Human rights is something that is very much political. It is a tug of war between those who are powerless and are powerful. And I think what academics hold is the power of knowledge and through knowledge that we can actually push for an agenda that can save people's lives. Welcome to Freedom Thank, the podcast celebrating people with the courage to seek truth and to speak truth through their research, teaching, and expression, and those who work to defend them. I'm Rob Quinn, Executive Director of Scholars at Risk and Your Host. Our guest today is Joel Mark Barreto, Executive Director of the Shapesee Coalition. Shapesee stands for Strengthening Human Rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN in the Southeast Asia. It's a hub for Southeast Asian, human rights, and peace scholars, researchers, and academics to make academic contributions to the human rights and peace situation in Southeast Asia. Joel, welcome to Freedom Think. Thank you very much Rob, it's a pleasure. It's an honor actually. Joel, can you just tell us about yourself and how you began working on academic freedom issues? Thank you very much. I'm a Philippine O'Base in Thailand. I've been working with human rights and peace scholars for more than a decade now and our work has really been focusing on the protection of human rights in Southeast Asia, particularly for vulnerable people or people living at the margins. And definitely, at Shapesee is a program that focuses on building academic capacities on the protection of human rights, and we see academic freedom as a core principle in achieving that vision. So definitely in our work, we've been working to make sure that the principle of academic freedom is mainstreamed throughout our trainings, our research as well as our publications. Personally, I've been working with a number of academics or scholars at risk, so definitely it's been part of my advocacy as a human rights and academic activist or human rights defender. And was there a particular incident or scholar situation that brought your attention to academic freedom? Definitely a very close colleague of mine, a friend actually, Azni Sarom, I guess four to five years ago, the government pressed charges against him through the Sedition Act. And I really saw that a person who's close to me, who's been working with me, who was very passionate about human rights, has been hit by that, who's hit hard by government because he was just trying to share his opinion. His scientific opinion on a certain matter. So for me, it's important that every academic, every scholar, every knowledge frontliner gets to do what they have to do with a secure and brave manner. And where does Azni work? Azni previously was working at the University of Malaya in Malaysia. And Shape Sea is a collective, right? So how many countries are researchers and how many countries are participating in your work? So we covered the whole region which has 11 countries. Azni, meaning it's a collective of 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Timor Lester. Well, in all we've engaged with at least more than 100 academics throughout our program life, lifespan. And how many of them work on or think about academic freedom before you got in touch with them? I would say not much, but there were a number of academics who have been very passionate about researching and advocating for academic freedom, perhaps, again, say, like less than 10 before coming into the program. And would I be right to guess that their experience, maybe, was similar to yours in that either they themselves or they knew someone who had issues and that's what brought their interest toward academic freedom? Yes, either no one was an individual academic or who's part of an institute that has been previously attacked by a powerholder. And so how do you see shapesy contributing? What's your mission and what are the main ways that you go about the work? So basically we look at two things. We want to build capacities. We want to increase knowledge and understanding on human rights, academic freedom as well. But at the same time, do you shape CSF platform for scholars? Particularly those from what we call academically developing countries. To do research and to publish critical work focusing on issues that matter to their societies and communities. We see us as a vessel for Southeast Asians who don't have access to resources who are not acknowledged for their work or for being academics and be able to reach the best many audiences as possible and eventually create impacts in their societies and communities. And how do you characterize what you said was an academically developing country? What are the hallmarks for that? I think the home definitely resources, not just academic materials, but also human resources, meaning that there is still a need for academics to improve their capacities and knowledge on human rights or particular issues. And also I think the ability to also do research, not just of the academics but also students. So we really see the need to build their capacities and to focus on how we can strengthen their facilities and of course how to engage more academics in a greater advocacy movement. So I assume that academic development is heavily a domestic process, but is there an international element as well as international connection help with national academic development? Yeah, definitely, definitely because well number one, that can set benchmarks for universities or for countries on how to improve their facilities and how to build capacities. It's also a way to develop and sustain discourses on critical issues. I think we cannot isolate our colleagues any longer, particularly in this field of human rights and peace that we need constant communication, constant coordination of our experiences and what we're doing at the moment. I think we need to hold the line together. And so you're working in what nearly a dozen countries with multiple languages, multiple cultures, multiple academic or higher education histories. How do you manage it or how do you bring people together? Do you ever have disagreements or different priorities? Well, there are a lot of similarities as well as differences among sorry experiences, but I think the fact that shape CS become this platform where we get to know about the situation of academics, then we get to also involve them, particularly on ways on how we could address it at the local and national levels. Again, it's difficult to standardize a certain intervention. And I think that even defeats the purpose of doing what we do. If you want it to be done successfully, they have to be taken on by academics themselves, whether they themselves would be producing their own publications or whether they do the conduct their own advocacy activities. So I think for us, it's important that we get to provide them with opportunity to know more and to discuss matters with different academics from different countries. But at the end of the day, we want them to own their plans and their strategies. And within individual countries are there shape CS members that work together in the national groupings or is it mostly with shape CS directly? So there are individuals who collaborate at the national level. I mean, again, there are countries like the Philippines and Indonesia where the collaborations are much more active and stronger while there are countries like Cambodia, like Singapore that need to be, it still needs more of a push in terms of coalition building. And in terms of conditions on the ground, do you hear different concerns or types of pressure from different countries? Yes, definitely. And it varies, you know, depending on the government or the regime of the day. I'm as a Filipino, seven years ago, the situation of academic freedom and human rights in general were much better. But nowadays we see we hear more and more of these cases of academics being attacked more regularly. But that's been always the case in more fragile countries like Myanmar and now. So again, the experiences spread.
