Chinese envoy terms Rakhine issue Myanmar’s internal affair
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Banglar Bir
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Economics and Democracy: Myanmar’s Myriad Challenges
Nationalism and the crisis in Rakhine hide the economic roots of the NLD’s weakness.
By Neil Thompson
September 27, 2017
The furor in the international community over the actions of the Myanmar armed forces in Rakhine state in recent weeks has led to widespread criticism of the civilian National League for Democracy (NLD) government, unofficially led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
A central theme of the criticism has been that the Nobel Prize winner either agrees with the ethnic and sectarian bigotry of a large part of Myanmar’s electorate, or that she is afraid to confront it due to electoral concerns and a fear of being seen as bowing to foreigners. However, this analysis misses a key factor in the political landscape of modern Myanmar: the tie between the country’s experiment with a civilian-led semi-democracy and the rise in living standards for ordinary people this change in the political system is meant to bring about.
As the Myanmar armed forces have demonstrated so brutally against the minority Rohingya, for its legitimacy as an institution the military (the Tatmadaw) in Myanmar can still draw upon the idea of itself as the chief defender of Myanmar’s territorial integrity and guarantor of the majority Bamar elite’s continued dominance within it. The Tatmadaw also still control the ministries of defense, home affairs, and border affairs, and a quarter of the seats in Myanmar’s parliament. Meanwhile the NLD is responsible to a diverse electorate that seems, now, united only by its loathing of the Rohingya.
Much of that electorate has grown up listening to Myanmar’s generals (and their successors) lambasting the practice of democratic civilian government in order to justify the Tatmadaw’s coups in 1962 and 1988 against the legitimate rulers of Myanmar. Despite 50 years of military misgovernment, charges that civilian rule is corrupt, inept at ruling the country, and unable to achieve peace and security still carry weight in a society which has been at war with itself since independence in 1947.
Some of the major priorities of that electorate can be seen from the responses to an opinion survey published in August by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a U.S.- based pro-democracy nonprofit. IRI interviewed 3,000 adult citizens (those eligible to vote) of Myanmar, who were weighed by state and region, on their views about “their socio-economic status, political and security situations of the country, the democratic transition and rights, and perceptions of government, legislature, political parties and the media” according to local media outlet The Irrawaddy. For supporters of Myanmar’s transition to democracy this survey of public opinion revealed some disturbing results.
Eye-openingly for democracy activists, a large percentage of the electorate seemed ready to judge not the NLD, but the democratic system itself for Myanmar’s economic performance. According to the IRI, 40 percent of their respondents thought that the economy was more important than democracy, versus just 24 percent who rated democratic reform as being more important overall. Another 11 percent of those surveyed rated further democratic reform as “moderately” important.
The Irrawaddy added that the IRI’s report even showed ordinary people putting economic development ahead of the country’s complex peace process, a central plank of Aung Sang Su Kyi’s political program. The central thrust of the survey’s revelations was any government of Myanmar would only be broadly liked and accepted if it could solve local people’s livelihood difficulties. This would matter less for the NLD in it’s struggle with the Tatmadaw if Myanmar’s economic growth was still increasing.
However, growth fell from 7.3 percent in 2015-2016 to 6.4 percent in 2016-17, and while the current year’s forecast is a more cheerful 7.7 percent, (and 2018-19’s estimate is even higher) that sunny scenario is heavily dependent on getting billions more dollars-worth of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the country’s economy. With foreign governments and businesses now mulling how to respond over the Tatmadaw’s unprecedented rampage across Rakhine state (which has now seen a record 480,000 Rohingya fleeing to unsafe and unhealthy refugee mega-camps Bangladesh) this hoped-for investment is now at risk.
So far investors have held their nerve but they are keenly aware of how Myanmar is perceived internationally. Businesses have come to invest in Myanmar’s economy because they believed it was going to be the next Asian high growth success story. With Myanmar’s military throwing its weight around and producing the largest flow of refugees in Southeast Asia since the 1970s, that narrative is suddenly at risk of turning into a story of how the international community moved prematurely to lift sanctions on an international pariah and then continued to reward it’s regionally destabilizing actions. Apart from China, which persecutes some of its own Muslim minorities at home, that is not a narrative foreign states or global businesses wish to be associated with.
