By Editorial of Los Angeles Times

March 9, 2014

The U.N. says the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, are one of the most persecuted groups in the world.

Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, has made substantial progress in the last few years, moving from military rule toward democracy, releasing political prisoners and freeing from house arrest Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the government has relentlessly continued its appalling treatment of the Rohingya population that lives in Rakhine state in western Myanmar. 

A Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, the Rohingya are effectively denied citizenship unless they can meet onerous requirements, such as tracing their lineage back decades. They are restricted in where they can live and work, are limited to having two children and have been subject to brutal violence at the hands of mobs unchecked by local police. More than 1 million Rohingya live in Myanmar, including about 180,000 in squalid internal displacement camps, according to Human Rights Watch. The United Nations has deemed the Rohingya one of the most persecuted groups in the world. 

Recently, violence against the Rohingya has escalated, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Two attacks in January left an estimated four dozen Rohingya dead in a village in Rakhine, according to the U.N. report. Myanmar's response has been to deny that it happened. 

Late last month, Doctors Without Borders was ordered by the government to shut down its extensive operations across the country. Two days later, it was allowed to resume working everywhere except in Rakhine, where the organization provided primary care to tens of thousands of Rohingya. 

This state-sponsored oppression must end. Myanmar needs to lift restrictions against the Rohingya and revamp its citizenship requirements. Security forces under government control should be deployed to Rakhine to supplant or oversee local police, who are often too prejudiced against the Rohingya to do their jobs properly. The government should also allow humanitarian groups back into Rakhine to provide aid and to monitor how the Rohingya are treated. 

And it should investigate this latest mass killing. The U.N. report notes that some of the Rohingya played a role in the violence — they killed a police sergeant in retaliation for the initial killing of eight Rohingya villagers. That's not excusable, but it's also no excuse for continued mistreatment of the entire group. 

Over the last few years, the U.S. has generously applauded the government of Myanmar for its steps toward democracy. President Obama has visited the country; an American ambassador has been installed. Now the United States should press President Thein Sein harder and call for him to extend that democracy to the Rohingya. 

It's unconscionable that Suu Kyi, a human rights icon, has not wielded her considerable moral authority to talk about this issue. She should abandon her diffident stand on the plight of the Rohingya and forcefully condemn the repression of and violence against them. It's heartening that she is a member of the Burmese Parliament now and hopes to secure a change in the constitution that would allow her to run for president. But a strong leader would not allow short-term political expediency to keep her from speaking out on a critical, life-and-death issue. 

By Brian Pellot

Regional News Service

March 9, 2014

“A politician thinks of the next elections. A statesman thinks of the next generation.” 

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most famous citizen, politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, made this distinction to a packed room of journalists at the International Media Conference in Yangon Sunday afternoon.

Daw Suu, as she’s known in Myanmar (Burma), is an internationally recognized and revered stateswoman. She’s also an active politician, thinking about running for president in the country’s 2015 elections. Suu Kyi’s continued silence on the Rohingya situation in western Myanmar begs the question: Are political priorities overshadowing her concern for the next generation?

Myanmar is one of the world’s worst countries for religious freedom. Minority faith groups are denied building permits, banned from proselytizing and pressured to convert to Theravada Buddhism, adhered to by 90 percent of the population. Myanmar’s constitution provides for limited religious freedom, but individual laws and government officials actively restrict it.

Most at risk are the country’s Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. Jim Brooke, editor of The Cambodia Daily, asked Suu Kyi to address their plight.

Suu Kyi’s full response to Brooke’s question:

When you talk about violence, you have to talk about the rule of law. I’ve talked about it very often but people are not interested because it’s not interesting enough to make the headlines. To me, rule of law is an extremely interesting subject, as interesting as it is important, but I don’t think it is to many people.

When I say the first thing you have to deal with in regards to the situation in the Rakhine is rule of law, people say I’ve said nothing about the situation because for them talking about rule of law is tantamount to talking about nothing. They don’t think it’s interesting, but it’s absolutely essential. It’s basic. If we want to resolve problems that are created through acts of violence, we have to make sure that the necessary actions are taken to ensure that these acts of violence do not take place. And that’s rule of law.

In any society, when there are tensions between different communities, you have to first of all ensure security. People who are insecure will not be ready to sit down to talk to one another to sort out their problems. So if you ask me what the solution is to the problem in the Rakhine, I would say simply ‘I don’t know what the solution is completely, but one essential part of it is the establishment of the rule of law.’

Suu Kyi didn’t mention the Rohingya by name. She didn’t mention the 240 Rohingya who were killed last year in clashes with mobs comprised of the Buddhist majority. She didn’t mention that Myanmar has refused to grant citizenship to 800,000 Rohingya, 240,000 of whom have fled their homes in recent clashes.

After five or six questions from the audience, one journalist requested of Suu Kyi “one last question from your neighboring country Bangladesh.”

Suu Kyi responded sternly, noting that the moderator had already selected a CNN journalist. “No, one last question from Victoria Kennedy is what was was said, so I think that’s how we’ll go.”

UPDATE: The Bangladeshi journalist mentioned above was Shyamal Dutta, editor of Bhorer Kagoj. He confirmed my assumption that his question pertained to Rohingyas fleeing persecution in Myanmar and flooding refugee camps in bordering Bangladesh.

I’m writing from the East-West Center’s International Media Conference in Yangon, Myanmar. I’ll be running a workshop Tuesday afternoon with my boss Debra Mason, former CNN producer Maria Ebrahimji and Burmese journalist Soe Myint. We’ll be discussing how to responsibly and accurately report on religious freedom and faith-based conflicts in restrictive media environments. You can read more about our workshop and view the full program here.

By Dr Nyo Tun

Democratic Voice of Burma

March 9, 2014

Burmese communities have recently paid attention to the media’s widely reported discussion between the nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu and the National League for Democracy (NLD) co-founder Win Tin. According to video footage reported on DVB on 24 February, Win Tin was discussing his party’s efforts to amend the military-drafted 2008 Constitution, specifically clause Article 59(f) which prohibits his party chairwoman, Aung San Su Kyi, from competing in the presidential race in next year’s elections.

