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Mohamed Farooq
Mayu Press:
April 3, 2013
The Burmese officials as well as Buddhist civilians jointly progress towards uprooting Muslims (Rohingya Muslim, Kaman Muslim and Burmese Muslim) across the Burma with different secret tactics and methodology; mass killing, open gun firing, raping females, looting properties and money, arbitrary arresting, burning houses, alive burning religious students and teachers, destroying noble Quran, Mosques and religious schools with falsehoods creative events step by step driving recklessly.
Burma known as Myanmar is grappling with a surge in religious extremism that experts trace to anti-Muslim “provocateurs” including radical Buddhist monks after two years of a repressive junta ceded power. At least hundred Muslims have been killed while Mosques and Muslim homes have been vandalized over the past fortnight in central Burma, in a wave of violence that witnesses say seems to have been well planned.
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, said Jim Della-Giacoma, a Burma expert with the International Crisis Group think-tank. He also added that 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.
The Buddhist Monks, once at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement and viewed with reverence in this devout Buddhist majority nation have been linked to the unrest. Some members of the clergy have been involved in the violence, while others are spearheading a move to shun shops owned by Muslims and only visit stores run by Buddhists, identified by stickers showing the number “969″, which has become a symbol of their campaign. More moderate voices among civil society activists and religious leaders are calling for the country to defuse unrest that has cast a shadow over the Buddhist majority nation’s political reforms.
The 969 campaign is organized by some Buddhist extremists and monk Wirathu who spread hate leaflets, speeches and CDs describing that Muslims are planning to dominate the country and so on. That falsifying materials include only nonsense lies against Muslims. All Buddhists believe whatever a monk told against Muslims.
Wirathu’s rhetoric is flush with conspiracy and paranoia. He claims that Muslim merchants receive cash injections from Middle East oil state brethren and use these funds to undercut Buddhist rivals. He claims Muslims have infiltrated the camp of Aung San Suu Kyi, the nation’s widely revered Nobel Peace Laureate and parliamentarian, along with other respected freedom icons. “We Buddhists allow them to freely practice their faith,” Wirathu said in the same February speech. “But once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practice our religion. We must be careful. These Muslims really hate us.”
The apparent spark for the recent conflict was an argument in a gold shop in the town of Meiktila on 20 March 2013 that escalated into a full-scale riot. Since then armed gangs have roamed from town to town in central Burma razing Mosques and Muslim homes. It follows Buddhist-Muslim clashes in the western state of Rakhine last year that left at least thousands of people dead, minority Muslim Rohingya who are made by many Burmese as illegal Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh. A wave of hate has swept across social media websites targeting the Rohingya, who have long been denied citizenship by Burma’s junta, which like many Burmese refers to them as Bengalis. Recently, however, the conflict has also targeted Muslims with Burma citizenship, some of whose families came to the country more than a century ago from India, Bangladesh or China.
The United Nations’ human rights envoy to the country, Tomas Ojea Quintana, has said the reluctance of security forces to crack down on the unrest suggests a possible state link to the fighting, refused by Burma.
This will be very difficult and out of expectation to getting back regular stability of Muslims living in Burma unless having strong pressure through powerful continents like USA,UN, EU, ASEAN, Russia, Australia, China, and OIC etc to keeping right of minority Muslims there.
Mohamed Farooq is an activist and a B.Sc. Engineer on Electrical and Electronics.