Buddhist-Muslim violence in Myanmar

The global euphoria towards peace and democracy in Myanmar seems to be fading fast. Many cases of ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas and organised massacre of Muslim minorities in central parts of the country have occurred since 2012. More than 250 people have died and at least a hundred thousand Muslims have been rendered homeless. The Human Rights Watch report of 2013, entitled “All you can do is Pray” reflects international pessimism over the country’s fast-deteriorating humanitarian crisis.[1]

The anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar’s heartland – Yangon-Mandalay Corridor – is not a new phenomenon. They have occurred from time to time during the last fifty years of the military rule, often politically motivated and occasionally driven by socio-cultural tensions between the Buddhists and Muslims. The last incident of anti-Muslim violence in Mandalay had occurred in March 1997 and in Yangon in 2001.

The violence returned to this corridor after more than a decade-long lull in March 2013 when a few hundred Buddhist monks attacked Muslim traders and merchants in Meiktila, just a hundred miles away from the capital city of Naypyidaw. This incident followed attacks against the Muslims along this corridor with the latest incident reported in July 2014 from Mandalay, the second largest city and an important business hub of the country.[2]

Majority of the Muslims living in this heartland corridor, derogatorily called ‘Kala’ are not Rohingyas or Arakanese. Though they are primarily of South Asian origin, their way of life is mainly Burmese, due to centuries of inter-mixing between the Muslims, and the local Buddhist population. They are located in different cities and engaged in their traditional businesses as traders and merchants. They are socially and culturally unaccepted, constitutionally delegitimised, politically marginalised and economically isolated. They have faced discrimination and persecution at regular intervals in the post-independent Myanmar, especially under the military rule.

Reasons for the recent upsurge in the Buddhist-Muslim violence lie in the rise of radical leadership among the Buddhist community, who are advocating narrow nationalism and ethnic majoritarianism as organising principles of nation-state building. As a part of their radical political ideology, they are demanding prosecution of the Muslims in the name of protecting Buddhism and advocating violence to punish the Muslims.

The radical Buddhists have called upon the community to boycott Muslim businesses, and restrict their already negligible economic influence and political participation. They claim that minority Muslims are controlling their wealth, women, and well-being. This has been a standard political slogan for anti-Muslim mobilisation in central Myanmar for the last seventy years. Ironically, the political elite and the military junta have used the same narrative to not only mobilise the Buddhist majority population but also restrict Muslims’ political freedom and prosecute them.

The radical Buddhist movement is led by Ashin Wirathu, one of the senior-most monks in the Masoeyein monastery, the largest monastery in Mandalay. He has played an instrumental role in stoking communal hostility both in Meiktila and Mandalay through his incendiary speeches. He has started, along with several other like-minded monks, an anti-Muslim movement called 969 to uphold the virtues of Buddhism and mobilised the community against the Muslims.

Wirathu’s position on the model of governance reinforces his majoritarian outlook. He, in conversation with the author, advocated the Malaysian approach of Bumiputeras as opposed to the military faction’s preference for the Suharto style of politics of Indonesia and Aung San Suu Kyi’s western liberal democracy paradigm. This approach entails primacy of political rights of the Buddhist majority population and their preferential role in the political and economic life of the country.

In addition to the cultural and religious overtone, the rise of the radical leadership indicates an attempt to project the Buddhist monastic order as an important political force, whose supports will be vital for winning the 2015 elections. In an acknowledgement of the political role of the monks, no political parties or factions within the government have either denounced the ‘969 movement’ or taken decisive actions against the anti-Muslim violence.[3]

The pro-democracy groups, which are campaigning for democratic reforms and constitutional amendments, are unwilling to take the risk of plunging into a sensitive matter that could derail the whole process of democratic reforms. The persecution of Muslims does not figure prominently in their political debates. Similarly, the leaders of 88 generation have also remained more or less silent on this issue.[4] They are worried about being branded anti-nationalist and anti-Buddhist by both the military as well as the common people.

Giving in to the pressure of the radicals, the Thein Sein government is planning to introduce an inter-faith marriage bill that would provide officials greater control over the religious life of the Muslims in the name of monitoring conversion and the size of the family. This would also allow frequent persecution of the minorities at the hands of the local community and law-enforcement officials.

Incompetent law-enforcement agencies and weak rule of law have emboldened the radicals. The police officials on both the occasions of violence in Mandalay and Meiktila were acting as mere onlookers and finally scurried away when large crowd of the weapon-wielding Buddhist monks turned up. Moreover, the presence of defence forces’ training centres on the outskirt of the Meiktila town highlights their indifference to the anti-Muslim violence. The complicity of the government officials makes one wonder whether these cases of violence are mere a diversionary tactic to draw the attention away from the real issue of stalling democratic reforms and constitutional change before the 2015 election.

The rise of Buddhist majoritarianism and persecution of Muslim minorities does not augur well for the country’s nation-building project. While governing institutions are weak, civil society remains underdeveloped and the political parties have shown indifference at best. Myanmar continues to be a country that faces more new challenges everyday than it solves.

Dr. Vibhanshu Shekhar is a Scholar-in-Residence at ASEAN Studies Center, American University, Washington DC.

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