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4 Myanmar
fixates on Rohingya
calculation By Peter
Lee
When pressed on the issue at Harvard
University, she went Ice Queen, according to
Global Post:
The forum at Harvard's Kennedy
School Thursday evening was little shy of a
lovefest …Until someone mentioned the "R" word.
Thanking Suu Kyi for "being our
inspiration," a student from Thailand said: "You
have been quite reluctant to speak up against
the human-rights violations in Rakhine State
against the Rohingya … Can you explain why you
have been so reluctant?"
The mood in the
room suddenly shifted. Suu Kyi's tone and
expression changed. With an edge in her voice,
she answered: "You must not forget that
there have been
human-rights violations on both sides of the
communal divide. It's not a matter of condemning
one community or the other. I condemn all human
rights violations." [8]
A few observations here.
First, the central government is
definitely along for the anti-Rohingya ride. It
(together with Aung San Suu Kyi) has adopted the
morally neutral "sectarian clashes" narrative,
with the implication that the Rohingya are
equally at fault for any violence, a framing
that official Chinese agencies - the PRC, of
course, is a key political backer for the
current regime - have carefully reproduced in
their coverage. [9]
In July, the local
Arakanese news agency carried a report on a
delegation of movie stars - again, wearing the
mass-produced T-shirts that seem to be an
integral part of political expression in these
matters - on a charitable mission to comfort
refugees created by the crisis … the ethnic
Rakhines displaced by the crisis, not the
Rohingya.
As the report makes clear,
the group, organized by the chairman of the
Myanmar Motion Picture Association, concentrated
its efforts on Buddhist refugees sheltering at
religious establishments in the capital of Sittwe:
"I was very glad and broke into
tears when I saw the stars I love coming to
offer their aid to us," said a female refugee
who is sheltering in the camp of Ray Kyaw Thu
Monastery in Sittwe.
The celebrity team
reportedly visited the camps of Ray Kyaw Thu
Monastery, Sinkuland Ward, Rwa Gree Mrauk
Primary School, Padone Ma Aung Myay Monastery,
Buddhawmaw Monastery, Su Taung Pyi Monastery,
Mingan Middle School, and Mingan Chapel in
Sittwe, and have made their respective donations
to the refugees taking shelter in those camps.
[10]
Anti-Rohingya bigotry has been a
mainstay of the dictatorship for decades.
Famously, the regime denied citizenship for the
Rohingya in 1982, stigmatizing them as
non-Burmese, and laying much of the foundation for
their current misery. The junta has been accused
of knowingly inciting anti-Rohingya violence if
and when government misbehavior might expose it to
the anger of the monks.
However, morally
bankrupt divide and rule tactics by the military
junta are not the full story.
The regime
draws on a considerable and easily tapped
reservoir of anti-Rohingya feeling in Burmese
society, feeling that has perhaps been exacerbated
by the overtly racialist Greater Burma propaganda
of the government but is to a certain extent
inherent in the religious and social worldview of
many politically-engaged Burmese.
Myanmar
is, of course, predominantly Buddhist. 94%
Buddhist, if recent estimates are accurate.
Myanmar is Theravada Buddhist, as are Sri
Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Theravada
Buddhism is a doctrinally conservative Buddhism
very close to the original practice laid out by
Gautama Buddha. It is predicated upon a Buddhist
domination of a secular polity under the rule of a
king who acts as defender and promoter of the
faith.
Back in the day, the main priority
of the Theravada Buddhist state was to establish
the social and financial infrastructure that would
enable Buddhist monks to achieve enlightenment.
Theravada Buddhism was devastated by the
arrival of Western imperialism in Asia, especially
by the incorporation of South Asian states into
colonial regimes and the extinction or sidelining
of the Buddhist kings. Sri Lanka and Burma got
rolled into British India; Laos and Cambodia
became part of the French system. Even Thailand,
which retained its nominal independence, was
forced to confront the challenge to its legitimacy
and authority posed by Western power and Christian
proselytizing.
Theravada Buddhism, like
other traditional religions of Asia, upped its
game in response to the imperial challenge.
