Published daily by the Lowy Institute. The release of hard-line Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu bodes ill for the rights of the country's religious minorities. In a statement , the military said it had dropped charges against Wirathu of sedition directed towards the previous Aung San Suu Kyi-led government. No reason was cited for his release.
The monk had turned himself in for arrest last November, having been on the run for more than a year. While Buddhism is rarely associated with extremism or violence, the year-old Wirathu espouses a militant view that justifies the use of force against religious and cultural others, and supports authoritarian regimes.
Wirathu was accused of inciting hate speech against the Rohingyas, who are viewed as having immigrated from Bangladesh illegally, despite many of their families living in Myanmar for generations. The Rohingya issue put Wirathu in the international spotlight. Facebook banned him from its platform in , while the National Monks Council in Myanmar barred him from speaking publicly for a year, although this was not tightly enforced.
Until his arrest, Wirathu continued to maintain an online presence and gave speeches around the country. Ma Ba Tha has been involved in various anti-Muslim campaigns , and has successfully lobbied for laws that limit the civil rights of Muslim minorities in Myanmar. While banned by the previous civilian government in , the group rebranded itself as the Buddha Dhamma Philanthropy Foundation, and encouraged its followers to continue their work under the new moniker.
Rakhine Buddhists are fighting through armed struggle against the Burmese Buddhists. Q: This is something news. But the question is why the world does not know that there are other armed resistance movements and conflicts in Myanmar? MZ: Because the western media wants to focus on Muslims versus the Buddhist paradigm. But in the case of Burma, in the case of Rohingya, the violence is perpetrated not by the Muslims, but by the Burmese military and Buddhist majority.
Q: Almost one-quarter of Myanmar hosts one or more ethnic armed organizations EAOs and most of them practice Buddhism. MZ: Rakhine has a triangular colonial situation. The entire coastline of the ancient Arakan kingdom is a colony of the Burmese Buddhists. The center has made sure that these regional Muslim and Buddhist communities remain divided. So, this is a classic colonial policy by the Burmese Buddhist and the military against two communities who are equally colonized by the Burmese.
Therefore, this horizontal or communal conflict in Rakhine has been actively fanned from the colonial Burmese center. Just about every single ethnic community, who has a pocket of land that they call their ancestral land or region, has taken up and revolted against the central, ethnically Burmese control, military, or civilian government since independence from Britain in The main reason for widespread armed ethnic rebellion or revolt against the central government in Burma is because of the violation of the principle of ethnic equality, within what was promised to be a federation of different ethnic communities?
That is what triggered widespread ethnic armed rebellions in all non-Burmese regions. And remember, Burma is a multi-ethnic country with borders with about five different countries like big ones like China, India, or smaller ones like Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos.
All these borderland areas belong to ethnic minorities. More importantly, these borderlands are militarily strategic for the Burmese military. And being used as buffers, these regions are rich in teak, agricultural land, and above ground and underground minerals like gold, titanium, jade, copper. Rakhine coast region also has one of the 10th largest natural gas deposits in the world.
So, there are economic elements and military elements that motivate the Burmese military to treat these ethnic communities as if they were colonies of the Burmese military and by extension colonies of the Burmese majority of people like myself. Q: But again, the question is why they single out Rohingya if they have issues with other communities as well? MZ: There are two reasons. Rohingya happen to be Muslims and are living next to one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, Bangladesh.
And through the eyes of the Burmese military, Bangladesh is a smaller country in landmass compared to Burma. And yet, Bangladesh's population is three times as many as Burma.
Bangladesh's population is about million. For that reason, the Burmese military fears that the larger Muslim country of Bangladesh would push the Muslim population into Arakan or Rakhine. And they would take over the land, using Rohingyas as a proxy.
Although the earlier generation of Burmese military leaders, including my great uncle had accepted the Rohingya as our ethnic people. In the mids, Gen. Ne Win and his deputies in the military decided that they must get rid of Rohingya first, to make sure that the Rohingya in Rakhine state could not become proxies that would advance the interest of the then East Pakistan that was the name of Bangladesh before Rohingya have been singled out for this genocidal policy by the Burmese military.
MZ: We have a total of about 16 different types of Muslim populations, but only Rohingya are confronted or subject to this textbook example of genocide.
There is no such thing as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing because there are no textbooks written on ethnic cleansing, only genocide. Rohingya have a strategic pocket of geography that they legitimately call their ancestral land, which is right in between Burma and Bangladesh. If you have been to the Rohingya area on the Bangladeshi side, Chittagong or Cox's Bazar, the largest refugee camp of Rohingya in the world, you will notice geography is seamless.
The mountain ranges and rivers are seamlessly connected with the Arakan. Besides that area at one point was a single cultural and demographic and economic community. Q: Like in other regions, India and China are battling for strategic supremacy in Myanmar. Does this war of interests also affect Rohingya in the region? MZ: Of course, yes. Because of this strategic rivalry, the Burmese military particularly has been able to play China and India against each other. The multi-million or multi-billion-dollar projects along the Arakan coastline, or like the giving the mineral rights concessions or gas exploration rights, you will see a pattern of the Burmese military, making sure both India and China received something.
So, in other words, while they are playing India and China against each other, they are also trying to maintain the benefits of being friends or allies with both powers. MZ: There are also western countries that are competing in the Arakan region. If you look at the largest top five investors, there are hundreds of millions of dollars invested by each country. And then you will also find these western governments that are talking up human rights violations and even expressing concerns about the genocide, such as the United Kingdom that you know, or Norway, which presents itself as peace exporting or peaceful country.
