| |
Myanmar's Muslim sideshow
By Cem Ozturk
As the world
continues to glare at Myanmar's ruling junta for its
ongoing oppression of the country's popular democracy
movement, it is hardly by coincidence that tensions
between Buddhists and Muslims, in the past instigated by
Yangon in times of political crisis, are on the rise
again.
Some in Myanmar point the finger at
alleged new "terrorists" among the Muslim minority. Do
these allegations represent a heightened Islamist
presence in Myanmar, or is this just the inner
grumblings of a regime hoping to use the "war on terror"
for desperately needed international support?
With red robes, a freshly shaven head and a look
of serene indifference across his face, the seated monk
was a near perfect emulation of the gold image of Buddha
placed against the far wall. His words, however, were
far from tranquil.
"We have a problem in
Myanmar; we have a problem here in Mandalay. The problem
is called Islam. There are many new Muslims in Mandalay
from Pakistan [and Bangladesh]. These people are thieves
and terrorists. They do not respect our religion and our
women. We are Buddhist, and we are peaceful, but we must
protect ourselves."
The scene was a Buddhist
seminary adjacent to Shwe In Bin Monastery in Mandalay -
Myanmar's second largest city. In this deeply Buddhist
nation, the monkhood is second only to the government in
public influence. The abbot, a charismatic Burman named
Win Rathu, is a highly respected leader among the
Mandalay clergy whose tough talk has earned him the
Hollywood-esque nickname "The Fighting Monk". He is
widely accepted as the leader of a growing anti-Muslim
movement.
Several weeks prior to his
conversation with Asia Times Online (September 14), he
gave a speech on the matter which attracted a voluntary
audience of nearly 3,000 monks - a substantial number by
all accounts, and one that reflects the seriousness with
which the perceived Muslim threat is being taken by the
monkhood.
This perceived threat is nothing less
than the largest religious minority in Myanmar.
Numbering approximately 2 million people, Myanmar's
Muslims comprise at least 4 percent of the
overwhelmingly Theravada Buddhist state - a percentage
as large as neighboring Thailand's. The percentage is
very likely to be even higher as the ruling junta in
Yangon refuses to recognize a large number of Muslims as
citizens, and furthermore, all official statistics from
the Myanmar government are known to be far from reliable
at best, and completely fabricated to fit the
government's needs at worst.
There are at least
four ethnically distinct Muslim communities in Myanmar,
all of which are Sunni. The ethnically Chinese Hui, with
roots in Yunnan, dominate much of the cross-border trade
in Mandalay and the north. Indian and Pakistani Muslims,
who arrived with British colonial rule, are still found
all over the country, most evident in Yangon and
Mandalay. The ethnically Burman Muslims were converted
in the same wave of Indian and Arab traders and scholars
that influenced Thailand and Malaysia between the 9th
and 14th centuries, and live throughout the central
plains. The largest, also the poorest, Muslim ethnic
group in Myanmar today is that of the Rohingyas. This
struggling community shares both a border and a common
cultural heritage with Bangladesh's Bengali Muslims, and
live primarily in Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state.
"These Pakistanis - they are the worst ones,"
says Win Rathu. "They are making it bad for everyone in
Myanmar. The real reason America put the sanctions on us
because they wanted to punish al-Qaeda, which is here -
and now we are all paying. Buddhists are starving
because of their connections to al-Qaeda."
While
Win Rathu might be the first to claim that the US's
sanctions on Myanmar are aimed at terrorists rather than
the ruling junta, he is not the first person to claim
that terrorists have mingled with Myanmar's Muslims.
International attention was drawn to the Rohingya Muslim
community when its links to Islamist groups were
discovered. Anti-terror officials around the world took
note, and so did the ruling junta in Yangon.
The
government in Myanmar has never recognized the Rohingyas
as a native population. It sent hundreds of thousands of
them fleeing into Bangladesh in 1978 during a cleansing
campaign ominously named Naga Min (Dragon King). Similar
pogroms erupted again in the early 1990s, resulting in
similarly massive migrations of refugees.
Most
of the Rohingyas have since repatriated to Myanmar.
However, over 100,000 remain inside Bangladesh. Some
enjoy the relative protection of United Nations refugee
camps, but all live in dire situations as refugees in a
state than can scarcely manage to support its own
people.
From the desperate conditions of these
camps have sprung several generations of small
resistance groups which have operated a low-level
insurgency along the northwestern border for some
decades. Most of these groups have sought equal
religious and economic standing in Myanmar, and a few
have demanded the creation of a separate Muslim state
along the border. All of these groups have been
completely ineffective against Myanmar's large military
- battle hardened by 50 years of counter-insurgency
warfare.
The Rohingya Solidarity Organization
(RSO) is one of these groups, and the subject of much of
the world's attention on Myanmar's Muslims. Founded in
the early 1980s, the RSO has aped movements such as the
Taliban and the Kashmir-based Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. After
a failed merger with another Rohingya insurgent group to
form the moderate Arakan Rohingya National Organization,
the RSO split into several factions, all claiming the
name RSO.
As the South Asia Intelligence Review
reports, at least one of the RSO's factions is known to
have enjoyed financial and technical support from a
variety of pan-Islamist organizations throughout South
and Southeast Asia, including the Bangladeshi/Pakistani
Jamaat-e-Islami, Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's
Hizb-e-Islami, and most importantly, Bangladesh's
Harakat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (HuJI) - all of whom are
unquestionably linked with al-Qaeda.