The controversial monk, who is leading a campaign to pass a law that will put restrictions on interfaith marriage, has recently spoken out about his wish to retain the clause. Wirathu offered this reason to Win Tin: “It [amending the clause] will ultimately allow those who are not ethnic nationalities to exploit the Burmese people who are simple and naïve. Our people are not ready for this kind of deceit — they don’t have high enough intelligence.”

Though this short debate between Wirathu and Win Tin can hardly be representative of the general will of Burmese people, their thoughts revealed during this particular meeting reflect a noticeable perspective of Burmese society’s mental culture in a nation that is currently striving to avert a moral dilemma between its long-term isolation and new freedom during the recent years of democratic reform.

I would like to make some observations upon this mental culture and understand some of its important characteristics, which are deep-seated and also continue to grow vibrantly during the recent years of the nation’s march towards its democratic goals.

My primary concern is to question whether these attitudes are pertinent to the evolving democratic practices or if they become preposterous placements in our much anticipated and long-time awaited open society.

In offering my analysis, I will limit myself to the contents related to the general truths rather than criticizing people based on their particular beliefs. The scenario of the meeting between Wirathu and Win Tin is selected because their thoughts mirror the important perspective of the general mental culture. This deserves our consideration. My purpose is to discuss key problems in the prevailing attitudes in Burma so that people can finally make a rational decision instead of adhering to the perennial beliefs of the past.

As reflected in the DVB article and observed in his interfaith restriction advocacy movements as well, people like Wirathu regard blood and heritage as prime reasons to change Burma’s laws.

The DVB article revealed another important little-known perspective of Wirathu: “Only a few people in Burmese society can philosophize”. It is evident that advocacy movements of Wirathu for interfaith restriction laws and the non-amendment of the Constitution are mainly founded on his two beliefs that in Burmese society: (1) We must make the laws with our blood, or our heritage; and (2) only the “intellectuals” should decide what should be the laws.

Win Tin’s stance is unclear with regard to the first belief but he could have well agreed to his opponent’s second belief that denotes that only the wise should choose what should be law. Win Tin’s agreement with Wirathu’s second belief is not without evidence. In the middle of last year, when Wirathu inaugurated his proposed law to target interfaith marriage, the veteran journalist was one of the very few to speak against it. However, instead of criticizing the discriminatory content of the monk’s proposal, his critique was on the competence of the monk to judge what kind of laws should prevail in Burmese society. His past critique of the monk indicates that Win Tin is also likely to share a similar view of Wirathu to think that only the “competent” should decide the crucial issues of Burmese society.

It is well known to the public that Win Tin and The Lady, Aung San Su Kyi, have different opinions on a number of political issues. The current example is not an exception. If it had been the NLD Chairlady instead of Win Tin at this meeting, she might have retorted differently to the monk’s statement that “Our people don’t have enough intelligence” because it was illustrative of Burmese mental culture that she regards as a long-term humiliation of people’s dignity.

The well-known work, Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy by GustaafHoutman (1999) contains the opinion of Suu Kyi on this subject:

“Hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship, there is no room for hero-worship in a true political struggle made up of human beings grappling with human problems,” she said.

Since the earlier years of her struggle, Suu Kyi has been convinced that a true political struggle is made by the people and not by a small group of sacrosanct heroes. Since this time she has realized that Burmese mental culture is standing in opposition to her conviction.

While Wirathu’s statements are vicarious imaginations of class worship in this static mental culture, holding such intentions in public lawmaking processes will breach the fiduciary duty of respecting egalitarian principles. These intentions will lead to discriminatory lawmaking practices and are counter to the nation’s democratic process.

I will start with the second belief. If we would like to recruit only intelligent people to make laws, we need to ask by what criteria we will choose intelligent people. When we push this question to Win Tin and the NLD, they will probably choose an Oxford degree. To President Thein Sein and his ruling USDP party, they will choose the military. To Wirathu and his Race and Religion Protection Society, they will choose Burmese, Buddhist, or “our national heritage” and “protectors”.

With any of these choices, the discrimination and exclusion of other groups, especially underprivileged groups, are inescapable.

Another important problem in adopting such a belief is that usually it is the authority that decides these criteria the treasure hunt for “wisdom” inevitably ends up in self-authentication of the already privileged classes. It is true that some authorities may probably set up the fairest selection standards.Nevertheless, we can never avoid procedural exclusion and discrimination against others who lose their eligibility outright just by preferable criteria of some decision-making body.

Not only can we not rule out the impartiality of the selection process, but the idea that “only the intelligent people should make the laws” is a self-perpetrating statement. As laws are made for making people equal, then by only allowing the “superior” ones to make the laws, the lawmaking process will never be impartial.

We will turn back to the first belief, which in essence shares the same connotation of partiality. This sounds more like “caste” because it is one’s birth that decides who will make the laws. Such discriminatory intent of proclaiming we must make the laws with “our blood” or “our heritage” directly violates the egalitarian principle of the Rule of Law and is also not acceptable to the public lawmaking process.

Allowing such discriminatory practices in lawmaking will divide the nation into friends and foes – those who are standing close to authority and those who are distant. Ultimately we develop a class system of the noble vthe unworthy.

It has been broadly acknowledged that provision of the Rule of Law is a desperate need on Burma’s path to reform. However, most discussions on this topic are focused on the integrity of the judicial system, checks and balances between the Parliament and the Administration, anti-corruption efforts, and education of the security forces. Too little attention has been paid to the importance of encouraging society’s general mental culture towards impartiality, an attitude that must be widely developed in a democratic nation’s lawmaking practices. As long as discriminatory attitudes in lawmaking practices persist, the country’s human rights situation will be negatively affected.

