Peaceful Societies

Several Malaysian news services carried an odd, tragic story about a Semai man last week. The first report was that Yok Meneh, from Kampung Ras, in Sungkai, about 80 km from the city of Ipoh, was out foraging in the forest for vegetation to bring back to his village when he was attacked by a tiger. The 47 year old man related how he was able to grab a rock and bash at the animal until it left him.

The news story included a photo of him with a very large bandage on his back covering a 4 inch by 6 inch gaping wound where the tiger had attacked him. He also suffered injuries on his legs and hands in the fight. His wife, included in the picture taken in his hospital room, stands next to him with her hands stretched several feet apart, describing how the tiger had attacked.

His story was that he was intent on collecting in the forest near his house and didn’t notice the tiger creeping up behind him. It remained quiet until it pounced on him. He said he hollered for help but no one was around, so he grabbed a rock and fought it off by hitting it repeatedly on its head. He then dragged himself about a mile back to his home, where his wife enlisted the help of a worker in a nearby palm plantation to take him to a hospital.

A reporter asked him if he planned to go back into the forest again, and he admitted that his family’s survival depended on his collecting in the forest.

The story got more complex the next day. The tiger that had attacked Yok Meneh was found dead of gunshot and blow pipe wounds about 100 meters from where the attack had occurred. The 265 pound animal was missing its left forelimb. Shabrina Shariff, director of wildlife for Perak state, was astonished by the news reports because tigers do not normally attack people. Due to the condition of the carcass, she suggested that it may have attacked the man because of its injury. She urged the Semai man to complete a police report, since he would be entitled to some government compensation. She said she would recommend the compensation.

A later news report, however, indicated that the tiger had been injured by gunshot, spear, and blowpipe wounds before it had attacked the Semai man. Ms. Shariff said seven men had admitted that they had attacked the tiger and inured it before it had turned on Yok Meneh. They had planned to trap it. The official said that her department would report the incident for prosecution. She said the men faced five years in jail if they are convicted of trying to poach a tiger.

She told the press that the tiger is a reclusive animal, and “It would … not have attacked the man if it was not injured.” She said that the tiger had been caught in a wire snare, and its leg had become infested with maggots. It managed to escape when the men were approaching with their weapons to kill it.

The coordinator of the Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers called it a real tragedy, since the Chinese people are welcoming 2010 as the Year of the Tiger. Loretta Ann Shepherd called for the swift prosecution of anyone poaching tigers. The poachers might hamper Malaysia’s goal of doubling the number of wild tigers in the country to 1,000.

Later in the week, Ms. Shariff made it clear that Yok Meneh was part of the gang that had snared the tiger but had been attacked when they tried to kill it. “He was among the tribesmen who trapped the tiger. They shot the tiger four times. Then they used the poisonous spear and blowpipe darts to kill it.” She said that the hunters made money from middlemen, who sell the body parts to Chinese merchants.

Ms. Shepherd urged swift action by the government to prosecute the poachers. “Let it be a lesson for other poachers,” she said.

Dionysius Sharma, executive director of WWF-Malaysia, was equally critical of the expanding use of exotic animal body parts for traditional Chinese medicines. The trade is growing due to the increasing wealth of the Chinese people. He said that the Orang Asli had been engaged in the hunt for the targeted animals, but hunters from Vietnam and Thailand were also crossing into Malaysia’s forests and setting elaborate traps. They are all forming organized crime gangs for their illegal hunting.

A news story two weeks ago about the death of the last surviving member of the Bo tribe, in the Andaman Islands, made an impact on the Birhor of Jharkhand state.

Evidently, state government officials are concerned about the gradually diminishing numbers of Birhor, a worry that they share with people in the village of Chalkari, 56 km from Dhanbad, the largest city in the state. The villagers are trying to compensate for their population decline by having large families. Koka Birhor told the press last week, “Yes, we like large families,” when told about the passing of the last Bo speaker.

According to the news story, the state Health Department is also doing its part. It has opened a sub-primary health center in Chalkari to help the people, and a medical officer for the block regularly visits the community.

