Letter from America: Wirathu – the face of Buddhist Terror

Dr. Habib Siddiqui

Asiantribune

In its July 1 issue, the Time magazine has covered the recent genocidal activities against the Muslims of Myanmar. In this, reporter Hannah Beech has done an excellent job analyzing the role played by Wirathu, a Buddhist monk, who has become the face of Buddhist terrorism. Her report has stirred up a hornet’s nest among the Buddhists. They are very upset.

  Unlike OBL, whose views had forced him to settle for a life of refuge outside the country, Wirathu who likes to call him ‘the Burmese bin Laden’ is quite popular inside Myanmar. He is an abbot who has a significant following not just within the Sangha but also within the government, military, and civilian population of his Buddhist-majority country. Soon after the publication of the Times issue, President Thein Sein came to his defense and said, "Buddhist monks, also known as Sanghas, are noble people who keep the 277 precepts or moral rules, and strive peacefully for the prosperity of Buddhism.” From such testimonials, it is not difficult to understand the level of support that Wirathu’s 969 Movement – or more correctly creed - enjoys inside Myanmar. And this is troubling. It paints a very damning picture not only about Myanmar – long known for its gruesome records of human rights violations but also about its Buddhist faith sanctioning such horrendous crimes.
After all, there is nothing honorable about the 969 Movement, which Wirathu launched in 2001. It draws its inspiration from fascism and Nazism and is racist, bigotry-ridden and apartheid to the core calling for boycott of anything Muslim the same way Jews of Germany were depicted and treated in the 1930s and 1940s until the fall of Hitler. "We have a slogan: When you eat, eat 969; when you go, go 969; when you buy, buy 969," Wirathu declared at his monastery in Mandalay. (Translation: If you're eating, traveling or buying anything, do it with a Buddhist.) This apartheid 969 creed led to sharp increase in anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar, especially after the Bamiyan statues were destroyed by Taliban in March of 2001. As a result, several mosques were destroyed by Buddhist monks. The sporadic violence which included killing of several Muslims and destruction of Muslim properties and mosques would continue until 2003 when he was arrested. The military regime sentenced him to 25 years in prison for distributing anti-Muslim pamphlets that incited communal riots in his birthplace of Kyaukse, a town near Meikhtila. At least 10 Muslims were killed in Kyaukse by a Buddhist mob, according to a U.S. State Department report.
Wirathu was freed last year from jail during an amnesty for hundreds of political prisoners, among the most celebrated reforms of Myanmar's post-military rule. He is now an abbot in Mandalay's Masoeyein Monastery, an expansive complex where he leads about 60 monks and has influence over more than 2,500 residing there. From that power base, he is again preaching hatred and intolerance. Many monks are highly influenced by his hateful messages, and are directly involved in genocidal campaigns against the minority Muslim population in Myanmar. They are also supported by government agencies at all levels - from local to central.
It is widely believed by Dr. Maung Zarni and many other independent researchers that the government of Thein Sein is using Wirathu and his terrorist monks, with wide support within the Buddhist society, to do what it could not do officially. Thus, the crimes of Wirathu cannot be separated from those of Thein Sein. They are in collusion.
Nyi Nyi Lwin, a former monk better known as U Gambira who led the "Saffron Revolution" democracy uprising in 2007 that was crushed by the military told Reuters that if government was serious to stop anti-Muslim pogroms, it could do it. "In the past, they prevented monks from giving speeches about democracy and politics. This time they don't stop these incendiary speeches. They are supporting them," he said. "Because Wirathu is an abbot at a big monastery of about 2,500 monks, no one dares to speak back to him. The government needs to take action against him."
Last year in May-October when Rohingya Muslims were killed in the Arakan state, the Buddhist monks played major roles not only in inciting violence against them, they allowed their monasteries to be used as arms depot and also participated themselves in the slaughter. Government security forces and ultra-racist Rakhine politicians also participated in such raids. The anti-Muslim pogroms last year led to the death of hundreds of Muslims and homelessness of nearly 140,000 Muslims in the Rakhine state.
