The OIC plans to take the issue of attacks against
Muslims in Burma to the United Nations
OnIslam News:
March 31, 2013
CAIRO – A global Muslim body is planning to take the
issue of persecution of Muslims in Buddhist-majority Burma to the United
Nations to help stop continuing attacks against the minority.
“The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) intends
to raise the issue in the Security Council and the Human Rights Council to find
a solution that contributes to putting an end to religious persecution against
Muslims in Burma,” an OIC official told Arab News on Sunday, March 31.
“The OIC had previously tried to contact government
officials in Burma to no avail.”
The Jeddah-based group plans to hold a meeting in
Saudi Arabia on April 14 to discuss attacks against Muslims in Burma.
OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the organization
was “ready to take all necessary measures and actions” in dealing with the
impending crisis.
Ihsanoglu also urged the Burmese government to “put an
end to Buddhist extremism and hate campaigns, as well as ethnic cleansing.”
The OIC move follows attacks against Muslims, which
left at least 43 people dead and several mosques burnt in a week of sectarian
violence in the central city of Meiktila.
The violence started by an argument between a Buddhist
couple and gold shop owners and spread to at least 10 other towns and villages
in central Burma.
“Violence has extended to target all Muslims in
Burma,” the OIC official said.
“The recent violence in the central regions of the
country confirms all too well that there is religious persecution.”
In October, the OIC tried to open an office in Burma
to help Muslims there, but the move was blocked by President Thein Sein
following massive protests by Buddhist monks.
“The OIC attempted to open an office in Myanmar (Burma)
over the past year to supply aid to Muslims in Myanmar but extremist Buddhists
demonstrated against this attempt,” the official said.
“There has also been an Egyptian proposition to send a
special delegation headed by the Secretary General of the OIC, Ekmeleddin
Ihsanoglu, and includes a number of foreign ministers of member countries to
Myanmar, but this visit has been postponed.”
Radical Monks
With Buddhist mobs chasing Muslims from village to
another, experts blame radical monks for the new wave of sectarian violence in
Burma.
“It is clear that there are some agents provocateurs
with radical anti-Muslim agendas at work in the country -- including
influential Buddhist monks preaching intolerance and hatred of Muslims,” Jim
Della-Giacoma, a Burma expert with the International Crisis Group think-tank,
told The Week.
“Also, the systematic and methodical way in which
Muslim neighborhoods were razed to the ground is highly suggestive of some
degree of advance planning by radical elements.”
Tension between Buddhists and Muslims has been
simmering since last year’s sectarian violence in western Rakhine state, which
displaced thousands of Muslims.
Monks were seen igniting the violence by preaching a
so-called “960 movement”, which represents a radical form of anti-Islamic
nationalism that urges Buddhists to boycott Muslim-run shops and services.
“When the profit goes to the enemy's hand, our
nationality, language and religion are all harmed,” said Wirathu, a monk from
Mandalay known for his radical anti-Islam rhetoric.
“They will take girls with this money. They will force
them to convert religion. All children born to them will be a danger to the
country. They will destroy the language as well as the religion,” he said in a
speech put online.
Burma’s Muslims -- largely of Indian, Chinese and
Bangladeshi descent -- account for an estimated four percent of the roughly 60
million population.
Muslims entered Burma en masse for the first time as
indentured laborers from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule,
which ended in 1948.
But despite their long history, they have never fully
been integrated into the country.
“We need to fight this incitement by a group of bad
people,” said Thet Swe Win, a human rights activist who co-organized a recent
prayer service for Burma’s peace.
“We must prevent racial and religious disputes.”