Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives
University of Victoria V8P 5C2 Victoria, BC, Canada

A massive congratulations to our friends at the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies (CIPS) who were awarded Atlas Network's 2020 Templeton Freedom Award! CIPS has hosted three CAPI student interns since 2018 (see the video in our Facebook page banner, above) and we look forward to when we can get University of Victoria students back on the ground with CIPS and all our other amazing partners doing important work across Asia

Join us this Thursday (Friday in Asia) for an online panel discussion on what the US elections mean for Southeast Asia, featuring The Straits Times' Nirmal Ghosh, Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law-CSHL's Ratana Ly, UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs' Kai Ostwald, ISIS Thailand's Thitinan Pongsudhirak and University of Nottingham Malaysia's Bridget Welsh. Chaired by University of Victoria Faculty of Law's Victor V. Ramraj and former Canadian Ambassador to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia Phil Calvert

"Mary and Perry Ross held onto some dresser drawers for a Toyota family during the internment. They had promised the family it would be here upon their return but the Toyota family never came back to the Cowichan Valley to their knowledge . . ." Mike Abe is the Project Manager of Landscapes of Injustice, a national research project based at CAPI that explores Japanese Canadian dispossession during the 1940s. He is also a Nikkei Sansei (third generation Japanese-Canadian; Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society (VNCS)) whose family was forcibly removed from their homes near Duncan, BC, and interned in the interior on account of the war. Last month, a comment appeared on the Landscapes website, and Mike was able to solve a family mystery and recover a special piece of their history:

An online offering from our friends at CIC Victoria:

"Commons committee says camps, forced labour, population control measures designed to eradicate Uighur culture"

Our friends at Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar - K4DM Initiative have a number of upcoming online talks: - Oct 21: Myanmar Road to improving health services in ethnic states (English only) - Oct 27: Myanmar Towards Gender Equality: Implications for the 2020 Myanmar Elections (English only) - Oct 28: Myanmar Working Pathways to Women’s Political Participation (English only)... - Oct 29: Myanmar How to support Sub-national Parliaments? 2020 Elections Part Two (bilingual) - Nov 3: Myanmar -- Bottom-up Decision Making: The Importance of Women as Local Leaders (bilingual) https://bit.ly/2H9Ik4g

A Kinesiology Masters student at UVic's School of Exercise Science, Physical & Health Education is looking for Hong Kong students at UVic to take part in a study of their outdoor recreational activities | more info: https://bit.ly/3dFwdIn UVic HKSA

We're pleased to be partnering with UVic's Centre for Global Studies - CFGS and Victoria Forum to present an election preview online panel featuring UCLA School of Law's Jill Horwitz, Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law's Michael Peil, University of Victoria Faculty of Law's Susan Breau, and Department of Political Science, UVic's Colin Bennett

Next Thursday, 22 October 2020, we're pleased to be co-hosting the Midge Ayukawa Commemorative Lecture, which will feature an online presentation of two new publications exploring the uprooting and dispossession of Japanese Canadians and the incarceration of Japanese Americans: - Masumi Izumi's "The Rise and Fall of America's Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s" and - UVic History Department prof Jordan Stanger-Ross' edited volume " Landscapes of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese Canadians," the culminating product of CAPI-housed national research project Landscapes of Injustice http://bit.ly/LOI-Izumi

CAPI Director/ University of Victoria Faculty of Law professor Victor V. Ramraj was the keynote speaker at a recent online Hong Kong University Faculty of Law / Centre for Comparative and Public Law, HKU webinar, providing commentary on the launch of the new book "China’s National Security: Endangering Hong Kong’s Rule of Law?"

A massive congratulations to our friends at Landscapes of Injustice on the launch of their capstone "Broken Promises" exhibit, eponymous book, and complementary narrative website, the culmination of seven years of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, community engaged research on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. We are proud to have served as LOI's project office for the past seven years.

A little nostalgia for our student internship program, which is of course on hold at the moment . . .