The United Nations has provided assistance to improve Burma’s human rights situation by recruiting special rapporteurs to the country. Just a few days ago, Tomás Ojea Quintana’s mission to Burma ended. The post-mortem analysis showed that special rapporteurs have their own emphasis on particular issues that fit with their background. For example, Quintana paid more attention to judicial procedures and the release of political prisoners while his predecessor, Pinheiro, focused more on the recruitment of child soldiers.

No significant effort has been observed to openly review the general mental attitudes of lawmakers and duty-holders with regard to their respect for impartiality.

As long as partial attitudes are legitimised and can be validly domineering in society’s general mental culture, procedural reforms will become a mere façade or ultimately become retrogressive.

We have completely lost our way in a daze by forgetting the need to change our mental culture in regard to our respect for the Rule of Law. This forgetfulness is fatal in a sense because it is the founding principle of the Rule of Law. Without addressing this critical issue, the reform efforts will simply become activism or rhetoric rather than bringing real major change to society.

Over and above, a lack of attention and criticism of our partial mental attitudes seriously undermines the nation’s current efforts for the reform processes that are underway. It will allow sentiments to override critical thinking and offer wrong justifications for continuous discriminatory practices.

Widespread acknowledgement of impartiality with respect to the Rule of Law and a new paradigm shift in our mental culture – to respect all other our fellow human beings, even those beyond our national boundaries, as equals – are urgently needed for our nation’s nascent road to democracy.

Dr Nyo Tun has worked as an international consultant for EU, USAID and Gates Foundation-funded study projects which analyse strategies for national and global health issues. Prior to his international consultant work, he led public health initiatives for providing health care to marginalized populations in various regions of Burma.

(Photo: AFP)

By AFP
March 9, 2014

In the desolate camps of western Myanmar many homeless Muslims are determined to assert their identity as Rohingya after years of persecution, in a census some fear will spark further turmoil.

Myanmar's first census in 30 years -- which starts at the end of March with United Nations help -- will provide new data on the country, until now relying on figures from a flawed population tally in 1983.

But observers warn that controversy over rigid official definitions of ethnicity and entrenched mistrust of authorities after decades of junta rule risk damaging the country's fragile peace efforts and further inflaming religious tensions after waves of anti-Muslim violence.

Questions of identity go to the very heart of divisions in Rakhine State, where long-held animosity between Buddhist and Muslim communities erupted into bloodshed two years ago, leaving scores dead and displacing 140,000 people -- mainly among the stateless Rohingya.

Violence has already flared in the camps on the outskirts of the state capital Sittwe as anxieties over the possible impact of the census run high.

Eindarit, 36, lay beaten and bandaged in a wooden shack following an effort to prevent dozens of fellow Rohingya from fleeing Myanmar by boat.

"He asked them not to leave because we have to take part in the census," said Hla Mint, a 58-year-old retired policeman and de facto local leader, speaking his behalf.

But it ended in violence. Eindarit was badly wounded, losing most of his teeth. The attack left him requiring strapping to his jaw.

"He was cut with knives on his head and hands and beaten with a pipe," Hla Mint said, blaming the clash on local human traffickers.

The incident adds weight to observers' fears that the census is stirring up new divisions in the already combustible state.

"I think this is going to create a huge mess. Everyone is extremely worried this is going to erupt into a new stage of violence," said Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project, which campaigns for Rohingya rights.

Myanmar's 800,000 Rohingya -- who are stateless, and considered by the U.N. to be one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- face restrictions that hamper their ability to travel, work, access health and education and even to marry.

Many Rohingya are deeply distrustful of the government -- which maintains that most in the community are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh -- and fear it could use its census findings to somehow extinguish their potential citizenship claims.

The survey form does not have a dedicated box for Rohingya, who are not one of the country's 135 official ethnic minorities -- despite the fact many can trace their ancestry back generations in Myanmar.

But they can still identify themselves as Rohingya in the census -- there is a box for "other" with space to write any group or name they wish to be identified as, which some see as a breakthrough in their efforts to assert their identity.

Many of Rakhine's Muslim population were listed as Bengali in the last census.

"We are labelled 'Bengali, Bengali' all the time. Evidence that we were born here, that we have been staying here, is crucial to us," Hla Mint told AFP.

The census "risks inflaming tensions at a critical moment" in Myanmar's democratic transition, according to a recent study by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which added that controversial sections on religion and ethnicity should be dropped in favor of a focus on key demographic data.

It said the results, many of which will be released before Myanmar holds its first national polls since the end of junta rule, had "direct political ramifications" because the country has some constituencies carved out along ethnic minority lines according to population size.

But the government and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have rejected those suggestions.

They say information on ethnicity is needed as part of efforts to provide a crucial snapshot of the country for national planning.

UNFPA's Myanmar chief Janet Jackson said most ethnic armed groups -- apart from Kachin rebels near the Chinese border -- had accepted the census.

She told AFP that efforts are under way to ensure everyone is counted in Rakhine "sensitively and with calm", adding the survey would not be linked to citizenship.

The U.N. aims to find census-takers among Rakhine's Muslim population to ease inter-communal mistrust.

But divisions fester and in Sittwe, Buddhist politicians expressed deep animosity towards their Muslim former neighbors.

"There is no such thing as the Rohingya ethnicity... it is just a term. Ethnic Rakhines know their intention. It is a political aim," said Shwe Maung, a senior member of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party.

The ICG said the previous census was believed to have deliberately under-reported the size of Mynamar's Muslim population, at four rather than 10 percent.

Consequently, this census could show a misleading "three-fold increase" in the Muslim population, "a potentially dangerous call to arms" for extremists in the Buddhist-majority nation, the study said.

For Muslims trapped between risking defiantly identifying themselves as Rohingya and the ongoing precariousness of statelessness, the path ahead is fraught with uncertainty, said Rohingya politician Kyaw Min.

"The future is very dark, gloomy -- very dangerous," he told AFP.