Seventy Muslims were slaughtered in a daylong massacre in one hamlet alone, according to Human Rights Watch. Children were hacked apart and women torched. In several instances, monks were seen goading on frenzied Buddhists. Muslim townships and villages were totally wiped out from the map. As usual, in this Buddhist country not a single Buddhist was found guilty for committing such horrendous crimes against the minority Muslims.
The communal violence, which the government has done little to check, has since migrated to other parts of the country. In March, dozens were killed and tens of thousands left homeless as homes and mosques were razed in Meikhtila. As widely documented, Buddhist monks led the massacre of Muslims and destruction of Muslim properties there. Rioters spray-painted "969" on destroyed businesses. A knife-wielding Buddhist monk was video-taped holding a Muslim girl. "If you follow us, I'll kill her," the monk taunted police, as a Buddhist mob armed with machetes and swords chased nearly 100 Muslims in this city in central Myanmar. It was Thursday, March 21. Within hours, the Buddhist monks led the mob to kill dozens of Muslims. The killings took place in plain view of police, with no intervention by the local or central government. The police were told not to intervene. The region's military commander, Aung Kyaw Moe, could have stopped the riots with a few stern orders - especially given that thousands of soldiers are permanently stationed in Meikhtila and nearby. [That pattern echoed what Reuters reporters found last year in an examination of October's anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar's western Rakhine State. There, a wave of deadly attacks was organized, according to central-government military sources. They were led by Rakhine Buddhist nationalists tied to a powerful political party in the state, incited by Buddhist monks, and assisted by local security forces.]
Graffiti scrawled on one wall in Meikhtila called for a "Muslim extermination." The Buddhist mob dragged their bloodied bodies up a hill in a neighborhood called Mingalarzay Yone and set the corpses on fire. Some were found butchered in a reedy swamp. A Reuter’s cameraman saw the charred remains of two children, aged 10 or younger. As noted by Min Ko Naing, a revered former political prisoner, bulldozers were used to destroy Muslim properties. Some 1600 Muslim owned homes and businesses were destroyed in Meikhtila. A historic mosque and an orphanage were also burned. By March 29, at least 15 towns and villages in central Myanmar had suffered anti-Muslims pogroms. In many of these incidents, Buddhist monks not only stopped firemen from dousing fire but also participated in killings of Muslims.
In his report, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar said he had received reports of "state involvement" in the violence. Soldiers and police sometimes stood by "while atrocities have been committed before their very eyes, including by well-organized ultra-nationalist Buddhist mobs," said the rapporteur.
Wirathu had a quick answer to the question of who caused Meikhtila's unrest: the Buddhist woman who tried to sell the hair clip. "She shouldn't have done business with Muslims."
As I have repeatedly said in my speeches and writings, genocide of Muslims has become a national project in Myanmar in which most Buddhists at all levels – from sly President Thein Sein to ignoble Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi to racist politicians to terrorist monk Wirathu to ordinary monks to criminal members of the security forces to general public – are involved one way or another. That is why Suu Kyi is silent on this greatest crime of the 21st century. Her criminal silence to condemn the anti-Muslim pogroms in her country has disgraced the Nobel Peace Prize!
Naturally, Wirathu's fascist movement is working: 969 stickers and signs are proliferating everywhere like mushroom — often accompanied by violence. Anti-Muslim mobs in Bago Region, close to Yangon, erupted after traveling monks preached about the 969 movement. Stickers bearing pastel hues overlaid with the numerals 969 are appearing on street stalls, motorbikes, posters and cars across the central heartlands. In his speech in a community center in Minhla, a town of about 100,000 people, which is a few hours' drive from Yangon, on February 26 and 27, in front of thousands of Buddhist monks, Wimalar Biwuntha, an abbot from Mon State, explained how monks in his state began using 969 to boycott a popular Muslim-owned bus company.