The village has been in the news before. A story in February last year described how a school group in Dhanbad was trying to help promote better health in Chalkari by building a sanitary toilet. The hope was to eliminate water-borne diseases. The same village made the news again in July when a man initiated boxing training for the children.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent Egyptian daily paper, published two stories last Friday about the Nubian people and their forced move out of the Nile Valley when the Aswan High Dam was completed.

One, titled “Old Nubia, Paradise Lost,” consists of an interview with Sharaf Abdel Karim, head of the Nubian Heritage Association. It took place at his home in New Nubia. Asked how he felt at the loss of Old Nubia beneath the waves of Lake Nasser, he replied that he felt his people were removed from paradise. Everything is submerged beneath the waters of the reservoir. The people have lost their lifestyle, their memories, their heritage, and their values. He said the loss of their proximity to the Nile was the greatest of all possible tragedies.

His description of the resettlement in 1964 is particularly moving. The government transported the people, livestock, pets, and belongings by trucks and boats to their newly constructed apartments—in the desert. Their traditions and aspirations were ignored. People who had formerly lived in well-constructed, spacious homes that faced the Nile were suddenly crammed into highly inadequate apartments that had no ceilings. “These are not houses, they are military barracks,” he told the paper. They had to use palm fronds to make temporary ceilings.

Asked if there were any positive aspects to the move, he said that the ways compensation were delivered by the government of President Nasser were quite unfair. People have still not been compensated properly. He remembered a day when President Nasser himself flew into Nubia by helicopter to talk with their representatives.

One of the few leaders who spoke Arabic—most people at the time only spoke Nubian—had the courage to address the president. “Welcome to Nubia, Mr. President—if you’re unfair to us, you’ll be judged by God.” Nasser replied to that, “We, the leaders of the revolution, will all work to pull the Nubians together so they can lead happy and prosperous lives.” Abdel Karim believes that Nasser’s words were betrayed by the government. The Nubians, however, loved the president himself, he said.

Reflecting on the move itself, he described a scene of chaos and tragedy. Adults, animals, children, belongings were jammed into the trucks and ships. Most children under the age of six didn’t survive, he claimed. When they arrived at their resettlement housing, he said, officials herded them into the buildings they were to occupy, cruelly and inhumanely.

The reporter asked him if he had ever gone back to see the area where he had grown up. He had been 18 when the village was moved. He replied that six months later they did go back to look. “The water had risen to envelop our homes, palm trees, mosques. Everything was half submerged [in] water. It was the saddest thing I ever saw.”

A second article in Al-Masry Al-Youn, also published on Friday, seeks to describe the contemporary situation of the Nubians. The description is mixed, but mostly bleak. The village of Gharb Sohil lies on an island which, formerly, served as a trading port for river traffic. Located downstream from the dam, near the city of Aswan, the island is now visited by tourists who arrive in boats wanting brief glimpses of authentic, Old Nubia. Raseema, an 80-year old woman who only speaks Nubian, is reduced to begging for money. At least her village survived.

Abdel Aziz, a 69 year old mechanic who lives in Gharb Sohil, was born there. He said that his father was born in another Nubian village that was much more beautiful, but it was inundated in 1905 by an earlier dam near Aswan so he was moved to Gharb Sohil. Abdel Aziz said that his two sons work in the tourist business, but he personally doesn’t like the changes that the tourists have brought. Families and neighbors have changed. “People were much better before. They were much more kindhearted and less materialistic,” he said.

His wife interjected that people used to share their foods with their neighbors. When people drank tea, they did so in social groups. Everything has changed now. Mr. Aziz complained that goods are much more expensive. Nearby, a much older man, Mohamed Dakroun, in his late 70s, has a large, lovely home. He feels that Gharb Sohil is quite beautiful.

The reporter visited Ballana in Nasr el-Nuba, the resettlement area built for refugees from the reservoir. Evidently, the communities kept the same names as the older villages now submerged under the water.

