Editing Nonviolence (section)

==== Semai people ====

The [[Semai people|Semai]] ethnic group living in the center of the [[Malay Peninsula]] in [[Southeast Asia]] are known for their nonviolence.<ref>{{cite book|first=Csilla|last=Dallos|title=From Equality to Inequality: Social Change Among Newly Sedentary Lanoh Hunter-Gatherer Traders of Peninsular Malaysia|year=2011|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-144-2661-71-4}}</ref> The Semai [[Semai people#Non-violence|punan]] ethical or religious principle<ref name=semai>{{Cite book|last=Dentan|first=Robert Knox|date=1968|title=The Semai: A Nonviolent People Of Malaya|series=Case studies in cultural anthropology|url=https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=an06-017|url-access=subscription|access-date=2019-11-10|archive-date=2021-03-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210323160558/https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/ehrafe/citation.do?method=citation&forward=browseAuthorsFullContext&id=an06-017|url-status=live}}</ref> strongly pressures members of the culture towards nonviolent, non-coercive, and non-competitive behaviour. It has been suggested that the Semai's non-violence is a response to historic threats from slaving states; as the Semai were constantly defeated by slavers and Malaysian immigrants, they preferred to flee rather than fight and thus evolved into a general norm of non-violence.<ref>{{citation|last1=Leary|first1=John|title=Violence and the Dream People: The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960. No. 95|publisher=Ohio University Press|year=1995|page=262}}</ref> This does not mean the Semai are incapable of violence however; during the [[Malayan Emergency]], the British enlisted some Semai to fight against MNLA insurgents and according to Robert Knox Dentan the Semai believe that as Malaysia industrialises, it will be harder for the Semai to use their strategy of fleeing and they will have to fight instead.<ref>{{citation|last1=Leary|first1=John|title=Violence and the Dream People: The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960. No. 95|publisher=Ohio University Press|year=1995}}</ref><ref>Robarchek, Clayton A., and Robert Knox Dentan. "Blood drunkenness and the bloodthirsty Semai: Unmaking another anthropological myth." American Anthropologist 89, no. 2 (1987): 356-365</ref>