UZBEKISTAN: АLEA JACTA EST

 

By: Abror Yusupov

The analysis of the reforms and changes undertaken in Uzbekistan demonstrate that a new model of society and state relations is being shaped. This model’s objective is to ensure the well-being of the people on the basis of mutually trustful and beneficial collaboration between society and the state, raising the sense of involvement of each person in the development of the country. The barometer for the effectiveness of such cooperation is a positive change in the quality of life of the citizens of the country.

In addition, it forms a strong foundation for the unification and mobilization of the huge potential and resources of society, as well as state institutions for the development of the country.

Of course, the road Uzbekistan chose is a complex one, but at the same time the most effective. 

It can now be stated with confidence that new Uzbekistan under the leadership of Shavkat Mirziyoyev has successfully passed an important stage of development. It involves directing the activities of government agencies to serve the people and the society becoming an active initiator and participant in the reforms. Another important aspect. is that political system considers the setting up mutual strategic communication with the society as an important factor of the development. The president of Uzbekistan pays special attention to the active, educated and independent position of citizens in the affairs of society and the state.

Now, the task before us is to move forward without slowing down the pace against the backdrop of the results and achievements. It can be similar to a process of striving forward with new vigour to retain the title after winning a championship in sports. Or, as one of the founders of modern physics, A.Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must move”.

The analysis indicates that the words spoken by Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the President of Uzbekistan are not a pre-arranged texts or attractive set of words, but a kind of challenge to society that reflects the realities and strategic goals.

It can be observed in the initiatives of the President of Uzbekistan, which he put forward with great precision and determination in his speeches at home and abroad. It is noteworthy that Shavkat Mirziyoyev, when making any proposal, clearly indicates its implementer and deadline.

In my opinion, the historical changes observed in the socio-political life of Uzbekistan over the past period are as follows.

First, freedom of speech has been ensured in the society. Citizens started to speak openly about their problems and their attitudes towards government agencies.  This, in turn, has steeply reduced the “distance” which has been formed over many years between citizens and officials. This can be seen in all means of mass media like television, radio, press and social networks. At the same time, through objective observation of the information space of Uzbekistan, one can conclude that there are still a lot of problems in the country. In fact, the people are proposing to sort out existing problems together.

Significantly, there have been dramatic changes in the minds of Uzbek people. The people who have lived under “internal censorship” for several years, have warmly welcomed the transparency put forward by the President and expressed their readiness for changes. This is the historical achievement of Uzbekistan in a short period of time. As it happens, positive changes in human thinking directly contribute to changes in the society.

Second, through his reforms, the President has managed to transform people from the “traditional spectator role” into the initiators and active participants in changes in society. This is one of the important positive changes.  After all, progress can only be achieved if everyone is equally responsible for the development of society and the state. It is noteworthy that Shavkat Mirziyoyev sets an example for real leaders. There is no segment of the population in Uzbekistan with whom he has not met and communicated (teachers, constructors, engineers, entrepreneurs, farmers, youth, etc.). The famous phrase of 26th President of the USA T.Roosevelt says: “A leader works openly, a boss works behind closed doors. Leader guides, but boss controls”.

Third, a critical spirit has emerged in Uzbek society. Public control over the activities of government agencies is being established. Of course, this process is now being carried out more by media representatives, including bloggers.  As a result, government organizations are forced to consider public opinion. This ensures one of the main constitutional norms in public administration – the principle of accountability of government to the people. Along with this, there has been formed institutionalization of the relationship between the people and government agencies.

Uzbekistan took 44th place in the Open Data Monitoring International Index, rising to 125 positions. An significant factor was the introduction of the practice of disclosure of indicators in 20 areas of public administration.

Fourth, Mr. Sh.Mirziyoyev trusts the youth. There is not only the factor that more than 60% of the population of Uzbekistan consists of young people, but also the factor that in today’s rapidly developing world, only young people can withstand various challenges and create a new society. This approach is also based on strategic goals such as the rational use of the intelligence and potential of young people, its proper direction in the development of society and the state.