There is now a clear danger that the military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing may drive away much of the FDI inflows with which the NLD is hoping to use to transform Myanmar and buy electoral support with. Any such economic slowdown would dent faith in the country’s democratic experiment and bolster support for authoritarian alternatives. The recent political histories of neighboring Thailand and Cambodia have certainly shown that Southeast Asian states are not immune to political backsliding once the opening to democracy has begun.
There were already international worries about the ability of Suu Kyi and her inexperienced party to handle the process of Myanmar’s economic transformation even before the current situation in Rakhine state erupted. Criticism focused on the fact that Suu Kyi’s leadership style saw her attempting to micro-manage multiple pressing issues, surrounded with loyalists who kept bad news away from their leader. Circling discussions on electricity investment, a weak top-down bureaucracy and terrible ease of doing business ratings were all combined with a leader who (in her first year of office) put a bigger priority on getting a durable national peace deal signed than with meeting business leaders’ concerns.
Now that Myanmar’s fledgling democratic leadership is further distracted by managing the PR disaster that is Rakhine state, it will have even less time and energy than before to settle upon a viable long term development strategy for its citizens. For now the best hope for the country’s political future is that Suu Kyi is persuaded to hand over responsibility for economic development to other (less damaged) hands, while she attempts to deal with Myanmar’s latest self-inflicted catastrophe.
Neil Thompson is a Contributing Analyst at geostrategic analysis and business consultancy Wikistrat and a blogger at the Foreign Policy Association. His work has appeared in The Diplomat, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the International Security Network, the Independent, and various other publications. He holds an MA in the international relations of East Asia and is presently based in London.
http://thediplomat.com/2017/09/economics-and-democracy-myanmars-myriad-challenges/
Bleed Myanmar through economic war of attrition. Another Afghanistan on the remaking?
TaiShang
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Welcome to the real World.
Indeed, real world.
***
More explosive devices uncovered in Myanmar northern state
Source: Xinhua Published: 2017/9/24 10:03:43
Seven more improvised explosive devices have been uncovered by Myanmar security forces in a village in Yathedaung township of Rakhine state, but were deactivated with no injury, Myanmar News Agency reported Sunday.
The explosive devices, found in Chein Khar Li village Saturday as the security forces were patrolling the area, were suspected of being planted by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) extremist terrorists.
The security forces also found six houses in two villages in Maungtaw and eight other Hindu houses in Kyein Chaung destroyed by fire, and the fire is suspected of starting from a Muslim house and then spread to nearby Hindu houses, the report said.
Myanmar government is working for the resettlement of refugees displaced at home and abroad due to conflicts in the country's northern Rakhine state.
Local people in the affected areas by the recent attack on Aug. 25 are being provided with humanitarian aid without discrimination, officials said, adding that the authorities are increasing more humanitarian aid to reach all areas in Rakhine state with the help of donor countries including those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Meanwhile, recommendations of the final report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine, led by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, are being implemented by the Implementation Committee.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1067870.shtml
Flynn Swagmire
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LOL, news from Burmese.
TaiShang
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Well, Xinhua.
I tend to trust China's media more than I trust others in providing realistic picture of developments in Myanmar. Other medias all have their own particular agendas, playing small dirty tricks.
China's agenda is peace, development and security.
