ASA Statement on the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
December 28, 2007

The Asian Students Association condemns in the strongest terms possible the December 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto. 

Bhutto was hit in an open fire by a suicide bomber before the latter detonated the bombs wrapped around his body killing 20 others. The unfortunate incident happened during a campaign rally of Bhutto’s party, Pakistani People’s Party, in Rawalpindi City.

This incident has only exposed further the worsening state of human rights and democracy in Pakistan. This has only displayed the present administration’s utter disregard for the overwhelming campaign of the Pakistani people for the immediate and genuine democratization of Pakistan. 

Instead of heeding, Musharraf denied the opposition party’s demand for proper security and equipment to Bhutto and her group. Even on that day, Musharraf’s police and military have even actively attempted to foil the said gathering in Rawalpindi.

While extremists may be responsible for Bhutto’s death, Musharraf is and should not be spared from the condemnation. He is accountable in every way possible as he has already displayed in recent times his inability to uphold and respect the Pakistani people’s rights to assembly, expression and participation in the democratization process that Pakistan has to go through.

Even if he has recently withdrawn the state of emergency, he himself has replaced the judiciary with people who seemingly will bow to his bidding.

There is no greater threat to genuine peace, justice and democracy in Pakistan but Musharraf himself. Bhutto’s death did not create a climate of fear among the people but fueled their anger against his despotic regime and call for genuine social transformation.

We in the ASA express our solidarity with our member organizations in Pakistan, the Pashtoonkwa Students Organization and Sindhi Shagrid Tareek, who are steadfastly organizing their fellow students and youth and joining the growing people’s movement to oust the military dictator that is Musharraf and replace him and his corrupt and rotten system with one that upholds peace based on justice, human rights and democracy.

We did not only share about the situation of education and employment in our countries. We committed ourselves to act to uphold and defend them.

Last December 12-15, we held the YOU ACT ON EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT: Regional Youth Camp on Developing Activism, Building Movements and Strengthening Solidarity on Education and Employment in Asia Pacific. In the beautiful district of Kavre, in Dhulikhel, Nepal, we gathered 30 international and local participants to discuss and plan how we can work collectively on these concerns.

Nepal proved to be politically significant as its people go through the gargantuan challenge of building a democratic republic and laying down the foundations for greater youth involvement. Not only that, we had participants from Burma, Pakistan (Pashtoon and Sindh), Bangladesh, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and indigenous communities (Nagas and Jomis) in India to share their current situations and struggles.
Through workshop, we were able to come up with a common analysis on education and employment: that they are continually neglected by the governments that are supposed to provide them to the youth and people of Asia. That education continues to become an item of trade and a factory of workers for the foreign labor market, not the needing economies. That employment is absent and remain unaddressed in countries while labor export policy is championed by many states. That international financial institutions and other capitalist-controlled institutions like the World Trade Organization have only made these two birthrights unreachable to the many.

We have come up with demands and action resolutions that we can take and implement locally and internationally. We have agreed to create a campaign network that will ensure that all our efforts are coordinated and will prove more effective. We have successfully released a declaration that sums up all our discussions, our conclusions, our resolutions, our aspirations, our commitment.

It was indeed a very unforgettable experience for many of the participants who attended the youth camp for the first time. Apparently, the 21st century is gifted with many vibrant, promising, committed and willing youth in Asia Pacific.

To read more about the declaration, please click more.

Declaration of Youth and Students in the Asia-Pacific Region on Education and Employment
Approved by all 30 participants of the Regional Youth Camp: You Act on Education and Employment held in Dhulikhel, Nepal on December 12-15, 2007
December 15, 2007

We, the young people from the Asia-Pacific region, gathering in solidarity with one another during the four-day (December 12-15) You Act on Education and Employment Youth Camp organized by the Asian Students Association (ASA) and host by All Nepal National Free Students’ Union (ANNFSU) in Dhulikhel, Nepal recognize the impacts of globalization and neo-liberalism on the education and employment of the youth and students in our region.

We recognize the impacts of the social and political crisis being experienced by our countries that have aggravated the condition of the youth and students. These include the fascism and repression being experienced by the peoples of Burma, Malaysia and Pakistan from their respective countries, and the state of undeclared Martial Law in the Philippines and militarization of the Northeast region, India. We know that minorities and oppressed nationalities are experiencing discrimination in their countries from their governments. We demand that the national emergency be withdrawn with all democratic rights returned to the people of Bangladesh as well as a transparent and credible election to be held to transfer the power to a democratically-elected government. We strongly condemn the Malaysian government for its repressive crackdown on the democratic movement and the minorities struggling for their rights and freedoms.