Definitely, a number of pertinent questions arise in this regard. In particular: how can the potential of young people be realized in the modern world? What position does Uzbek leader hold in this regard?

In this respect, it should be noted that a new system – “continuous knowledge chain” has been created in the country.  This can be observed in the process of preschool-secondary school-professional and higher education”. In particular, in modern Uzbekistan, kindergarten is treated not only as an educational institution, but also as the foundation of education.  In this regard, it should be noted that a separate system, which has no analogues in the world, has been established – the Ministry of Preschool Education. As a result, the coverage of young children with preschool education has doubled within 4 years to 60%, and the number of kindergartens has tripled.

In turn, school education is being specialized in certain disciplines based on the requirements of modern development. In particular, schools with focus on chemistry, biology, mathematics, IT, physics, in-depth teaching of foreign languages are being established. It is noteworthy that a systematic approach is being taken to demonstrate the talent of students not only domestically but also internationally. In his address to the Oliy Majlis President put forward the initiative to organize the International Science Olympiad in Physics named after Akhmad Fergani.

In the short term, the level of higher education coverage in the country has almost tripled to 25% (four years ago this figure was only 9%). This was achieved through the opening of new universities, including branches of leading foreign universities, and the organization of part-time and evening education.

Another important historic decision in the higher education system of Uzbekistan is the granting of academic freedom to 30 leading universities of the country this year. 

Thus, the strategic goal of the leader of Uzbekistan in this regard is to encourage young people to acquire in-depth knowledge, to form the country’s youth, first of all, as educated, high-potential and mature people who can meet modern requirements and increase the attractiveness of science.

Fifth, there have been major changes in the field of external migration.  This is directly related to the management and liberalization of migration processes. It should be noted that migration processes are transnational and specific to all countries. It is known that Uzbekistan is a country with a high labour force due to the fact that the majority of the population is young. Until recently, however, the country did not establish cooperation with recipient countries on the safe, orderly organization of migration processes. In the past period, 12 normative and legal acts directly or indirectly regulating the industry were adopted. Work experience will be considered if citizens participating in labour migration pay social taxes on time. Most importantly, Uzbekistan protects the rights of its citizens working in other countries. This is a proof that
Shavkat Mirziyoyev guarantees the rights and freedoms of the citizens of Uzbekistan, wherever they are.

Despite the closure of borders between the two countries due to the pandemic, more than 600,000 of our compatriots have been brought to our country. Necessary assistance has been provided to about 100,000 of our citizens in difficult situations abroad

Sixth, it is well known that foreign policy is an integral continuation of domestic policy. This approach can be seen as a strategic direction of the foreign policy of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has been the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan for many years. In this respect, it can be said that the priority of Tashkent’s foreign policy is to establish equal relations with foreign countries and directly ensure the interests of the population. 

This can be seen in the systematic implementation of tasks such as attracting investment in the socio-economic sphere, creating favourable conditions for investors, providing assistance to citizens of Uzbekistan in difficult situations in foreign countries. In general, this can be interpreted as a contour of domestic policy in foreign policy activity.

At the same time, one of the most important results of the effective foreign policy of the President of Uzbekistan in the past period is the creation of an atmosphere of dialogue, practical cooperation and good neighbourhood relations around Uzbekistan.  In this way, Uzbekistan has created a common “point of attraction” in the Central Asian region. Another important aspect is that Uzbekistan does not claim individual leadership in the region, but seeks the harmonious development of the whole region.  Such an approach of the Uzbek leader towards the region can be considered as a model of “mutual benefit and common success”.

The initiatives put forward by Uzbekistan at international events at various levels in practice set the agenda for such events. In the international arena, the proposals put forward by Uzbekistan are supported and put into practice.

Based on the analysis, we can say that the formula of Uzbekistan’s foreign policy is clear, official Tashkent has a strong position, which is in the interests of the people of Uzbekistan. 

