Peacebuilding

Episode 1 – Peacebuilding transcription

Host:

We are very excited to start this podcast series called “See Through Feminism”, hosted by Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Southeast Asia Regional Office and Feminimitr, where we will investigate feminist movements across Southeast Asia. I'm your host, Jirada, and we start this first ever episode with the reckoning that Southeast Asia has complex, local and colonial histories that have influenced the development of feminist movements in many different ways. But despite these challenges, they are common themes that resonate across the region. And in fact, each country's feminist movement can offer stories that could benefit one another, and the public can also learn more about these feminist mobilization, support and consciousness. So, we would like to investigate these stories, challenges and lessons, one topic at a time.

For today's episode, we start with peacebuilding. We have a guest that I'm super excited to talk to. Her name is Khun Ouyporn Khuankaew, who is a Buddhist feminist activist and has been a workshop facilitator in Asia since 1995. She facilitates workshops on feminist counseling, sexuality, anti-oppression, peacebuilding and nonviolent direct action with Thai NGOs and government workers. But not just for Thais, this spans to regional and international participants as well. She also guides meditation retreats for activists. She's based in Mae Rim in Chiang Mai and she's with us today. So how are you feeling, Ouyporn?

Ouyporn:

Excited to talk to young feminist activists like you and also, I guess the audience probably are also into the issue that we are committed to, right?

Host:

I'm very excited as well.

Ouyporn:

Thank you for inviting me.

Host:

Thank you for joining us today. So, let's start with the first question. What is peacebuilding and why is it important?

Ouyporn:

This is when I began to be involved in peacebuilding and women, which came later. Probably 20-30 years ago. It was all right. I think it's amazing how feminists around the globe are challenging the meaning of peace building, which has a name or call by patriarchal leaders that peace building means the situation or a program, a movement to rebuild a country, a nation after war. Something like that. So, peace building is always either after the war ends. You need to reconcile; you need to rebuild.

But from the feminist perspective, and particularly for me. No, particularly me, peacebuilding starts from home because I always grew up and raised in a very violent family. And even before I claimed myself a feminist activist who worked on peacebuilding, I was growing up in a village where poverty is quite random. You and your neighbor are the same. We face a situation, but I know that many families in my village they live peacefully with their parents, struggle together through poverty.

But my family was not. So, to me already when people ask me what peacebuilding for many children is and particularly women and GLBT for us is the safety in the home. Safety and security in the home and for poor people, security of food. And safety too. So, peace building is the basic need. You need first. So, it's not the end of the war that you rebuild, you try to build after the war. It was that you had access to safety in your body, in your mind, your spirit. It's your access to clean water, you access to good food, you access to a house, good housing. Because of all these basic needs, it's an almost universal need for every human being.

But particularly for women and children and LGBT when home is not a safe place. So, when you talk about peace building, for me it starts from the home and then the next place is the community where you belong, where you feel safe when you walk around. You know I grew up when I walked around at night, and I didn't feel safe. And then I grew up in a Buddhist country like Thailand where I was not allowed to go to a temple after dark and there's certain buildings in the temple. Even nowadays I'm 62, you are still not allowed to go, to enter, right? So, peacebuilding is your daily life where you can access safety, security, where you can live your normal life.

Host:

I agree. So as a CIS woman and also as a Buddhist person, I tend to avoid Buddhist temples because I don't feel like it has a space for me, and I just don't feel like I belong there. There are so many restrictions around just because of my gender. So why have you included Buddhism into your work and how does religion play a role in this?

Ouyporn:

This is something where I grew up in a village like Buddhist village. My life at that time, some 50-60 years ago, there's no school in the village. So, the temple is the center of everything for community, for culture, for art, for education, for health events, and for spirituality. But when the temple is, you know, limited access to me, women, plus LGBT too and or in those days and I am always questioning. To me, my feminist doesn't mean you have to go to study, right? To read Western feminist theory or something. But you can feel that something wrong happened to you and your family.

And remember when my mom always said this. When my father started abusing, she would say, “oh, this is our karma, this is our karma and when will it end?” And that I kept hearing from her. And then that was karma. It's all coming from Buddhism, right? You hear all the time the temple says something else about others. It is about karma, right? And one of my sisters was a nun and she remained a nun now, maybe after 30 years and was told that she's very dedicated to her practice, but she was told by her mom that you have to do a lot of good karma so that next life you will be born in a male form. So even though she has been a nun, a white robe nun for 30 years, this message is too strong in Thailand, in Burma, in Cambodia, in Laos and even in the Tibetan tradition where I work a lot with Buddhist women.

So, then when I became involved in Buddhist for social justice through the network of engaged Buddhism, I was the only one among two women in that circle at that time to identify as feminist. Another person is Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, formerly Professor Chatsumarn Kabilsingh. I realized that when you were in the gathering of Buddhist lay and ordained, again, I saw the women were quiet. Especially the white robe nun. A lot of them came from poor families. They were not in the structure of Thai Buddhism. There's no place at all.

