Foreign Policy In Focus

Burma's Muslims are caught in a cross-fire between Chinese and Western investment.

In a New York Times op-ed titled Are Myanmar's Hopes Fading?, Aung Zaw, founder of Irrawaddy, reminded us about clashes last year "between Buddhists and Muslims in western Myanm [that] killed at least 180 people and displaced more than 120,000, mostly Rohingyas. Last month, violence spread to central Myanmar, killing dozens and leaving more than 13,000 homeless." Many, he adds, "fear that the deadly anti-Muslim riots are no accident but the product of an effort led by army hard-liners to thwart both the reforms and Myanmar’s opening to the world."

… I have no doubt that national officials bear some responsibility, and that the violence suggests a power struggle within the elite. Infighting between hard-line and moderate forces in the government, which took power two summers ago under the moderate general Thein Sein, is no secret. His cabinet, Parliament and the army remain dominated by holdovers from the regime of the former dictator Gen. Than Shwe. Many are resisting President Thein Sein’s reforms.

The generals who ruled the country for five decades control much of the nation’s wealth, and some are close to Chinese interests that stand to be eclipsed if Myanmar deepens economic ties to the West. The anti-Muslim violence is a useful distraction from Burmese grievances against China, whose heavy-handed economic activities have bred resentments across much of Southeast Asia.

Muslims, long a convenient scapegoat and exponentially more so since the advent of the likes of Al Qaeda, have become a casualty of hidebound forces attempting to retain power and their share of what China invests in Burma.

Burma -- from its president to its Nobel laureate -- has failed to address Buddhist violence in its Rakhine state against Muslim Rohingyas.

Does any religion in the world have a cleaner rep than Buddhism? With much of its efforts devoted to helping one realizing the divinity within him or her, it's disinclined to repressive morality or proselytizing. More to the point, much less violence is committed in its name than that of the other great religions. The operative word is "less."

For instance, Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka committed violence against Christians and Tamils. Even worse, during World War II, the Buddhist establishment -- even Zen -- cooperated, for the most part, with the militaristic Japanese regime. For more, read Buddhist Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2010) by Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer.

Recently Burmese Buddhists -- incited by monks, no less -- have been conducting violent attacks against the Muslim Rohingyas with whom they share the Rakhine district, which borders Sri Lanka, from where the latter emigrate. Robert Fuller reports for the New York Times.

The Buddhist monastery on the edge of this seaside town is a picture of tranquillity, with novice monks in saffron robes finding shade under a towering tree and their teacher, U Nyarna, greeting a visitor in a sunlit prayer room.

But in these placid surroundings Mr. Nyarna’s message is discordant, and a far cry from the Buddhist precept of avoiding harm to living creatures. Unprompted, Mr. Nyarna launches into a rant against Muslims, calling them invaders, unwanted guests and "vipers in our laps."

"According to Buddhist teachings we should not kill," Mr. Nyarna said. "But when we feel threatened we cannot be saints."

As if, Mr. Nyarna, there isn't a world of difference between simply not being a saint and advocating ethnic cleansing. Earlier this month, at Reuters, Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall detailed some of the violence.

Tuesday [October 22] began with a massacre. … By 7 a.m. … hundreds of Rakhine arrived on boats to surround [the village of] Yin Thei, said a resident contacted by telephone. By late afternoon, the Muslim villagers were fending off waves of attacks. The resident said children, including two of his young cousins, were killed by sword-wielding Rakhines. Most houses were burned down. … A Yin Thei villager telephoned Musi Dula's neighbours and said police were shooting at them. Another farmer nervously told Reuters how he watched from afar as police opened fire from the village's western edge, also at about 5 p.m.

The official death toll is five Rakhines and 51 Muslims killed at Yin Thei, including 21 Muslim women, said a senior police officer in Naypyitaw, the new capital of Myanmar. He denied security forces opened fire or abetted the mobs. … As Yin Thei burned, the last of nearly 4,000 Rohingya Muslims were fleeing the large port town of Pauktaw, in a dramatic exodus by sea that had begun five days earlier.

Returning to the Times article, Fuller writes, "the country's leading liberal voice and defender of the downtrodden, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been circumspect in her comments about the violence." For their part, Szep and Marshall write that Suu Kyi's "studied neutrality has failed to defuse tensions and risks undermining her image as a unifying moral force. Suu Kyi, a devout Buddhist, says she refuses to take sides." [Emphasis added.]