To conclude, the people of Uzbekistan and the system of government in a short period of time have come a long way, which is the basis for complex and at the same time positive changes. In this regard, as noted above, relying on the interests of ordinary people in government, creating a “bridge” of constant communication with them, in my opinion, is an important factor in the changes taking place in the new Uzbekistan. This is an important basis for the next big strategic leap. Uzbekistan has enough potential and resources for this, because, as President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said, there is no way back, all the bridges have been burned down.

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COURTESY dailyspokesman

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Health implications of smoking in Pakistan

 

BY PALWASHA NAWAZ, PROJECT EXECUTIVE CGSS

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COURTESY cgss.com.pk

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Why is online learning failing so miserably in Pakistan?

 

COVID-19 has made in-person exam proctoring impossible and so normal safeguards have disappeared. My inbox is full of anguished emails from university students across Pakistan bewailing the use of unfair and unethical means by their class fellows. Upon combining these complaints with those of my colleagues in various universities, and adding in my own online teaching experience, a frighteningly dismal picture emerges.

Almost every university student in this country cheats. Perhaps the actual figure is lower (80-90 per cent?) but it’s hard to tell. Many students say they are reluctant and would opt for honesty if there was a level playing field. But exercising virtue brings bad grades or even failure. Rare is the student with strong moral conviction — or perhaps lack of opportunity — who is not complicit.

A system full of holes is easy to beat. Not regarded as a significant moral crime, cheating was plentiful even in the days of in-person classes. But with online exams, the bottom has dropped out. Knowing their paychecks will be unaffected, many teachers don’t care what their students do. If one is somehow caught, cheating can always be deemed to be that student’s fault. After all, the pathways to cheating are so many.

The difficulty of preventing online cheating and low ethical standards means that these days most students cheat.

Consider: while taking an exam the home-bound student supposedly sits facing his/her laptop camera without access to books, notes, or smartphone. Correspondingly, the teacher is supposed to be eagle-eyed, watching many students simultaneously on Zoom or MsTeams. Neither supposition is true. For example moving slightly out of the camera’s field of view allows the student to copy the question and insert it into the Google search bar of that laptop or a hidden smartphone. The answer pops up even before he/she fully finishes typing.

What of a question which Google cannot answer? Such slightly clever questions can indeed be devised by a conscientious professor. One shared with me how that worked out with her class of 30. In an exam none of her students got any question right. But, upon inspection, it turned out that every wrong answer belonged to one of six near-identical sets. Conclusion: the students were either sitting in the same room or had created WhatsApp groups with members messaging each other during the exam.

From a frustrated student who emailed me from an engineering university in Karachi, I learned something brand new after which I explored the matter further. Fact: there exists a plethora of commercial companies that will get you the required answer for almost every exam question. Among them are study aids Chegg, Quizlet, Course Hero and Brainly.

The ones I tried out with physics and math problems give instant answers. All you need to do is cut and paste the exam question into the indicated box. These answer services use artificial intelligence and operate without human intervention. While not cheap, they are affordable. According to my informant, students pool in to buy a subscription and then share answers over WhatsApp. More expensive are answer services staffed by human expert essay writers. The student need provide only basic information such as the topic and some course materials.

Special automated proctoring services, hired by overseas educational institutions, can catch cheaters who are taking their exam at home. These services block browsers from accessing forbidden websites, check to see if the student has contacted a friend or answer service, verify identity and geographical location, and see if the student is looking at flash cards or boards, etc. Some can even detect Bluetooth devices and suspicious movements of the test-takers’ head, keystrokes, and eyes.

Although such proctoring services probably have some value overseas, their utility in Pakistan is doubtful and they are not used. Apart from the cost, they also assume that a student has a quiet room, wide-angle webcam, and stable internet connection. This excludes rural areas but even in cities the last condition is not easily fulfilled.

Can any online exam work in these circumstances? The answer is: yes. A one-on-one oral exam over Skype or Zoom is the only totally safe method. But this is tedious for large classes and checks only a small aspect of his or her learning. To my knowledge, only a few university teachers use it.

