How bad do you have to be to provoke rage in a Buddhist monk? Pretty bad! I don't usually cover events outside of Europe on this blog but I thought this item was worth highlighting given its relevance to our situation. It shows, to anyone who still doubts it, that Islam really is uniquely problematical. Antipathy to Islam is not the expression of some generalised "xenophobia". Islam is genuinely different. It also shows that more and more people are coming to realise that there really is no solution to the problems Muslims present except confining them to territories of their own and quarantining them from the rest of the human race. In practice, that means expelling Muslims from the non-Muslim territories they're already in. Whoever has moral inhibitions about this - and that includes quite a few people in the Counterjihad movement - needs to overcome them.
After leading some of the largest demonstrations against Burma’s former military junta in 2007, hundreds of Buddhist monks have once again taken to the streets in protest. Yet instead of marching to demand greater freedoms, they are demonstrating in support of President Thein Sein’s recent proposal to either deport members of the country’s minority Rohingya Muslim community, or send them to camps.
The demonstration follows months of unrest in the country’s western Rakhine state between the region’s ethnic Buddhist communities and the Rohingya. Violence first broke out in June, after a Buddhist woman was raped and then killed, allegedly by Muslims. Outraged by the crime, a local mob attacked a bus, beating 10 Muslims to death in the process. Since then, Rakhine state has been plagued by periodic clashes between the two groups, which have left at least 90 people dead, according to an official estimate. Human rights group fear, however, that the death toll could be much higher.
In response to the mounting violence in Rakhine state, Burma’s government launched an investigation into the violence in the region. While Thein Sein in part blamed Buddhist monks and other ethnic Rakhine figures for inciting hatred against the Rohingya in a parliamentary report last month, he also echoed past comments, in which he said that the minority group was not welcome within Burma’s borders, and that the only “solution” was to either deport or send them to camps.
Sign reads: "Protect mother Myanmar by supporting the president".
Rallying behind the president’s plan, hundreds of Buddhists and other demonstrators gathered in Mandalay on September 2, holding up signs that read “Protect mother Myanmar by supporting the president”.
According to the UN, there are an estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims currently living in Burma. Many in the country refer to them as “Bengalis”, because they speak a regional dialect of Bengali. The Rohingya, however, are stateless. Claiming centuries of lineage in Rakhine state, Rohinhya activists have long petitioned for Burmese citizenship, to no avail. This means they have little access to education or health care and face travel restrictions.
U Wirathu
Kio
“It’s a question of justice”
U Wirathu led the anti-Rohingya protests in Mandalay on Sunday, September 2.
We decided to hold the protest for three reasons. First off, we wanted the world to know that the Rohingya are not among the 135 different ethnic groups that are recognised in Burma. We also wanted to make sure everyone knew that we, as Burmese people, do not condone their acts of violence. Lastly, we wanted to highlight the importance of border security, by pointing out the fact that there have been some on the western border [which runs along Bangladesh] in the past who were not concerned with Rakhine’s security and did their job carelessly.
We have lived peacefully among different religions and ethnicities for years. But we now have these illegal Bengali immigrants demanding to be recognised as a native ethnic group and asking to be granted citizenship. We want people to know the truth, that the Rohingya are not Burmese and that they are not a peaceful group. If they lived quietly, we would allow them to stay regardless of the fact they entered the country illegally.
It’s not that we want all immigrants, illegal or not, to leave Burma. There are a lot of illegal Chinese immigrants here too, but the difference is that they just go about their own business. They’re not trying to swallow native tribes and colonise the country, or destroy our religion. [Burma’s entire Muslim population makes up 4 percent of the population.]
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