Banglar Bir
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Rohingya refugee crisis: The fundamental questions
www.thestateless.com/2017/09/rohingya-refugee-crisis-the-fundamental-questions.html
Rohingya refugees react as they see the remains of a family member, whose family says he succumbed to injuries inflicted by the Myanmar Army before their arrival, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
By Tom Farrell, Big Issue
Is it Aung San Suu Kyi’s political expediency or fundamentalism that is fuelling the Rohingya refugee crisis? Tom Farrell visited Myanmar to report on the latest horrific chapter of a long-persecuted minority
It has been one of the most harrowing examples of ethnic cleansing in recent years. And it is a bitter irony that the exodus is taking place in Bangladesh. In 1971 newly independent Bangladesh was scene to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the late 20th century. That year’s calamity inspired massive relief efforts and a concert organised by George Harrison, as millions of refugees, fleeing civil war, poured into India.
Firstly, there has been the reaction of Myanmar’s ‘state counsellor’ Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, long feted by the likes of Bono and Barrack Obama, to the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) expelling over 420,000 Rohingyas from their lands in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where most of them live. Her response was silence at first.
Then asinine complaints followed about “an iceberg of misinformation” surrounding the Rohingya. When she finally acknowledged the crisis on September 19, her speech downplayed the civilian suffering and was seen as deferential to the military. Is she genuinely a racist or simply in fear of the same 400,000 strong Tatmadaw that ruled Myanmar (Burma) for decades and placed her under house arrest for 15 years?
Armed Forces guard a checkpoint into Aung Mingalar, a suburb inhabited by Rohingya
Secondly, there has been the rise in militancy by many Buddhist monks, applauding the expulsion of what they claim are unwelcome Muslim invaders. Accustomed to the smiling benevolence of the Dalai Lama and its unworldly mysticism, many westerners are taken aback: surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
Some time before the current wave of violence erupted, I took a flight from the Myanmar capital of Yangon (Rangoon) to Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State. Its population is a mix of Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists.
The town appeared as a somnolent sprawl from my upper storey guest house window, corrugated iron rooftops and the occasional gleaming temple amid lines of tamarinds and coconut palms. But also visible, skulking at checkpoints, were border police and soldiers from the Tatmadaw.
Rohingya refugees Dildar Begum and her daughter recover in hospital in Bangladesh, after being stabbed by Myanmar soldiers
Sittwe had already been purged of most of its Rohingya population. The 19th century Jama Mosque was cordoned off, with policemen sitting in front of barbed wire. The mosque still bore the fire damage of the previous year when it was torched by a mob of Rakhine Buddhists, allegedly with Tatmadaw complicity.
A few streets away, I found a row of gutted and bullet pocked buildings, former Rohingya houses and shops. When I started snapping shots, shouting locals chased me away.
I already had the number of a local community leader named Aung Win and we arranged to meet in the last remaining Rohingya sector of the town. But having hailed a motorised trishaw, I was stopped at a checkpoint because I had no clearance. A surreal episode then ensued as Aung Win, visible down several hundred yards of road, chatted with me.
Surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
“It started June last year,” said the 57-year old via his mobile. “Rakhine’s extremists arrived and they attacked Rohingya villages. My family was very lucky because my neighbours didn’t attack my house.”
All the while, the police sat near the checkpoint and looked listlessly at the few vehicles allowed to proceed into the Rohingya area
I ventured into the local government buildings, hoping to secure an afternoon pass into the ‘Rohingya area.’ A Rakhine civil servant scowled at me under spinning fans.
“They are not called Rohingyas! They are called Bengalis!” he snapped.
This reflected a prevailing view that the Rohingyas, contrary to archaeological evidence, are just migrants from next door Bangladesh.
“When we got independence [from Britain] in 1948, the parliamentary government already recognised the Rohingya as one of the ethnic groups in Burma,” Abu Tahay, a Rohingya legal expert told me in his office after I returned to Yangon. He added that the junta stripped them of citizenship in 1982, two decades after the military takeover.
Refugee crisis: “Every pair of shoes tells a story”
In Yangon it is easy to find CDs and DVDs of inflammatory sermons by right-wing monks, inveighing against rising Muslim birth rates in Myanmar and reminding the faithful that Buddhism’s reach across Asia was once much greater, Islam having extinguished its presence centuries ago.
