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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2020)
ASIA / PACIFIC Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER October 5, 2020 Giant rat wins animal hero award for sniffing out landmines By Danica Kirka The Associated Press ONDON — A rat has for the first time won a British charity’s top civilian award for animal bravery, receiving the honor for searching out unexploded landmines in Cambodia. Magawa, a giant African pouched rat, was awarded PDSA’s Gold Medal for his “lifesaving bravery and devotion” after discovering 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordinance in the past seven years, according to the charity. First known as the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, PDSA started as a free veterinary clinic in 1917 and has honored heroic animals since 1943. Magawa was trained by a Belgian organization that has taught rats to find landmines for more than 20 years. The group, APOPO, works with programs in Cambodia, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique to clear millions of mines left behind from wars and conflicts. Magawa is the group’s most successful rat, having cleared more than 141,000 square meters of land, the equivalent of some 20 soccer fields. APOPO chief executive Christophe Cox described Magawa’s medal as a huge honor “for our animal trainers.” “But also it is big for the people in Cambodia, and all the people around the world who are suffering from landmines,” Cox said. “The PDSA Gold Medal award brings the problem of landmines to global attention.” More than 60 million people in 59 countries continue to be threatened by landmines and unexploded ordinance, according to APOPO. In 2018, landmines and other remnants of war killed or injured 6,897 people, the group says. While many rodents can be trained to detect scents and L NONTRADITIONAL TUTORING. A child practices writing dur- ing a sidewalk class taught by an Indian couple, Veena Gupta and her husband Virendra Gupta, in New Delhi, India. It all began when Veena’s maid complained that with schools shut, children in her impoverished community were running amok and wasting time. The street-side classes have grown as dozens of children showed keen interest. Now the Guptas, with help from their driver, teach three different groups three times a week, morning and evening. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) Indian couple run street-side classes for poor students By Rishabh R. Jain The Associated Press EW DELHI — On a quiet road in India’s capital, tucked away on a wide, red-bricked sidewalk, kids set adrift by the country’s coronavirus lockdown are being tutored. The children, ages 4 to 14, carry book bags more than a mile from their thatched-roof huts on the banks of the Yamuna River to this impromptu, roadside classroom. There, they receive free lessons in math, science, English, and physical education, taught by a former Indian diplomat and his wife. It all began when Veena Gupta’s maid, who lives on the bank of the river, complained that with schools shut, children in her impoverished community were running amok and wasting time. “If they stayed at home doing nothing, they’d become drifters,” said Dolly Sharma, who works at Veena’s high-rise apartment, which overlooks the lush riverbank. Veena, a singer and grandmother of three, and her husband, Virendra Gupta, decided to go out to the street and teach the kids so they are not left behind when school reopens. “They don’t have access to internet, their schools are shut, and they don’t have any means to learn,” said Veena, who bought books, pencils, notebooks, and other teaching materials, and set up the small, open-air classroom under the shade of a leafy banyan tree. India’s stringent lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 shut schools across the country in late March. Most remain closed as the number of cases has surged past 6.5 million, making India second worst-hit in the world after the United States. While many private schools switched to digital learning and online classes, children in most government-run schools either don’t have that option or don’t have the means to purchase digital learning tools like laptops and Continued on page 12 N RESCUE RAT. In this undated photo issued by PDSA, Cambodian landmine detection rat Magawa is photographed in Siem, Cambodia. Magawa, born November 5, 2014 in Morogoro, Tanzania, is 27.5” long and weighs 2.7 pounds. (PDSA via AP) will work at repetitive tasks for food rewards, APOPO decided that giant African pouched rats were best suited to landmine clearance because of their African origins and lifespan of up to eight years. Their size allows the rats to walk across mine fields without triggering the explosives — and do it much more quickly than people. The PDSA’s Gold Medal has been awarded since 2002 to recognize bravery and acts of exceptional devotion by animals in civilian service. It is considered the animal equivalent of the George Cross, a decoration for heroism. Before Magawa, all the recipients were dogs. PDSA also awards the Dickin Medal for military service. The medal has been awarded to 34 dogs, 32 pigeons, four horses, and one cat since it was created in 1943. The PDSA has offered the following statistics on the hero rat: Continued on page 11 The U.S. reckoning on race, seen through other nations’ eyes By Aya Batrawy The Associated Press UBAI, United Arab Emirates — It’s not only in the United States where protests against racial injustice are part of the national conversation. A handful of America’s critics have taken note too, using recent months’ demonstrations and graphic images of police violence to denounce the country at the United Nations’ gathering of world leaders this year. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani invoked the killing of George Floyd, the Black American man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee against his neck even as he repeatedly said he could not breathe. Floyd’s death, caught on video, set off nationwide protests in support of Black lives. Rouhani said the scene was “reminiscent” of Iran’s own experience in its quest for freedom and liberation from domination, and that Iran instantly recognized “the feet kneeling on the neck as the feet of arrogance on the neck of independent nations.” Similarly, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said U.S. sanctions were “an inhumane attempt to suffocate Syrians, just like George Floyd and others were cruelly suffocated in the United States.” Cuba and Venezuela also took jabs at the U.S., making specific references to the protests during words delivered to the U.N. General Assembly. While the tactic of criticizing the United States for its racial tensions and policies toward Black Americans is decades old, it comes as historians and experts on democracy warn that under U.S. President Donald Trump, American moral authority and stature around the world has waned. “When the United States falters, it ripples across the world. And the United States has long faltered in regard to its racial policy and upholding its promise of equality,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace whose research focuses on democracy and governance. “In the past, when we’ve faltered, we’ve tried to do better,” she said. “I think what’s different now is that people fear that those ideals and values are possibly slipping.” In his remarks to world leaders at the all-virtual U.N. meeting, Trump touted what he called his administra- tion’s achievements in advancing religious liberty, opportunity for women, and protecting unborn children. “America will always be a leader in human rights,” Trump said. He made no reference to the protests roiling multiple cities as Americans prepare to vote in November’s presidential election. In contrast, Barack Obama spoke directly about America’s “own racial and ethnic tensions” during his D RACE RECKONING. In this photo provided by the United Nations (U.N.), Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s pre-recorded message is played during the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly, on Septem- ber 22, 2020, at U.N. headquarters. The U.N.’s first virtual meeting of world leaders featured pre-recorded speeches from some of the planet’s biggest powers. (Manuel Elias/U.N. Photo via AP) U.N. General Assembly remarks in 2014, saying he knew the world took notice of Ferguson, Missouri, where the shooting of an unarmed Black 18-year-old by a police officer set off protests. America’s critics will be quick to point out “that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals,” he said at the time. “But we welcome the scrutiny of the world — because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems, to make our union more perfect.” Though Trump made no mention of the struggle for racial equality in his speech, others did. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said “we aren’t going far enough to eliminate systemic injustice, whether it’s a question of racism against Black or Indigenous people, homophobia or sexism.” The small island chain of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines proclaimed “that Black Lives Matter” and said the case for reparatory justice remains strong. As the Republican nominee in 2016, Trump seemed to acknowledge that when it came to civil liberties, the U.S “has a lot of problems” that impact America’s ability to promote democracy abroad. “I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country,” Trump told The New York Times that July. That argument echoes the one the Soviet Union levied against the U.S. during the Cold War, particularly in the civil-rights era of the late 1950s and early 1960s under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Soviet media often portrayed the protests and sit-ins as evidence that racism was systemic of capitalism. According to a State Department memo in 1963, written Continued on page 12