Youssef el-Omda, the son of the mayor of Old Ballana, derided the desert location of the village they live in now. People used to drink from the river in Old Nubia and were fine, but today they die from drinking polluted water. “The Nile was our source of life. It was sacred,” he said. “It was a source for healing every sickness.”

His son and daughter, however, enjoy some of the benefits of modern life—electricity, television, and computers. Their father is skeptical. He insists that the electric devices are bad for their eyes and their health. Nubians never used to need doctors, he grumped, but now “these technological devices are doing more damage than good.”

The paper interviewed the governor of Aswan, Moustafa el-Sayed, about the Nubian situation. That official argued that the Nubians were fairly compensated when the big dam was built. He said that their move gave them access to electricity, hospitals, schools, and the other public services associated with modern life.

Other press reports last Friday indicated that the Egyptian Center for Housing Rights, joined by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, are planning to submit a petition to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights for recognition of the Nubians as an indigenous people and for better housing. The move is evidently controversial in the Nubian community. Some of their leaders want justice, even if it is many decades late, while others just want to get beyond the mistreatments of the past and try to build better lives.

Father Ewald Dinter, a German priest who has worked with the Mangyan people since the mid-1980s, has received another award for his services. Two years ago, Fr. Dinter was recognized for his contributions to the education of the Buid and the other Mangyan societies on Mindoro Island in the Philippines.

The 72 year old priest arrived in the Philippines in 1969. He performed various duties before settling on Mindoro, where he has focused his energies on setting up schools and protecting the land rights of the Mangyan peoples. He suspects that the Mangyans accepted him because he never made any negative remarks about their culture and he didn’t try to overtly convert them. He said he only wanted them “to experience the love of God.” He has been the director of the Mangyan Mission, Inc. (MMI) for more than 20 years.

When he became mission director, he updated its approaches. Instead of continuing to give handouts to the indigenous people, he asked them what they were doing and what their aspirations were for their own futures. The goals he established for the mission were based on what the people told him. They wanted schools for their children. The mission has now built 27 of them for the Buid and the other Mangyan groups, many of which run programs for elementary level students. All of the schools have been turned over to the Department of Education for their supervision.

Over 1,300 students have participated in the programs offered by the schools. The MMI helps Mangyans attend high schools and colleges as well. About 500 of the Mangyan students have graduated and become midwives, lawyers, nurses, social workers, and other professionals. Fr. Dinter credits the success of the mission to the assistance he has received from many others, particularly the Mangyan people themselves. Never far from his origins as a priest, however, he teaches everyone that they are all children of God.

On January 29, the Society of the Divine Word, of which he is a member, honored him with the Saint Joseph Freinademetz award for a member of the society who best exemplifies its goals.

Haggag Ouddul, the famous Nubian writer, published an article last week that describes some traditional customs connecting his people to the Nile River.

He provides an evocative opening for his essay in Al-Ahram, a prominent Egyptian weekly magazine: “ Nubia is as soft as the Nile’s mud, dark as the Nile’s water and powerful as the Nile’s course.” The focus of the piece is established immediately and forcefully. The Nile is the lifeblood of the Nubians. It is not just the source of their water; it is the source of their lives, their souls.

He says that while the Egyptians may have venerated the Nile in ancient times, the Nubians still venerate it today. The Nubian, when he washes out his mouth, will spit the water toward the land, so as not to pollute the river. The people make sure their children learn, when they swim, to not pee into the water. They think of the river as something to be devoted to.

When they christen children, he writes, Nubian women will take them ceremonially to the river and rub the water on them. Then they use vegetable dyes to make a cross on the foreheads of the infants, pray for the children and the Prophet Mohammed, and launch little boats into the river. As soon as a boat is launched, a boy acting as an assailant runs toward the procession brandishing a knife. But when he sees the boat in the river, he plunges the knife into the ground, symbolizing that he was unsuccessful in attacking the child.

Members of the procession then drink thickened, sweet milk to conclude the ceremony, which, Ouddul says, is inspired by the story of the escape of Moses from the Pharaoh.

