RangonNewsDaily: March . 8 .2014
In 2003, Ashin Wirathu, the radical Burmese monk, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for inciting mobs to kill Muslims. He was freed in 2010 in a general amnesty.
Buddhism and nationalism have been intertwined in Burma for more than a century. It is a good guess that George Orwell, the writer who first came to Burma as a British police officer in the 1920s, witnessed monks taking part in demonstrations against the occupation.
And here, almost a century later, was Ashin Wirathu, the radical Burmese monk, notorious leader of the “969” political movement, the anti-Muslim crusade widely condemned for spreading hate speech.
In 2003, Wirathu was sentenced to 25 years in prison for inciting riots that led to the killing of 10 Muslims but was released in 2010 in a general amnesty for political prisoners.
Considering his volatile history, I was surprised to meet a charismatic, cherubic-looking preacher, a boyish 45-year-old who stood only about 5‘7”, with a voice so soft it was difficult to hear.
The 969 movement considers Rohingyas to be land- and job-grabbing illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They are like “Mexican sneakers in your country,” someone told me, rephrasing a common slur.
Wirathu joined 969 — the number supposedly refers to Buddhist scripture — in 2001. The movement’s logo, a circle of light emanating from three lions on a pedestal, can be seen throughout Burma on vendor stalls, taxicabs, and private vehicles.
Wirathu has thousands of Facebook followers, and his YouTube videos calling Muslims “dogs” and “carp” and other names are all over the Internet.
I met him at the respected Masoeyein Monastery in the city of Mandalay in central Myanmar, where he presides over some 2,500 monks.
Wirathu painted a picture of Buddhist monks cowering under physical threat from a worldwide Muslim conspiracy. “Their purpose is to turn Myanmar into an Islamic state,” he claimed.
While most Rohingya are not connected to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, he said, the majority are bound by their influence.
Kevin McKiernan
The author found himself the center of attention when Ashin Wirathu, the radical Burmese preacher, assigned three young monks to shoot photos and video of him.
Outside Wirathu’s temple were two large bulletin boards, where gruesome photos of the corpses of mutilated monks were posted. An idyllic drawing of Wirathu, encircled by the doves of peace, was positioned above the corpses.
Wirathu told me the monks were bludgeoned or hacked to death by Muslim attackers. I asked him where the pictures were taken. He said Thailand and Bangladesh, both of which have small Rohingya populations.
He later claimed similar photos on the other board were taken in the Rakhine state in Burma, though there was no context for the photos and no authentication.
It seemed preposterous to believe that the murders of so many monks could have taken place in a society where the majority population is Buddhist — a place where monks are held in such reverence that they routinely jump queues at supermarkets and airport counters.
How could all these crimes be committed in such a country without being reported in the news?
Kevin McKiernan
Most ethnic Rohingyas were stripped of their citizenship in 1982 when Burma’s military junta rewrote the national constitution.
Andrea Gittleman, the senior legislative counsel for the Physicians for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., said her organization has seen a connection between speeches by Wirathu and spikes in anti-Muslim violence across Myanmar.
Gittleman cited the example of Wirathu leading a rally of monks in Mandalay in September 2012 to promote the current president Thein Sein’s controversial plan to send Rohingya Muslims to a third country.
A month later, more violence broke out in the Rakhine state.
(note: According to Burmese media accounts, the January 2014 massacre in Rakhine erupted soon after monks delivered sermons calling for the expulsion of all the Rohingya.)
In last year’s controversial Time interview, Wirathu took the title “Burmese Bin Laden.” After the exposé, more than a thousand monks and other Burmese attended a protest rally and Deputy Minister of Information Ye Htut banned the magazine, saying it was necessary to halt the spread of “hate speech.
” Wirathu was quoted in the article saying Muslims were the main cause of violence in the world, and urging his compatriots to be vigilant: “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog.”
Kevin McKiernan
This temporary mosque was built in a refugee camp near Sittwe, Myanmar, after Buddhist mobs burned down the Muslim quarter.
Late in the afternoon of our interview, standing in a sweat-drenched shirt next to the photos of mutilated corpses, I listened as Wirathu began to profess his admiration for historical figures such as Corazón Aquino in the Philippines, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, and Mahatma Gandhi in India. “I have a great deal of respect,” Wirathu said, “for a leader like Martin Luther King who has shown us the way for peacefulresistance.
There are a few people in Myanmar who follow his example, and I identify with them.”
It all had a weird, Alice in Wonderlandfeeling. Here I was, an American visitor, now steeped in human rights reports about Buddhist atrocities against Muslims, talking to an angelic little man who claimed that the Rohingyas were behind most, if not all, of the carnage. Why have all these Rohingyas been killed and why were there 140,000 refugees in those camps? I asked incredulously. It’s propaganda, Wirathu replied politely.
Credit by: http://www.independent.com/news/2014/mar/06/buddhist-rampage-burma/?on
kolatt(PBDN)
RangonNewsDaily
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