Theorists developed a vision of Theravada Buddhism
as a mechanism for national renewal- and national
resistance against British rule. The movement
started in Sri Lanka as the Young Men's Buddhist
Association - the YMBA. The name, though it sounds
quaint, was both a direct challenge to the YMCA,
an important agent of Christian penetration among
Sri Lanka's youth and professional classes - and
an adoption (and implicit endorsement) of its
methods.
There are interesting parallels
between the Theravada renaissance and the 19th
century movements to redefine Indian Islam- which
was also experiencing severe stress as national
integration threatened to redefine Indian Muslims
as a national minority, instead of the holder of
various local majorities. The remorseless
transformation of Indian society led, on the
political level, to the eventual partition of the
British Raj into India and East and West Pakistan.
On the religious level, it led to the
development of a more militant,
politically-engaged brand of Indian Islam through
the rise of the Deoband school. The Deoband
madrassah prepared Indian Muslims for an
existential struggle against the forces of
Westernization and Hindu dominance by emphasizing
Islamic renewal, resistance, doctrinal rigor, and
intolerance for the accommodating and syncretist
brand of Sufi Islamic observance practiced in many
areas of the Indian subcontinent.
In the
20th century, the Deoband school also inspired a
conservative Islamic backlash against foreign
penetration into Muslim central Asia; we know
these arch-conservatives (actually Islamic
neo-fundamentalists) as the Taliban.
"Myanmar's Buddhist Taliban" is an
unwelcome framing, and certainly unfair when
contrasting the intensity of violence practiced or
condoned by the two groups.
However, it
should be noted that religiously-supported
Buddhist chauvinism was a key element in the
estrangement between Sri Lanka's dominant Buddhist
population and its Tamil minority. The political
conflict climaxed in a virtual war of annihilation
successfully carried out by the Sri Lankan
government (with significant Chinese military and
financial support) against the Tamil Tigers. Sri
Lankan "Buddhist fundamentalism" - a quest for
national renaissance through a rededication to
Buddhist practice and goals- has inspired Burma as
well. Burmese Buddhism, traditionally
locked into a solipsistic quest for personal
enlightenment, has been repurposed as a political
and social movement, drawing justification from
the exalted (healing society as an exercise in
compassion) and pragmatic (poor societies lack the
ability to give suitable alms to Buddhist monks,
thereby endangering the Buddhist project).
This led to the emergence of a class of
politically active monks with immense social
prestige, whose leaders the Myanmar dictatorship
has desperately and largely unsuccessfully labored
to co-opt. It also encouraged the emergence of a
uniquely Myanmar Buddhist bigot, for whom the
continued presence of the Rohingya is an affront
to the Buddhist purity and cultural unity of the
nation.
The existence of an ineffectual
Rohingya liberation movement among exiles in
Bangladesh adds fuel to the fire.
The most
conspicuous Buddhist voice in the national (as
opposed to Rakhine State) protests against the OIC
initiative is a monk, U Wirathu, with a history of
imprisonment (providing him with activist
credibility) and anti-Muslim agitation. In
September, he led a 5,000-person march in Yongyon
supporting President Thein Sein's proposal to
either hand over the Rohingya to the UN Human
Rights Commissioner or deport them to any third
country that would have them.
On the
occasion of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha,
Wirathu posted a video which, according to the
translation by a hostile party, accused the
Rohingya (or, in his formulation, "the Bengalis")
of acting as a front for Islamic infiltration and
destabilization of Burma, starting with an
"invasive jihad war" against Rakhine with the
objective of establishing an Islamic state.
Wirathu also accused the Rohingya
Solidarity Organization of "drugging children in
order to get them to fight" and "disguising
themselves as ladies". Perhaps this reflects
Wirathu's goofball worldview; more likely it is an
attempt to explain away the child and female
casualties of the pogrom.
He concluded by
declaring that it is imperative to protect the
Rakhine State in order to protect the Myanmar
motherland. [11]
Al-Jazeera's Wayne Thay
speculated that Wirathu has assumed the role of
pro-government provocateur on the Rohingya issue.
[12]
Perhaps the monk's outlook was
remolded by the 10 years he spent in prison and
his crude propaganda is orchestrated by his
minders in the security apparatus.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
