The Stateless Rohingya Blog

(Photo: Andre Malerba/Getty Images) By  Sir Geoffrey Nice & Francis Wade Foreign Policy May 13, 2014 Burma's Rohingya minority could fall victim to full-scale genocide if the international community doesn't intervene.  In conflicts that have potential to produce the worst of human atrocities, states and international actors must take action to identify the precursors of mass killing and stop it from ever happening. That's precisely what is needed now in western Burma, where the Rohingya minority faces attacks so violent that state crime experts fear a full-on genocide is in the making. The Muslim minority, numbering around 1 million, shares the state with Rakhine Buddhists, who consider them to be illegal Bengali immigrants. The Burmese government, which shares this view,  denies  them citizenship as well as limiting their access to education and healthcare. Organized mob violence in late March, which wrecked the entire aid infrastructure ...

Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, left, and Ashin Wirathu are spearheading a new vision for a religion once based on principles of non-violence. By  Jake Scobey-Thal Foreign Policy March 11, 2014 The  photo  of two monks looks innocent enough. One of the men presents the other with a birthday present. It’s difficult to make out, but it looks to be some sort of gold figurine on a red velvet base. In fact, the photo would be totally uninteresting if it weren’t for the fact that these men are two of the world’s most important leaders of a dangerously radical brand of Buddhism. The man on the right is Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu. Known as the ‘‘bin Laden of Buddhism'', Wirathu leads the country’s 969 movement, which sees the country’s Muslim minority as an existential threat to its majority Buddhist population. The man on the left is Sri Lanka’s Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, the face of hardline Buddhism in the island nation. Together, these two robed radicals anchor a p...

Francis Wade Foreign Policy April 22, 2013 Buddhist monks have been major instigators of the recent violence against Muslims in Burma. In a small wooden office in the Mahamyaing monastery, Kyaw Linn rifles through a carrier bag of stickers emblazoned with 969, the logo that has come to represent Burma's budding anti-Muslim movement. Six months ago the head monk, Oo Wi Ma La, ordered the first batch of stickers from a nearby printing company. Now they're hard to avoid. Taxis, buses, and shop fronts across Rangoon and other major towns now display what some observers consider a symbol of Buddhist extremism -- a symbol that sees Burma's Muslim community as a threat to the country and its dominant religion. This sentiment has unleashed waves of violence over the past several months that have  left  more than 40 dead, and 13,000 displaced in 2013 alone. The monastery in Moulmein, southern Burma, is credited as the birthplace of the resurgent 969 movement. Prod...