Most prominent is the ‘969 Movement,’ led by Ashin Wirathu, a monk who was imprisoned from 2003-10 for inciting hatred against Muslims. The sermons of Wirathu, who in one interview said: “We would like to be like the English Defence League: not carrying out violence but protecting the public,” are all over social media and disseminated in the markets via DVD.
Sinhala Ravaya monks clash with police outside government buildings
But it is hard to believe Mrs Suu Kyi and Wirathu are cut from the same cloth. As her biographer Peter Popham has pointed out, there is little evidence of personal Islamophobia. After arriving in Oxford in 1964, Suu Kyi’s first serious boyfriend was a Pakistani fellow student. A close confident within her National League of Democracy (NLD) was a Burmese Muslim journalist and satirist named Maung Tha Ka, who perished in jail in June 1991, soon after the old junta cancelled an election result that the NLD had decisively won.
Mrs Suu Kyi’s inaction on the recent Buddhist-led violence may be explained by the Myanmar constitution. It prevented her from becoming President due to her having foreign sons with her late husband, British academic Michael Aris.
With a ‘caretaker’ military-backed regime now in power, she decided to stand for parliament in 2011, deeply suspicious of the document, imposed three years before, in a rigged referendum. In December that year, under pressure from Hilary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, she agreed to abide by the document.
Children in the town of Tak Bai, near the Malaysian border, have an armed escort
The constitution has ensured that the Tatmadaw still has massive powers. It has block representation within parliament and control of three key ministries: home affairs, defence and border affairs. The generals can still suspend democracy in the name of national security.
But Buddhist militancy is also on the rise in Sri Lanka and Thailand: the 969 Movement is known to have contacts with the Boda Balu Sena (Buddha Strike Force) in the former country. Operating as a kind of Buddhist vigilante group, the Buddha Strike Force has organised attacks on mosques and Christian churches.
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s murderous 26-year civil war, many more right-wing Buddhists feel validated in their belief that Buddha himself once consecrated ‘Holy’ Lanka as uniquely sacred to the faith. Likewise in Thailand, the separatist insurgency in the Muslim far south since 2004 has drawn many monks towards a more intolerant stance against Thai Muslims, even if many Muslims reject the notion of an independent state.
As more Rohingyas pour out of Myanmar, the much vaunted ‘Burma Spring’ seems as dead as its Arab namesake. Regardless of the faith in question, fundamentalism and militarism are a lethal mix in any nation’s politics.
Xinhua operates more than 170 foreign bureaus worldwide, and maintains 31 bureaus in China—one for each province, plus a military bureau. Xinhua is the sole channel for the distribution of important news related to the Communist Party and Chinese central government.
Xinhua has been criticized by international media for promoting propaganda, hate speech and racism against opponents of the Communist Party of China.
Due to the media censorship in China, Xinhua remains the major source for smaller news publications, eliciting a Conflict of Interest between the Communist Party and the news agency.
www.thestateless.com/2017/09/rohingya-refugee-crisis-the-fundamental-questions.html
Rohingya refugees react as they see the remains of a family member, whose family says he succumbed to injuries inflicted by the Myanmar Army before their arrival, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
By Tom Farrell, Big Issue
Is it Aung San Suu Kyi’s political expediency or fundamentalism that is fuelling the Rohingya refugee crisis? Tom Farrell visited Myanmar to report on the latest horrific chapter of a long-persecuted minority
It has been one of the most harrowing examples of ethnic cleansing in recent years. And it is a bitter irony that the exodus is taking place in Bangladesh. In 1971 newly independent Bangladesh was scene to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the late 20th century. That year’s calamity inspired massive relief efforts and a concert organised by George Harrison, as millions of refugees, fleeing civil war, poured into India.
Firstly, there has been the reaction of Myanmar’s ‘state counsellor’ Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, long feted by the likes of Bono and Barrack Obama, to the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) expelling over 420,000 Rohingyas from their lands in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where most of them live. Her response was silence at first.