The author describes the cultural significance of Nubian traditions—their songs, dances, and oral history. He focuses on the symbolism of the dances performed at weddings, many of which derive their meanings from the actions of the river. Dancers line up in two facing lines. Each line takes steps forward and backward, symbolizing the movements of the waves. Then, more active dancers will form circles in the center of the gathering, swirling like whirlpools. Other people may dance with slithering motions, like fish struggling in nets. Ouddul explains how the river is intimately connected to the drinks and feasts that are also associated with the wedding.

The translucent dress worn by a Nubian women, called a gregar, ruffles as she walks, imitating the rippling waters of the river. It folds over her knees when she sits, just like the river’s waves. Now, many brides wear city clothes at their weddings, he writes, but the old traditions are not completely forgotten. “Whether they live in what remains of Nubia, in Aswan, or in Egypt’s northern cities, Nubians still cherish their past,” he concludes.

Ouddul’s collection of short stories Nights of Musk, published in 2005 in English, introduced his work to a worldwide audience. His novella My Uncle is on Labor further advanced his reputation. He has made effective contributions to conferences in Egypt on behalf of the Nubian people.

Last Saturday night in Vancouver, the prominent Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq performed with the Kronos Quartet in the world premier of Halifax composer Derek Clarke’s Tundra Songs. Since the Vancouver Winter Olympics will open next week with a stylized Inukshuk, the traditional Inuit rock sculpture, as its symbol, a concert two weeks before the opening events featuring music relating to northern Canada must have seemed quite appropriate. The concert was held at the Chan Center on the University of British Columbia campus.

In order to prepare himself to compose the work, Clarke flew to Nunavut, hired a guide, and set out for the ice of Frobisher Bay. He recorded the calls of seals, the clicks of shrimp, the sounds of sled dogs, ravens, and a snowstorm. In town, he used his microphone to capture the sounds of a bush plane, a soapstone carver, snowmobiles, and kids playing ball hockey. Later, back in Nova Scotia, he captured one of the more pervasive sounds of northern life that was not available to him when he was in Nunavut: mosquitoes. He had been in Nunavut too early. He has made numerous other trips to the North and is intimately familiar with Inuit throat singing.

He explained that capturing the essence of life in the North in an electro-acoustic composition such as Tundra Songs required more than just computer manipulations. He said that after he captured the sounds he wanted to use, he “put them through granular synthesis and different kinds of processes to stretch them out.” He layered them “to get the different harmonies.” He explained further that “the really enjoyable part of it [was] trying to find a way to relate the sounds so that there is a real play between the sounds of the environment, the sounds that you’re using on the soundscape, and the string quartet itself.”

For her part, Tagaq feels that Charke’s composition has more than met her expectations. He evidently gives clues throughout the work when he expects the throat singer to come on, but he leaves it up to her improvise what she wishes to actually sing. “I’m really fortunate that way, in that most people allow me to have my artistic freedom,” she says. “I can really feel my home in the piece.”

David Harrington, first violinist and leader of the Kronos Quartet, agrees that Clarke’s composition is “really one of the major, spectacular pieces that has ever been written for Kronos.” He said the work is fun to play, with an elemental quality to it. The quartet, from San Francisco, has premiered compositions by a number of leading contemporary composers.

Harrington also praised the talents of Tanya Tagaq. “I find Tanya to be one of the most elemental performers that I’ve ever been on-stage with,” he said. “Her sense of life and her sense of sound is so spectacular and refreshing. I always feel more alive after we’ve played with Tanya—or rehearsed with her, or just been with her. I think she’s just a wonderful force.” He explains how she is a strong, natural performer with no formal musical training—she doesn’t even read music. But she is a wonderful performer and throat singer. Her first performance, she said, was “at a rave that was part of a friend’s wedding.”

She performs every show with total commitment, whether for friends or in a concert hall. “Every show is different, and it all depends on where I’m at emotionally. If I’m having a hard time, the sound comes out differently. But each time, it’s about exploring what it means to be a woman. The darkness, the pain, the positive stuff, too, the sexuality, all of it,” she explains.