diverse, it's a very uncertain time in the region because we don't know what's going to happen next tomorrow. And so just so our listeners know what we're talking about when you say a range of attacks, verbal assaults, yes. Yes, nowadays it's actually a tax more on social media. So that's where I was going next. So online assaults? Online assaults, yes. Threats to your position? Yes. Threats of prosecution? Yes. Threats of arrest. Yes, it is increasingly becoming a case. And violence? Yes. Particularly in countries like Myanmar where seemingly academics and also seen as an enemy of the state. And so earlier I think we've talked about how you're convening, you're connecting people, you're encouraging research and publications, but you've also alluded to advocacy. And I think the shapes the website describes your theory of change as focused on what's called academic scholar advocates. What do you mean by that term? I think additionally academics tend to produce knowledge for the contribution to an understanding of certain phenomena. But I think academic activism goes beyond that. We go towards knowledge dissemination not just through publications, but also by involving affected communities on certain issues that matter, the demand that affect them. And then eventually of course with that, with a vision in mind to also transforming affected communities into themselves ages of change. And also as knowledge holders and knowledge producers themselves. Because we need to expand this movement of knowledge frontliners. So I think that is for us what's very important to invite academics to take that leap and to also think of when they produce knowledge and when they disseminate nail insid the also think about people who will be affected by the outcomes of their research or by what they teach in their classrooms. So what do you say to the academic who says, that's not my job. My job is to produce the report, the article. I put it out in the world, but it's not my job to deliver change with it. Well, I'll have a conversation with you and tell him that whatever you produce is something that affects someone might change someone's mind. And that in itself is already a good start of being an academic activist. I think the word activists has become a very, very sensitive, but been a very, very, quite a controversial term, but it's really simple. It's really using your ability, using yourself as a way to make change. And if someone's word actually could change a life, and that in itself is already a good starting point for activism. I think another one of those words that has gotten sort of distorted a bit is political, right, where academics are accused of being political when their work touches on issues that are in the political space. Do you see that in your work? Yes, very much. I think it's an undeniable fact. Particularly human rights is something that is very much political. As far as at risk, we tend to draw the line between political and partisan, where political is an academic doing their job and delivering knowledge to the public to inform on important public issues, whereas partisan is taking a stand on an ideology or a policy program, which again is fine for academics to do as citizens, but then they've stepped outside of the academic role. How do you feel about that? No, I totally agree. I think that I think one of the quality, super-benefit, and the pandemic is to be as objective as possible to also be critical of both sides of the matter. So as much as possible, you stick to your principles when it comes to human rights, but also to make sure that you get to critically analyze every, every, every side of a certain issue. I think that for me is more important than revealing what your sides are in terms of a political issue, political matter. Do a lot of our advocacy work as far as at risk is necessarily reactive. We're campaigning for individuals who have had problems, maybe even wrongly imprisoned or prosecuted. We're documenting and reporting on attacks after the fact, like in our annual Free to Think reports, but we're trying to develop more proactive advocacy strategies, such as engaging with the UN's universal periodic review process. The shapesy wrestle with this challenge of the reactive versus the proactive, and if so, how do you manage it? Oh yes, very much. I think, especially now that we've been receiving reports of academics under attack, we cannot depart from reacting to certain topics, but I think what is more sustainable is to make sure that we, number one, to educate people on what on your human rights, and to also talk about particularly with academics on their academic freedom. And to also make sure that that again, the shapesy serves as a platform where we can discuss some of these issues and be able to also hopefully look at any warning signs so that we together can find ways on how we can, we can protect each other from future attacks and how we can make ourselves much safer and braver. I keep on stressing the word braver because I think despite this regime of fear, we still need to really express ourselves to the knowledge that we produce. As far as it is, you know, our monitoring, our Free to Think reports, the academic freedom index, these are tools that we use to try to encourage moving past the fear, to try to raise awareness of the problem. What tools do you use or what tools do you think are missing that we need to be more effective in the advocacy space? For us, we don't really want to reinvent the wheel. I think the Free to Think report and academic