The silence of the muezzin

By I.S.
The Economist

October 31, 2013

A SUNNI mosque looks as if it has seen better days. Many of the tiles on its roof are missing and one of the minarets looks as if it is about to collapse. But inside, the cool white floor tiles are spotlessly clean, and the carpeted prayer-rooms look well-kept. A bearded old imam, whose sharp features hint at his Arabic ancestry, prepares for noon prayers. No muezzin calls from the minarets but the faithful in the town of Thandwe know anyway when to trickle in, some wearing prayer caps, others with their heads uncovered and long white shirts pulled over their blue-checked longyis.

The mosque, like most of the six others here, is near the town’s sprawling central bazaar. Thandwe is in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, which was once an independent kingdom called Arakan. Muslims, Indians and members of the state's ethnic-Rakhine majority sit side-by-side in Thandwe’s marketplace, trading fish and fresh vegetables, clothing, hardware and gold. 

It all looks peaceful. But the Buddhist pagoda opposite the market has been turned into a dormitory for riot police and soldiers. And by nightfall the roads into town are sealed off, only to open again at dawn.

In early October, Thandwe and some nearby Muslim villages were the scene of arson and murder. In total seven people died, five of them Muslims. An eyewitness says the attacks on Muslim homes in Thandwe were led by Rakhine women and backed up by men armed with homemade weapons. The police disarmed Muslims who had been trying to help defend their neighbours’ properties. 

Almost all the Muslims in Thandwe are Kaman people, members of a recognised ethnic group. Unlike the Rohingyas in the north of the state, whom most Rakhines and Burmans regard as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh—and hence stateless—the Kaman are widely acknowledged as citizens of Myanmar. 

The Rakhine people are Buddhists, as are most of their countrymen across Myanmar. But in Thandwe, as elsewhere in Rahkine state, they nurture a deep resentment against the ethnic-Burman group, who form the majority nationwide, and blame them for their own impoverishment. Despite its abundance of natural resources, Rakhine state is the second-poorest in Myanmar, with 43.5% of its people living below the poverty line.

Many Rakhine feel crushed between “Burmanisation” and “Islamisation”. Their state, with some 2m people, shares a border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, with a densely packed population of 150m. Some of the Rakhines’ frustration has been vented on the Muslim Kaman, whom they think to be more prosperous and plugged into better trade networks.

Such feelings are exploited by organisations such as “969”, a Buddhist ginger-group with a numerological name. Its leader, Wirathu, now a sort of celebrity-monk, has been inciting Buddhists against Muslims, regardless of their ethnic group. He visited Thandwe some months ago and his movement's 969 signs are now displayed prominently on many shops and houses (and on the roadside hoarding in the picture below, against a backdrop of traditional Buddhist colours).

The latest round of communal violence flared just as Myanmar's president, Thein Sein visited the area. His government has come under increasing pressure to to curb the activities of the 969 movement and ensure the safety of the Muslim population. In a recent report to United Nations General Assembly, Tomás Ojea Quintana, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said that Rakhine remained in a “situation of profound crisis”.

He reported that the situation there had fed anti-Muslim feelings in the rest of Myanmar, where this year Buddhist mobs have clashed with Muslims in a number of places. He called it “one of the most serious threats to the reform process” that started in 2011. (A representative of Myanmar’s government accused him of “blaming a doughnut for its hole”.)

Communal violence in Rakhine last year left at least 190 people dead and at least 140,000 homeless. But the Buddhist perpetrators, among them members of the security forces, have, until now, gone unpunished. (On October 21st two Muslims in Thandwe were sentenced to 15 years in jail for the rape of a Buddhist woman—an incident that was blamed for sparking an earlier, less extensive, onslaught on Muslim homes in June.)

Following the violence in October, more than 40 people were arrested, three-quarters of them Buddhists, including leaders of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), which is the main ethnic-Rakhine party. RNDP leaders say this is the first time its leaders have faced trial, and call it politically motivated.

Thandwe, which was once called Sandoway, is just a few miles from Ngapali, an upmarket seaside resort. A long stretch of sandy beaches dotted with 5-star hotels plays host to the growing numbers of foreign tourists who choose it as a holiday’s last stop, to recuperate from all that sightseeing. The few Muslim families who had lived in the area were forced out by their Buddhist neighbours a year ago. Some others, like an artist who runs a gallery there, are too scared to open their shops.

More than anywhere else in Myanmar, in Rakhine the renewed communal violence is a political minefield for the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s opposition leader. During her latest visit to Europe in October she rejected the description “ethnic cleansing” for the violence, and argued “that both Buddhists and Muslims are suffering". The blame, she said, should be chalked up to a “climate of fear”. This sparked an outcry abroad, for sounding like a deflection. But inside Myanmar her remarks went down easily. Even a young Muslim in Thandwe thought she was wise not to “fall into a political trap”. In Miss Suu Kyi’s heart, be believes, she “thinks differently”.

Even as she risks international criticism, however, it is highly unlikely that Miss Suu Kyi’s public stance will win the Rakhine vote for the NLD in the elections due in 2015. 

At an NLD youth meeting in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, the representative from Thandwe, a 22-year-old student, proudly flaunts the new tattoo on his arm: “Arakan”, it reads in large gothic letters. He chose it, he explains, because he “loves Arakan”.

For many of the Rakhine, loyalty to their state transcends that to their party and even to Myanmar itself. The outside world is exercised about the plight of Rakhine's Muslim minorities. For the NLD, however, as for the government, the anger of the ethnic-Rakhine majority is just as worrying. Too many of them seem to hanker still for the days of Arakan's glory and independence.