Religious Minorities in Asia: Between the Scylla of Minority Protection and Charybdis of Religious Freedom Rights?

This article examines the intersection of religious freedom and minority protection within the Asian context. It argues that, to the extent that a focus on minority protection draws greater attention to the collective and communitarian dimensions of religious practice, it has the potential to enrich the discourse on religious freedom protection. I identify three areas of possible convergence—first, where a minority-focused regime leads to a richer understanding of the intersections between culture, language, and religion; secondly, where a focus on minority protection leads to positive measures by the state to protect religious minorities; and thirdly, where a minority regime founds a right of religious minorities to political participation. Nonetheless, I will also point out that there are limits to minority protection. It may even be a double-edged sword, as it serves to reify differences with the rest of society and risks permanently marginalizing the group as a minority. This could be the case even if there are institutional designs, formal or informal, to provide for religious minorities’ political participation.

An Intelligent Question Answering System of the Liao Dynasty Based on Knowledge Graph

The Liao Dynasty was a minority regime established by the Khitan on the grasslands of northern China. To promote and spread the cultural knowledge of the Liao Dynasty, an intelligent question-and-answer system is constructed based on the knowledge graph in the historical and cultural field of the Liao Dynasty. In the traditional question answering system, the quality of answers was not high due to incomplete data and distinctive vocabulary. To solve this problem, a combination method of Liao Dynasty question-and-answer database and KB is proposed to realize knowledge graph question answering, and a joint model of Siamese LSTM and fusion MatchPyramid is proposed for semantic matching between questions in the question-and-answer database. With the joint model, it is easy to perform semantic matching by fusing sentence-level and word-level interactive features through LSTM and MatchPyramid. Furthermore, the question sentence with the same semantics as the user input question sentence is retrieved in the question-and-answer database, and the answer corresponding to the question sentence is returned as the result. The experimental results show that our proposed method has achieved relatively good performance in the historical domain of the Liao Dynasty and the open-domain knowledge graph, and improved the accuracy of question and answer.

“A marathon, not a sprint”: Canada and South African apartheid, 1987–1990

In 2020, Canada does not maintain diplomatic ties with Iran or Saudi Arabia partly owing to their human rights violations—a choice which has eroded its capacity to act meaningfully in these countries. Thirty years ago, the Brian Mulroney government was faced with a similar decision: to sever relations with the white minority regime in South Africa or use its limited but real influence to contribute constructively to an end to apartheid. This article examines how Canada “punched above its weight” on an issue seemingly peripheral to its national interests from 1987 to 1990. It was during these oft-overlooked years—South Africa’s “darkest days”—that Canada engaged through multilateral fora, bilaterally, and its embassy to sustain global pressure and attention on apartheid. In so doing, the Mulroney government became a diplomatic battleground between its major allies, Pretoria, and its African Commonwealth partners. Such efforts were not without costs, but Canada’s “advanced middling” role helped to bring about a peaceful transition towards majority rule in South Africa and thus holds contemporary lessons for policymakers.

Postmodern Political Discourse: A Thematic and Linguistic Analysis of Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom

The Postmodern wave of democratization and the emphasis on democratic values and right to expression make it imperative that the political discourse be studied with more and full attention. In this regard, one genre that is almost totally ignored in Pakistani context and little attention has been paid to it even at the global level, is autobiography. Autobiography is a special kind of composition in which the author gives a picture of the evolution of the self and its relation with the external world throughout this evolutionary process. The famous political autobiography Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela is, therefore, selected as the basic unit of analysis. Through content analysis different topics are separated from the original text. These topics are then grouped under different categories of van Dijk’s theory of Political Discourse Analysis (PDA). The exploration and analysis of linguistic devices are also carried out. Besides Van Dijk’s PDA, Huckin’s approach to text and Corpus Linguistics’ quantitative methodology aided the systematic in-depth analysis. Methods of both qualitative and quantitative research have been utilized for this study as the researchers believe that quantification of data along with qualitative description produce reliable results. Findings revealed various linguistic devices are used in abundance. Amongst the most prominent ones are the unique and effective use of the year-statistics, language of the minority regime, Afrikaans, Trilingual combination, dramatic language and listing or cluster of three to stress certain themes like racial discrimination, inequality, poverty, parties, law, justice, separation and history.

The Congressional Black Caucus and the Closure of NASA’s Satellite Tracking Station at Hartebeesthoek, South Africa

Keith Snedegar explores the impact of the civil rights movement on decisions related to NASA facilities outside the United States. Snedegar maintains that when Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the founders of the Black Congressional Caucus, visited the NASA satellite tracking station at Hartesbeesthoek, South Africa, in 1971, he discovered a racially segregated facility where technical jobs were reserved for white employees and black Africans essentially performed menial labor. Upon his return to the United States, the Detroit congressman embarked on a two-year struggle, first to improve workplace equity at the tracking station, and later, for the closure of the facility. NASA administration under James Fletcher was largely indifferent to demands for change at the station. It was only after Representative Charles Rangel proposed a reduction in NASA appropriations did the agency announce plans to end its working relationship with the white minority regime of South Africa. NASA’s public statements suggested that a scientific rationale lay behind the station’s eventual closure in 1975, but this episode clearly indicates that NASA was acting only under political pressure, and its management remained largely insensitive to global issues of racial equality.

Indigenous Medical Knowledge and the Experiences of ZIPRA Guerrillas in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Strugg

This article aims to examine the importance of indigenous medical knowledge during the 1970s when guerrillas from the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) negotiated their way to the front to fight the Rhodesian white minority regime. From the 1960s until the ceasefire at the end of 1979, ZIPRA was one of the two liberation movements that waged war to liberate Zimbabwe. This article traces the experiences of guerrillas who moved from the Zambian side of the Zambezi Valley into Rhodesia. The terrain that the guerrillas had to navigate on foot was punctuated by many devastating and life-threatening challenges. Some of these included malaria, sleeping sickness, venereal diseases, snake bites, mental disorders, injuries and even fatigue. Given that the guerrillas had no hospitals and other medical facilities at their disposal, it is important to establish how local knowledge assisted them to survive, especially when ailments struck them. The purpose of this study was to determine the role the fighters’ knowledge of indigenous medicines played in dealing with these difficulties. The author collected information by conducting interviews with former ZIPRA guerrillas who had operated in Zimbabwe during the war. Some civilians who were in ZIPRA operational areas were also interviewed. The importance of the study lies in understanding the continued use and existence of indigenous medical remedies in Zimbabwe. Findings from the study are valuable in widening knowledge horizons on indigenous medical knowledge as a useful alternative in times of need.