Despite difficulties in evaluating students, online university education has worked reasonably well in some countries. Indeed, there are distinct advantages in going digital: an instructor’s recorded lectures can be rewound and reviewed at will for self-paced learning, students can ask questions online without feeling intimidated, and learning is available 24 hours a day. Additionally, a wealth of information and knowledge is just a click away and helps a student understand difficult points.

Why then is online learning failing so miserably in Pakistan? Why has fancy 21st-century education gadgetry not excited our students’ imagination? Why don’t our academic environments sparkle with energy? Two obvious reasons stare at us. First, the generally uninspiring online lectures delivered by teachers. Second, most students and many teachers have insufficient mastery over English to usefully engage with internet learning materials.

But a more serious, much deeper reason underlies this failure. Pakistan’s education system gives importance only to getting high grades, not to actually learning a subject. Even a good teacher — and these are few and far between — cannot make a student study, read books, meet schedules, and take responsibility. Real learning is purely voluntary. Largely a result of childhood training, it cannot be forced upon students. There is an age-old adage: education is all about learning to learn. The internet and Google have made this clear as never before. Every student today has good grades but only a few actually learn while in college or university.

Although our student body is hyper religious and regular in prayer, almost all are perfectly comfortable with cheating. But online testing cannot work unless cheating is viewed for what it is — a white-collar crime. Students willing to experiment, question, model, and wrestle with a problem alone can benefit from 21st-century online education. The bottom line: Pakistan’s education system must change direction. It must seek to create a proactive mindset and an ethical community.

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.

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COURTESY DAWN NEWS

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EXCLUSIVE: ‘Motivation And Your Personal Vision’ An Unbeatable Force!

 

Farukh Shehzad

Editor-in-Cheif

DIPLOMATICNEWSPK

Motivation can take you far, but it can take you even further if you first find your vision. Your vision will motivate and guide you on your journey to success and personal fullfillment. Trying to succeed at anything without first having a clear vision of what it is you want to accomplish will only lead to you going around in circles and eventually giving up in frustration.

To develop your vision, you must look inside yourself. Vision comes from within, from the spirit or subconscious, whatever you choose to call it. Every one has a vision that is uniquely their own, and you are no different. the hard part comes in understanding your personal vision and how it applies to your personal motivation plan.

Your vision will most likely not come suddenly like some bolt of lightning out of the sky. Instead, it will grow from your experiences, talents, dreams, and desires, so don’t try to rush it. Instead, keep your motivation and allow your vision to reveal itself through you.

Here are five steps you can use to effectively find your vision:

1. Learn to listen to your inner voice. Since your vision starts from inside you, you should learn to listen and feel what your mind and heart truly desire. What stirs you? What is your greatest desire? What kind of dreams do you have? If what you think you want does not really come from the inner depths of your heart and soul, then you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to not give up before you achieve it.

2. Prepare yourself mentally. Your vision begins in your mind and heart. It is something that burns within your soul. it should be greater than your all of your past memories, mistakes, and accomplishments. If you know what your vision is, you will have a purpose and won’t get lost on your journey. Discouragement is the outcome of not having a ditinct vision. If you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there, the journey will seem a lot longer and harder.

In order to seek your vision, retreat to a quiet and tranquil place, a place that will allow your mind to think creatively and concentrate on your vision.

3. Seek out other motivated vision seekers. Greatness breeds greatness, and it is for this reason that you should seek out the company of others who can appreciate and support your vision. Hang with the winners and it will keep your motivation high.

4. Keep a notebook and pen handy. All too often, when seeking a vision, it is easy to forget that it is 90 percent inspiration, as American inventor Thomas Edison said. With that in mind, you never know when your vision is going to come to fruition, so keep a small notebook with you at all times, even on your nightstand when you sleep, and write down whatever comes to mind, no matter how silly it seems at the time. You may write down a hundred crazy ideas but number one hundred and one just might be the vision you were searching for. Don’t try to edit right now, just write down everything that comes to mind.