After the speeches, the mood in Minhla turned ugly. Muslims were jeered. A month later, about 800 Buddhists armed with metal pipes and hammers destroyed three mosques and 17 Muslim homes and businesses, according to police. No one was killed, but two-thirds of Minhla's Muslims fled and haven't returned, police said. One attacker was armed with a chainsaw, he said.
As reported by Reuters a local police official made a deal with the mob: Rioters were allowed 30 minutes to ransack a mosque before police would disperse the crowd, according to two witnesses. They tore it apart for the next half hour, the witnesses said. A hollowed-out structure remains.
Two days earlier in Gyobingauk, a town of 110,000 people just north of Minhla, a mob destroyed a mosque and 23 houses after three days of speeches by a monk preaching 969. Witnesses said they appeared well organized, razing some buildings with a bulldozer.
On April 2, 13 Muslim boys died in a fire at a Yangon religious school. The floors were surprisingly slick with oil during the blaze, clearly pointing out that the blaze was deliberately set by others. However, the local police blamed the fire on electric problem.
For too long we in the West had entertained a very romantic view of Buddhism. Forgotten or ignored there was the ground reality of Buddhist crimes done under the name of religion, let alone its people. As I have noted in my book ‘Rohingya: the forgotten people of our time’, for hundreds of years the Arakanese Buddhist Maghs terrorized Bengal and neighboring territories of Muslim-ruled India. That history is a blood-soaked history of unfathomable cruelty and savagery that devastated Bengal (today’s Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal of India). According to the words of historian Shihabuddin Talish, an eye witness: "They [Buddhist Maghs] carried off the Hindus and Muslims, male and female, great and small, few and many that they could seize, pierced the palms of their hands, passed thin canes through the holes and threw them one above another under the deck of their ships.” He continued, “The Magh did not leave a bird in the air, or a beast on the land from Chatgaon [Chittagong] to Jagdia, the frontier of Bengal, increased the desolation, thickened the jungles, destroyed the land, closed the road so well that even the snake and the wild could not pass through.”
As also noted by British historian G.E. Harvey, “The Arakan pirates, both Magh and feringhi, used to come by the water-route and plunder Bengal. Mohammedans underwent such oppression, as they had not to suffer in Europe. As they continually practiced raids for a long time, Bengal daily became more and more desolate and less and less able to resist them. Not a house was left inhabited on their side of the rivers lying on their track from Chittagong to Dacca. The district of Bakla [Backergunge and part of Dacca], which formerly abounded in houses and cultivated fields and yield a large revenue as duty on betel-nuts, was swept so clean with their broom of plunder and abduction that none was left to tenant any house or kindle a light in that region.”
While the children of abducted slaves of Africa are recognized as citizens in the USA, the children of those abducted Bengali Muslims, settled in Arakan state and elsewhere inside Myanmar, are now denied their due citizenship rights.
I wish I could have said that the savagery of the Buddhist Maghs and Bamars of Myanmar had stopped. Alas, the recent history of Myanmar has once again proven that they are beyond reform. They never understood civility and like to remain buried in their savage past. Thus, rather than condemning the religio-racist violence led by a criminal Buddhist monk, Wirathu is celebrated as a national hero and his horrendous crimes are condoned by the highest authority of the land. Only in Mogher Mulluk can one witness such an amazing thing!
One should thank the Time magazine and its courageous reporter Hannah Beech for a much needed factual account of a war criminal like Wirathu who is a disgrace to any religion. With the religious edicts he and other terrorist monks make they soil the good name of their faith, and portray the ugly side of what Theravada Buddhism has become in Myanmar that scripts and directs genocide against an unarmed minority. It is disgraceful!
Thein Sein cannot hoodwink the rest of the world with his appeasing comments that these terrorist monks are model Buddhists who only strive for Buddhist prosperity. At whose expense is such prosperity earned? Is genocide or pogrom of another people acceptable in that goal of selective prosperity? If not, his government better stop Wirathu and his terrorist supporters now. If the answer is yes, then he better accept the grim reality that Buddhism in Myanmar means genocide of other non-Buddhists, esp. its Muslim population. Period and simple! Thein Sein and other Buddhists of Myanmar cannot have it both ways.