Composer, quartet, and throat singer praise one another to various newspaper interviewers. “They’re so cute,” Tagaq said, referring to the Kronos quartet members. “They open up more every time. I think they’re more relaxed now. I might even throw them a few curve balls.” Harrington, from the quartet, describes the composer admiringly: “To record the sound of crows, [Clarke] literally covered his microphone with meat to get them to come closer.”

The throat singer and the quartet followed their 30 minute performance of Tundra Songs with some informal jamming for their Vancouver audience.

Last Friday the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a press release about the continuing troubles suffered by the Mbuti people of eastern Congo. Its major point is that the Mbuti, identified in the document by their alternate name “Bambuti,” want to be designated as an indigenous minority, as well as full citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The release quoted Nyongolo Betto Mutimanwa, a Mbuti leader, who argued that the major problem facing his people is that they are being deprived of the forest land they have used for millennia. “The Bambuti ancestors’ land has been stolen from them and regularly, Bambuti members are victims of the ongoing armed conflicts,” he said. According to the statement, the Mbuti still subsist primarily on hunting, fishing, and gathering.

Mr. Betto described the continuing domination of the Mbuti by their Bantu neighbors. He said the Bantu people “‘own’ Bambuti slaves, who are often killed when they try to escape.”

The U.N. Human Rights Office brought Mr. Betto and other representatives of African indigenous minorities to Geneva for a fellowship training program. He represents an organization that advocates for indigenous peoples in his country called LINAPYCO (Ligue Nationale des Associations Autochtones Pygmés du Congo). One of the projects of the group has been to translate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into African languages.

Mr. Betto hopes to get legislation introduced in his country that will help protect the Mbuti and other indigenous societies. “My purpose is to share the knowledge I acquired in Geneva with my fellow members and with the other indigenous communities of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he said. He expects to promote the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People in his country.

The G/wi and the other San peoples of the Kalahari who are being persecuted by the government of Botswana have decided to take their case to the International Court of Justice. Roy Sesana, leader of First People of the Kalahari, an advocacy organization for southern African indigenous groups, announced last week that they would abandon any further attempts to resolve their grievances through the Botswana courts or by negotiations with the national government.

He said that his group has tried to mediate the dispute for several years. The San took the government into the High Court of Botswana because they were illegally exiled from their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) and moved forcefully into squalid resettlement centers outside it. The government denies that they removed the San from their homes for any reasons other than the welfare of the wildlife in the reserve and the health of the San people themselves.

A lot of evidence suggests, however, that the reason for the removals was that the government wanted to make sure there were no competing claims to the anticipated mineral wealth if and when diamonds were mined in the Kalahari. There are precedents in other nations for indigenous claims to profit sharing from such mining contracts. Botswana evidently wanted to forestall that possibility.

In 2006, the High Court of Botswana ruled against the government, but the court could not force the government to honor its mandate. Since then, government agencies have hassled and abused the G/wi, trying to prevent them in every way possible from resettling back into their homelands. The people were not allowed to use water from functioning boreholes, which government agents subsequently destroyed. This despite the fact that nearby tourist resorts are allowed to bore for water and run their businesses, as long as they do not share the water with indigenous San peoples living in the area. Also, the San have often been denied the hunting permits that the High Court had mandated.

Mr. Sesana said that he was the one who had initiated a much-publicized meeting with Botswana President Ian Khama and some of his cabinet ministers in 2008. He was inspired by the new President’s comments about reviving culture in the country. “I told him Basarwa [another term for the San people] culture was destroyed from 1997-2000 during the removals from the CKGR. I told him now I’m happy to hear that ‘you want to revive culture.’ I requested for our cultural homes as Basarwa, we wanted our land.”

At the same time, the San launched another attempt in the Botswana High Court seeking to force the government to grant them water, hunting rights, and the other amenities they need. All of these efforts appear to have stalled, and the San leaders have run out of patience.