But Norway is also competing in Arakan offshore gas exploration. So, in Arakan itself, if you focus on just the mineral rights exploration like gas and oil offshore, you will find about 15 different national investors competing to stay friendly to the Burmese government. Because the Burmese military and Aung San Suu Kyi government control these multi-billion-dollar projects.
They control who would get what. So, I think we cannot talk about the Rohingya genocide or this persecution of Muslims in Burma without talking about western and Asian investors coming in investing in infrastructure projects or investing in industrial agricultural development or multimodal port projects.
We cannot simply focus on talking about Burmese military troops killing Muslims, killing Rohingya, driving one million Rohingya out of the country over the past 10 years.
We have to talk about this capitalist competition. They too have blood on their hand through their investment in Rakhine in particular, and in Burma as a whole.
We cannot separate the two. This is the same situation we had in the s and 40s in Nazi Germany. What is the significance of the ICJ order for the Rohingya community? MZ: There is an assumption that at the end of this legal proceeding, there will be enough evidence to show that Myanmar has commissioned the crime of genocide.
I think the most significant gain is that ICJ has established that Rohingya people qualify as a protected group under international law. And the other significance is that Myanmar is forced to appear in the court in Hague.
The international court does not have the army or the power to enforce any ruling it may come up at the end of this trial.
When a country is being tried, it enables human rights activists, particularly Rohingya refugees themselves, to campaign for the end of this genocide. So, there are three major benefits or maybe progress that have been accomplished by having this ICJ case. Q: But what next now? I mean, how far these measures can mitigate the pain of these people?
MZ: You know Myanmar has submitted the report that was required as part of the provisional measures. By the end of the first 4 months, Myanmar was ordered to submit the report to the ICJ laying out or spelling out concrete measures that Myanmar has undertaken in compliance with the provisional measures.
Provisional measures have two different types of orders. One was the preservation of what we will call a crime scene in a vast area. That concerns the preservation of evidence, the land, the property. And the other one is the protection of the Rohingya who remain in the country that is estimated to be about half a million.
Q: The question, again arises whether these measures will mitigate and end future violence? MZ: I will say it has the potential to mitigate future mass killings. Myanmar has killed a large number of Rohingya people in different waves of organized violence by the military and not by the Rakhine people. Rakhine people have partaken or joined the Burmese troops, but the primary killings and disruptions and rape and loot were done by the government.
So, when the government is being challenged at the ICJ, its troops will not be in a position like they were before to organize another wave of killing. It is true, that they have not rolled back their policies and these policies have been made into law, for instance, citizenship law. So, I think we still have a long way to go. But in terms of the immediate future, I do not see Myanmar government troops organizing another mass killing as they did in Q: You are a Buddhist but you support the Rohingya Muslims.
But why not many people like you in Myanmar have come forward to help the persecuted people? MZ: I am Buddhist culturally and my philosophical orientation is Buddhist mindfulness. But I am not supporting Rohingya as Muslims, I am supporting them as fellow Burmese, and more importantly, as fellow humans. Of course, I also support the Palestinians, I also support the Uighurs openly.
And I actively support other oppressed communities. Because I identified myself with them as a fellow human. Some of them are afraid. You know that they do not want to be targeted by violent racists. So, it is the fear that is holding these more open-minded Buddhists. I was involved in creating this network of Buddhist and other non-Rohingya Muslims, as well as Christians and Hindus to stand up for the Rohingya.
We have a network or networks of multi-faith activists who say Rohingya belong here. But their voices are being drowned out by famous people like Aung San Suu Kyi and powerful military generals or influential monks.
That's why we are not hearing their voices as much as we hear the voices of the killers. Q: What has been your experience since you took up the cause of supporting Rohingya? We have heard that you were fired from Brunei University which came under pressure from the Myanmar government.
The body approved a full investigation into the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar in November. Although Myanmar itself is not a member of the court, the ICC ruled it had jurisdiction in the case because Bangladesh, where victims fled to, is a member.
Myanmar has long denied carrying out genocide and says it is carrying out its own investigations into the events of The country's Independent Commission of Enquiry ICOE admitted that members of the security forces may have carried out "war crimes, serious human rights violations, and violations of domestic law", but claimed there was no evidence of genocide.
Its full report has not yet been released, but questions have been raised. With more than half a million Rohingya believed to still be living in Myanmar's northern Rakhine province, UN investigators have warned there is a "serious risk that genocidal actions may occur or recur". The situation that led to "killings, rapes and gang rapes, torture, forced displacement and other grave rights violations" in remained unchanged, the investigators said in September, blaming a lack of accountability and Myanmar's failure to fully investigate allegations or criminalise genocide.
Rakhine province itself is the site of an ongoing conflict between the army and rebels from the Buddhist-majority Rakhine ethnic group. The massive numbers of refugees who fled to Bangladesh in joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who had fled Myanmar in previous years. Kutupalong, the largest refugee settlement in the world according to UNHCR, is home to more than , refugees alone. But in March , Bangladesh announced it would no longer accept Rohingya fleeing Myanmar.
While an agreement for the return of refugees was reached in early , none returned. They said they would not consider going back to Myanmar unless they were given guarantees they would be given citizenship. And as a BBC investigation showed, even those considering returning in the future may not be able to, with villages destroyed to make way for government facilities. How a peace icon ended up at a genocide trial.
Aung San Suu Kyi: Democracy icon who fell from grace. Rohingya homes destroyed for government facilities. How a 'genocide' was investigated. Will Omar get justice for his murdered family?
Bangladesh 'to be tougher' on Rohingya refugees. Camps built on destroyed Rohingya villages. Rohingya mark two years in refugee camps. No homecoming for Rohingyas. Drone shows thousands of Rohingyas fleeing.
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