U
Wirathu – The extremist monk
IT
was not so long ago that Myanmarese Buddhist monks dressed in saffron robes
organised brave protests and peaceful processions against the brutal military
junta led by General Than Shwe. It was dubbed the Saffron Revolution. In 2007
their Gandhian non-violent resistance was watched with awe and commanded the
respect of millions around the globe.
These
images etched in our collective memory are hard to square with an ugly new
reality in Myanmar - the sight of Buddhist gangs setting Muslim communities
ablaze. Some monks have played a vanguard role in instigating this anti-Muslim
campaign which has seen acts of collective arson and racist brutality.
How
can the same religion known throughout the world for its commitment to peace,
meditation and reflection engage in hate-filled sermons against the Muslim
minority?
Muslim-owned
shops and homes in Lashio in Shan state were the most recent victims of a
Buddhist motorbike gang in June. Shan researcher Sai Latt commented that 'the
government and the police are not doing anything at all to clamp down on
extremist hate propaganda against Muslims'.
The
killings of Muslim Rohingyas in western Rakhine state that started the violence
in 2012 have spread this year to the wider Muslim population. In March,
systemic arson razed to the ground 1,300 Muslim-owned houses and shops in the
central town of Meikhtila. Armed Buddhist gangs later brought terror to 14
peaceful Muslim communities in towns and villages in central Myanmar. Acting
with total impunity, they moved south to Pegu division, unleashing another wave
of havoc in Okkan district.
Is
the violence the inevitable result of reformist changes in the country that
have brought more freedom of expression in Myanmar with the emergence of a
quasi-civilian government after 50 years of brutal military repression?
Certainly
that is what presidential spokesman and deputy minister of information Ye Htut
would have us believe. 'We cannot avoid this time of chaos,' he told AFP news
agency. He insisted the wave of hate speech and violence targeting Muslims was
the 'ugly by-product' of new freedoms allowed by the reformist government.
Whereas
Ye Htut claims the government 'cannot control the chaos', Sai Latt, a PhD
candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada, claims that there is a clearly
orchestrated pattern to these anti-Muslim attacks.
Latt
says the pattern is clear: 'Prior to the riots, anti-Muslim literature arrives
in a town, followed by monks preaching "969" sermons in the vicinity.
On the day when violence breaks out, truckloads of strangers including monks have
appeared on the scene. In each case an incident takes place that triggers the
anger of the Buddhists.'
Shortly
after that, all hell breaks loose as angry mobs cry 'Kill the Muslims', attack
mosques and set fire to their homes while carefully avoiding damage to nearby
Buddhist-owned shops and houses.
According
to Sai Latt, 'there is never any preventive action. Whatever happened or
however things turned out, the president's spokesman, Ye Htut, will blame
Muslims and cover up the incidents on his Facebook page'.
Originally
the numerals '969' symbolise the virtues of the Buddha, Buddhist practices and
the Buddhist community. But now '969' has been hijacked as a symbol of
anti-Muslim agitation.
Lack
of effective response
The
central town of Meikhtila bears the ugly legacy of recent anti-Muslim violence.
Large sections of the town have been reduced to rubble and a few broken walls -
all that remains of what used to be a thriving Muslim community of almost 1,300
houses, shops and mosques. This writer found compelling evidence of state
complicity among the eyewitness accounts of the actions of residents during the
four days of mob attacks on the Muslim community which resulted in an official
count of 42 deaths although other reports indicated more than a hundred Muslim
victims and a few Buddhists.
The
government of President Thein Sein, so active in its efforts to assure Western
audiences that the new Myanmar will never return to the dark days of the
previous ruling military junta, has so far failed to take any concrete action
to end the brutal spiral of attacks on Muslim communities.
Thein
Sein's periodic appeals for 'an end to communal violence' are less than
convincing. He never condemns Buddhist extremism but on the contrary has
defended extremist monk U Wirathu as a 'true son of Buddha'.