When asked about the Time cover story, Wirathu said, "This is being done because the Islamic extremists want my downfall. ... If I fall down, it will be very easy for the extremist who wants to overwhelm Burma with their extreme beliefs. They want me to be arrested, or killed. That’s why, they put me on the [Time] cover, I think. … Extremists are trying to turn Burma into an Islamic country. There is financial, technological, human resources support for this, even media support. I’ve observed these things and because I’m speaking out to show these things to the world, I have become their number 1 enemy, so they are targeting me."
He repeats the same mantra uttered by every damn Nazi and fascist before him. Pure nonsense to justify their savagery unto the minority people! It is inexcusable.
Is there any hope in Myanmar? I am glad that a monk like U Pantavunsa is speaking out against such monstrosity done in the name of Buddhism. How far such dissent voices would succeed, I don't know.
Nonetheless, it is high time for conscientious human beings inside and outside Burma to condemn the 969 movement and its executioners for the crimes against humanity.
They must also demand restoration of citizenship and human rights for all the residents of Myanmar.

Letter from America: The Rohingya Question – Part 6 Dr. Habib Siddiqui

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

As we have noted elsewhere there are other records, including British, which mention the name Rohingya. Consider, for instance, the account of the English surgeon to Embassy of Ava, Dr. Francis Buchanan (1762-1829 CE), who visited Burma decades before the British occupied the territory.He published his major work “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire” in 1799, in the fifth volume of Asiatic Researches, which provides one of the first major Western surveys of the languages of Burma. What is more important is that his article provides important data on the ethno-cultural identities and identifications of the various population groups in the first half of Bodawpaya’s reign (1782-1819).
He wrote, “I shall now add three dialects, spoken in the Burma Empire, but evidently derived from the language of the Hindu nation. The first is that spoken by the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan. The second dialect is that spoken by the Hindus of Arakan. I procured it from a Brahmen [Brahmin] and his attendants, who had been brought to Amarapura by the king’s eldest son, on his return from the conquest of Arakan. They call themselves Rossawn, and, for what reason I do not know, wanted to persuade me that theirs was the common language of Arakan.
Both these tribes, by the real natives of Arakan, are called Kulaw Yakain, or stranger Arakan. The last dialect of the Hindustanee which I shall mention is that of a people called, by the Burmas, Aykobat, many of them are slaves at Amarapura. By one of them I was informed, that they had called themselves Banga; that formerly they had kings of their own; but that, in his father’s time, their kingdom had been overturned by the king of Munnypura [Manipur], who carried away a great part of the inhabitants to his residence. When that was taken last by the Burmas, which was about fifteen years ago, this man was one of the many captives who were brought to Ava. He said also, that Banga was seven days’ journey south-west from Munnypura: it must, therefore, be on the frontiers of Bengal, and may, perhaps, be the country called in our maps Cashar [Cachar].” [Notes: 1. In the above account, the word Rohingya is spelled as Rooinga.. 2. Cachar district, part of the state of Assam in India, is located north-east of Sylhet in Bangladesh; it is located between the Indian state of Manipur and Bangladesh.]
Dr. Buchanan’s above statement is very revealing in that it shows that before the British occupied Arakan and the rest of Burma there were already Muslims living there who had identified themselves as the Rohingya, and that it was not an invented term. This observation squarely contradicts the current campaign by ultra-nationalist Rakhines and Burman racists that the Rohingyas settled in the Arakan only after the British occupation.
In his massive work - A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of Hindostan and the Adjacent Countries in Two Volumes, published in London in 1820, Walter Hamilton wrote about Arakan (the Rakhine state), “The Moguls know this country by the name of Rakhang, and the Mahommedans, who have been long settled in the country, call themselves Rooinga, or the natives of Arracan.”
