Opinion: This is militant Islamophobia in Burma, rooted in history | Asia News – Politics, Media, Education | Asian Correspondent

Opinion: This is militant Islamophobia in Burma, rooted in history | Asia News – Politics, Media, Education | Asian Correspondent
Francis Wade, Mar 25, 2013
 
In November last year, a piece I wrote on the potential for the Arakan state violence to evolve into wider anti-Muslim conflict in other parts of Burma was met with accusations of sensationalism and a misreading of the root causes of the Arakan unrest. The piece had argued that the first obvious signal that this wasn’t just ‘communal’ or ‘inter-ethnic’ violence, as many observers were calling it, was the targeting of Kaman Muslims in Arakan in October, who are distinct from the Rohingya.

Half a year on from the first attacks on Kaman Muslims, and despite the current rioting in Meikhtila and surrounding areas, there still seems to be an attempt in Burmese ultra-nationalist circles to write this violence off as a series of isolated incidents. This reading suggests that the first wave of attacks on Rohingya in June last year are not linked to the first attacks on Kaman Muslims in October, and that the targeting of Kaman has nothing to do with the more recent Meikhtila riots. Instead, individual groups are reacting to provocation from Muslims, which happens to have increased in frequency since June 2012.

Smoke billows from a burning mosque following ethnic unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in Meikhtila Thursday. Pic: AP.

The stance is being used to counter accusations that the violence is born of anti-Muslim sentiment – that beyond just confronting ‘terrorists’ or ‘land-grabbers’, as the Rohingya were branded, an entire ideology is being targeted. This is obviously much harder to justify, and portrays Burma’s militant nationalist movement in a primitive and ugly light, which it doesn’t want.

The signs however are clearly there. In fact they’ve been there for decades, but religious persecution was never really part of the Burma story during the dictatorship, which the world viewed through a very black and white lens. Go back to the civilian government of U Nu, and you’ll see that he expelled the Burma Muslim Congress and made Buddhism the state religion; General Ne Win carried out several pogroms against Rohingya, and deported hundreds of thousands of Indian Hindus and Muslims. The army has for decades attacked sites of Christian and Muslim worship in the ethnic states in a deliberate attempt to Burmanise (“Buddhicise”?) the entire country.

Yet this latest wave of attacks on Muslims is so troubling because of the involvement of civilians, who have otherwise been tolerant of the Christian beliefs of their countrymen. (To be sure, it is highly likely that hardline elements in the government are driving this, and using civilian groups as proxies.)

It’s unclear why fear of Islam is so pervasive, and theories abound, but the geographical spread of this animosity is both hugely concerning and underreported. In Karen state for example, pamphlets were circulated last year ordering locals to cease all interaction with Muslims – trading, marriage, and so on. In the state capital of Pa’an there are reports that stickers bearing ‘969’ are now frequently appearing on buildings (’969‘ signifies Buddhist precepts, and has been used recently as a label by the militant nationalist movement to counter the ’786′ stickers used to identify Muslim buildings – which should of course also be debated). The Karen Human Rights Group has also documented massive forced relocation of Muslim communities by the army in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Meikhtila violence should be seen as the latest manifestation of an historic Islamophobic streak in Burma. Of course there is bitter irony in reports of civilians and monks colluding with security forces in last week’s attacks; that a monk threatened violence against a photographer who wants to shine a light on persecution in Burma; that agitators are roaming the streets of Rangoon provoking Muslims into attacking. It’s ironic because these monks and civilians, evidently suffering from some acute form of historical amnesia, can only embolden the military to recast itself as “protectors” of the nation.

The signs of a major pogrom against Muslims are now visible. This isn’t mass hysteria from ‘foreign anti-Buddhist saboteurs’, as anyone who comments critically on this issue is called, but is very real and evident. Of all the photos and videos of the Meikhtila riots, the charred bodies and the woman shouting “Kill them, kill them!” that circulated last week, it was this one that I found both effective in capturing the state of play in Burma now, and incredibly disturbing: Muslims being marched out of town by police with their hands above their heads and a child looking back in the crowd. They are being sent to a football stadium where the government will tell them they are being held for their own protection, under armed guard. Given there appears to be no attempt by the government to try to rebuild community cohesion (we only need to look to Arakan state for evidence), we must keep a close watch on whether these relocation sites become permanent, and the implications of this.