We also have expectations on the government of Nepal to respect the demands of the people after the successful April Revolution which has led in the successful overthrow of their kingship and is in the process of nation-building and unifying their people for a future Democratic and Federal Republic of Nepal through the process of Constitution Assembly Election. We also demand that Burma saffron revolution led by Buddhist monks, students and people, democratization should be ensure through genuine dialogue. We demand that the suspended judiciary of Pakistan shall be restored and a free, fair and transparent election should be held under their supervision.

As we realize the political stability is vital in ensuring education and employment rights, we are strongly against the usage by the state of mechanism to crackdown on the youth and people movement.

On Education

We have identified commercialization and privatization, both of which are dictates of capitalist powers and the trend of neo-liberal globalization as a major commonality and trend in our countries. Both of these have raised issues of accessibility and quality of education especially for the underprivileged and the poor, making education a privilege to be enjoyed only by the few and the powerful.

In most countries, more and more students are dropping out of school or are unable to enter schools because of the rising cost of education. Our governments are reducing the budget and subsidy of our schools leading to a loss of necessary facilities and infrastructures such as classrooms, textbooks, teachers for quality education. These necessary funds are instead being transferred to military funds which are being used to suppress the people.

The lack of state subsidy on education and the manipulation by military governments and religious fundamentalists of curriculums have also caused a problem in the quality of education. Our schools are being used to train docile and semi-skilled workers for foreign markets or to become submissive to the government instead of being critical thinkers and nationalists.

Gender and racial discrimination are prevalent in our schools. Women are neglected in schools. Indigenous youth are refused their right to be educated in their own language.

Academic freedom is being suppressed in our schools and universities. These include the right to establish and run an independent student council/union and student publication, the rights to organize, assemble, hold protest rallies and speak against the injustices that we see in our land. Besides, we believe that the “freedoms to teach, research, publish and to speak extra-murally” are the basics of academic freedom and should never be violated.

On Employment

We, too, face great problems with regards to our right to decent employment. In most countries, there is a great lack of employment opportunities and so our graduates and professionals are being forced to work in another land. As stated, our schools, universities and institutions are used to produce labor according to the demands of foreign nations and multinational corporations.

Wages and salaries remain low and barely enough for the survival of families for their daily livelihood. In our countries, the increase in the minimum wage, if there is any, fails in comparison to our country’s inflation rate and the rising cost of living.

Job security is also a major problem that we face. As imposed by the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Economic Forum and Asian Development Bank, contractualization has become a matter of policy for employers, be it the government, private sector or multinational corporations.

The predominance of the feudal mode of production in our countries causes underemployment. Many people are being hired to jobs lower than their qualifications. University degree holders become mere clerks or service men. It has also forced our professionals to work in the bubble economy of Business Process Outsourcing such as call center jobs which one day shall implode leaving thousands upon thousands jobless.

Forced labor migration is a growing problem caused by unemployment. Instead of ensuring employment by creating new jobs that would hire our people, our governments encourage the export of cheap-labor as a source of foreign remittances to boost our nation’s sinking economies rather than use these productive labor force for the benefit our people and our nation.

There is a lack of necessary agreements between our governments and those of receiving countries, and as a result, migrant workers face great hardships in foreign nations and do not receive protection and support from our governments. Their jobs are usually characterized by three Ds (dirty, dangerous and difficult). They face discrimination, extreme exploitation, physical and mental abuse and are paid extremely low salary when compared to local and workers from the first world working in the same jobs. More so, they do not receive protection from both sending and host governments.

The situation of women workers continues to worsen. Their rights in the workplace are ignored. They are not provided with equal job opportunities as those given to men. They usually receive less for the same amount and quality of work done. They face gender discrimination in the workplace, especially sexual and physical harassment from other employees and employers.

Because of extreme poverty, the practice of child labor continues. Children are being forced to work in sweatshops and garbage collectors, become domestic helpers instead of going to school to become educated.

