Word: ruralism
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...That love is strongest in Thailand's rural north, where Thaksin grew up. Bangkok residents may rattle through a litany of Thaksin's alleged faults - corruption, a disregard for human rights, even an attempt to build his reputation at the expense of Thailand's beloved King - but, for people upcountry, as the Thais like to call it, Thaksin's populist health-care initiatives and village funds were manna. "When the soldiers took over, people were scared to say they liked Thaksin," says Nuntana Sommun, a teacher of Thai dance in Chiang Rai. "But in our hearts we still supported...
...often use similar vocabulary and phrasing - are part of a new effort by activists and farmers to focus the government's attention on the country's 700 million peasants and the restricted claim they have on the land they work. "This is just the beginning," says a Beijing-based rural-rights activist who says he is one of the main organizers behind the drive to give farmers full legal ownership of their land. "You'll see [many] declarations like these coming out before the Olympics...
...Jianrong, a director of the Institute of Rural Development at Beijing's most prestigious think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, or CASS, acknowledges that the recent assertions of rights over land by peasants are potentially transformational. "They're not widespread now but they could become symbolic ... of peasants ceasing to depend on the law and instead depending on 'natural law.'" Journalist and author Chen Guidi is more blunt: "If word of these declarations starts to spread to peasants around the countryside, it could become uncontrollable." Chen, with his wife Wu Chuntao, is the author of Will the Boat...
...Communist Party is aware of the farmers' anger but seems limited in what it can do. Yu of CASS notes that although there is "widespread recognition in both political and academic circles that the existing rural land system faces extremely grave problems, an extremely large gap also exists over the nature of the problem and how to solve it." Given that the party rose to power as an agrarian movement, conservative forces are blocking attempts to grant private ownership of farmland, which they believe would destroy one of the party's most fundamental socialist tenets. The answer...
...Reyes' death, of course, won't end the Colombian conflict. And it won't remedy the dark social ills, especially the misery of millions of neglected rural Colombians, which started the civil war in the first place. Concern about that aspect of Colombia's tragedy, in fact, has prompted the U.S. Congress to slash President Bush's 2008 military aid request for Colombia by 30% - not least of all because even Colombia's modernized military is still reportedly prone to ugly human rights abuses - and to raise social and economic...