Buddhist Monks Incite Muslim Killings in Myanmar

 

That evening, flames devoured much of Mingalarzay Yone, a mostly Muslim ward in east Meikhtila. The fire razed a mosque, an orphanage and several homes. Hundreds fled. Some hid in Buddhist friends’ houses, witnesses said. About 100 packed into the thatched wooden home of Maung Maung, a Muslim elder.

 

As the mob swelled in size, Win Htein, a lawmaker in Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, tried to restrain the crowd but was held back. “Someone took my arm and said be careful or you will become a victim,” he said.

 

About 200 police officers watched the riots in the neighborhood before leaving around midnight, he said.

 

By about 4 a.m., the Muslim men inside Maung Maung’s house were braced for battle, chanting in Arabic and then shouting in Burmese, “We’ll wash our feet in Burman blood.” (The Burmans, or Bamah, are Myanmar’s ethnic majority.) Nearly a thousand Buddhists were outside.

 

When dawn broke, at about 6 a.m., the only police presence in the area was a detail of about 10 officers. They slowly backed away, allowing the mob to attack, said Hla Thein, 48, a neighborhood Buddhist elder.

 

The Muslims fled through the side of the house, chased by men with swords, sticks, iron rods and machetes. Some were butchered in a nearby swamp, said Hla Thein, who recounted the events along with four other witnesses, both Buddhist and Muslim.

 

Others were cut down as they ran toward a hilltop road. “They chased them like they were hunting rabbits,” said NLD lawmaker Win Htein.

 

Police saved 47 of the Muslims, mostly women and children, by encircling them with their shields and firing warning shots in the air, Hla Thein said. “We don’t want to attack you,” one monk shouted at the police, according to a policeman. “We just want the Muslims.”

 

Ye Myint, the chief minister of Mandalay region that includes Meikhtila, told reporters later that day that the situation was “stabilizing.” In fact, it was getting worse. Armed monks and Buddhist mobs terrorized the streets for the next three days, witnesses said.

 

They threatened Thein Zaw, a fireman trying to douse a burning mosque. “How dare you extinguish this fire,” he recalls one monk shouting. “We are going to kill you.” A group of about 30 monks smashed the sign hanging outside his fire station and tried to block his truck. He drove through a hail of stones, one striking below his eye, and crashed, he said, showing his wound.

 

“A monk with a knife at one point swung at me,” said Kyaw Ye Aung, a junior firefighter who, like Thein Zaw, is Buddhist.

 

Three days later, on the hill where Muslim bodies were burned, this reporter found the remains of a mix of adults and children: pieces of human skull, vertebrae and other bones, and a singed child’s backpack.

 

Nearby, municipal trucks dumped bodies in a field next to a crematorium in Meikhtila’s outskirts. They were burned with old tires.

 

Knife-wielding monks jar with Buddhism’s better-known image of meditative pacifism.

 

Grounded in a philosophy of enlightenment, nonviolence, rebirth and the vanquishing of human desires, Buddhism eschews crusades or jihads. It traditionally embraces peace, clarity and wisdom—attributes of the Buddha who lived some 2,500 years ago.

 

About 90 percent of Myanmar’s 60 million people are practicing Buddhists, among the world’s largest proportion. Sheathed in iconic burgundy robes, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy and, before that, independence.

 

Many Burmese find it easier to assume a cherished institution has been infiltrated by thugs and provocateurs than to admit the monkhood’s central role in anti-Muslim violence in recent years.

 

On the streets of Meikhtila, witnesses saw monks from well-known local monasteries. They also saw monks from Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and a center of Burmese culture about 100 miles to the north. One such visitor was the nationalistic monk Wirathu.

 

Wirathu was freed last year from nine years in jail during an amnesty for hundreds of political prisoners, among the most celebrated reforms of Myanmar’s post-military rule. He had been locked up for helping to incite deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2003.

 

Today, the charismatic 45-year-old with a boyish smile is an abbot in Mandalay’s Masoeyein Monastery, a sprawling complex where he leads about 60 monks and has influence over more than 2,500 residing there. From that power base, he is leading a fast-growing movement known as “969,” which encourages Buddhists to shun Muslim businesses and communities.

 

The three numbers refer to various attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood. In practice, the numbers have become the brand of a radical form of anti-Islamic nationalism that seeks to transform Myanmar into an apartheid-like state.

 

“We have a slogan: When you eat, eat 969; when you go, go 969; when you buy, buy 969,” Wirathu said in an interview at his monastery in Mandalay. Translation: If you’re eating, traveling or buying anything, do it with a Buddhist. Relishing his extremist reputation, Wirathu describes himself as the “Burmese bin Laden.”

 

He began giving a series of controversial 969 speeches about four months ago. “My duty is to spread this mission,” he said. It’s working: 969 stickers and signs are proliferating — often accompanied by violence.

 

Rioters spray-painted “969” on destroyed businesses in Meikhtila. Anti-Muslim mobs in Bago Region, close to Yangon, erupted after traveling monks preached about the 969 movement. Stickers bearing pastel hues overlaid with the numerals 969 are appearing on street stalls, motorbikes, posters and cars across the central heartlands.

 

In Minhla, a town of about 100,000 people a few hours’ drive from Yangon, 2,000 Buddhists crammed into a community center on February 26 and 27 to listen to Wimalar Biwuntha, an abbot from Mon State. He explained how monks in his state began using 969 to boycott a popular Muslim-owned bus company, according to Win Myint, 59, chairman of the center that hosted the abbot.

 

After the speeches, the mood in Minhla turned ugly, said Tun Tun, 26, a Muslim tea-shop owner. Muslims were jeered, he said. A month later, about 800 Buddhists armed with metal pipes and hammers destroyed three mosques and 17 Muslim homes and businesses, according to police. No one was killed, but two-thirds of Minhla’s Muslims fled and haven’t returned, police said.

 

“Since that speech, people in our village became more aggressive. They would swear at us. We lost customers,” said Tun Tun, whose tea shop and home were nearly destroyed by Buddhists on March 27. One attacker was armed with a chainsaw, he said.

 

A local police official made a deal with the mob: Rioters were allowed 30 minutes to ransack a mosque before police would disperse the crowd, according to two witnesses. They tore it apart for the next half hour, the witnesses said. A hollowed-out structure remains. Local police denied having made any such an agreement when asked by Reuters.

 

Two days earlier in Gyobingauk, a town of 110,000 people just north of Minhla, a mob destroyed a mosque and 23 houses after three days of speeches by a monk preaching 969. Witnesses said they appeared well organized, razing some buildings with a bulldozer.