In factories, shops and the workplace, the rights of workers and trade unions are intentionally being denied by multinational corporations and local exploiting industrialists. Some are being denied their rights to hold strikes and pickets and to negotiate their demands.

Our Commitment

We, the participants of this camp, thereby express our firm commitment to advance and uphold the right of the people to education and employment.

We affirm our conviction that education is a fundamental right and not a privilege. It must be free, compulsory, scientific, practical, competitive, nationalist, people-oriented and must respond to the people’s needs and interests. We demand that the budget for the military, for the repression of our people, be channeled to the much more necessary and productive use of educating our people. We recommend the introduction of an education tax coming from high-income earning people and sale of liquor and cigarettes/tobacco.

We demand an end to the commercialization and privatization of education and other dictates of neo-liberal globalization. Education should not be used as a means of getting profit but to serve the nation and people.

To this end, we call for a curriculum that is scientific, secular, and knowledge-based and also adopt sound and scientific examination system. It should be a curriculum that shall teach students to become nationalists, critical thinkers and progressive-minded. It must serve not the demands of the foreign job market but the needs of our countries.

Discrimination of women, indigenous peoples, cultural and gender minorities should be ended. Mother language or mother tongue education should be promoted and protected to enrich our people’s culture and make education more accessible for them.

Our teachers should be given necessary and up-to-date trainings as well as reasonable and standard salaries. The appointment of education ministers, heads and officials should be based on their merit and qualifications, not political biases.

We call on the government and school administrators to end their intervention in student affairs. Students should be given full academic freedom, which means freedom to publish, organize, speak, hold rallies and assemblies. Student publication, councils and governments should be fully independent, without intervention and fully supported by school administrations and governments.

With regards to employment, we call on our governments that all capable individuals be given full employment according to their qualifications, regardless of their sex, gender and race. Differently-abled individuals should be given full social security including living allowances, health care, etc.

The capitalist dictate of contractualization should be stopped immediately. All workers and employees in the private and public sector should be given full job security.

We demand for food sovereignty and security and the protection of the ownership of seeds to the farmers.

The labor-export policy of the government should also be stopped while the rights of migrant workers should be ensured and protected. We demand the free movement of people. Overseas workers should be paid salaries equal to those of the local workers in the respective countries.

The rights of women should be respected in the workplace. They should be given equal treatment, opportunities and equal wage for an equal amount of work. Discrimination, abuse and harassment should be stopped and apprehended.

The government should ensure that child labor be stopped and that working children be sent to schools to study.

The rights of workers should be respected and upheld according to the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

We believe that the ultimate solution to these problems on employment and poverty is the end of feudalism along with autocratic, orthodox state and foreign intervention in our countries. Genuine and comprehensive land reform as well as national industrialization should likewise be realized. The process of industrialization and development should also be environmentally-friendly and sustainable. National sovereignty and the people’s right to self determination should be asserted and protected. All unequal treaties and agreements with capitalist nations should be ended and our countries should have an independent foreign policy.

In pursuit of these demands, we shall hold forums, symposia, rallies, demonstrations and peaceful mass movements as well as fact finding missions, training workshops, massive research conferences while respecting other youth and student organizations’ initiatives as we involve more students and youth, as we pressure our respective governments in our fight for our rights to education and employment.

We shall likewise commit ourselves in a campaign network that will ensure coordination and cooperation among many of us who participated in the youth camp and other youth and student organizations who may be interested as we all work together in this very important campaign.

These we declare in solidarity with all students and youth in the Asia-pacific region and the world who face, stand up to and unite to frustrate the onslaught of neo-liberal globalization.

Education is a fundamental right, not a privilege!
Employment for all!
Long live students and youth movements of Asia and the Pacific!
Long live international solidarity!

This morning, December 10, more than 100 university students participated in a fun run to promote the ASA’s regional youth camp on education and employment.

For more details as to this very exciting event, please click more.

Stepping up, gearing up the momentum: ANNFSU Leads Youth Run for Upcoming Youth Camp

We could have walked. But we ran instead.

The chilly weather in Nepal did not stop the leaders and members of All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU) and the Asian Students Association (ASA) in running through the busy streets of Kathmandu to promote the upcoming Asia-Pacific Youth Camp on Education and Employment, co-organized by both organizations.

Bearing slogans “You Act on Education and Employment” and “Let’s Make the Grand Success of Youth Camp”, university students belonging to the ANNFSU started the run from Nepal Humanities College in Exhibition Road in Bagbazar.