Besides that she's a Buddhist, how does she justify her silence? Seasoned Burma watcher and activist Roland Watson speculates. In April of this year he wrote:

It is difficult to fathom her actions, but a number of explanations are possible, including: She didn't know how bad the Tatmadaw [Burma's army] was treating the ethnic groups; … she censored herself; she thinks the problems that the ethnic nationalities have are their own fault (as many Burmans [the majority ethnic group] believe) … or, she noticed that since the international community ignored the atrocities it was safe for her to do so as well. (Of note, the United States, her close advisor, for two decades only backed her and refused to acknowledge the regime's war crimes.)

During his recent visit, writes Fuller, President Obama at least made a nod to violence against the Rohingyas.

Mr. Obama spent a considerable portion of a speech at Yangon University focusing on the importance of diversity, singling out the "danger" of the Rakhine situation and telling his audience "there is no excuse for violence against innocent people."

But (Fuller again), like Suu Kyi, Burma's President Thein Sein keeps the issue at arms length.

… President Thein Sein told a visiting delegation from the United Nations in July that only Muslims who have been in the country for at least three generations would be allowed citizenship. The rest were a "threat to the peace of the nation," he said, and would be put in camps and sent abroad. The United Nations rejected the idea, saying that it was not in the business of creating refugees.

Diplomats say that Mr. Thein Sein has retreated from that position and is now talking about resettling displaced Muslim populations inside the country. He sent a letter to the United Nations just before Mr. Obama’s visit saying that once passions cooled he would "address contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of displaced populations to granting of citizenship." But he offered no details or time frame.

Let's return to Mr. Nyarna, who has a talent for putting his foot in his mouth, who said

… many Muslims do not "practice human morals" and should be sent to Muslim countries to be among "their own kind."

Clearly, even some Buddhists need a refresher course in "human morals."

The U.S. government has decided to lift the economic and diplomatic pressure that made reform in Burma possible.

Cross-posted from the United to End Genocide blog.

Why is President Obama about to meet with leaders in Burma who are systematically fomenting hatred and violence that has already claimed innocent lives, destroyed entire villages and displaced tens of thousands?

In just a few days, President Obama will travel to Burma to recognize progress that one of the most brutal regimes on the planet has made toward democracy. Now that modest improvements have been made or pledged by the regime, and Aung San Suu Kyi is free, the U.S. government has decided to lift the economic and diplomatic pressure that made reform in Burma possible.

That is bad news if you are part of an ethnic minority in Burma. And it is life threatening if you are a member of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Systematic hate speech and entreaties for the local population to isolate and attack the Rohingya Muslim minority are pervasive in western Burma. The Burmese military stand aside or actively participate in attacks against innocent men, women and children. More than one hundred people have already lost their lives, tens of thousands have lost their homes, and over one hundred thousand have been displaced.

What is the U.S. government doing about it? On Sunday, President Obama will become the first President to visit Burma. He is there to recognize and congratulate the military-dominated government for making modest reforms toward democracy. As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya continue to live in fear, President Obama will be congratulating a government that wants to ethnically cleanse every one of them from Burma.

Burma’s President Thein Sein--who Obama will be sitting down to dine with--has been actively fomenting hatred against the Rohingya community. He has gone so far to ask the United Nations to help him ethnically cleanse Burma by forcing 800,000 Rohingya people out of their home villages and into refugee camps or out of the country altogether!

I saw what violence and persecution looks like first-hand in Burma when I snuck into Kachin State last May. I saw entire villages abandoned, its population driven into makeshift camps filled with desperate people without adequate food, shelter of medical care. I spoke with families whose loved ones had been tortured, raped, incarcerated or killed by Burmese troops. Without international pressure on the regime, I know what the Rohingya are experiencing will only continue to get worse.

An entire people are under attack not because of what they have done but because of who they are. Instead of traveling to Burma, President Obama should be leading the call for a United Nations observer mission to investigate the violence in Rakhine State, deter the escalation of the violence and hold the perpetrators accountable. The leading role that the Obama administration played in scaling back sanctions on Burma obligates the U.S. government to act urgently to hold the Burmese government to its responsibilities to protect its ethnic populations.

