Myanmar is once again in the spotlight of the world press: on July 1, a Buddhist mob burned down a mosque in the village of Hpakant, Kachin State. The attackers were infuriated by the fact that a Muslim prayer building was built too close to a Buddhist temple. A week earlier, a similar incident occurred in the province of Pegu (Bago). There, too, a mosque was destroyed, and a local Muslim resident was also beaten.
- Reuters
Such incidents are not uncommon in modern Myanmar. This Southeast Asian state borders China, Laos, Thailand, India and Bangladesh. From Bangladesh, a population of 170 million, Muslims are illegally migrating to predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, with a population of 55 million. Those who call themselves Rohingya made this journey many years ago. They settled in Rakhine State (Arakan), a historical land for the Myanmar people, the cradle of the Burmese nation. They settled, but did not assimilate.
Migrants with roots
“Traditional Muslims of Myanmar, such as Malabari Hindus, Bengalis, Chinese Muslims, Burmese Muslims, live throughout Myanmar,” explains orientalist Pyotr Kozma, who lives in Myanmar and runs a popular blog about the country, in a conversation with RT. “Buddhists have had experience of coexistence with this traditional Muslim ummah for many decades, therefore, despite the excesses, it rarely came to large-scale conflicts.”
With the Bengalis, the Rohingya are a completely different story. It is officially believed that they entered Myanmar illegally several generations ago. “After the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, came to power, the official wording was adjusted. They stopped saying “Bengalis” and started saying “Muslims living in the Arakan region,” Ksenia Efremova, an associate professor at MGIMO and a specialist on Myanmar, tells RT. “But the problem is that these Muslims themselves consider themselves the people of Myanmar and claim citizenship, which is not granted to them.”
- Reuters
According to Peter Kozma, for many years the Myanmar government did not know what to do with the Rohingya. They were not recognized as citizens, but it is incorrect to say that they did this because of religious or ethnic prejudices. “There are many Rohingya who fled Bangladesh, including due to problems with the law,” says Pyotr Kozma. “So imagine enclaves where radicals and criminals who escaped from a neighboring state rule the roost.”
The expert notes that the Rohingya traditionally have a high birth rate - each family has 5-10 children. This led to the fact that in one generation the number of immigrants increased several times. “Then one day this lid was blown off. And here it doesn’t even matter who started it first,” concludes the orientalist.
Escalation of the conflict
The process got out of control in 2012. Then in June and October, armed clashes in Rakhine between Buddhists and Muslims killed more than a hundred people. According to the UN, approximately 5,300 homes and places of worship were destroyed.
A state of emergency was declared in the state, but the cancer of conflict had already spread across Myanmar. By the spring of 2013, pogroms moved from the western part of the country to the center. At the end of March, riots began in the town of Meithila. On June 23, 2016, the conflict broke out in Pegu province, and on July 1 in Hpakant. It seemed that what Myanmar's traditional ummah feared most had happened: Rohingya grievances were being extrapolated to Muslims in general.
- Reuters
Inter-communal controversy
Muslims are one of the parties to the conflict, but it is incorrect to consider the unrest in Myanmar as interreligious, says Dmitry Mosyakov, head of the department of regional studies at Moscow State University: “There is a significant increase in the number of refugees from Bangladesh who cross the sea and settle in the historical region of Arakan. The appearance of these people does not please the local population. And it doesn’t matter whether they are Muslims or representatives of another religion.” According to Mosyakov, Myanmar is a complex conglomerate of nationalities, but they are all united by a common Burmese history and statehood. The Rohingya fall out of this system of communities, and this is precisely the core of the conflict, as a result of which both Muslims and Buddhists are killed.
Black and white
“And at this time, the world media talks about the exclusively affected Muslims and says nothing about Buddhists,” adds Pyotr Kozma. “Such one-sidedness in covering the conflict has given Myanmar Buddhists a feeling of being under siege, and this is a direct path to radicalism.”
- Reuters
According to the blogger, the coverage of the unrest in Myanmar in the world's leading media can hardly be called objective; it is obvious that the publications are aimed at a large Islamic audience. “In Rakhine State, not much more Muslims were killed than Buddhists, and the sides are approximately equal in the number of destroyed and burned houses. That is, there was no massacre of “peaceful and defenseless Muslims,” there was a conflict in which both sides distinguished themselves almost equally. But, unfortunately, Buddhists do not have their own Al Jazeera and similar worldwide rating TV stations to report this,” says Peter Kozma.
Experts say that the Myanmar authorities are interested in smoothing out the conflict or at least maintaining the status quo. They are ready to make concessions - recently peace agreements have been reached with other national minorities. But this will not work in the case of the Rohingyas. “These people board junks and sail along the Bay of Bengal to the Burmese shores. A new wave of refugees provokes new pogroms of the local population. The situation can be compared to the migration crisis in Europe - no one really knows what to do with the flow of these foreigners,” concludes Dmitry Mosyakov, head of the department of regional studies at Moscow State University.