Then asinine complaints followed about “an iceberg of misinformation” surrounding the Rohingya. When she finally acknowledged the crisis on September 19, her speech downplayed the civilian suffering and was seen as deferential to the military. Is she genuinely a racist or simply in fear of the same 400,000 strong Tatmadaw that ruled Myanmar (Burma) for decades and placed her under house arrest for 15 years?
Armed Forces guard a checkpoint into Aung Mingalar, a suburb inhabited by Rohingya
Secondly, there has been the rise in militancy by many Buddhist monks, applauding the expulsion of what they claim are unwelcome Muslim invaders. Accustomed to the smiling benevolence of the Dalai Lama and its unworldly mysticism, many westerners are taken aback: surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
Some time before the current wave of violence erupted, I took a flight from the Myanmar capital of Yangon (Rangoon) to Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State. Its population is a mix of Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists.
The town appeared as a somnolent sprawl from my upper storey guest house window, corrugated iron rooftops and the occasional gleaming temple amid lines of tamarinds and coconut palms. But also visible, skulking at checkpoints, were border police and soldiers from the Tatmadaw.
Rohingya refugees Dildar Begum and her daughter recover in hospital in Bangladesh, after being stabbed by Myanmar soldiers
Sittwe had already been purged of most of its Rohingya population. The 19th century Jama Mosque was cordoned off, with policemen sitting in front of barbed wire. The mosque still bore the fire damage of the previous year when it was torched by a mob of Rakhine Buddhists, allegedly with Tatmadaw complicity.
A few streets away, I found a row of gutted and bullet pocked buildings, former Rohingya houses and shops. When I started snapping shots, shouting locals chased me away.
I already had the number of a local community leader named Aung Win and we arranged to meet in the last remaining Rohingya sector of the town. But having hailed a motorised trishaw, I was stopped at a checkpoint because I had no clearance. A surreal episode then ensued as Aung Win, visible down several hundred yards of road, chatted with me.
Surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
“It started June last year,” said the 57-year old via his mobile. “Rakhine’s extremists arrived and they attacked Rohingya villages. My family was very lucky because my neighbours didn’t attack my house.”
All the while, the police sat near the checkpoint and looked listlessly at the few vehicles allowed to proceed into the Rohingya area
I ventured into the local government buildings, hoping to secure an afternoon pass into the ‘Rohingya area.’ A Rakhine civil servant scowled at me under spinning fans.
“They are not called Rohingyas! They are called Bengalis!” he snapped.
This reflected a prevailing view that the Rohingyas, contrary to archaeological evidence, are just migrants from next door Bangladesh.
“When we got independence [from Britain] in 1948, the parliamentary government already recognised the Rohingya as one of the ethnic groups in Burma,” Abu Tahay, a Rohingya legal expert told me in his office after I returned to Yangon. He added that the junta stripped them of citizenship in 1982, two decades after the military takeover.
Refugee crisis: “Every pair of shoes tells a story”
In Yangon it is easy to find CDs and DVDs of inflammatory sermons by right-wing monks, inveighing against rising Muslim birth rates in Myanmar and reminding the faithful that Buddhism’s reach across Asia was once much greater, Islam having extinguished its presence centuries ago.
Most prominent is the ‘969 Movement,’ led by Ashin Wirathu, a monk who was imprisoned from 2003-10 for inciting hatred against Muslims. The sermons of Wirathu, who in one interview said: “We would like to be like the English Defence League: not carrying out violence but protecting the public,” are all over social media and disseminated in the markets via DVD.
Sinhala Ravaya monks clash with police outside government buildings
But it is hard to believe Mrs Suu Kyi and Wirathu are cut from the same cloth. As her biographer Peter Popham has pointed out, there is little evidence of personal Islamophobia. After arriving in Oxford in 1964, Suu Kyi’s first serious boyfriend was a Pakistani fellow student. A close confident within her National League of Democracy (NLD) was a Burmese Muslim journalist and satirist named Maung Tha Ka, who perished in jail in June 1991, soon after the old junta cancelled an election result that the NLD had decisively won.
