This article discusses how state suppression of human rights activism and restrictions on civil society are likely to impact the implementation of the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032, hereafter “the Decade”). We focus on China, India, and Indonesia, the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia. Drawing on a range of reports from human rights organizations and materials from academic literature, we argue that increasing attacks on human rights defenders and restrictions on civil society are likely to pose serious challenges to the implementation of the Decade in these countries. We situate this argument within broader debates about human rights advocacy and state repression, and draw on Guzel Yusupova’s arguments about the politics of fear and minority language mobilization to suggest that intensifying state repression of human rights is likely to prevent new forms of Indigenous language advocacy from emerging during the Decade.
Many cultural strategies of appropriation serve as weapons of the weak (Scott), testifying to the dynamic identity work and formation among the colonized amidst structures of unfreedom. This paper explores subversion, decolonization and cultural appropriation in Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang (The Stories of Grandmother Basyang), early 20th century Filipino fairy tale stories of Severino Reyes. We found greed with capitalistic undertones, mockery of the excesses of authority and the ruling political class, re-inscribing of agency and self-determination among society’s weak and marginalized, as well as subtle racism in intercultural contact. Lola Basyang and her stories, retold many times amidst the onslaught of profit-driven writing and the business of writing for consumers of Disneyfied versions of folktales, as well as a global culture that devalues reading in general, remind us that the Filipino identity is constantly being remade and we actually have an active role in shaping it and claiming ownership over it.
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