Bill
Davis, former Burma project director for Physicians for Human Rights, and
Andrea Gittleman, the group's senior legal adviser, reported that 'in
Meikhtila, investigators found that police were complicit in the violence against
Muslims ... they marched unarmed Muslims toward an armed civilian mob, then
refused to protect them from beating, stoning, and murder; they did not help
injured Muslims; and they failed to apprehend perpetrators'.
'The
general lack of an effective response from the central government is a
monumental failure to protect its citizens from organised and targeted
violence,' they said in a report.
UN
Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said he
received reports of 'state involvement in some of the acts of violence, and of
instances where the military, police and other civilian law enforcement forces
have been standing by while atrocities have been committed before their very eyes,
including by well-organised ultra-nationalist Buddhist mobs'.
Religious
conflict or a politically stoked intrigue?
In
many parts of the world racial and religious prejudice and bigotry have been
manipulated by autocratic rulers to stay in power, or by colonial powers to
hang on to their stolen territories.
Ashin
Issariya, one of the monks who led the 2007 Saffron Revolution protests against
the previous military government, told this writer, 'Buddhists and Muslims in
Myanmar have lived together harmoniously for decades.'
The
Irrawaddy, a Myanmarese news service with offices in Chiangmai and Yangon,
reported that 'Muslims began arriving in Burma as traders and mercenaries in
the 13th century and lived alongside Buddhists in relative peace for centuries.
In the 19th century, under the reformist King Mindon, mosques were built and
thousands of Muslims served in Burmese infantry and artillery divisions. Mindon
even helped build a hostel in Mecca for Burmese Muslims making the pilgrimage
or hajj.'
The
editor-in-chief of the Open News journal, Thiha Saw, in a recent interview
explained, 'Overall we have a history of religious harmony in the country. But
the anti-Muslim card is the trump card used by the military at critical times.
It is an old trick. The Buddhist mobs attacking mosques are outsiders. These
so-called Buddhists are often hired from the ranks of the unemployed, and it is
alleged they receive training from former military officers.'
A
recurring theme from locals is that 'outsiders' are bussed in by trucks and
nearly all of them are armed with sticks, swords and machetes. An incident soon
happens between a Muslim and a Buddhist that provides the spark and then the
gangs swing into action, agitating and enlisting locals to join the ensuing
riot. Muslim-owned homes and shops are demolished and, along with them,
previous inter-communal and religious harmony.
In
Okkan district a monk in robes was at the wheel of a bulldozer engaged in
destroying the walls of a mosque. Issariya laughs in disbelief, 'A real monk
cannot drive a bulldozer, this is not part of our training.'
Discerning
the truth through the fog of propaganda and the chaos is not made any easier
when you have both extremist monks like U Wirathu and fake monks carrying out
an offensive - the one with inflammatory rhetoric complemented by a fake monk
bulldozing a mosque.
The
peace activist monk Issariya told this writer, 'This is a well-planned campaign
by a group of people who use religious bigotry to further their political
ambitions. Certain forces yearn for the return of a military government.
General Than Shwe [the supreme leader of the former military junta] is more
powerful than President Thein Sein.'
Bitter
divisions inside Myanmarese Buddhism
Most
of the media coverage, both domestic and international, has narrowly focused on
the anti-Muslim rantings spewed out by U Wirathu from a monastery near
Mandalay.
He
has claimed that Muslims commit virtually all the rape cases in Myanmar, that
their mosques and assets are being secretly financed by the Saudis, and that
they plan to eventually take over the whole country.
The
Buddha preached calm and contemplation but Wirathu's agenda calls for the
opposite. 'Now is not the time for calm,' the 46-year-old monk has declared
while denigrating Muslims. 'Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood
boil.' He was quoted as saying this in the 1 July issue of Time
magazine, which featured a cover photograph of the monk with the caption 'The
face of Buddhist terror'. That issue was banned inside Myanmar.