Mrs Suu Kyi’s inaction on the recent Buddhist-led violence may be explained by the Myanmar constitution. It prevented her from becoming President due to her having foreign sons with her late husband, British academic Michael Aris.
With a ‘caretaker’ military-backed regime now in power, she decided to stand for parliament in 2011, deeply suspicious of the document, imposed three years before, in a rigged referendum. In December that year, under pressure from Hilary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, she agreed to abide by the document.
Children in the town of Tak Bai, near the Malaysian border, have an armed escort
The constitution has ensured that the Tatmadaw still has massive powers. It has block representation within parliament and control of three key ministries: home affairs, defence and border affairs. The generals can still suspend democracy in the name of national security.
But Buddhist militancy is also on the rise in Sri Lanka and Thailand: the 969 Movement is known to have contacts with the Boda Balu Sena (Buddha Strike Force) in the former country. Operating as a kind of Buddhist vigilante group, the Buddha Strike Force has organised attacks on mosques and Christian churches.
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s murderous 26-year civil war, many more right-wing Buddhists feel validated in their belief that Buddha himself once consecrated ‘Holy’ Lanka as uniquely sacred to the faith. Likewise in Thailand, the separatist insurgency in the Muslim far south since 2004 has drawn many monks towards a more intolerant stance against Thai Muslims, even if many Muslims reject the notion of an independent state.
As more Rohingyas pour out of Myanmar, the much vaunted ‘Burma Spring’ seems as dead as its Arab namesake. Regardless of the faith in question, fundamentalism and militarism are a lethal mix in any nation’s politics.
The Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation:/ˌʃɪnˈhwɑː/) is the official press agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China. Xinhua is a ministry-level institution subordinate to the Chinese central government. Its president is a member of the Central Committee of China's Communist Party.
Xinhua operates more than 170 foreign bureaus worldwide, and maintains 31 bureaus in China—one for each province, plus a military bureau. Xinhua is the sole channel for the distribution of important news related to the Communist Party and Chinese central government.
Xinhua has been criticized by international media for promoting propaganda, hate speech and racism against opponents of the Communist Party of China.
Due to the media censorship in China, Xinhua remains the major source for smaller news publications, eliciting a Conflict of Interest between the Communist Party and the news agency.
At least you are honest.
I disagree that China is correct to protect Myanmar. World is watching and it now thinks China will behave like US if it had the power.
Yeah right.
China is backing a bunch of racist, bigoted and genocidal Buddhists.
Flynn Swagmire
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Chinas agenda is Chinese benefit. Nothing else...
And, the news above came from Burma without any neutral party verification (China isn't a neutral party here)...
Banglar Bir
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Chinese love $$$$$$$$$, long term geostrategic-geopolitical+economic interests, access to the warm waters and uninterrupted supply of hydrocarbon resources,the more the merrier.
TaiShang
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Rohingya refugee crisis: The fundamental questions
Rohingya refugees react as they see the remains of a family member, whose family says he succumbed to injuries inflicted by the Myanmar Army before their arrival, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton
By Tom Farrell, Big Issue
Is it Aung San Suu Kyi’s political expediency or fundamentalism that is fuelling the Rohingya refugee crisis? Tom Farrell visited Myanmar to report on the latest horrific chapter of a long-persecuted minority
It has been one of the most harrowing examples of ethnic cleansing in recent years. And it is a bitter irony that the exodus is taking place in Bangladesh. In 1971 newly independent Bangladesh was scene to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the late 20th century. That year’s calamity inspired massive relief efforts and a concert organised by George Harrison, as millions of refugees, fleeing civil war, poured into India.
Firstly, there has been the reaction of Myanmar’s ‘state counsellor’ Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate, long feted by the likes of Bono and Barrack Obama, to the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) expelling over 420,000 Rohingyas from their lands in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where most of them live. Her response was silence at first.
