project initially began as an attempt to investigate and document the massacre of the Muslim population in 2016 by extremist Buddhist leaders and the military in Meiktila, Myanmar.  After publishing a human rights report documenting the three-day massacre, we launched another project to survey the citizenship status of ethnic minorities in Myanmar. As part of this project, ADI conducted a workshop on human rights documentation with Odhikar, a Bangladeshi civil organization, and other citizens' groups including Banan.  In the same year, we submitted our survey report to the UN.  

 

Currently, human rights documentation is funded by several organizations, including Gwangju Human Rights Peace Foundation.  The project regularly provides Rohingya partners with training on human rights documentation. We aim to empower and support the Rohingya people to participate in the process of human rights documentation, so that they can be the representative of their own stories. 

 

In Korea, ADI strives to raise awareness of the Rohingya crisis in civil society.  ADI has published through various media channels, including Hankyoreh newspaper, and regularly organizes lectures by people with diverse backgrounds, including activists, the Rohingya, scholars, and UN Special Rapporteur, Yanghee Lee.

 

BACKGROUND

 

In October 2016, the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine state (also called Arakan), in northwestern Myanmar, were persecuted by the Myanmar government and military.  The violence included indiscriminate shooting, extrajudicial killing, mass rape, child murder, and arson. The Myanmar government sought to retaliate for the deaths of nine people at a security post following an attack by Rohingya rebel group ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army).  The following year, on August 25, 2017, when ARSA attacked other police posts, the Myanmar government announced a massive crackdown on "terrorists." The same persecution from the previous year, targeted at Rohingya civilians, repeated, but this time on a much bigger scale. Since August 2017, the number of Rohingya to cross the border to Bangladesh has reached nearly 700,000, resulting in the world's most rapidly expanded refugee camp.  The UN described the Rohingya as the "most persecuted people in the world."






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