Thus, we can draw the conclusion that before the British even entered Arakan, the Muslim inhabitants called themselves by that name and were known as such by others.
These revelations about the Rohingya people from Buchanan and Hamilton should not come as a surprise to any genuine researcher of Arakanese and Burmese history. Numerous research works have demonstrated that a substantial portion of Arakan’s Muslim population was made up of descendants of Muslims who had lived in Arakan for centuries.
In his first hand account of the Arakanese Muslims, Charles Paton, wrote, “The Musselman Sirdars generally speak good Hindustani, but the lower orders of that class, who speak a broken sort of Hindustani, are quite unintelligible to those who are not thoroughly acquainted with the jargon of the southern parts of the Chittagong district.” It is not difficult to understand why the elites (Sirdars or Sardars) within the Arakanese Muslim society - the descendants of those attached to royalty and those in high offices - were more familiar with Hindustani, which is closer to Farsi, than the less educated cultivator class. Many of the forefathers of those elites came as the soldiers of generals Wali Khan and Sandi Khan who came to restore the kingdom of Nara-meik-hla in the early 15th century, and courtiers, ministers and administrators – as we shall see below - that later attached themselves with the Arakanese royalty in Mrohaung.
In his travelogue, the Augustine monk Friar Sebastian Manrique mentioned Arakanese king’s coronation ceremony in the early 17th century in which the parade was opened by Muslim cavalry unit of Rajputres from India, which was led by its cavalry leader.
Michael Charney in his doctoral dissertation (under the supervision of Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan) mentions about the emergence of Muslim ‘cultivator’ class in Arakan from at least the 17th century when large number of Bengalis were kidnapped by Maghs and Portuguese slave traders to work in the Kaladan valley. Quoting Manrique, he says that from 1622 to 1634, some 42,000 Bengali captives were brought in by the Portuguese pirates. By 1630, there were probably 11,000 Bengali families living in rural areas of Danra-waddy. The actual number is, however, significantly higher since there were also royal-sponsored campaigns to bring Bengalis as captives. Charney estimates that between 1617 and 1666, the total number of those Bengali captives could be 147,000. He also mentions about Bengali captives brought from Chittagong to Arakan as late as 1723 during the reign of Sanda-wizaya-raza. Those captives were called Kala-douns in the Arakanese chronicles, “who were then donated as pagoda-slaves in the ordination halls and monasteries, including the Maha-muni shrine complex.”
As noted by Professor Moshe Yegar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the capture and enslavement of prisoners was one of the most lucrative types of plunder of Bengal by joint Magh and Portuguese pirates. In his article, “The Crescent in the Arakan”, Yegar wrote, “Half the prisoners taken by the Portuguese and all the artisans among them were given to the king; the rest were sold on market or forced to settle in the villages near Mrohaung. A considerable number of these captives were Muslims.” It is not difficult to surmise that those abducted slaves and their descendants would identify themselves as the Rohingya.
Charney writes, “It is not surprising that in the late 1770s, as observers based in Chittagong explained, ‘Almost three-fourths of the inhabitants of Rekheng [Danra-waddy] are said to be natives of Bengal, or descendants of such… In short, despite the lack of complete data, it is still apparent that the demographic contribution of Bengali captives to Danra-waddy’s population is considerable.”
Charles Paton, similarly, mentioned the reason why the Rohingya Muslims were traditionally employed in farming: “The Mugs being particularly fond of hunting and fishing, do not make such good farmers as the Musselmans; however, as Banias and shop-keepers, they surpass the Bengalis in cunning, and, on all occasions try, and very often successfully, to overreach their customers: stealing is a predominant evil amongst them …” The Arakanese (Rohingya) Muslims and Hindus, as children of the indigenous people of the soil, were mostly involved in wet farming since time immemorial, a tradition which they retained before and after the British moved into Arakan.