Then asinine complaints followed about “an iceberg of misinformation” surrounding the Rohingya. When she finally acknowledged the crisis on September 19, her speech downplayed the civilian suffering and was seen as deferential to the military. Is she genuinely a racist or simply in fear of the same 400,000 strong Tatmadaw that ruled Myanmar (Burma) for decades and placed her under house arrest for 15 years?
Armed Forces guard a checkpoint into Aung Mingalar, a suburb inhabited by Rohingya
Secondly, there has been the rise in militancy by many Buddhist monks, applauding the expulsion of what they claim are unwelcome Muslim invaders. Accustomed to the smiling benevolence of the Dalai Lama and its unworldly mysticism, many westerners are taken aback: surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
Some time before the current wave of violence erupted, I took a flight from the Myanmar capital of Yangon (Rangoon) to Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State. Its population is a mix of Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists.
The town appeared as a somnolent sprawl from my upper storey guest house window, corrugated iron rooftops and the occasional gleaming temple amid lines of tamarinds and coconut palms. But also visible, skulking at checkpoints, were border police and soldiers from the Tatmadaw.
Rohingya refugees Dildar Begum and her daughter recover in hospital in Bangladesh, after being stabbed by Myanmar soldiers
Sittwe had already been purged of most of its Rohingya population. The 19th century Jama Mosque was cordoned off, with policemen sitting in front of barbed wire. The mosque still bore the fire damage of the previous year when it was torched by a mob of Rakhine Buddhists, allegedly with Tatmadaw complicity.
A few streets away, I found a row of gutted and bullet pocked buildings, former Rohingya houses and shops. When I started snapping shots, shouting locals chased me away.
I already had the number of a local community leader named Aung Win and we arranged to meet in the last remaining Rohingya sector of the town. But having hailed a motorised trishaw, I was stopped at a checkpoint because I had no clearance. A surreal episode then ensued as Aung Win, visible down several hundred yards of road, chatted with me.
Surely violent, intolerant Buddhism is a contradiction in terms?
“It started June last year,” said the 57-year old via his mobile. “Rakhine’s extremists arrived and they attacked Rohingya villages. My family was very lucky because my neighbours didn’t attack my house.”
All the while, the police sat near the checkpoint and looked listlessly at the few vehicles allowed to proceed into the Rohingya area
I ventured into the local government buildings, hoping to secure an afternoon pass into the ‘Rohingya area.’ A Rakhine civil servant scowled at me under spinning fans.
“They are not called Rohingyas! They are called Bengalis!” he snapped.
This reflected a prevailing view that the Rohingyas, contrary to archaeological evidence, are just migrants from next door Bangladesh.
“When we got independence [from Britain] in 1948, the parliamentary government already recognised the Rohingya as one of the ethnic groups in Burma,” Abu Tahay, a Rohingya legal expert told me in his office after I returned to Yangon. He added that the junta stripped them of citizenship in 1982, two decades after the military takeover.
Refugee crisis: “Every pair of shoes tells a story”
In Yangon it is easy to find CDs and DVDs of inflammatory sermons by right-wing monks, inveighing against rising Muslim birth rates in Myanmar and reminding the faithful that Buddhism’s reach across Asia was once much greater, Islam having extinguished its presence centuries ago.
Most prominent is the ‘969 Movement,’ led by Ashin Wirathu, a monk who was imprisoned from 2003-10 for inciting hatred against Muslims. The sermons of Wirathu, who in one interview said: “We would like to be like the English Defence League: not carrying out violence but protecting the public,” are all over social media and disseminated in the markets via DVD.
Sinhala Ravaya monks clash with police outside government buildings
But it is hard to believe Mrs Suu Kyi and Wirathu are cut from the same cloth. As her biographer Peter Popham has pointed out, there is little evidence of personal Islamophobia. After arriving in Oxford in 1964, Suu Kyi’s first serious boyfriend was a Pakistani fellow student. A close confident within her National League of Democracy (NLD) was a Burmese Muslim journalist and satirist named Maung Tha Ka, who perished in jail in June 1991, soon after the old junta cancelled an election result that the NLD had decisively won.
