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Burma government accused of participating in genocide
Irrawaddy - May 10, 2013
"It's nothing short of genocide," he said. "Genocide is a process that unfolds; it's a virus that spreads quickly into a contagion that cannot be stopped. What has happened in Burma in the last two years is evil, vile and depraved," he said. The genocide in Burma is now on the scale Uganda and Pol Pot's Cambodia, he added. "And it won't stop until all the country's Muslims and Rohingyas are eliminated."
These are challenging times, Burmese Muslim leader Myo Win said. He runs an education NGO called Smile in Rangoon, and came from Burma especially to attend the seminar to provide first-hand testimony of the situation facing Muslims in Burma.
"It's not a communal or sectarian conflict, it's a one-sided, targeted and often deadly attack against Muslims, under the purview of state authorities," he said. "Community leaders are spreading hostility and hate against Muslims, through the distribution of pamphlets and propaganda ...verbal abuse, harassment and violence," he explained.
Inside Burma there is a state of fear amongst the country's Muslims. The violence against the Rohingyas in Arakan last year and then the attacks on Muslims in central Burma have left most Muslim communities feeling vulnerable and scared. Most Muslims now fear for their security and the safety of their property.
But according to eye-witnesses inside Burma, the Muslim community has begun to fight back. Mosques in Rangoon are sheltering refugees who have fled from attacks on them, though they fear that the monks and security forces will find out.
Barricades have been set up near the Muslim quarters in Rangoon and citizen patrols are being conducted. But every night Muslims in Rangoon have to suffer abusive threats, insults and calls for their deaths. The Thai Buddhist social activist Sulak Sivarksa was much more measured in his comments, but drew a stark comparison between the role of the monks during the so-called Saffron Revolution and that in the last two years. In 2007 they were willing to lose their lives he said; they preached everyone be free, have no anger and live in peaceful harmony.
Now they are spreading hate, with the 969 stickers central to the anti-Muslim campaign. The organizers and the monks involved say they are reminding Buddhists of their core values. And draw comparisons with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, which they believe were originally Buddhist countries that were overrun by Islamists.
"Fear is the source of many problems in any society," said Sulak. And with Burma's transition to democracy, and the increase freedom that has accompanied it, traditional prejudices and unruliness have inevitably risen to the fore, he added.
The teachings of Buddha are very clear, he said: you can never harm anyone, but first you cannot harm yourself. A Buddhist must overcome fear, must learn to love, even the oppressors, and never stoop to violence. "Buddhism and nationalism are incompatible," he said. "Nationalism is an extension of selfishness...not to be tolerated or condoned."
Buddhists must have compassion; they cannot be quiet and sit on the fence, they cannot turn a blind eye, said Sulak. But this is exactly what is happening in Burma today stressed Myo Win.
"The State's silence and inaction has been deplorable," he said. They are responsible for the safety and security of the Muslims, but instead they seem to be complicit in the pogroms, he added.
The 969 leaders have not been identified, the members involved in violence have not been arrested, and their campaign against Muslims has been allowed to continue unhindered. They are puppets of a bigger master, he suggested.
While the evidence of atrocities against Muslims in Burma in the last two years is staggering, the government' views were not aired. Reference was made to President Thein Sein's televised speech to the nation, in which he insisted that the government would take preventative measures, increase security and that all Muslims would be protected and allowed to worship freely.
But Zarni simply dismissed the president's pledges as worthless. "Thein Sein is a world-class liar," he stormed. The regime is outraged at the term ethnic cleansing, but not the action of ethnic cleansing carried out by the security forces.
The discussion was closed with a song from the renowned Burmese reggae artist Saw Phoe Khwar. He sang: "what we need is love; love is the answer." But the general feeling was that the love is missing, and that more is needed. For Sulak it's a return to his view of Buddhist values: truth, civilization and non-violence. But for Myo Win, that's a long way away. "The regime cannot stop the violence if they wanted to...and they are not trying."
Civil society in Burma has not taken the issue on board. "There has been a thunderous silence from Aung San Suu Kyi," Zarni complained. "We still not be able to have the open discussion that we have here in Burma, things have not changed sufficiently yet," Myo Win told Irrawaddy on the sidelines of the meeting.
But the whole program was broadcast into Burma on webcam.
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