5. Don’t try to fully understand your vision. The vision you are seeking will most likely come to you in ways that you won’t fully understand at the moment. That’s okay. Just follow as much of your vision as you can right now, and more will be revealed to you as time goes on.

All truly successful people have a vision that they follow, no matter what challenges they may face, to it’s eventual outcome. Begin following the above steps to seek your vision today and remember that true, lasting success will never come to you until you know what your vision is and how you will follow it. And you will be unstoppable if you combine your personal vision with a healthy dose of motivation.

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Leading UN member-states fail to end Rohingya abuse

 

China-brokered tripartite meeting will bring no solution for either Bangladesh or Rohingya refugees

Maung Zarni

With an air of renewed optimism, Bangladesh side has widely reported on the Beijing-brokered meeting yesterday to resuscitate the repatriation process of 1 million Rohingya.

In sharp contrast, today's [Wednesday's] Global New Light of Myanmar, Naypyidaw's official mouthpiece, completely downplayed the significance of this resumed virtual meeting by sticking the news of the "Tripartite Informal Vice Ministerial Meeting" on page 6, under "National" news and allocating less a quarter of a page, at the bottom.

Yesterday there was a total silence on news reportage from Myanmar about Tuesday's China-brokered tripartite virtual meeting supposedly to speed up repatriation of the “displaced people” from Rakhine State.

This total silence of media speaks volumes about how little pressure -- economic, diplomatic, political or military -- the Burmese civilian and military leadership feels.

The painful truth is it is not only the Rohingya survivors in Bangladesh who now make up the world’s largest pocket of Rohingya, within and without Myanmar, who find themselves in between a rock and a hard place, but Bangladeshi leadership too is in an unenviable situation.

A country with a population of 160 million, scattered across densely populated regions with much smaller inhabitable land areas, Bangladesh has been significantly burdened by the presence of and the need to feed, and keep law and order among, a total of 1 million Rohingya whose literal survival depends on humanitarian hand-outs from rich western nations -- “donors” -- such as the US, Canada, the UK, and EU countries.

Dhaka also has to contend with drug and human trafficking crime networks that prey on desperate and destitute Rohingya in the vast complex of refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar and Tek Naf provinces.

Rahman Nasir Uddin, anthropologist and author of The Rohingya: An Ethnography of Subhuman Life, summed up the situation for the Rohingya in his interview in Bangladesh’s leading bilingual paper Prothom Alo (dated 17 January) thus: 'No clear future for the Rohingyas in sight'.

As early as July 1978, this scenario of Rohingya becoming the Palestinians of Asia -- without the determined resistance or the UN’s political recognition -- had been speculated by journalists and scholars alike. Successive large scale waves of Myanmar’s violent genocidal purges since -- 1992, 2016 and 2017 -- have proven the worst case scenarios for Rohingya are not without merits. One million Rohingya today -- with 60,000 new births in Bangladesh camps -- are not welcome in either their country of immediate refuge, namely Bangladesh, or at their ancestral home of Western Myanmar state of Rakhine.

Myanmar, particularly the military leaders with their signature Islamophobic paranoia, has long institutionalized the policies of genocidal persecution of the predominantly Muslim Rohingya -- framed falsely as “illegal British colonial era migrant workers” who did not go home after the British rule ended in January 1948.

These anti-Rohingya state policies from the late 1970s have been popularized by the military-controlled government of former President Thein Sein 10 years ago, using Buddhist monks, monks associations, other civil society organizations and local Buddhist Rakhine communities who share the state’s fear and loathing of Muslims -- as a threat to Buddhist way of life and the “racial purity” of Myanmar people.

By their nature, the crime of genocide is an international state crime prohibited under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (or the Genocide Convention), the first ever inter-state human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations on 9 December 1948, one day older than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted on 10 December 1949). Out of 194 UN member states, a total of 152 UN member states that have ratified and/or ascended the Genocide Convention as of July 2019. Irrespective of their consent to or acceptance of this crucial international human rights law, all states are obligated to, and expected, not to commit this mother of all crime -- the crime to exterminate the entire ethnic, rational, religious or national group, either in whole or in part, and to prevent other states from committing genocide.

