Identity Hunters
Written by: Paula Arrus & Femi Ivan /Edited by: Lila Ovington On August 2017, nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims were forced to flee from Myanmar (formerly Burma) due to a ‘clearance operation’ executed by the Myanmar military. Today, Rohingya refugees remain the most vulnerable and racially oppressed ethnic minority in the world (Alam, 2019). Referred to as […]
Written by: Asher Conway The NHS exists today Britain’s sole unifying institution. In the absence of any one national identity, ethnicity or shared set of ideals, the NHS has emerged as a central pillar of modern British identity. Whilst divisions in public opinion have emerged in recent years over ancient institutions such as parliament, the […]
The neo-Fascist Kotleba – Ľudová Strana Naše Slovensko (Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia or K-ĽSNS) recently put forward a bill severely restricting legal abortions in Slovakia. Although unsuccessful, the move has received a shy support from Slovak Catholic intellectuals and the Church.
On the eve of Turkey’s military operation in Afrin, Syria, a new state-sponsored TV show made its debut. Mehmetçik: Kut’ül Amare is about the WWI Battle of Kut in modern-day Iraq, in which the Ottoman armies were victorious against the British Empire. Among other state-sponsored TV shows, such as The Last Sultan and Revival: Ertugrul, this latest series also serves as an ostensible instrument for the government agenda.
Where are you from? In a globalized world where people continuously renew their ties with their environment, this simple, yet complex question has for many become more and more difficult to answer.
Cyberspace is the new battleground for identity – but can anybody rule it? China says: yes, we can!
When Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) wrote ‘Cahier d’un Retour au pays Natal’[1], (Notebook of a Return to my Native Land), coining the term “Négritude” he started a movement, founding the journal ‘L’Étudiant Noir’ along with Lépold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001), and Léon Damas in 1934. Négritude was the movement of black consciousness, in a political and cultural statement. Négritude was the reclaiming of black culture and history; wherever in the world the black diaspora was situated, these individuals had a unifying identity under the particular notion of African ancestry.
With hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing towards Bangladesh from Rakhine in Myanmar, the Rohingya situation is said to be the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. What is the cause of this ongoing crisis? Persecutions led by the Myanmar government, with the United Nations describing such an atrocious offense as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
In a meeting with an IRA gun smuggler the historian Richard English noted how easily the Republican could explain Irish history: “the Brits – they’re the problem, and will be. They have been since 1169, and will be until such time as they leave”