Extremist
monks led by the publicity-hungry Wirathu are preaching a brand of pure
Buddhist nation-state where there is no place for the followers of Islam.
Speeches and rallies led by Wirathu, which resemble more a political campaign
than a call to enlightenment, have invariably happened in the vicinity of
Meikhtila, Okkan and other districts just before the violence there broke out.
Buddhism
in Myanmar has been battered and divided by the anti-Muslim campaign. Extremist
monks like Wirathu have garnered worldwide attention for their racist views.
But Buddhist networks which assert the teachings of the Buddha and the path of
peace, religious tolerance and social justice have largely been ignored by both
local and international media.
At
Meikhtila's Zay Yar Bun monastery, senior monk Udamme Thara said, 'I know more
than 1,000 Muslims fleeing from their attackers received sanctuary inside our
monasteries. I am sure almost all temples provided safety and saved their
lives.'
Ashin
Issariya's peace network of 800 monks, meanwhile, provided humanitarian aid to
the victims of Meikhtila and organised shipments of rice, clothes and other aid
to IDP (internally displaced people) camps for fleeing Muslims.
'We
were not expecting this violence when we chanted for peace and reconciliation
in 2007,' said Ashin Nyana Nika, the abbot of Pauk Jadi monastery who has
attended a meeting sponsored by Muslim groups to discuss the issue.
Ashin
Sanda Wara, the head of a monastic school in Yangon, has been quoted by the New
York Times as saying that the monks in Myanmar are divided nearly equally
between moderates and extremists.
Okkan-based
Shwe Nya was reported by The Irrawaddy as telling a gathering of his fellow
monks, 'We need to work together to stop this violence. This is not only good
for Okkan, but good for Myanmar. If this conflict spreads to the whole country
based on religious issues ... there will be a coup. So if this continues to
happen, Myanmar is headed in a dark direction.'
If
a military faction or hardliners inside the cabinet are playing the anti-Muslim
card, the real objective is probably not to stage another coup. The 'dark
direction' is more likely to be towards entrenching the role of the armed
forces in the country's new quasi-civilian configuration by seeking to convince
the grassroots population that a strong army is still needed to protect the
nation from falling into further chaos.
It
may also be part of the ruling party's strategy to cling on to power and
prevent reformist parties such as Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy from winning the 2015 general election.
During
all the persecution of the Rohingyas and other Muslim communities, Suu Kyi, who
has won many awards abroad for her moral leadership, has maintained a steadfast
silence. Whenever cornered by the media, she has retreated into bland pleas for
'communal violence to end' and argued that it would be unhelpful to take sides.
But
since May 2012, Suu Kyi has undergone her own metamorphosis, from iconic moral
voice against dictatorship to a politician who is hoping to
lead her NLD party to victory in
the 2015 polls. Many fear that the anti-Muslim tide is being
whipped up to undermine her chances of victory.
One
of the few public statements countering the anti-Muslim prejudice came from
senior Buddhist leader and respected scholar Sitagu Sayadaw in a speech at the
Myanmar Peace Centre in Yangon on 30 March. He declared, 'I deeply denounce
these religious, racial and commercial conflicts with no exceptions. Lord
Buddha teaches non-violence. I firmly believe other religious denominations
share the same concept, and no god prescribed conflict of any kind.' He told
his audience that all religions 'aim for eternal peace of mankind'.
Sadly,
his noble call to follow the teachings of the Buddha has received little
attention in the Burmese-language media.
Any
hope of Myanmar advancing towards democracy
will depend in part on the outcome of
this struggle over the soul of Myanmarese
Buddhism - whether it results in a regression into ethnic
chauvinism or an enlightenment that supports human rights of all religions and
races.
Tom
Fawthrop is an author, roving reporter and filmmaker. He directed Where
Have All the Fish Gone? (Eureka Films), a documentary about the damming of the
Mekong River.
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Ulama
