March 28, 2013
The Economist
Sectarian violence was not supposed to be part of Myanmar’s bright new direction
WHEN Myanmar’s newly installed president and former soldier, Thein
Sein, kick-started the country’s political transition two years ago, he
hoped to usher in a clean and steady advance towards some sort of
orderly democracy. Now, however, things are starting to turn out rather
differently.
Unwittingly, it seems, in relaxing decades of tight army control over
the country, Mr Thein Sein and his reforming ministers have breathed
life into some of the uglier forces in Myanmar society that
authoritarian rule kept suppressed, notably sectarian violence. (In the
past, when such violence took place, it was the prerogative of the armed
forces to conduct it.)
On March 20th, provoked by a small argument in a gold shop, a
Buddhist mob rampaged through the central Burmese town of Meiktila,
killing over 30 people and injuring about another 70. The Buddhists
burned mosques and Muslim homes before marching many of the terrified
survivors out of town. The intercommunal violence has so far displaced
over 12,000 people.
Meiktila, between Mandalay and the new capital of Naypyidaw, was put
under a curfew, together with three nearby townships. But the violence
quickly spread to other areas, creeping always closer to Yangon, the old
capital and commercial centre. On March 25th mosques and houses in
Okpho and Gyonbingauk townships were attacked, just 125 miles (200km)
north. In Yangon itself rumours of imminent and co-ordinated attacks by
Buddhist youths have swept through Muslim districts for weeks. People
have been stockpiling rice and other food, anticipating a prolonged
siege. So far, only sporadic attacks have taken place. But Yangon is on
edge, and Muslim shopkeepers lock up at the first hint of trouble.
This violence in the Burmese heartland follows on from, and is
clearly inspired by, the massacres of Rohingya Muslims around Sittwe,
the capital of the western state of Rakhine, that happened last year.
About 180 were killed and over 100,000 Rohingyas made homeless in two
bouts of ethnic cleansing. Those Rohingyas now live in squalid refugee
camps, under curfew and prevented from travelling into Sittwe, let alone
to anywhere else in Myanmar. Cut off from their sources of income and
livelihoods, many attempt each day to flee to neighbouring countries in
rickety fishing boats. Some make it, but others drown. Still more fall
victim to traffickers.
In Sittwe recently, mobs of Buddhist bigots and extreme Rakhine
nationalists exercised their newly gained freedoms by marching through
town past the charred remains of Rohingya houses and mosques. They
screamed hatred at Muslims and denounced countries such as Turkey that
want to aid the helpless refugees. Buddhist monks, heroes of the 2007
“saffron revolution” that tried to unseat the old military regime, egg
on the crowds and help organise the protests. This is the looking-glass
world of the new Myanmar. Now it is only the once-reviled army that
stands between minority Muslims and the bloodlust of Buddhist
chauvinists.
In Rakhine animosity towards Muslims goes back a long way, and now
that central political control is loosening, old scores are being
settled. Local Rakhines regard all Rohingyas, who are denied
citizenship, as illegal “Bengali” immigrants, even though Rohingyas were
in Rakhine not only before the British came, but even before Burmese
rule.
Elsewhere in Myanmar ethnic Burman Buddhists have always resented the
descendants of Indian Muslims who arrived on the coat-tails of the
British in the 19th century to take all the best jobs and, to their
mind, swamp the local cultures. In the early 20th century over half of
the population of the booming commercial hub of Yangon were South Asian.
A British administrator, J.S. Furnivell, coined the term “plural
society” to describe the extraordinary diversity of races and religions
in Burma’s cities under British rule: Bengali Muslims jostled alongside
Iraqi Jews and Armenian Christians.
The indigenous Buddhists, however, lost out, so the first thing the
generals did when they seized power in 1962 was to exact revenge by
nationalising businesses and forcing hundreds of thousands of Indians
back to India or what then was East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The 2.5m
people of Indian origin who remain are stigmatised and vulnerable; most
have no citizenship. In this sense the Buddhist mobs are finishing off
what the Burman chauvinist generals started in the 1960s. Piled on top
of ancient resentments, more recent prejudices circulate via the
internet and social media and feed into the ideologies of
Buddhist-chauvinist groups, some of which are implicated in the Meiktila
violence. So much for a plural society.
Immersed in their reform agenda, the country’s politicians, including
Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy, have
been taken by surprise. But even a correct response to the violence
carries risks. A government commission into last year’s brutalities in
Rakhine state is due to be published soon. If, as is expected, it
recommends some sort of legal security for the Rohingyas, though just
short of citizenship, that could spark another round of anti-Muslim
rioting across the country. Mr Thein Sein and Miss Suu Kyi will need to
show moral leadership in the face of Buddhist chauvinism. The
alternative could be ugly.
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