Mrs Suu Kyi’s inaction on the recent Buddhist-led violence may be explained by the Myanmar constitution. It prevented her from becoming President due to her having foreign sons with her late husband, British academic Michael Aris.
With a ‘caretaker’ military-backed regime now in power, she decided to stand for parliament in 2011, deeply suspicious of the document, imposed three years before, in a rigged referendum. In December that year, under pressure from Hilary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, she agreed to abide by the document.
Children in the town of Tak Bai, near the Malaysian border, have an armed escort
The constitution has ensured that the Tatmadaw still has massive powers. It has block representation within parliament and control of three key ministries: home affairs, defence and border affairs. The generals can still suspend democracy in the name of national security.
But Buddhist militancy is also on the rise in Sri Lanka and Thailand: the 969 Movement is known to have contacts with the Boda Balu Sena (Buddha Strike Force) in the former country. Operating as a kind of Buddhist vigilante group, the Buddha Strike Force has organised attacks on mosques and Christian churches.
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s murderous 26-year civil war, many more right-wing Buddhists feel validated in their belief that Buddha himself once consecrated ‘Holy’ Lanka as uniquely sacred to the faith. Likewise in Thailand, the separatist insurgency in the Muslim far south since 2004 has drawn many monks towards a more intolerant stance against Thai Muslims, even if many Muslims reject the notion of an independent state.
As more Rohingyas pour out of Myanmar, the much vaunted ‘Burma Spring’ seems as dead as its Arab namesake. Regardless of the faith in question, fundamentalism and militarism are a lethal mix in any nation’s politics.
The Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation:/ˌʃɪnˈhwɑː/) is the official press agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China. Xinhua is a ministry-level institution subordinate to the Chinese central government. Its president is a member of the Central Committee of China's Communist Party.
Xinhua operates more than 170 foreign bureaus worldwide, and maintains 31 bureaus in China—one for each province, plus a military bureau. Xinhua is the sole channel for the distribution of important news related to the Communist Party and Chinese central government.
Xinhua has been criticized by international media for promoting propaganda, hate speech and racism against opponents of the Communist Party of China.
Due to the media censorship in China, Xinhua remains the major source for smaller news publications, eliciting a Conflict of Interest between the Communist Party and the news agency.
You are entitled to believe any media of your liking. In the end, it is a free market of news reporting. If Western narrative fits in your ideology, endorse it.
There is hardly any neutral party, in this case. It looks dangerously similar to Syria. I remember lots of child stars playing Assad bombing victims to the liking of the likes of CNN.
In any case, I do not expect China to allow a divided Myanmar. That's even against Bangladesh interests. Definitely against China's interests. The crisis needs a solution without breaching Myanmar's sovereignty. No RTP action by the UN in China's doorsteps.
First and foremost, security and development, which is good not only for China, but for all the rest. Besides, Myanmar stands at a significant juncture of the Belt and Road.
Banglar Bir
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TaiShang
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For regional interest, first and foremost, which is also part and parcel of national interest. The two cannot be separated. A region in turmoil will do good to nobody other than outsiders with agendas. As I said in my first post, Balkanization of East Asia cannot be tolerated. This is so even if it appears to be doing injustice in the short run. In the long run, everybody will benefit from warless and security-non-multilateralized regional existence.
Banglar Bir
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That's exactly what was the USA's position was in the Far East Asian conflict,and former USSR's stance in Afghanistan. Wishing you all the best in your endeavours
.Myanmar is not a nation. It is a legal entity where many nations make an artificial entity called a country.
Sorry if it hurts your interests but it needs to be split into it's constituent parts
and then there will be peace. No power in this world can stop the disintegration of Myanmar.
Chinese-Dragon
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It is Bangladesh who says they want to return all the Rohingya to Myanmar where they will be killed.
If you really feel so badly for them, then don't return them, give them Bangladeshi citizenship. After all they are your fellow Bengali Muslims, if you won't give them citizenship, who will?