Thakur Gaire, ANNFSU president, led the youth run with Rey Asis, ASA regional secretariat. According to Gaire, “This is one of many ways that we can promote the youth camp and encourage many of our local youth to take part in. Nepal is going through major change and we want to make use of the youth camp to ensure our generation’s active involvement.”

Joining them were Rabi Aryal, head of the local hosting committee for the youth camp and ASA member, and Ye Htut, representative from the All Burma Federation of Students Union and youth camp participant.

The youth camp, aptly entitled “You Act on Education and Employment: Regional Youth Camp on Developing Activism, Building Movements and Strengthening Solidarity for Education and Employment in Asia Pacific”, is slated on December 12-15, 2007 in Hotel Merabel in Dhulikhel.

The said youth camp aims to gather students and youth from all over Asia Pacific to discuss the current situation of education and employment in their respective countries, develop a common analysis, and draw out plans of actions they can take both at the national and international levels.

International participants from Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria and India are expected to attend the youth camp.

The formal opening of the youth camp will be at the International Conference Center (BICC) on December 12, 12:00NN-2:00PM.

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, CPNUML secretary general Madhav Kumar Nepal, Nepal Education Minister Pradeep Nepal are among Nepal’s top political leaders invited to the opening. Student organizations, members of the academe and other international and local groups are likewise expected to attend. ###

ASA member DEMA (Malaysia Youth and Students Democratic Movement) is presently holding a campaign for Lee Song Yong, a student from the Universiti Putra Malaysia  who was unjustly suspended by the university administration for allegedly challenging the school’s security.

On December 14, they will submit a joint memorandum to the Malaysian minister on higher education demanding to overturn the administration’s decision to suspend Lee Song Yong for one semester.

To know more about the case or if you want to sign the petition, please go to DEMA’s blogsite and their online petition.

Walk out of classes, march to Mendiola

Students of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), together with the other sectors of the PUP community, today launched a massive class walkout to condemn the P40.2 million slash in the state university’s budget.

The PUP Office of the Student Regent, Sentral na Konseho ng Mag-aaral and Sandigan ng Mag-aaral para sa Sambayanan-PUP (Samasa-PUP) spearheaded the class walkout.

The PUP community held an in-campus protest in the morning before commencing in a protest march towards Mendiola to decry ‘the government’s abandonment of state education in line with its commercialization and privatization schemes for state universities and colleges (SUCs).’

The P40.2 million budget cut is the largest decrease in PUP history.

“We are outraged. The overwhelming cut in PUP’s budget is clearly anti-student, especially for PUP students who consist of the poorest among students from SUCs, ” said Ma. Sophia Prado, PUP Student Regent.

Prado said that the P40.2 million budget cut is ‘unacceptable and unfair considering large budget allocations for military-spending and debt-servicing’.

For his part, Samahan ng mga Janitors sa PUP (SJ-PUP) President Ricardo Cagomoc said, “We condemn the huge PUP budget cut because it will also directly affect  workers in the PUP community. Our jobs and livelihood are at stake because we figure in PUP’s least priority if pitted against the university’s infrastructure-building projects for its commercialization schemes.”

Unyon ng mga Kawani sa PUP (UNAKA-PUP), a union of PUP employees, will also participate in tomorrow’s protest. “PUP employees are disappointed with the result of the budget deliberation. We are yet to receive the benefits promised us by the PUP administration. With this development, our hopes for better benefits are becoming more and more far-fetched,” said UNAKA-PUP President Dindo Emmanuel Bautista.

PUP administration doing nothing
Prado also criticized the PUP administration for ‘blindly and passively’ accepting the P40.2 million budget cut.

“The PUP administration, according to President Dante Guevarra, did not submit any budget proposal stressing the need for an increase in the PUP budget. It seems that the PUP administration is all set to just accept this injustice and as a result be able to justify income-generating schemes by the university,” Prado said.

Prado criticized the PUP administration’s infrastructure projects that consume most of the university’s budget.

She particularly cited CHED’s (Commission on Higher Education’s) anomalous call center project in coordination with the PUP administration.

Prado clarified that “The PUP studentry and the PUP community will not receive any amount from this project, not even a single centavo. Only the private companies will profit from it, at the expense of students.”