RB News 

March 8, 2014

Dar Paing, Arakan -- An estimated 500 Rohingya villagers are left homeless after an accidental fire claimed approximately 40 households in Dar Paing village, within the Sittwe Township of Arakan State.

Reportedly, the fire broke out at 11:45am on March 8, 2014. Houses were burnt to ash before it was extinguished at approximately 2:30pm. According to one village elder it was suspected that the blaze was started due to an accident while one woman was cooking with oil. There were other talks of a spark caused by a malfunctioning solar panel. 

There are reports that an 8 month old baby girl is missing and is presumed dead. Her mother has severe leg burns. At this time there are 10 other reported injuries due to burns and smoke inhalation.

There is access to a small variety of medical supplies locally however there are no medical staff or professionals. This due to the only real lifeline for educated medical care having been MSF-Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors without Boarders, the medical humanitarian group who have recently expelled from Arakan state by the Myanmar Government. There is little knowledge about medical procedures by locals so there is a serious concern for infection as the Rohingya villagers are left to their own to try to treat their friends and family. There are some that beloved that Red Cross will come to assist the situation. That is yet to be confirmed. 

To those in Arakan state who find themselves in the situation of being forced to treat wounds without experience, the #1 way to prevent wound infection is as follows: The wounds and the surrounding skin needs to be cleaned with plain soap and water. Cream should be applied to the wound and a use a clean cloth or bandage to cover it.

The Rohingya people in Dar Paing village despite having lost their livelihoods have not been considered displaced because they still had their homes. That means that they are not eligible to get aid from WFP - World Food Programme. 

Along with losing their homes and their personal possessions, the now homeless Rohingya villagers have lost all of their food and cooking materials. They will have to rely on their community and friends and family for support just to stay alive amidst concerns of being pushed into IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps around Sittwe.

Although the fire is accepted to be an accident, locals told RB News that the Police seemed to enjoy the fire. They were laughing as they delayed help from coming to extinguish the blaze.

Mobs Attack Rakhine Muslim Minority in Potential Ethnic-Cleansing Effort

By Kevin McKiernan

Santa Babara Independent

March 8, 2014

Last month, some weeks after I visited Myanmar, state security forces and Buddhist vigilantes massacred at least 48 ethnic Rohingya Muslims, mostly women and children, according to human rights reports. Witnesses said the mass killings took place in the Rakhine state in western Myanmar ​— ​the country also known as Burma ​— ​in one of the many areas that are largely off-limits to journalists and humanitarian workers.

Rakhine is the troubled place where in 2012 Buddhist mobs killed more than 200 Muslims and burned thousands of homes. Despite government controls, journalists managed to report that the mobs, assisted by police, had driven more than 100,000 Rohingya into militarized camps. They remain there today, forbidden to marry or to have more than two children without permission or to travel beyond the police and army checkpoints.

Immediately after the massacre, the UN called on Myanmar to investigate. But as with prior atrocities, the government denied responsibility for the killings. According to the Associated Press, on February 27 Myanmar’s government expelled the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders after the organization reported that it had treated two dozen Rohingya Muslims, victims of violence committed by Buddhist mobs. The government denied the attacks.

I never thought the word Buddhist would be used as an adjective to modify the noun terror.

All that changed last summer, when I saw the serene image of a Buddhist monk on the cover of the Asian edition of Time magazine. The story appeared a few months after President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Myanmar, which was intended to note the end of 50 years of brutal military rule and the beginning of a “transition to democracy.” In reality, growing sectarian violence in the country may yet derail that transition, as it may slow down the stampede of Western corporations hungry to share in this, the last frontier market in Asia. Next to the portrait of the monk in his flowing, maroon-colored robes was the headline “THE FACE OF BUDDHIST TERROR.”

Buddhists compose about 90 percent of the population in Myanmar; Muslims account for only about 4 percent. The country has some 135 ethnic groups and a long history of tribal and religious conflict. Founded as a democratic nation in 1948, Burma fell to a military coup in 1962, remaining a dictatorship until 2010. At that time, the junta, desperate for hard currency, announced political reforms and allowed elections, which led to a nominally civilian government. The reforms included the freeing of prominent human-rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who had spent 15 years under house arrest in her lakeside home and in the notorious Insein prison. The loosening of military control prompted the lifting of international sanctions, but it was followed by a rash of sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims.

Last fall I flew to Burma, the storied home of thousands of golden pagodas and ancient temples. The country was renamed Myanmar by the junta in 1989, but it is still called Burma by many Western nations. I’d reported from China and Vietnam, but somehow I hadn’t realized that this country was as big as Texas, the largest landmass in mainland Southeast Asia.

I certainly didn’t understand what could be at stake for my own country politically ​— ​what forging this new alliance might mean for President Obama, whose legacy will be colored, fairly or unfairly, by failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. I guessed that Obama sorely needed a win in the foreign policy column. And I watched with interest, following the visit, when the President lifted punishing economic sanctions, which had isolated Burma as a police state for decades. Now I wondered how these events would impact the beleaguered Rohingya, the people the UN calls one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Would their sorry tale play a part, however small, in Obama’s legacy?

Or would the Rohingya, these stateless people whose citizenship was revoked when the Burmese generals rewrote the national constitution in 1982, remain a sideshow in a larger picture: the Administration’s attempt to refocus attention from the Middle East toward the China-dominated Pacific, a gambit some have dubbed Obama’s “Asian Pivot”?

Myanmar Stories

It was a humid 93 degrees the morning I landed in Yangon, the city many still call Rangoon (the military changed the name in 1989). Before my trip, Bill Davis, the lead investigator for Physicians for Human Rights, had told me about a Rohingya businessperson called Karim (not his real name), who had moved to Yangon before travel restrictions were imposed. Davis told me that dozens of Muslims had been massacred and 13,000 displaced by mob violence in Meiktila, a town in the center of the country. The mayhem had apparently been triggered by an argument between a Muslim merchant and a Buddhist customer over gold prices. Much of the town had been burnt by Buddhists, who reportedly set fire to the corpses of their victims as police stood idly by. According to Davis, the crowds shouted “Kill the Kalars!” ​— ​a racial epithet commonly used against foreigners, despite the fact that many of the victims were from families who had lived in the area for generations. Davis suggested that his contact might be able to take me to see the rubble of the central mosque and school.