So again, in religion, you saw only me because I spoke English and I'm a feminist, so I run international things. I also saw only a couple of women. Three women were invited to speak. The rest you would just listen and be a passive audience. That hit me like, how does Buddhism, which is very governing our culture, our daily life, our faith, our spirituality, our religion, and people. You know, in Thailand, there's still a strong faith in many countries around the world. Faith is about your life and your death. For some people more economic than economic status, right? So, I began to just look at how this patriarchy is impacting Buddhism and you can do this only through the feminist lens.

So, I began to just read everything I could find, asked Dhammananda all the questions and was like what? And then just realizing that when we began the first training on feminism, Buddhism and social justice. This is like 2003. We invited women from all the countries in our region, and all said the same thing. You are not going to be enlightened. This happened; your husband abused you because of previous life’s karma. You are LGBT. You are poor. You're disabled. Everything about oppressive situations. It's about previous life’s karma.

And to me, because I decided to work with grassroot women and I said if you don't really wake up, if you don't deconstruct this belief, this patriarchy value and belief system in women, they cannot truly wake up. And they won't see that patriarchal Buddhist institutions and teaching are actually supporting oppression, supporting the state. You know. It's part of the problem or even the root cause of the problem for me. So that's why I can see the deep link between religion, particularly Buddhism and how that cooperates with state oppression. How that cooperates with, you know, an economic system that is unfair.

So, I began to really read and studied with all other feminists, from them directly. I went to every feminist teacher if I could attend their retreat, their talk and read because among feminists my age at that time, I don't think anyone interested in that. But because I was so directly impacted by a patriarchal Buddhist from where I grew up in the village and I work with grassroots. You can see that it impacts them. And the other thing I noticed was a feminist movement, feminist groups in Thailand are middle class, and are well educated. They are not social like this, so they don't see. And it's good they work on law. They work to save other women. But I just noticed if inside our internalization is one deeply wrong thing about the Buddha teaching. I find that this is a way to crack that foundation, you know, the root.

So, I began to invest our energy. We ran that course for almost, I don't know, 7 to 10 years and we attract a lot of women. You know why? Because in Christianity there was a school for lay people. A school to understand Buddhism. But in Buddhist culture institutions, only boys can access education. And this is one of the ways the patriarchy institution in Buddhism prevents women. Keep the oppression on women and GLBT by preventing you from studying what is the true teaching of Buddhism.

Host:

You mentioned IWP, that's International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice based in Mae Rim, is that correct?

Ouyporn:

Yes.

Host:

So what does peace particularly mean for IWP, for being a feminist and being a Buddhist? What does that look like?

Ouyporn:

20 years ago, you know, we met a lot of young people who went to study peace in other places around the world and particularly the women from Burma. Many of them came back. They came to study with us for three months or three weeks. They came back and said “oh”. They're very impressed with the way we look at peace building because, one, we did a lot of inner peace. You know, peace for us, it's just not the two governments, you know, it's just not the two groups reconciling and agreeing on war, no shooting like what's happening in Burma and Cambodia right now. We start with the peace within and you know why? Because as women, as grassroots, LGBT, as a marginalized group, in order to work for peace and justice, we don't have support. We don't have money. We don't have big names. We don't have a big organization and other resources. But the resource that will sustain us is inner peace. But why do women and grassroot people don't have inner peace? Because we were being beaten up from home. So we deal with trauma. That's how we did. I remember the first course of three months. It was just so traumatizing. I don't know, 13 or 14 women of different ethnicities came to our center. We cried so much. I taught them yoga in the morning and evening. Because they couldn't close their eyes while sitting meditation because the trauma triggered them.

So peace within is what we really make sure it cultivates. But also not just peace within, it's joy. And to me, I have this gratitude to Ti Shan Han. He said life is not just suffering. We need to cultivate joy from being around beauty, being around good friends, from eating good food, from playing with animals, from just sitting and looking up in this clear blue sky. So I found that we need to cultivate inner peace, joy and hope. So that's how we talk at a personal level. And at the group level, at the movement level, we talk about power sharing. This is another call of feminists to deconstruct because it doesn't mean all women come together, and we are not - how you call socializing or continuing the power over culture - which I think is rooted, it is part of dominance, male dominant culture. So we practice a lot of deep listening, a lot of power to listen to each other, sharing resources. This to me is also a key. Peace means you move to a power sharing culture, which democracy is part of. Because many countries like Thailand, we say democracy, but it's not power sharing, right?

