Dagger-Wielding Monks In Myanmar

[sabaijai]

Buddha Buzz: Dagger-Wielding Monks and Mindfulness in Service of the Bottom Line

Posted by Alex Caring-Lobel on 22 Mar 2013

Tricycle Magazine

Just hours ago, Burmese President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in central Burma due to killing, destruction of property, and general rioting in the streets of the town of Meikhtila. Violence erupted following a dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and Buddhist customers. After four nearby gold shops were burnt to the ground, a 1,000-strong mob of Buddhists ran riot through the Muslim neighborhood. The death toll is currently being reported at at least 20, but this number will likely rise. TIME reports:

Journalists attempting to report in the area have been threatened. A photographer for the Associated Press reportedly had a foot-long dagger placed against his neck by a monk who had hi

s face covered. The confrontation was defused when the photographer handed over his camera’s memory card. Late on Friday, the Burmese government said that nine reporters trapped amid the unrest had been rescued by local police and evacuated from the area.

On social media, residents reported seeing bodies scattered by the side of the road and women and children lying helpless, their homes destroyed. U Aung, a Muslim lawyer living in Meikhtila, told TIME that the violence was already spreading to nearby townships. “They are burning mosques and houses and stealing Muslim property,” said Aung.

Tricycle readers will be familiar with the Buddhist-led violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in western Burma from the article "Buddhist Nationalism in Burma" in the current issue. In the article, Burmese dissident and democracy activist Maung Zarni makes a convincing argument for the characterization of recent anti-Rohingya violence as genocide. Zarni highlights the harnessing of the same sangha-led forces that occasioned the "Saffron Revolution" (2007) to accomplish these ends.

Recent unrest in Meikhtila suggests two important things. First, anti-Muslim violence and rioting has spread beyond the western Burmese Rakhine state and into the heart of Burma. Second, since the violence appears to be directed at Muslims of Indian origin—not Rohingya Muslims—this would seem to corroborate Zarni's assertion of the anti-Muslim, religious sentiment of these riots, repeatedly dismissed as "sectarian violence" by many mainstream media outlets at the time of the outbreak of violence last year. (TIME quotes Chris Lew, founder of The Arakan Project: "the perception of last year's unrest as sectarian rather than religious was inaccurate.") Zarni makes this contention in his article for Tricycle and reiterated the point when I interviewed him over Skype from Indonesia the day before the last. We also spoke about his objection to the term "communal violence," which TIME has used in the article quoted above, and the reasons why the conflict hasn't been called a genocide. The anti-Muslim racism we're currently witnessing can be tracked back to Burma's colonial past, which Zarni adumbrates in the article and further elaborates in our interview. Zarni's article for Tricycle can be found here and our interview will run on the Tricycle blog on Wednesday.

[sabaijai]

Article mentioned above:

Buddhist Nationalism in Burma

For those outside Burma, the broadcast images of the Theravada monks of the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007 are still fresh. Backed by the devout Buddhist population, these monks were seen chanting metta and theLovingkindness Sutta on the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, and Pakhoke-ku, calling for an improvement in public well-being in the face of the growing economic hardships afflicting Burma’s Buddhists. The barefooted monks’ brave protests against the rule of the country’s junta represented a fine example of engaged Buddhism, a version of Buddhist activism that resonates with the age-old Orientalist, decontextualized view of what Buddhists are like: lovable, smiley, hospitable people who lead their lives mindfully and have much to offer the non-Buddhist world in the ways of fostering peace.

But in the past year, the world has been confronted with images of the same robed monks publicly demonstrating against Islamic nations’ distribution of aid to starving Muslim Rohingya, displaced into refugee camps in their own country following Rakhine Buddhist attacks. The rise of genocidal Buddhist racism against the Rohingya, a minority community of nearly one million people in the western Burmese province of Rakhine (also known as Arakan), is an international humanitarian crisis. The military-ruled state has been relentless in its attempts to erase Rohingya ethnic identity, which was officially recognized as a distinct ethnic group in 1954 by the democratic government of Prime Minister U Nu. Indeed, in the past months of violent conflict, beginning in June 2012, the Rohingya have suffered over 90 percent of the total death toll and property destruction, including the devastation of entire villages and city neighborhoods. Following the initial eruption of violence in western Burma, several waves of killing, arson, and rampage have been directed at the Rohingya, backed by Burma’s security forces.

cont'ed;

http://www.tricycle.com/feature/buddhist-nationalism-burma

[fabianfred]

The saffron revolution was one thing but IMHO this new violence is nothing to do with it.