Karim was supposed to meet me at the airport, but the roads were choked with the usual autos, pickups, tuk-tuks, and trishaws. He advised me by phone to take the airport van. An hour later, I walked into the lobby of the Queen’s Park Hotel, a reminder of the British colonial period, which ended after Burma declared independence in 1947.

We met in the hotel restaurant where Karim, a well-dressed man in his mid-thirties, selected a table out of earshot of other customers. The breakfast buffet was winding down, and the waiters were removing platters of Burmese delicacies: mango with dried eel and fish bought fresh on the docks only a few blocks from the hotel. Karim began by apologizing that he could not take me to Meiktila. It was just too dangerous. He was willing to help, but only with background information. “I have three little girls,” he said, his voice trailing off.

I knew Myanmar was experiencing the longest-running civil war in the world, a dubious distinction at best. The Burmese army, one of the largest in the world, was now in its sixth decade of fighting ethnic groups, none of them Muslim, on the China and Thai borders. I knew that Burma’s border territories were rich in oil, gas, and precious gems (90 percent of the world’s rubies and the best jade come from here) and that the Burmese military shared in the riches. There was also credible evidence that government-aligned militias were profiting from drug production in Burma’s Golden Triangle, a principal supplier of heroin to the U.S.

During my visit last fall, China completed an oil and gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal across Burma’s Rakhine state and onward to the Chinese frontier, a distance of more than 1,000 miles. This followed Beijing’s construction of a new railroad from the Chinese border to ports on the Rakhine coast. This was now the fastest way for Chinese products to reach the Indian Ocean. Not to be outdone, a number of American companies had already announced investments in Myanmar, including Coca-Cola, General Electric, and Ford, which was opening its first franchise dealership in Yangon. But the biggest bonanza could be the anticipated influx of post-junta tourists looking for resorts, and many developers were eying properties on the Bay of Bengal. The value of real estate, Rohingya and otherwise, was going up.

Sittwe

The Rohingyas are a small ethnic minority with their own culture and language, scattered throughout a half-dozen countries from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia. The largest concentration ​— ​some 1.2 million ​— ​are found in Burma, mostly in the Rakhine state, which lies directly south of Bangladesh on the Bay of Bengal. This is where tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were confined “for their own protection” after the attacks of 2012. Sittwe is virtually inaccessible by road, cut off by an inland mountain range, splitting western Myanmar from the rest of the country.

Rakhine was an independent country until 1784, and, in its glory days, European travelers called the coastal kingdom the “Venice of the East.” Despite the fact that today Rohingyas outnumber Buddhists in some areas, ethnic Rakhines still think of themselves as a separate, monolithic people, something similar to the Basques in Spain.

I flew by prop plane to Sittwe, Karim’s birthplace and the Rakhine capital. It’s an island city of almost 200,000, surrounded by rivers that flow into the bay. Sittwe is the spot where the British landed in 1825 during the first Anglo-Burmese War, and, despite a sizeable Muslim population, it is considered the birthplace of “political Buddhism.”

Here in a British security prison in 1939, the monk Sayadaw U Ottama, a famous leader of the Burmese independence movement and practitioner of Theravāda, the oldest surviving form of Buddhism, died on hunger strike. And here in 2007, Sittwe monks launched the “Saffron Revolution,” an uprising against the military government that quickly spread throughout the country but was brutally repressed.

In 2012, the first large-scale sectarian violence broke out in June, when a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered allegedly by three Muslims, who were quickly lynched. It erupted again in October 2012, when the Muslim quarter, Aung Mingalar, was emptied and much of it burned by rampaging mobs. Between the two outbreaks, more than 240 Rohingya Muslims were killed and an estimated 140,000 were confined to internally displaced persons (IDP) camps near Sittwe. Tens of thousands managed to flee the country.

When I tried to get into Aung Mingalar, I was turned back at a police checkpoint. The next day I hired a fixer who got me into one of the camps not far from the ocean. There I met Noor Ali, a Rohingya man in his mid-thirties who was wearing a torn white T-shirt. Ali took me to a makeshift cemetery and showed me a large mound of fresh dirt. It was a mass grave. The day before, Ali told me through an interpreter that the police had come at night in a big truck. Without explanation, they dumped 58 bodies of men, women, and children. The bodies, which were partially decomposed, may have come from another camp, but no one could identify them. The bodies remain a mystery. The police offered no answers, and everyone was too terrified to press the issue.

Ali led me to an older grave in the cemetery. “My wife is buried here,” he said.

We lingered awhile before walking across an open field, lush green and soft from the rainy season that was now ending. He told me his story in simple language. “We used to all live together,” he said of the Sittwe community. “Then one day the monks told [the Muslims] to leave our village. ‘This is not your land,’” they insisted. When his neighborhood leader, who was Buddhist, decided to join the monks, he knew it was time to go. The Muslim quarter was in a state of high panic. During the chaos, Ali was separated from his wife and their 3-year-old boy. “They had to cross a river,” he said, “but the river was too strong.” Ali was only able to find one body, that of his wife.

“They drowned.”

I thought of the Royal Sittwe, the seaside resort beyond the police checkpoints where I would spend the night, one of many that developers hope will transform Myanmar into a tourist mecca. Then I thought of Ali and the others in the camp. They were like random beings adrift in a lawless outer space, where the sound of voices cannot travel. Unhooked from the earthship where most of the rest of us ride, they seemed to be floating away, tinier and tinier in the distance.