Power sharing is a new culture and I love this teacher. I haven't met her but read most of her books. Ryan Eisner who is a really amazing thinker. She wrote a book called “The Power of Partnership”. Meaning only power sharing between human beings, between race and gender, different race, gender, religion, and even power sharing between us and others being, human being will survive. So that is another peace level. Once you listen to each other, you share resources. You're not competing. You're not judging. You are not like taking away other people’s privilage.

I would call it the power sharing is one of the main principles and when as an organization, a company at a moment you practice this principle. It brings peace and hope and safety and that's how we can feel peace when peace is not there totally for everyone in our community, in our world, in our nation, but at least among our group. We just feel safe. We feel supported. We feel empowered. And that's how we explain peace when we are with other people that we work with for change. Peace within is when you are alone but power sharing means peace.

So the next level is society. How? That's why in those courses we spend about 7 to 10 days. Teaching participants on non-violent action, different actions you can use from stopping violence on the street, from stopping a child being beaten by parents in your neighborhood. Working with local leaders to protect your land, your water, your resources, anything that is being taken away by capitalists, you know, by outsiders, by the government or by rich people. And to the level of civil war or the war between countries. So this is in short how we see it's all interconnected.

Host:

That's very interesting. And you know, living in a world where there's so much violence going on, on the structural level, on knowledge, on everything. How do these nonviolent actions look like? Could you share some examples or the work that you and your team has done?

Ouyporn:

I think non-violent because I was so fortunate to have been trained by Quakers. I owe a lot of my knowledge. I went to attend a Quaker course many times and then learn from the Quaker teacher who came to Thailand and even went to assist my Quaker teacher, Josh Leakey, to teach nonviolent action to constitute people in Cambodia 29 years ago. And then I was also influenced by the Gandhian movement. So you know at that time it's just that you look at, you read everything, you learn and also because when I was around 33 year old I started to commit a Buddhist practice and the Buddhist philosophy. The Buddhist way of life is non-violent. You don't lie. You don't take advantage of people. You don't destroy life and you protect life. So at a daily level, at a personal level, it's how you live in a way that you don't harm.

As a human being, you don't harm nature by putting chemicals on your land and not harming other beings anymore as much as you can in your life. To me this is again peace. It is about nonviolent daily life. You know, some people might think being religious follows the ‘Sila’. The Five precepts might be something out of date, but it's not out of date and I took five Buddhist vows from this Shanghai. It's socially engaged like you are not harming anyone but you work against all kinds of oppression. So it's your daily life and your work life. So non-violent in daily life is like that to me. Non-violence in organization becomes a principle which coincides with the feminist principle. Transparent, right? And use non-violent speech if you want to give feedback to a friend, to a colleague. Without judgment, without making up a story to destroy her. So again, nonviolence, speech, non-violent feedback come into work, even to write e-mail, right? This happens before you respond to something on your Facebook. Just breathe in. Even before you pick the call when you're angry, right? Breath in five times, ten times so that you calm down. Feel a little bit peaceful and have some mindfulness and then, OK, now I just have to listen because that person is, you know, got the wrong information. And then later on when I'm calmed down, the person has speech, I can write back nonviolently. And I learned this from Ti Shan Han and also from Quaker.

So again this is with work and I think at a big level I still believe that only nonviolentness is an answer to war, to conflict because we are marginalized people. If you think about a global movement around the world in the US. We don't have arms and even if we have arms, you don't have access to all technology that the government or the big corporation has. But we have the people. We have our friends globally who share value. When people come together, believe in non-violent, I think we become a powerful force. We can take down the dictatorship government that has hundreds of tanks and a huge army.

I have seen that in many countries. Not with my eyes but through the training that our teacher will show many themes when nonviolent prevails. Nonviolence has been used by women around the world. But the story is not heard. When you go through all the feminist movements around the world. Even if it starts with one woman or young people, they all start with non-violence. That's the only thing they have. Women, we will not learn socialite to just fight back. We just say, OK, step back and try to have a dialogue. And we may learn to solve problems nonviolently. You should see that when you talk about family, who is the one who is trying to have a dialogue? Listen to both, is the mother. When the son and and when the siblings are fighting, when whatever happens, the mother, the woman is that. We socialize to learn and inherit this nonviolence and we use that and we believe because it's worked in the family already, right? It works in the family and it works in many places because you have experiences.

It reinforces my Buddhist practice. It reinforces my belief in a feminist because I mean it's fight for justice, fight for equality, fight for safety. It connects to my religious belief as a Buddhist. It reinforces my belief in feminism because when you think about feminism on your own, do we not have tanks? Where are the feminists going to get an army and tank? We have an army of women and young people. Young and go protest here and there on war, climate change and everything.

Host:

So from what I'm hearing, it's about Buddhism, but at the same time it's about shared principles of peace, right? It's not just about if a person who might have a different faith, they can't participate in the peacebuilding process. It's not like that. So I think that's very interesting. Let's say for example, if I want to start looking into peace building, are there any resources or recommendations? Where should I start? Because usually when I study, it's usually about feminism, white feminism and usually a very urban focus and very master degree education, for the lack of a better word. Where should I start?

