Far be it from me to boss people around, but activists who live in Melbourne, Australia should hotfoot it over to the University of Melbourne to protest its sponsorship of the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Mandalay, Burma on November 3rd to 5th, which is organized by the Burmese junta & Suu Kyi to whitewash the genocide of the Rohingya people. Several from the University will be participating in the festival. The same for anyone near Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK which is also sponsoring the thing.
As Khurram Parvez from Kashmir said about an “apolitical” literary festival India was trying to pull off in Kashmir: “If it does not highlight the pain & truth of Jammu & Kashmir, it’s not apolitical,” & he added that Kashmiris “have a fundamental problem when the show is organised in collaboration with the government, which is aimed at promoting the problematic political agenda of fascist & tyrannical military occupation.” If the Irrawaddy Literary Festival does not highlight the genocide in Arakan state, it’s not a cultural event but a whitewash.