Fleeing Ethnic Cleansing by Sea

On the Bay of Bengal, about a hundred yards from one of the camps, I found what someone generously called the “Rohingya fishing fleet.” The fleet consisted of some 40 wooden hulls, rotten-looking things without a trace of paint. Above the water line, you could see cracks between the swollen planks; below, you could hear the whoosh of bilge pumps working overtime to keep up with the leaks. The boats listed against one other, like huddled driftwood. It felt like a marine graveyard.

On a muddy embankment near the water, several Rohingyas were struggling to revive a boat ​— ​it looked more like a skeleton ​— ​about 40 feet in length. One man was busy with a hammer, trying to “sister” an old rib with rusty nails. I remembered from my days on the water that salt dissolves iron all too quickly, one reason why wooden boat operators in the West insist on using bronze and stainless steel to fasten planks.

“Sixty or 70 people crowd into these boats,” my guide told me, noting that the rickety vessels do so without any navigational equipment to guide their ocean voyages. Some flee to nearby Bangladesh, he said, others to Malaysia and Thailand.

Just in the last year, according to human rights groups, thousands of desperate refugees had chosen the dangers of ocean escape from the ethnic cleansing. According to the UN, of the 13,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims who fled in 2012, 485 are known to have drowned. Shortly after I left Myanmar last November, 70 men, women, and children drowned when their overloaded boat broke up in the Bay of Bengal.

I had to wonder if the man with the rusty nails was aboard.

A Burnt Mosque

I followed Aung Win, my balding 60-year-old fixer, through the ashes of the torched mosque near Sittwe and into an adjoining space that used to be a madrassa. Aung Win said that some 350 people had come there every day to pray. We passed through the eerie remains of a classroom, walls still standing, a floor of blackened rubble, then on to the remnants of a kitchen, where student lunches once had been prepared. Plate and teacup fragments cracked underfoot.

“The Buddhists set everything on fire on June 12 and then again on June 13 and 14,” he said. “Then the police attacked the people who were trying to run away.”

We walked to another room, with only walls standing. For a moment we were alone, out of sight of the nearby guards. “During the violence, I lost two of my brothers-in-law,” Aung Win said quietly. “One of them was killed by beating and the other,” he said, dragging a finger across his neck, “his throat was cut with a long knife.”

“I am very sad,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I do not think still there is justice in Myanmar.”

Wirathu

Buddhism and nationalism have been intertwined in Burma for more than a century. It is a good guess that George Orwell, the writer who first came to Burma as a British police officer in the 1920s, witnessed monks taking part in demonstrations against the occupation. And here, almost a century later, was Ashin Wirathu, the radical Burmese monk, notorious leader of the “969” political movement, the anti-Muslim crusade widely condemned for spreading hate speech. In 2003, Wirathu was sentenced to 25 years in prison for inciting riots that led to the killing of 10 Muslims but was released in 2010 in a general amnesty for political prisoners. Considering his volatile history, I was surprised to meet a charismatic, cherubic-looking preacher, a boyish 45-year-old who stood only about 5‘7”, with a voice so soft it was difficult to hear.

The 969 movement considers Rohingyas to be land- and job-grabbing illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They are like “Mexican sneakers in your country,” someone told me, rephrasing a common slur. Wirathu joined 969 ​— ​the number supposedly refers to Buddhist scripture ​— ​in 2001. The movement’s logo, a circle of light emanating from three lions on a pedestal, can be seen throughout Burma on vendor stalls, taxicabs, and private vehicles. Wirathu has thousands of Facebook followers, and his YouTube videos calling Muslims “dogs” and “carp” and other names are all over the Internet.

I met him at the respected Masoeyein Monastery in the city of Mandalay in central Myanmar, where he presides over some 2,500 monks. Wirathu painted a picture of Buddhist monks cowering under physical threat from a worldwide Muslim conspiracy. “Their purpose is to turn Myanmar into an Islamic state,” he claimed. While most Rohingya are not connected to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, he said, the majority are bound by their influence.

Outside Wirathu’s temple were two large bulletin boards, where gruesome photos of the corpses of mutilated monks were posted. An idyllic drawing of Wirathu, encircled by the doves of peace, was positioned above the corpses. Wirathu told me the monks were bludgeoned or hacked to death by Muslim attackers. I asked him where the pictures were taken. He said Thailand and Bangladesh, both of which have small Rohingya populations. He later claimed similar photos on the other board were taken in the Rakhine state in Burma, though there was no context for the photos and no authentication. It seemed preposterous to believe that the murders of so many monks could have taken place in a society where the majority population is Buddhist ​— ​a place where monks are held in such reverence that they routinely jump queues at supermarkets and airport counters. How could all these crimes be committed in such a country without being reported in the news?

Andrea Gittleman, the senior legislative counsel for the Physicians for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., said her organization has seen a connection between speeches by Wirathu and spikes in anti-Muslim violence across Myanmar. Gittleman cited the example of Wirathu leading a rally of monks in Mandalay in September 2012 to promote the current president Thein Sein’s controversial plan to send Rohingya Muslims to a third country. A month later, more violence broke out in the Rakhine state.

(note: According to Burmese media accounts, the January 2014 massacre in Rakhine erupted soon after monks delivered sermons calling for the expulsion of all the Rohingya.)

In last year’s controversial Time interview, Wirathu took the title “Burmese Bin Laden.” After the exposé, more than a thousand monks and other Burmese attended a protest rally and Deputy Minister of Information Ye Htut banned the magazine, saying it was necessary to halt the spread of “hate speech.” Wirathu was quoted in the article saying Muslims were the main cause of violence in the world, and urging his compatriots to be vigilant: “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog.”

Late in the afternoon of our interview, standing in a sweat-drenched shirt next to the photos of mutilated corpses, I listened as Wirathu began to profess his admiration for historical figures such as Corazón Aquino in the Philippines, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, and Mahatma Gandhi in India. “I have a great deal of respect,” Wirathu said, “for a leader like Martin Luther King who has shown us the way for peacefulresistance. There are a few people in Myanmar who follow his example, and I identify with them.”