Ouyporn:

I think one is that there's not so many stories of grassroot, of grassroot business movement. Just last week this person came. Her name is Pawnee. I'm gonna send you a link. She's a Tamil feminist activist. Sri Lanka is a small country, but they've been through war. They lost 30,000 people. The war was like, you know, 30-40 years. So many lost, so many like hatred, so many missing, and violence. And she came to lead the dancing and art therapy to the LGBT from Asia and Pacific region. And before she did that I led a three-day well-being workshop for those 16 trans activists from 11 countries in the region. We had time to talk. And so she talked about her group, a small group, but they've been working. They've been working on their work every day. They did a lot of art and dancing, and created a safe space.

So I think that's how you learn peace building through real life experience. We either go to a course that is run by people who have been through it and really committed to work on it. But reading is important. Reading from the text, different things are important. But once you go attend the workshop, visit their project, it helps to see what a real experience looks like. And that's how I just look at my life, either feminist work or peacebuilding. I read my interests. But when you went to the conference, you met real people who did it, especially grassroot people like Maha Ghosananda - the monk who led the peace work in Cambodia 20 years ago. Very powerful work and learn about the other groups around the region. It was so powerful when you immerse yourself in that experience of the people who are working on peacebuilding through their life. Even joining the protest. My Quaker teacher always said if you're going to teach people how to protest, you have to join the protest. If you're going to teach people about different things, you have to dive into that.

So to me nowadays we probably have a lot of things on the Internet. I would say, if you already know who you're looking for, who and where and what issue you want to go deep. Nowadays young people speak English very well. They all connected. Go and learn. I just find that if you have an internship for three months or six months or 10 months, it's so helpful. Or you invite those people who train on the ground to come and teach, teach, not just talk, but they teach too. So that we all do as much as we can, we get hands-on experience.

Host:

That's how you build a community as well, right? A person cannot heal in isolation. They have to connect with other people.

Ouyporn:

Yes.

Host:

And usually what are the challenges that you usually experience? Or perhaps there are also many shared challenges for other people who work on peace building. Usually what do those challenges look like?

Ouyporn:

Particularly for feminists, peacebuilding. It's only peacebuilding that we are facing. We women have lower income than men. And even when you work on an issue like peacebuilding, if you are a woman the media won't come to you. They go to the monk first. They go to the CIS man first. Secondly, we have other issues to do which I spent a long many years teaching about gender, teaching about Patriarchy. You have to teach other issues. Why deal with training the psychologists, the police women to deal with gender based violence. It's going on daily. Every single minute. Women and GLBT. So, there's so many issues you have to deal with. You know the cool part that makes you become intersectional, but with under resources. That's why it's a challenge for me. It's still like this.

I have worked with the women of Burma for a long time. Now the people I worked with 20 years ago had to deal with well-being. And they came back. Before they came back for training on feminist leadership and then gender equality and human rights. Now they came back to learn that, oh, we want to be a trainer on well-being. So they come and work on their trauma. Work on their burnout. Go back. Because the terms of peacebuilding that are defined by feminists are bigger, are broader, are inclusive and are intersectional, not just a war between groups like that. So, this has been challenging, but I hope with young feminists like you and others around the world. We have to keep writing and talking about what we mean by peace building. We have to create a program where women across faith, region or even just one region, but different generations come and learn from each other.

I think this will be a place where we keep passing down. Where I can learn from the younger generation like you. This is what I'm thinking about. Because of this challenge, it is even more important for us to come together.

For Thailand at a country level and now with the problem with Cambodia, a regional level or just a country level that I'm planning to be involved in next month already with an old friend from Cambodia. We're just going to have a meeting. What can we do at the regional? And also intergenerational but spend time together. Not just conferences like one or 2-3 days and then bye bye. I will contact you later when I have work or a meeting.

But coming to get to know each other deeply. Like you said, build our community, build a family, for me. We are sisters, mothers, aunties, or whatever, where we can keep supporting our community to grow big and connect to other movements.

Host:

I like that a lot. That's very powerful and I'll take that with me wherever I go.

Ouyporn:

That's why we met.

Host:

This will not be the last time we will meet as well. There will be more, surely more in the future. Thank you so much for your time. I wish I could talk with you many more hours.

Ouyporn:

Thank you for your energy and your very interest in the useful program. Take good care.

Host:

Thank you. Likewise.

Host:

So, that’s it. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. For more information about feminist peace building in Southeast Asia, we also recommend you to check out our blog which should be linked in the description. For the next episode, we will cover climate, agriculture, and land rights with our very special guest in Thailand. So stay tuned. Until next time.