Sesana summarized the long term pattern of official abuse and concluded, “We are convinced we should now go back to the courtroom, but it will be a different court room, not in Botswana. We want our matter to be heard by an international court this time.” He feels that the Botswana court is insensitive to San persecutions.

He argued that the treatment of the G/wi has been comparable to the way the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe treated Morgan Tsvangirai, when the latter won the recent national election. Sesana would prefer that the minority people of Botswana be treated as people were in South Africa when Nelson Mandela’s victory ended apartheid and everyone in that nation gained their freedom.

Government officials have tried to prompt the San leaders to distance themselves from Survival International, the minority rights NGO headquartered in England that has championed their cause for many years. Some disagreements had developed between the two groups, but it now appears as if they have found common cause once again.

Sesana indicated that, while he was negotiating with the government, he was irritated by its request that he should visit the various San communities spread across the desert and find two people from each to serve as representatives on a consultative committee which would work with the government. He fumed, why should they expect him to walk vast distances across the desert to visit those widespread communities?

Sesana’s exasperation is very clear from the tone of his comments to the press. He described the difficulties the G/wi are having finding water in the old way, by wandering in the desert searching for tubers so they can survive, as their parents did many years ago.

The sole policeman on Tristan da Cunha rarely if ever uses the tools of his office—a truncheon, handcuffs, pepper spray, a jail cell—nor does he make arrests. He hasn’t had to. The Guardian last week included an article about Conrad Glass, Tristan policeman for 22 years, who was in England for a training course on community policing.

He told the reporter that the island does not even have a prison to put people into. The cell that they do have is not usable. “We only have one bunk, there’s no washing facilities and the door is made of plywood so it wouldn’t take a strong man to break it down.” He told the reporter that crime is nearly nonexistent on Tristan. Doors are never locked. When there are problems, they occur among people who know one another, so calming situations is one of his most important responsibilities. For Glass, the concept of community policing often involves staying out of things. “It’s hard to remain aloof on such a small island but that’s what I try to do,” he says.

His daily patrols include the fish factory, the school, the administrator’s house, and the hospital. But he avoids going into the pub, the Albatross Inn, since he is not a drinker. “I’m much happier at home with a book,” he says. A photo with the story shows him standing next to his official looking patrol vehicle, police lights prominently displayed on the roof.

He recalls that there was a serious brawl once, in the 1970s, before he was the policeman. A knife fight broke out on a fishing vessel. Since then, the problems that have occurred have been due to visiting yachters. After one man left, Conrad learned that he was wanted by Interpol.

Officer Glass plans to retire in five years, and no one appears to be eager to take over his job. He has two deputies, but they are not interested.

The Guardian story does not mention that Glass was elected Chief Islander in 2007, and that he has written a book about his experiences called Rockhopper Copper. A biographical sketch of him can be found on the website run by the Tristan community, its government, and the support group, the Tristan da Cunha Association.

Sometimes, small city newspapers publish articles that capture national attention. On Saturday, January 9, the Watertown Daily Times from upstate New York ran a story which highlighted an obscure provision in both the Senate and the House health care bills before the U.S. Congress. Both bills would provide a religious exemption from the requirement that all Americans must be covered by health insurance.

The article connected that exemption to the interests of the Amish, and mentioned that their numbers in the north country of New York state have been increasing. It stated that the Amish do not want to pay for insurance since they believe in relying on their own communities when they need assistance.

The Times went on to describe an objection to the proposed religious exemption made by a professor at Yeshiva University in New York, Marci Hamilton. Professor Hamilton posted an opinion piece to a legal website on August 6, 2009, decrying the religious exemption allowed in the legislation. She presumed the exemption was instigated by the Christian Science Church. When the newspaper checked with her, she told it via an e-mail that she was unaware of any Amish interest in the bill.

Amish objections to mandated health insurance surprised Professor Hamilton because, she argued, they “do buy vehicle insurance.” She apparently told the paper that her major concern was for children that might not have medical coverage—the same point she made in her August post. She appears to have been unaware that the Amish do not own motor vehicles.