It all had a weird, Alice in Wonderlandfeeling. Here I was, an American visitor, now steeped in human rights reports about Buddhist atrocities against Muslims, talking to an angelic little man who claimed that the Rohingyas were behind most, if not all, of the carnage. Why have all these Rohingyas been killed and why were there 140,000 refugees in those camps? I asked incredulously. It’s propaganda, Wirathu replied politely.

The Buddhist Peacemaker

The first thing that grabs your attention in her tidy middle class house in Mandalay is the large photo of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s famous dissident and Nobel laureate. The home belongs to Armarni Sein Hlaing, a peace activist who, as a student in the ’80s and ’90s, was briefly detained in demonstrations against the military junta and once “spent a month hiding in the jungle” after her college friends were arrested. She told me that in order for Suu Kyi to run for the presidency in 2015 ​— ​a development that might convince many skeptics that Myanmar was on a real path to democracy ​— ​the military would have to agree to amend the constitution, which states that a candidate’s family must have been born in Burma. Suu Kyi’s husband and children were born in England.

Such a change, Armarni guessed, was unlikely.

Today, Armarni and her husband are members of the once-outlawed National League for Democracy, which was represented in the historic election of 2012 when Suu Kyi was elected a member of Parliament. Like Suu Kyi, Armarni and her husband, who is a maritime engineer, are Theravāda Buddhists. They are part of a group called Myitta, which tries to promote harmony between Buddhists and Muslims. Myitta means “empathy” in Burmese.

Armarni said she welcomed the democratic reforms, especially the new press freedoms, but she said the violence against Muslims was orchestrated, “a deliberate attempt by the government to sway the outcome” of the coming elections. The Myitta movement was raising issues I hadn’t heard before, which seemed a hopeful sign. “It is the government that is trying to divert attention to distract us from the real issues at hand,” she said. “There is no reason for the Buddhists and the Muslims to fight ​— ​we were all born here and are like brothers and sisters,” she added. But “someone is pulling the strings ​— ​there is a puppet master.”

Leaving

On my last day in Myanmar, five bombs exploded in Yangon. In one of the blasts, a 43-year-old American tourist in the Traders Hotel suffered multiple injuries. The government blamed Karen guerrillas, one of an alphabet soup of rebel groups in the resource-rich north, which have been fighting the Burmese army for almost 60 years.

A Yangon newspaper, perhaps testing the limits of the new press freedoms, blamed the Burmese secret police, claiming government efforts to instill fear in the long run-up to the 2015 elections. Given the conspiracy theories swirling in the country, that guess was as good as any.

This was the end of the Buddhist Lent, the religious holiday known as Thadingyut that falls each year when the rains begin to retreat. This year Thadingyut overlapped with Eid al-Adha, the worldwide Islamic feast that honors the sacrifice attributed to the patriarch Abraham. I got a taste of both, first by walking in the annual festival of lights that celebrates Thadingyut. Then Karim picked me up and brought me to the Muslim quarter, where lines of poor people had queued up to receive the traditional donations of lamb.

After that we went to the family home of Kyaw Min, a well-known Rohingya politician who had been elected as a member of the Myanmar Parliament in 1990. In 2006 Kyaw was arrested by the secret police on charges his Rohingya advocacy was giving Myanmar a “bad name” abroad. Then the police rounded up the rest of the family, Kyaw’s wife and their three children. The youngest, Wai Wai (who was 18 at the time), told me the notorious Special Branch police came to their house at midnight. After two months in jail without benefit of counsel, Wai Wai said she and her mother and siblings were sentenced to 17 years in prison. Her father, the real target, was sentenced to 46 years. All of them were incarcerated at Insein, the notorious prison built by the British in 1871. The prison ​— ​which, at the time of its construction, was the largest in the Empire ​— ​was intended to house 5,000 inmates. Under Myanmar military government, Kyaw said, the population had swollen to 10,000.

Only a few months before my visit, Kyaw and his family were released from prison. Considering their seven-year ordeal behind bars, they struck me as remarkably cheerful.

Kyaw was back at work printing broadsides. His daughter Wai Wai, a bright young woman of 25, had polished her English while in prison and was now virtually fluent. She was taking civics classes at the U.S. Embassy, which had given her and a peace delegation she belonged to coveted visas to visit the U.S.Encouraged by the Americans, she and her delegation had just returned from a trip to New York and Washington, D.C. It was a small but hopeful sign.

. . .

Flying home on China Airlines, watching The Lone Ranger with subtitles in Mandarin and eating a kosher meal that had been packaged in Belgium, I had to marvel how the world had shrunk ​— ​and how Burma had remained so frozen in time.

A few weeks after I returned to Santa Barbara, the United Nations passed a resolution urging Myanmar to grant citizenship to the disenfranchised Rohingya. Myanmar quickly told the UN to mind its own business (which, some might say, it was trying to do). After that, the U.S. Congress introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on “Burma to end the persecution and discrimination of the Rohingya people and ensure respect for internationally recognized human rights for all ethnic and religious minority groups.” The resolution, which Tom Andrews, former U.S. congressmember from Maine, helped draft, is largely symbolic. It is aimed in part at those in the Obama administration who are pushing behind the scenes for the U.S. to lift the last big sanction, military aid to Burma, which was cut after the bloody crackdown on protesters 25 years ago. “It’s wrong to be talking about weapons,” Andrews told me. “The big question should be whether the Myanmar military is answerable to the government or, as it appears, the government is still answerable to the military.” The overall issue is being driven, the ex-congressmember said, by the U.S. and China vying for power in Burma. “That’s why I fear [U.S. military aid] will eventually pass.”

I asked Andrews why Aung San Suu Kyi, the symbol of human rights in Myanmar who is so revered in Washington, D.C., had remained silent in the face of the brutal ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. “Muslims are the third rail of politics,” he said bluntly.

“No politician in Burma can make a stand for a reviled minority and still be elected.”