Videotapes
of Bangladeshi/Rohingya mujahideen training camps
acquired by the media and US intelligence during the
October 2001 campaign in Afghanistan also support this
link, as does the fact that Rohingyas were among some of
the Taliban fighters captured by the Northern Alliance
and coalition forces. According to Islamist network
expert Subir Bhaumik, Rohingya volunteers have been sent
to international flashpoints as far away as Kashmir and
Chechnya. Further establishing the links is the fact
that Osama bin Laden himself has openly referred to the
persecution of Muslims in Myanmar, as well as his
supporters there, in at least one speech.
Back
in Win Rathu's office, the tranquil smiling continued as
he switched on a digital video camera, a Compaq PC, and
an air conditioner - all incredible luxuries for anyone
in this desperately poor country, and especially unusual
material possessions for an avowed ascetic monk.
"There have been problems before, but the
problems have really grown in the last several years
with the Pakistani Muslims," said Wi Rathu. "They want
Myanmar to be Muslim - but Myanmar is Buddhist. They
want the rest of Asia to be Muslim and live by Muslims
rules - but we are Buddhist."
Win Rathu's fears
call to mind the stated goals of some of the
pan-Islamist jihadi groups such as Jemaah Islamiya,
which wish to see an Islamic super-state encompassing
territory from Bangladesh to Indonesia. It is not
difficult to see why this idea might be cause for alarm.
His other fears, however, call to mind nothing but the
kind of superstitions that give rise to religious
violence in the first place.
"The Muslims are
responsible for nearly all of the crime in Myanmar:
opium, theft, many rapes. They want to deface images of
the Buddha like they did in Afghanistan. Now they mock
us with these longyis [a common traditional
garment]". As he said this, three young monks presented
framed pictures of the longyis - on which they
claimed patterns of Buddhist symbols were placed next to
symbols which supposedly represented female genitalia.
The longyis, they asserted, were worn and sold by
Muslims, and were imported from Malaysia - a Muslim
country.
It was this kind of tension which led
to nationwide sectarian riots in 2001. Violence broke
out between the two faiths in the towns of Taungoo,
Prome, Sittwe, Pegu and Mandalay, as large mobs often
led by what appeared to be Buddhist monks attacked
Muslim businesses, homes and mosques. The violence
resulted in at least nine deaths and considerable
destruction of property.
As Human Rights Watch
reported in its 2001 report, "Crackdown on Burmese
Muslims", monks, working with the support of the
government, have distributed anti-Muslim pamphlets such
as the 2001 tract "Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Hla Tai (The
Fear of Losing One's Race). Distribution of the
pamphlets was also facilitated by the Union of
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). The USDA
is the civilian support wing of the military regime, and
the same group that recently ambushed and abducted
democratic opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi.
While the idea of monks actually leading rioters
may seem unusual, certain details make it less so.
Myanmar's large and much feared military intelligence
service, the Directorate of Defense Security
Intelligence is commonly believed to have agents working
within the monkhood. The monks have always been
courageous supporters of the democracy movement. It
would seem that monitoring dissident monks is not their
only function.
Human Rights Watch also reported
that monks in the 2001 riots were carrying mobile
phones, a luxury not readily available to the Myanmar
population - as very few without government connections
can afford them. It is also reported that there was a
clear split between monks who provoked violence and
those who did not. It has been suggested by Human Rights
Watch and others that these facts may reflect the
presence of agents provocateur among the monks. That
suggestion may not be far off.
"Win Rathu works
for the government," said one monk to Asia Times Online
on strict condition of anonymity. "What he says is not
Buddhist. What he does is not Buddhist. Very many monks
do not support these views." Indeed, by his own
admission, Wi Ra Thu's speech was not licensed or
supported by his seniors among the clergy. One doubts as
well that it is the clergy which finances his princely
lifestyle.
In the past, the military regime has
launched major campaigns against one or another internal
minority during times of major political crises. The
logic is clear - without internal crisis as an excuse
for government crackdowns, the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC)has no justification for its
heavy-handed rule. Indeed, the SPDC has often been
accused of inciting such sectarian violence for its own
political ends. In February 15, 2000 testimony before
the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus
Stephen Dun, a Christian member of the Karen ethnic
minority, related how the 1994 split between the
Buddhist and Christian factions of Karen rebels in the
south was caused by agitators. The sectarian schism
resulted in the fall of the rebels' most important
stronghold, Manerplaw, to SPDC forces - a nearly mortal
blow to the Karen rebellion.
The 1991
scapegoating and subsequent exodus of 250,000 Rohingyas
into Bangladesh occurred at a time of major political
crisis - the ruling military regime had just been
overwhelmingly defeated by the National League for
Democracy (NLD). Refusing to recognize the NLD's
victory, the regime was condemned domestically and
internationally.
As the government faces
economic sanctions and renewed international
condemnation for its imprisonment and treatment of Aunt
San Su Kyi from the West, one should expect the same
diversionary tactics from the regime. The recent
military campaign against Karen National Liberation Army
(KNLA) rebels in south confirms this.
The Muslim
minority is another easy target. However, unlike the
KNLA, operations against Rohingyas have the added
political value of being framed as part of the
international "war on terror". If tension continues to
escalate, setting off violence like it did in 2001 - the
same kind of desperate conditions that gave hold to
Islamist groups in the first place will be exacerbated.
A further radicalized Muslim minority directly adjacent
to a major terrorist target like Thailand, in a region
already struggling to cope with terrorism, could indeed
constitute a heightened Islamist threat.
If
violence does once again break out, it will be agitators
like Win Rathu at the lead. And this religious violence
threatens to divert the world's attention from the real
issue in Myanmar - the continuing deprivation of its
people's prosperity by an unpopular military
dictatorship.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