freedom index has been used by shapesy throughout the years. And we're very glad that we have this tool that we can use. This, we have the information to actually keep ourselves updated, to keep ourselves in check of what's happening was around the world. But at the same time, I think because shapesy has become a platform for networks to actually do more work on research and publication that the shapesy itself is already a mechanism to, for expression and for knowledge production and dissemination. I think what's really missing here is really the preventive side of things because again, I think it's always been and whether we're like it or not, our work has mostly been on the reactive side. But how do we really, I think, be able to prevent any more attacks as much as possible, identify the risk and mitigate them at the most efficient and accurate fashion. It would be can have that kind of tool then that would be helpful across the board. And do you have any theories for how we can do that? I mean, you mentioned early warning earlier. I think it's really, again, I think the easiest part now is to really have a robust coordination system reach out to as many academics, even who are not yet part of shapesy to have access to a platform where they can, they can, they can share the experience and they can tell us also how it is happening in their, in their school, in the university, in their community. I think really knowledge about the lived experience on the ground is really critical in order for us to do, to work on something that is beneficial for all. Before we can think of any kind of, of, of more sophisticated mechanisms for early morning identification. I mean, that knowledge on the ground, I agree with you, is so absolutely important, to central. And yet, so scholars at risk, our work, we work with partners and scholars all around the world, in over a hundred countries. But we have to be clear that most of our network members are in the global north currently. So for me, that raises the question of how can a network like ours be most useful or most supportive to a regional effort like shapesy? So is there, is there room for productive partnership between the global and the regional? What's our role? What's your role? I think this, this regional, interregional
collaboration of our coalition will really open doors for further discourse on the issue. I think there are a number of activities that we can hold. We can have conferences. We can have closed door seminars on digital security, on reporting, on even an early warning sign mechanism that can be owned on the ground. At the same time, scholars at risk can actually be instrumental to disseminate information at the UN level in spaces where decisions are critically being made. And for us, that's very important because then we need to do things from bottom up and top down. So that pressure is felt for academic freedom. And so if we have listeners who are in the global north who hadn't heard of shape see earlier, do you have an ask or request of them anything you want them to take away? Definitely. We are a Southeast Asian focused program, but we also are a program that is willing to collaborate on issues, particularly in an academic freedom within the region and beyond. We have academics who are at the moment facing risks, but they are also very brave in expressing their thoughts and a very brave in expressing the issues that matter to them. And if you provide them with platforms, if you provide them with opportunities to discuss their issues and amplify that to as many audiences as possible. It's actually a good, a good entry point to support academics in Southeast Asia. Again, it is, I think there is a shared experience of fear of repression, where they're different regimes, and well, they're different with different situations, with different levels of resources that we have. I think solidarity is something that's universal between and amongst academics. So again, shape see is here as a platform for collaboration between the global south, the global north and between the global south as well. So yes, we are very open to working with anyone and to open our doors to academics who would want to know more about the situation in Southeast Asia. Well, that solidarity is certainly at the heart of our work. It's got as a risk, Joel. So, and thank you. It's been a pleasure speaking with you today. And thank you to you and your fellow members of shapesy for what you're doing to protect academic freedom and human rights across Southeast Asia. How can our listeners learn more about your work? Thank you very much. First and foremost, Rob Marami, Salamat, Konka. Terima Kasi for inviting me to this to this podcast. It's it's really an honor. Again, I am speaking on behalf of scholars from from Southeast Asia. It's really an honor. And friends, you can you can you can check us online at ww.shapesy.com. All our publications are free of charge. You can access them anytime that you want and please do share them to us wider audience is possible. We would want our voices to be heard in every corner of the world. You can also check us on Facebook on Twitter and also Instagram. Thank you very much. This has been an episode of free to think a podcast brought to you by scholars at risk. If you like this conversation, please subscribe on your favorite platform to receive automatic updates on new episode. You can also send us your comments or suggestions for future conversations by email to scholars at
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