[But over the past year,
images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative
sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme
Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater
freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more
than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from
their homes.]
 |
Adam Dean for The New York Times
Ashin
Wirathu, a Buddhist monk in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd and spoke
|
“You can be full of
kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said,
referring to Muslims.
“I call them
troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,” Ashin Wirathu told a reporter
after his two-hour sermon. “I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.”
The world has grown
accustomed to a gentle image of Buddhism defined by the self-effacing words of
the Dalai Lama, the global popularity of Buddhist-inspired meditation and
postcard-perfect scenes from Southeast Asia and beyond of crimson-robed,
barefoot monks receiving alms from villagers at dawn.
But over the past year,
images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative
sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme
Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater
freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more
than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from
their homes.
Ashin Wirathu denies any
role in the riots. But his critics say that at the very least his anti-Muslim
preaching is helping to inspire the violence.
What began last year on
the fringes of Burmese society has grown into a nationwide movement whose
agenda now includes boycotts of Muslim-made goods. Its message is spreading
through regular sermons across the country that draw thousands of people and
through widely distributed DVDs of those talks. Buddhist monasteries associated
with the movement are also opening community centers and a Sunday school
program for 60,000 Buddhist children nationwide.
The hate-filled speeches
and violence have endangered Myanmar’s path to democracy, raising questions
about the government’s ability to keep the country’s towns and cities safe and
its willingness to crack down or prosecute Buddhists in a Buddhist-majority
country. The killings have also reverberated in Muslim countries across the
region, tarnishing what was almost universally seen abroad as a remarkable and
rare peaceful transition from military rule to democracy. In May, the
Indonesian authorities foiled what they said was a plot to bomb the Myanmar
Embassy in Jakarta in retaliation for the assaults on Muslims.
Ashin Wirathu, the
spiritual leader of the radical movement, skates a thin line between free
speech and incitement, taking advantage of loosened restrictions on expression
during a fragile time of transition. He was himself jailed for eight years by
the now-defunct military junta for inciting hatred. Last year, as part of a
release of hundreds of political prisoners, he was freed.
In his recent sermon, he
described the reported massacre of schoolchildren and other
Muslim inhabitants in the central city of Meiktila in March, documented by a
human rights group, as a show of strength.
“If we are weak,” he
said, “our land will become Muslim.”
Buddhism would seem to
have a secure place in Myanmar. Nine in 10 people are Buddhist, as are nearly
all the top leaders in the business world, the government, the military and the
police. Estimates of the Muslim minority range from 4 percent to 8 percent of
Myanmar’s roughly 55 million people while the rest are mostly Christian or
Hindu.
But Ashin Wirathu, who
describes himself as a nationalist, says Buddhism is under siege by Muslims who
are having more children than Buddhists and buying up Buddhist-owned land. In
part, he is tapping into historical grievances that date from British colonial
days when Indians, many of them Muslims, were brought into the country as civil
servants and soldiers.
The muscular and
nationalist messages he has spread have alarmed Buddhists in other countries.
The Dalai Lama, after
the riots in March, said killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable” and
urged Myanmar’s Buddhists to contemplate the face of the Buddha for guidance.
Phra Paisal Visalo, a
Buddhist scholar and prominent monk in neighboring Thailand, says the notion of
“us and them” promoted by Myanmar’s radical monks is anathema to Buddhism. But
he lamented that his criticism and that of other leading Buddhists outside the
country have had “very little impact.”
“Myanmar monks are quite
isolated and have a thin relationship with Buddhists in other parts of the
world,” Phra Paisal said. One exception is Sri Lanka, another country historically
bedeviled by ethnic strife. Burmese monks have been inspired by the assertive
political role played by monks from Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority.
As Myanmar has grown
more polarized, there have been nascent signs of a backlash against the anti-Muslim
preaching.
Among the most
disappointed with the outbreaks of violence and hateful rhetoric are some of
the leaders of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, a peaceful uprising led by Buddhist
monks against military rule.
“We were not expecting
this violence when we chanted for peace and reconciliation in 2007,” said the
abbot of Pauk Jadi monastery, Ashin Nyana Nika, 55, who attended a meeting
earlier this month sponsored by Muslim groups to discuss the issue.
Ashin Sanda Wara, the
head of a monastic school in Yangon, says the monks in the country are divided
nearly equally between moderates and extremists.
He considers himself in
the moderate camp. But as a measure of the deeply ingrained suspicions toward
Muslims in the society, he said he was “afraid of Muslims because their
population is increasing so rapidly.”
Ashin Wirathu has tapped
into that anxiety, which some describe as the “demographic pressures” coming
from neighboring Bangladesh. There is wide disdain in Myanmar for a group of
about one million stateless Muslims, who call themselves Rohingya, some of whom
migrated from Bangladesh. Clashes between the Rohingya and Buddhists last year
in western Myanmar roiled the Buddhist community and appear to have played a
role in later outbreaks of violence throughout the country. Ashin Wirathu said
they served as his inspiration to spread his teachings.
The theme song to Ashin
Wirathu’s movement speaks of people who “live in our land, drink our water, and
are ungrateful to us.”
“We will build a fence
with our bones if necessary,” runs the song’s refrain. Muslims are not
explicitly mentioned in the song but Ashin Wirathu said the lyrics refer to
them. Pamphlets handed out at his sermon demonizing Muslims said that “Myanmar
is currently facing a most dangerous and fearful poison that is severe enough
to eradicate all civilization.”
Many in Myanmar
speculate, without offering proof, that Ashin Wirathu is allied with hard-line
Buddhist elements in the country who want to harness the nationalism of his
movement to rally support ahead of elections in 2015. Ashin Wirathu denies any
such links.
But the government has
done little to rein him in. During Ashin Wirathu’s visit here in Taunggyi,
traffic policemen cleared intersections for his motorcade.
Once inside the
monastery, as part of a highly choreographed visit, his followers led a
procession through crowds of followers who prostrated themselves as he passed.
Ashin Wirathu’s movement
calls itself 969, three digits that monks say symbolize the virtues of the
Buddha, Buddhist practices and the Buddhist community.
Stickers with the
movement’s logo are now ubiquitous nationwide on cars, motorcycles and shops.
The movement has also begun a signature campaign calling for a ban on
interfaith marriages, and pamphlets are distributed at sermons listing Muslim
brands and shops to be avoided.
In Mawlamyine, a
multicultural city southeast of Yangon, a monastery linked to the 969 movement
has established the courses of Buddhist instruction for children, which it
calls “Sunday dhamma schools.” Leaders of the monasteries there seek to portray
their campaign as a sort of Buddhist revivalist movement.
“The main thing is that
our religion and our nationality don’t disappear,” said Ashin Zadila, a senior
monk at the Myazedi Nanoo monastery outside the city.
Yet despite efforts at
describing the movement as non-threatening, many Muslims are worried.
Two hours before Ashin
Wirathu rolled into Taunggyi in a motorcade that included 60 honking
motorcycles, Tun Tun Naing, a Muslim vendor in the city’s central market, spoke
of the visit in a whisper.
“I’m really frightened,”
he said, stopping in midsentence when customers entered his shop. “We tell the
children not to go outside unless absolutely necessary.”
Wai Moe contributed reporting from Mandalay and
Yangon, and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.