We’ve seen these warning signs before. The hateful rhetoric of Rakhine monks is reminiscent of the hateful propaganda directed at the Tutsi population and their sympathizers leading up to, and during the Rwandan genocide. While renewing calls for their expulsion from Burma, several Rakhine monks have urged the local population to sever all relations with the Rohingya, including trade and the provision of humanitarian aid and have called on Rakhines to expose Rohingya sympathizers as national traitors, potentially exposing them to violent attacks.

There is no word to describe the response from the United States and the international community other than inadequate. The conditions that led to two major outbreaks of mass killings in the last few months are worsening daily. Greater loss of life and displacement are a certainty without a change of course.

In a day and age in which technology affords us the ability to connect with people across the world, we can no longer claim ignorance to the fact that the Rohingya people are being slaughtered, displaced, and terrorized. When we look back on the books of history, will this be another example of when we failed to show up or showed up too late?

Take action: Tell President Obama to call for an end to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.

Tom Andrews is the President of United to End Genocide.

A prominent Burma activist takes the Nobel laureate to task.

Roland Watson, who runs Dictator Watch, is one of the most trenchant Burma and activists and observers. On October 27 he posted an article with the, uh, provocative title: "Worst person in Burma." Surely, he was referring to long-time junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, who still retains influence, or perhaps even current president Thein Sein, despite his reforms. In fact, counterintuitively enough, to Watson, the "worst person in Burma" is Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and now member of Burma's parliament. Why?

"The reason for this is that, while she isn't raping and killing people herself," writes Watson, referring to the Burmese army as well as "Rakhine madmen" who persecute and kill Rohingya Muslims in Western Burma, "she is nevertheless directly responsible for the carnage because she is the only person in Burma who has the ability to stop it, or at a minimum to reduce its scale."

By way of background for Watson's article, here's an excerpt from a previous post of mine.

In his most recent report, Burma's Semi-Freedom Scorecard, [Watson] writes: "There are clearly winners, but also losers, from the new status quo," by which he means victims of the organs of the "dictatorship’s oppression apparatus." … What makes it worse, Watson writes, is that these victims will never

… receive justice. Daw Suu and [her National League for Democracy party] made a political calculation that justice must be sacrificed, that there should not be an international investigation into the regime’s crimes against humanity, or a tribunal for them, much less the ability to bring a case to a local court.

Watson has no interest in dishonoring Daw Suu (as Aung San Suu Kyi is often known to Burma's people).

I do not mean to begrudge Daw Suu her due. She has suffered tremendously [and] maintained her courage and commitment throughout years of hardship and sacrifice.

But-t-t Suu Kyi

… has ignored the ethnic nationality plight for years. (She traditionally focused almost exclusively on the nation’s political prisoners.) Through doing this she turned a blind eye to what is Burma’s core social issue: Racism against the ethnic nationalities by the country’s Burman generals.

Why does Watson think Daw Suu threw the ethnic nationalities … under the bus? [He speculates.]

She didn’t know how bad the [Burmese army] was treating the ethnic groups; … she censored herself; she thinks the problems that the ethnic nationalities have are their own fault (as many Burmans believe) … or, she noticed that since the international community ignored the atrocities it was safe for her to do so as well.

What has made Watson double-down on his condemnation of Suu Kyi?

Suu Kyi is the only person with real moral authority over the Burmans, of which the Army and police are comprised, and the Rakhines. Were she to call loudly and repeatedly for the attacks [by the Burmese army and by Rakhines on Rohingya] to end … the violence would subside. (She should ask to speak on national television, and make just such an announcement. If refused permission, she should make a statement to foreign media.)

Equally importantly, the International Community would no longer be able to avoid the subject. … If she spoke out, they would also be forced to condemn the atrocities, and even to support action such as the introduction of a peacekeeping force.

Watson sums up.

History will remember Suu Kyi as the the leader of a pro-democracy movement who changed her mind and surrendered, who ignored barbaric violence, who helped split a nation, and who opened it to rapacious corporate development. This will be her real legacy. This is why she is indeed the worst person in Burma.

As you can imagine, Watson's article generated a backlash. In his "Response to Critics of 'The Worst Person in Burma'," he adds that Suu Kyi

… does not understand the process of social change. You cannot change a society from a dictatorship to a democracy through reform. There has to be a break: a revolution. One way or another, the dictators have to be deposed. Only then can you really move forward.