The Stateless Rohingya Blog

GlobalPost-Open Hands Initiative reporting fellows interview the Buddhist monk U Wirathu, founder of the anti-Muslim 969 movement, in Mandalay, Myanmar. (Marc Laban/AsiaWorks Television) Kevin Douglas Grant Huffington Post June 24, 2013 YANGON, Myanmar — As an estimated 140,000 Rohingya Muslims sat captive in  squalid refugee camps  in Rakhine State and across the border in Thailand and Bangladesh, a group of red-robed Buddhist leaders gathered here in Yangon last week, dismissing what human rights groups have called a genocide as “illusions created by the Arab media.” “I really take pity on [my critics],” said the Buddhist monk U Wirathu, founder of Myanmar’s 969 movement , accused of mobilizing a campaign of murder, arson and displacement against Muslims in Rakhine and across the country. “They are under the influence of media backed by the Arab world. Europeans and Americans are educated people, but sometimes certain illusions are created by the Arab media.”

Internally displaced Rohingya boys in a camp for displaced Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Burma, May 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)  Gary Feuerberg Epoch Times June 24, 2013 Religious violence between Buddhists and the Muslim ethnic group, the Rohingya, returned again in April to Burma (officially known as Myanmar) in its western state of Rakhine (also called Arakan). The discrimination and violence against the minority Rohingya Muslims is taking on an increasingly uglier tone. Kira Kay, correspondent for PBS Newshour, reported on June 18 that in April, “Over the three days of violence, at least 50 people, mostly Muslims, were burned alive or hacked to death; 18,000 were displaced; 12 of the town’s 13 mosques were destroyed or badly damaged.” Once people realized the police would not intervene, they were emboldened to murder Muslims, according to Burmese parliament member Win Htein, who witnessed it and said that the mob was cheer