Nazi-type protests are never peaceful

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

Asian Tribune 

September 08, 2013 

Most news reports coming from Myanmar are bad, often atrocious and painful to read or watch in video. But once in a while some good news reports are also showing up in the media these days.

Thanks to the world-wide condemnation of one-sided, anti-Muslim justice in this Buddhist country that has seen unfathomed savagery and crime by the Buddhist mobs, often aided and led by Buddhist monks, security forces and political leaders, in recent days, the Myanmar government has put some criminal elements within its Buddhist community behind the bar.

They have been found guilty for crimes that have resulted in internal displacement of some 140,000 Rohingya Muslims inside the Arakan (Rakhine) state, and tens of thousands of other Muslims in other parts of Myanmar, let alone wholesale destruction of Muslim-owned properties, including mosques, schools, orphanages, and hostels. Nothing was spared by the racist savages within the Buddhist community. And yet, as one may recall not a single Buddhist perpetrator of one of the worst crimes of this decade was apprehended or found guilty - well, until very recently.

We were shocked at justice in the Mogher Mulluk where the victims - the Muslims of this country - who were terrorized - were the only ones who were jailed and killed for resisting Buddhist-led pogroms. Not a single Buddhist was sentenced for such gruesome murders and destruction.

Things are now changing, or so it seems!

The latest news from the Irrawaddy shows that 4 Rakhine Buddhists have been sentenced to light terms for demonstrating against Rohingya resettlement in the Arakan state. As one may know, the Rohingyas are the original inhabitants of Arakan whose ancestors lived in the contested territory from time immemorial. The racist government there had denied their citizenship since the time of dictator Ne Win, merely because they are Muslims.

I applaud the government action to go after such preachers of intolerance and bigotry inside Myanmar.

These Buddhist criminals cannot hide their despicable crimes under the pretext of organizing so-called 'peaceful' demonstration protests. When such Nazi-type demonstrations provide the justification for on-going ethnic cleansing of a vulnerable minority, which Myanmar, especially, the Rakhine state, had amply demonstrated in the last two years, there is nothing peaceful about such demonstrations, and these criminals that organize must be hunted down like criminal thugs and murderers.

I urge the Thein Sein government for making sure that such demonstrations that breed hatred and intolerance are not tolerated inside Myanmar.