This week I am in Aceh, northern Sumatra and yesterday I gave a training to the Aceh Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For 30 years the Acehnese suffered a devastating conflict, seeking greater autonomy and a fair share of the area’s oil and natural gas from the national Indonesian government.  As if the conflict was not enough, the 2004 tsunami killed more than 140,000 Acehnese in a single day, leading to the signing of a Peace Agreement in Helsinki.  Here is a historical photo of inspirational Acehnese women calling for peace and one taken yesterday of myself with the Commissioners and staff. The Commission’s job is to help strengthen sustainable peace by investigating the truth, promoting justice for perpetrators of mass crimes and assisting victims.

Yesterday I had the chance to speak and then play a gig in Chiang Mai, Thailand, alongside fantastic Burmese and Thai musicians at the global conference on Burma, attended by 650 human rights advocates and academics from around the world. We were asked to play at the first day closing in the foyer of the conference centre, to a great crowd of inspirational young and not so young rights activists. The backdrop for the music was AJAR’s exhibition of ‘quilts of memory and hope’: cloth patches of the stories of Rohingya women refugees, sewn together for the quilts.
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Next live performance will be at 6pm TODAY Sunday 4th August at the Uniserv CMU, Chiang Mai, Thailand