While all member states have by and large failed to end genocides that have since the closure of Auschwitz in 1945 taken place in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America the powerful states, particularly those who wield veto-power in the Security Council, the most powerful body principally tasked by the UN Charter to maintain peace and stability in the world, that is, peace as lived by the people, not just peace among states.

As in the previous cases of atrocity crimes, particularly genocide, for instance, Indonesia (1965), Bangladesh (1971), Cambodia (1975-79), Rwanda (1994), Bosnia (1994), South Sudan (2003), as well as Latin American atrocities that are as yet to be recognized as genocides, Myanmar genocide of Rohingya has not been resolved.

As many observers have pointed out all member states, including Bangladesh, have continued with its business-as-usual approach with Myanmar, however disturbed they may be about Myanmar’s state crimes against Rohingya (or other national minorities such as Karens, Kachin, Shan, Rakhine, etc). Typically, media, human rights organizations and liberal governments have called out the two neo-totalitarian states of Russia and China on the latter’s (Russian and Chinese) opposition against any firm measures aimed at ending the ongoing genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar. These two veto-wielders do not even bother to pay human rights a lip service. They have established a record of protection of Myanmar with their double-vetos at the Security Council in previous human rights resolutions against Myanmar.

Other veto-wielders such as the US, France and the UK have, on their parts, used the certainty of the two vetoes as an excuse for their inactions at the Security Council while failing to formulate any policy alternative beyond throwing humanitarian dollars at the 1-million Rohingya in refugee camps in Bangladesh and a sprinkle of aid to facilitate ineffectual dialogue among the two Rakhine and Rohingya communities, traditionally pitted against each other by the Burmese military.

All the while, other regional powers and global economic powerhouses such as India, Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) pursue relentlessly their own strategic and commercial ends in Myanmar by fully cooperating with the genocidal civilian and military leaderships. For Myanmar, an export consumer market of 50+ million peoples, is rich in natural sources such as gas and oil, jade and rubies, forest and agricultural products and is geo-strategically important as the land-bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia.

European Union countries both as a bloc and individually, as well as the non-EU Switzerland and Norway, pursue lucrative commercial deals. Effectively no-ASEAN member state, not even Malaysia with its most vocal opposition to Rohingya genocide is prepared to forgo their national economic interests in the forms of natural gas joint ventures and the import of hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrant workers many of whom are known to cheer on Myanmar genocide of Rohingya.

Finally, beyond its preamble of its founding Charter, the United Nations is a system of nation-states, not of people. As such, the United Nations itself stands in the way of genocide prevention and punishment of the genocidaires, states and persons. For it is the organization founded, in effect, on the 370 years-old, read obsolete, backward and anachronistic, principle of inter-state relations called Westphalian Principle. Absolutist state sovereignty undergirds the post-WWII and post-Holocaust inter-state organization of the UN.

According to this principle, states have more or less exclusive sovereignty over its territory -- and the populations under the states’ typically militarized administrative and political control. This obsolete principle is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that, “nothing [...] shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” That is, no sovereign states will intervene in affairs of other sovereign states as long as international trade, flow of goods and services, and boundary arrangements remain un-interrupted.

There is then little wonder that Rohingya have been subjected to the slow genocide by Myanmar over the last 40 years, and no state, near or afar, has really acted to effectively end their genocide. The virtual tripartite meeting is not about to make any difference. Myanmar has not even bothered to report on its participation in the meeting.

More than ever both stakeholders -- Dhaka and Rohingya -- need to develop mutually helpful strategic cooperation as the world isn't showing signs of resolve to put an end to Myanmar's institutionalized persecution of Rohingya.

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[ The writer is a Burmese coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia. ]

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of DIPLOMATIC NEWS (DN NEWS).

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COURTESY aa.com.tr

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