Kevin McKiernan is a journalist and filmmaker. He directed the PBS documentary Good Kurds, Bad Kurds and is the author of the book The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).

By Eliane Coates

The Nation

March 8, 2014

Nay Pyi Taw's road to reform remains long and winding, but its neighbours can help power the country towards internal peace

Myanmar's chairmanship of Asean, which began in January, will become an open display of its progress on national economic and political reforms. Nay Pyi Taw's hosting of the regional bloc has the potential to improve the country's international reputation, national economy and domestic reconciliation efforts.

After emerging from international-pariah status, Myanmar sees taking the Asean helm as an opportunity to demonstrate its reformist credentials and as a platform to re-engage the global community. The nation's chance comes after almost 50 years locked in the grip of a fierce and repressive military regime that paid little attention to international criticism.

However, under the leadership of a quasi-civilian government, it has stepped onto a path towards substantial reforms, including a loosening of the political system, press freedom and economic liberalisation. This has not only convinced Nay Pyi Taw's Asean neighbours, but has also managed to woo major powers including the United States into easing sanctions.

As Asean Chair, Myanmar now has the opportunity to discard its isolationist foreign policy and become a responsible stakeholder of the international community, helping steer Southeast Asia through contentious regional issues, including the South China Sea disputes. Nay Pyi Taw's challenge now is to translate this chairmanship into genuine leadership.

Apart from raising its international profile, leading Asean could unlock greater economic opportunities for Myanmar, spurring investor confidence and further integration with surrounding economies.

Asean's goal is to create a single Southeast Asian market and regional trading bloc by 2015. However, Myanmar remains the bloc's poorest member with a GDP of only US$53 billion (Bt1.75 trillion), contributing only 0.2 per cent of total production in mainland Southeast Asia. Myanmar will struggle to meet the strict policy reform requirements for the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in the specified time frame. 

Nevertheless, increased investor confidence after taking the regional helm could help narrow the crucial gaps in critical infrastructure and employment, as well as provide the momentum to achieve market regulation and greater human capacity in Myanmar.

Domestic economic reforms have already helped to increase the flow of foreign capital into Myanmar. In a recent report by the private sector, Myanmar was listed as one of five countries that had made the greatest improvements over the last five years to their business environment. The floating of its currency, the kyat, as well as the launch of a new foreign investment law to regulate foreign ownership limits and land leasing rules, have not only made Myanmar more attractive to foreign investors but has also enabled further exploitation of its natural resource riches, such a arable land, forestry and natural gas. One report suggests the country's energy and mining sector is projected to expand to $22 billion by 2030 from $8 billion in 2010.

However, Myanmar's capacity to fully exploit such opportunities is questionable at best. Endemic corruption, lack of transparency, limited legal recourse, slow and costly approval procedures to rebuild infrastructure, and remaining Western economic sanctions continue to stifle the country's economic growth. The World Bank recently ranked Myanmar 182 out of 189 countries for ease of doing business.

There has also been a brain drain of skilled workers to neighbouring countries which offer higher wages. While the economic payoffs in heading Asean may be great, more reforms must be made to create an inviting business environment to set the stage for Myanmar's full integration with the AEC.

Rohingya crisis

National reconciliation presents the biggest hurdle to the country's reform process. Many outsiders remain sceptical of Myanmar's development amid ongoing internal inter-ethnic conflict. Myanmar expects Asean to recognise its national reconciliation efforts to solve deep-rooted conflicts between the government and ethnic armies with ceasefire deals and comprehensive peace settlements. 

While its neighbours are keen to see it succeed in its path to democratisation, Asean's support for the country will not be unconditional. The prestige and legitimacy associated with helming Southeast Asia's regional bloc must not obscure the fact that Myanmar still has a long way to go, particularly in protecting human rights and pursuing national reconciliation. 

Myanmar's inter-ethnic violence continues to strain its Asean neighbours with the flow of Rohingya-Muslim refugees to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Rohingya also pose a spillover potential security threat to some Aseanmembers. In 2013 two Rohingya leaders linked to the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) were reported to have enlisted assistance in the form of weapons and tactical knowledge from Islamist groups in Indonesia. 

At present, peace agreements with ethnic armies have not been consolidated. Instead of granting greater autonomy,Nay Pyi Taw is offering economic incentives through development projects to rebel leaders in exchange for signing ceasefire agreements. While this process has facilitated re-engagement between the two sides, it is no more than a short-term fix; it cannot replace sincere political dialogue to address the underlying political, economic and social causes of the ongoing armed conflict.

Human rights setbacks

Slow progress in national reconciliation efforts is compounded by increasing concern over human rights inside Myanmar. Reports of rights violations - particularly against the Rohingya- are rife, despite Nay Pyi Taw having set up a national human rights commission in 2011. The visit last month by the UN special rapporteur on Human Rights only confirmed Myanmar's inability to conduct objective investigations on widespread violations and to bring the perpetrators to justice, including those belonging to local security forces. 

Last week, Nay Pyi Taw further angered the international community by suspending the operations of medical NGO Doctors Without Borders in Rakhine state, claiming it was biased towards the Rohingya.

While Myanmar has announced the Rohingya issue will not be on the Asean agenda, the government says it will accept advice on the crisis from individual Asean members. Asean could thus play an instrumental role in pushing Myanmar to achieve national reconciliation and encourage it to implement the 2012 Asean Human Rights Declaration. The bloc could also call upon its Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR). The AIPR's Intergovernmental Commission of Human Rights could investigate the various demands of ethnic groups and give recommendations to Nay Pyi Taw. 

As the largest democracy in Asean, Indonesia could also cooperate to strengthen Myanmar's civil society and engage in more transparent inter-ethnic dialogues. With the potential regional spillover of Myanmar's internal strife, Nay Pyi Taw should not interpret Asean's move as intervening in its internal affairs. Rather, it would be in Nay Pyi Taw's best interests to embrace Asean's assistance with open arms.

Eliane Coates is a senior analyst at the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.