Late Monday, the Drudge Report, a conservative, muck-raking, news aggregator website, picked up the Times story, according to a later report in the paper. The newspaper website immediately got 32,000 visitors and by noon on Tuesday an additional 76,000 people had visited. Since many hundreds of those visitors each hour were attempting to post responses, the paper had to temporarily shut down its comments feature.

A few of the opinions posted to blog sites around the Web have been well informed. For instance, Eric Wesner, who runs a blog about the Amish, posted on Tuesday a piece expressing his surprise that the Amish exemption from health insurance had received so much attention on the Web—a “hot sub-story to the health care issue,” he called it. Mr. Wesner has a background in publishing and was recently associated with the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.

The law that established Medicare in 1965 included a provision that specifically released the Amish from any requirement to pay into the Social Security system, since they would never take any funds out of it. Even self-employed Amish farmers had been required to make social security payments before then, despite their religious objections to the system. Their beliefs require them to rely on their communities, and God, to provide for their needs when they get old or sick. Before the law was passed, the Internal Revenue Service had placed liens on some of their properties as a way of collecting the social security taxes that they refused to pay. A 1988 federal law modified the 1965 law to exempt Amish-owned businesses from the requirement of including their Amish employees in the social security system.

Mr. Wesner suggests that Amish objections to the insurance requirement in the health care bills currently before Congress may not be as defensible as their rejection of social security. The bills, after all, do allow people who do not wish to be part of the required health system to pay fines instead. Wesner feels that such fines, which many non-Amish people will also probably pay in order to avoid the new system, are not as coercive as required payments into Social Security.

He cites Peter Ferrara’s (1993) analysis of the problems the Amish have with government insurance programs. They feel they would undercut the biblical injunction that Christians should assist their own members and not rely on the state. They would also contradict and weaken the wall of separation from the secular society that the Amish try to maintain.

Wesner concludes his essay by mentioning, briefly, that existing IRS regulations include a provision that prohibits religiously motivated non-participants from owning any other health insurance. He doesn’t claim to be a lawyer, but he does quote a portion of an IRS publication directed to people who want to have a religious exemption from Social Security. The IRS publication appears to relate to the current matter: “As a follower of the established teachings of the sect or division, you must be conscientiously opposed to accepting benefits of any private or public insurance that makes payments for death, disability, old age, retirement, or medical care, or provides services for medical care.” Thus it sounds, from Wesner’s analysis, as if an exemption for the Amish in the current health bills fits in correctly with already-established federal laws and regulations.

The main stream media began to pick up the issue as the week went by. A Harrisburg television station reported the story on Wednesday, and Fox News covered it Friday evening in their 6:00 PM program. A report by Molly Henneberg in the first half of the show touched on the issue. She interviewed Prof. Steven Nolt, author of several scholarly books about the Amish.

“The Amish believe it’s the fundamental responsibility of the church to care for the material needs of the members of the church,” according to Prof. Nolt, “and so they don’t buy commercial health insurance and they don’t participate in public assistance programs.” The legal expert that Fox News consulted feels that the religious exemptions provided in the health care bill will be completely constitutional.

The victory of the Republican candidate for Senate in Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts eliminated the 60-vote supermajority needed to overcome a potential Republican filibuster. The fate of the health care initiative is now unclear, but perhaps the Amish issue may soon start to diminish. As of late yesterday afternoon, an advanced Google search on AMISH and “HEALTH CARE” still returned 14,600 results for just the previous 24 hours.

Ferrara, Peter J.1993. “Social Security and Taxes.” In The Amish and the State, edited by Donald B. Kraybill, p.124-143. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Semai Celebrate the Year of the Tiger

Death of Last Bo Speaker Worries Birhor

Nubian Elders Still Miss the Old Life

Missionary to the Buid Honored Again

Nubian Connections to the Nile Remembered

Inuit Throat Singer Performs in Vancouver

Mbuti Seek Designation as Indigenous People

G/wi Take Case to International Court

Tristan Policeman Has Quiet Job

Amish Exempt from Health Care Insurance

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