Remember that the Burmese Government is always looking for ways to 'divide & conquer' the minorities. With spies and secret police everywhere they have often dressed in robes as monks to create confusion, spy upon the monks and serve their own agenda.

Do not be fooled too quickly that real Buddhists or real monks are involved in this violence, or you have swallowed the propaganda the Government are trying to preach.

[sabaijai]

The news report appears credible: the magazine is a Buddhist publication, to start with, and the author of the Buddhist Nationalism piece, Maung Zarni, is a Burmese democracy activist and research fellow at the London School of Economics.

I see no hint of government propaganda. My sources in Myanmar say Buddhist nationalism among monks there is very real. Academics who follow Sangha politicisation tend to rank Myanmar second after Sri Lanka in this regard.

In my opinion, claims that the monks were spies.or provocateurs is Buddhist nationalist propaganda.

I don't think there is any evidence of 'divide and conquer' here any more than there was in the Rakhine State.The Buddhist anti-Muslim movement is an embarrassing crisis for the people of Myanmar and its fledgling democratic government.

Captions accompanying two compelling photos in Zarni's piece:

Image 2: Thet Htoo/Zuma Press/Newscom. Rakhine men and a Buddhist monk hold handmade spears and watch as a fire burns in Sittwe, capital city of Rakhine State. Two weeks of clashes between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists left an official death toll at 50, with 58 injured and more than 2,500 houses burned down.

Image 3: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty/Newscom. Rakhine Buddhist monks pray in Langon, Burma, in June 2012. Several thousand monks took to the streets of Mandalay to protest against a world Islamic body’s efforts to help Muslim Rohingya in strife-hit Rakhine Stat

[sabaijai]

Politicisation of the Sangha is nothing new in Myanmar, and in fact it may have contributed to the downfall of Burma's first, short-lived (1960-62), democratic government when U Nu was perceived not to have fulfilled his promise to the Sangha to make Buddhism the state religion in every regard.

From the 1990 book Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World, have a look at the passage that begins with "In Burma, U Nu's policy of promoting the revivial of Buddhism undoubtedly encouraged the monks to believe that the were entitled to a place very near the center of power" and ends with "The loss of Sangha support was an important element in the deteriorating political situation that led to the military coup of 1962."

[khaowong1]

This is a interesting story. Myself and some other Buddhist monks I talk to on facebook are talking about it. It's hard to know what's going on there when we're not there to see it. I know that this Muslim incursion into everybody's home countries is a problem. They (muslims) don't seem to care about anyones laws but their's. It's a problem. How do you get along peacefully with a group of people who are trying to change your government and your way of life? Who don't recognize your religion? Who don't recognize any religion but their own? Having ranted about all that, I still don't accept violence as a solution for Buddhist monks. If robed monks are actually arming themselves, they are wrong. Their Sangha should ask them to dis-robe. I'm sure the Buddha faced this problem with the Brahma/Hindu's and I don't remember reading anywhere that he armed himself.

[Naam]

The saffron revolution was one thing but IMHO this new violence is nothing to do with it.

Remember that the Burmese Government is always looking for ways to 'divide & conquer' the minorities. With spies and secret police everywhere they have often dressed in robes as monks to create confusion, spy upon the monks and serve their own agenda.

Do not be fooled too quickly that real Buddhists or real monks are involved in this violence, or you have swallowed the propaganda the Government are trying to preach.

or perhaps you preach propaganda?

[sabaijai]

This is a interesting story. Myself and some other Buddhist monks I talk to on facebook are talking about it. It's hard to know what's going on there when we're not there to see it. I know that this Muslim incursion into everybody's home countries is a problem. They (muslims) don't seem to care about anyones laws but their's. It's a problem. How do you get along peacefully with a group of people who are trying to change your government and your way of life? Who don't recognize your religion? Who don't recognize any religion but their own? Having ranted about all that, I still don't accept violence as a solution for Buddhist monks. If robed monks are actually arming themselves, they are wrong. Their Sangha should ask them to dis-robe. I'm sure the Buddha faced this problem with the Brahma/Hindu's and I don't remember reading anywhere that he armed himself.

In the case of Myanmar, the Muslims have been there for centuries. In fact Rakhine, the state where most of the violence has occurred, has been occupied by Muslim Rohingyas for centuries, and was only annexed by Myanmar in the 18th century. Hence the Buddhist Burmese are the relative newcomers there (although there were Indian Buddhists in Rakine before annexation).

Likewise many generations of Muslims from South Asia have been in Myanmar since the British colonial era.