Prado said that the PP40.2 million budget cut in PUP is only a manifestation of the government’s neglect of education.

PUP students succeeded in preempting a proposed 525% tuition increase last semester after a massive walkout at the event of a Board of Regents’ meeting meant to approve the imposition. Some 5,000 students marched from the PUP campus to the CHED main offices in Ortigas in protest against the said proposal.

Last Friday, November 9, we joined the Asian Human Rights Commission in their protest action against the state of emergency issued by President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.

Despite the media blackout, news about the arrest of the chief justice and other lawyers as well as all sorts of violent actions made by the military have reached us in the international community.

There is no denying that the people of Pakistan are resisting Musharraf and we in the Asian Students Association are one with them.

This Thursday, November 15, we call on everyone to join us in this internationally coordinated action in support of the Pakistani people as they fight the military dictatorship of Musharraf.

The Asia Pacific Indigenous Youth Network released a signature campaign calling for the immediate release of Maoris who were illegally rounded up and arrested by the NZ police.

The Terrorism Suppression Act apparently has been used to crack down on activists and other progressives.

The Asian Students Association joins the APIYN in calling for the unconditional release of all the arrested Maoris as well as the repeal of the Terrorism Suppression Act.

To sign the petition, please click here.

A friend sent this New York Times column by Thomas Friedman about the new generation of youth in the U.S. He calls them “Generation Q” or the Quiet Generation.

I found it to be an interesting read.

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges — Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams — and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

One of the things I feared most after 9/11 — that my daughters would not be able to travel the world with the same carefree attitude my wife and I did at their age — has not come to pass.

Whether it was at Ole Miss or Williams or my alma mater, Brandeis, college students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever.

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

There is a good chance that members of Generation Q will spend their entire adult lives digging out from the deficits that we — the “Greediest Generation,” epitomized by George W. Bush — are leaving them.

When I was visiting my daughter at her college, she asked me about a terrifying story that ran in this newspaper on Oct. 2, reporting that the Arctic ice cap was melting “to an extent unparalleled in a century or more” — and that the entire Arctic system appears to be “heading toward a new, more watery state” likely triggered by “human-caused global warming.”

“What happened to that Arctic story, Dad?” my daughter asked me. How could the news media just report one day that the Arctic ice was melting far faster than any models predicted “and then the story just disappeared?” Why weren’t any of the candidates talking about it? Didn’t they understand: this has become the big issue on campuses?

No, they don’t seem to understand. They seem to be too busy raising money or buying votes with subsidies for ethanol farmers in Iowa. The candidates could actually use a good kick in the pants on this point. But where is it going to come from?

Generation Q would be doing itself a favor, and America a favor, if it demanded from every candidate who comes on campus answers to three questions: What is your plan for mitigating climate change? What is your plan for reforming Social Security? What is your plan for dealing with the deficit — so we all won’t be working for China in 20 years?

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

Maybe that’s why what impressed me most on my brief college swing was actually a statue — the life-size statue of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Meredith was the first African-American to be admitted to Ole Miss in 1962. The Meredith bronze is posed as if he is striding toward a tall limestone archway, re-enacting his fateful step onto the then-segregated campus — defying a violent, angry mob and protected by the National Guard.

Above the archway, carved into the stone, is the word “Courage.” That is what real activism looks like. There is no substitute.

The Asian Students Association will hold a Regional Youth Camp on Education and Employment in Kathmandu, Nepal this December 14-19, 2007.

We are calling on all student organizations and unions as well as young members of national trade unions to attend this youth camp/conference and discuss the current situation of education and employment in Asia Pacific.

Aside from seeing a regional trend on the two issues, the youth camp we call “YOU ACT ON EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT” aims to see the relations between education and employment, the policies of the governments and international institutions on these most urgent concerns, provide participants with a better understanding of existing international conventions and policies with regard to the two, and possibly create a campaign network that will ensure that these rights are protected and upheld both at the national and international levels.

This we do in the light of the developments affecting the youth not only in the region but all over the world. With the dismal statistics showing the failure of some governments to respond to the so-called Millenium Development Goals that they themselves have created, the ASA wants the sector to be more actively involved in the campaign, putting their stance in the debate and providing a space for their greater participation.

Due to limited resources, however, we can only accommodate a certain number of international participants from the region.

For more information, please feel free to contact us at asasec@netvigator.com.