Charney also mentions about the existence of a small group of Muslims dating as far back as the 9th century. He also cites Arakan traditions which hold that ship-wrecked Muslims had settled in Arakan as early as the 8th century. The Muslim population grew significantly with the Mrauk-U dynasty. Even Muslim mercenaries were brought in to fight in special campaign or to solve special problems within Arakan. He writes, “It is unlikely that these mercenaries had no influence in terms of advertising Islam to the Arakanese. After all, the Muslim mercenaries who helped restore Nara-meik-hla to his throne seem to have built the Santikan mosque in Mrauk-U in about 1430. There was also certainly a small Muslim presence among the intermediary service elites in the royal city during the early Mrauk-U period… At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there were many Muslims in the Arakanese court, including a Turkish courtier … who seems to have become a kind of royal adviser.”
There was also a small, but wealthy and influential community of Muslim traders in Arakan. “Even higher status Muslims arrived as political refugees from Bengal with Shah Shuja in the mid-seventeenth century. Together, Muslims in the royal city formed a special social group with a privileged and unique socio-political role than their rural counterparts enjoyed, with different connections to the Muslim world,” notes Charney. Suffice it to say that before Bodawpaya’s invasion of Arakan, Arakanese Muslims (also known as the Rohingya) were employed in various professions: from high ranking courtiers in the capital city to non-elites and agriculturalists into the countryside.
Quoting British census, Charney says that in 1891 there were 126,586 Muslims in Arakan (most of whom were concentrated in Danra-Waddy, wherein sat the capital), comprising roughly 19% of the total population. This figure should not come as a surprise given the fact that in the 1830s, at least 30% of Arakan’s general population was Muslim. For the original number to increase to the 1891 number, only a growth rate of 2.24% was necessary. This annual growth rate is below what was prevalent in those days amongst the Muslim population in Bengal and Arakan suggesting rather strongly that to grow to that size it did not require an influx from outside.
As I have pointed out in an earlier work on demography in Arakan, a rational basis for understanding the size of the Rohingya population in Burma during the British period lies in Charles Paton’s data when the East India Company colonized Arakan. As the Sub-commissioner in Aracan (Arakan), he was able to estimate the population soon after Arakan came under British rule. He said, “The population of Aracan and its dependencies, Ramree, Cheduba, and Sandoway, does not, at present, exceed a hundred thousand souls, and may be classed as follows: Mugs, six-tenths; Musselmans, three-tenths; Burmese, one-tenth; total, 100,000 souls.”
The questions that an unbiased researcher, therefore, has to ask are: what happened to those 30,000 Arakanese Muslims whom Paton called Musselmans? During the British period in 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931 and 1941 or thereafter what was the size of their population?
Ignoring such obvious signs and records of presence, many Rohingya-deniers continue to say that the Rohingyas are not an ethnic group in Myanmar. And in recent months we have witnessed quite a few state-managed demonstrations, which even included highly politicized pro-government, ultra-racist monks carrying placards that demanded that the 1982 constitution – responsible for making the Rohingya people stateless - should be strictly followed by the government so that they can be removed from Myanmar. Claims and demands of this kind are symptomatic of the depth of racism and bigotry that has penetrated the Buddhist society inside Myanmar. Consequently, the latest genocidal campaign to ethnically cleanse the Rohingya which began in June of 2012 has already succeeded in uprooting more than a hundred thousand Rohingya people who are now forced to live in concentration camps, unless they choose to settle for a life of uncertainty elsewhere. They cannot go out to fetch livelihood. As al-Jazeera’s documentary film ‘The Hidden Genocide’ revealed, they are starving to death. It is a slow death camp for them!
====? To be continued.
For part 1: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2012/11/24/letter-america-rohingya-ques...
For part 2: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2012/12/01/letter-america-rohingya-ques... ;
For part 3: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2012/12/08/letter-america-rohingya-ques...
For part 4: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2012/12/15/letter-america-rohingya-ques...
For part 5: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2012/12/22/letter-america-rohingya-ques...
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