________
In Myanmar, unfortunately, communal clashes between Muslims and Buddhists do occur. The perpetrators of these clashes are often Muslims themselves. As a result of these clashes, both Muslims and Buddhists suffer.
Unfortunately, Buddhists do not have their own Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya, as one Yangon resident rightly noted, and the world often perceives what is happening in Myanmar one-sidedly. In reality, the Buddhist population suffers just as much, but few people talk about it.
Against the backdrop of these sad events in Myanmar, online mujahideen are fueling anti-Buddhist hysteria with the help of banal lies. Why be surprised? After all, after all
Allah is the best of tricksters (Quran, 3:51-54)
But here are some warriors of Allah leading such propaganda jihad, are far from the best of cunning people. Their primitive methods only affect the orthodox gopota, who loves to shout “Allahu Akbar!” for any reason and for no reason! coupled with threats against infidels.
Let's look at several “masterpieces of Islamic propaganda” about the mass genocide of Muslims in Burma.
Bodies of murdered Muslims in Burma. But what do Tibetan monks have to do with it!
It turns out that Tibetan monks are helping earthquake victims in China.
We read: “ More than a thousand Muslims killed in Burma yesterday”.
In fact, this is Thailand, 2004.
The photo shows protesters being dispersed by police using tear gas near the Tai Bai police station in Bangkok.
In fact, the photo shows the detention of illegal Rohingya immigrants by Thai police. Photo taken from a website about protecting the rights of the Rohingya people.
We attach a screenshot just in case:
Another photo about the suffering of Muslims in Burma. The photo shows the suppression of the rebellion in Thailand in 2003.
Let the online mujahideen first figure out for themselves in which country their coreligionists were allowed to sunbathe.
It’s good that there is such a country as, which is so rich in photographs of similar subjects. The police uniform is not at all the same as the Myanmar police.
Another masterpiece of Islamic propaganda. Under the photo there is an inscription that this poor Muslim guy was burned in Burma.
But in fact, a Tibetan monk set himself on fire to protest the arrival of former Chinese President Hu Jin Tao in Delhi.
On Russian-language sites, something like:
- http://mirislama. com/news/1642 - genocid - musulman - birmy - foto - 18 . html
- http://ru. turkiston. net/? p = 349
- http://osmiev. livejournal. com/230595. html
and many others whose names are legion, we can also get acquainted with amazing photo galleries about the “Muslim genocide in Burma”. The same photos are published on many sites, and judging by the comments Islamic People Hawala all this information with pleasure.
Let's look at these masterpieces.
Any attentive person who has been to Myanmar will understand that this is not Myanmar. The people standing near the unfortunate people are not Burmese. These are black Africans. According to some sites, the picture shows the consequences of flagrant genocide, which was carried out by the Islamist group Boko Haram against Christians in Nigeria. Although there is another version of “230 dead due to truck explosion in Congo”, see here: http://news. tochka. net / 47990 - 230 - pogibshikh - iz - za - vzryva - fury - v - kongo - obnovleno - foto / . In any case, this photo has no relevance in Burma.
Cm. . The thief's hat is on fire!
Does this black guy look a lot like a Burmese Buddhist?
And this is not Burma. The police uniform in Myanmar is completely different.
Where does the information come from that this is Myanmar, and that this unfortunate woman is a Muslim? Does a yellow baseball cap give you away as a Myanmar citizen?
And these are really the events in Myanmar:
However, where does the information come from that the photo shows the beating of Muslims? There were many anti-government demonstrations in Burma that were dispersed by the police. Moreover, several women in the dispersed crowd are not dressed at all Islamically.
Are they lying? slaves of Allah deliberately, or out of stupidity, in the context of this topic does not matter. The main thing is that they are lying. What conclusion arises, let everyone decide for themselves.
Sources:
http://farazahmed. com/muslims - killing - in - burma - and - our - social - media - islamic - parties - 1010 . aspx
Last Sunday, Muslim rallies against discrimination against the Islamic population of Myanmar were held in Moscow and other cities around the world. In August, members of the armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked several dozen military targets. In response, Myanmar authorities launched an extensive anti-terrorist operation, during which dozens of Muslims were killed and which the international community calls genocide of the country's Islamic population. What are the reasons and why this conflict cannot be called religious - in the material of “Futurist”.
What's happening in Myanmar?
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar - this is how the country began to be called recently, having got rid of the military dictatorship that had been in power since 1962. It consists of seven provinces inhabited by Buddhist Burmese and seven national states that have never recognized a central government. There are more than one hundred ethnic groups in Myanmar. The diverse ethnic, religious, and criminal groups inhabiting these regions have been waging civil wars for decades—against the capital and against each other.
The conflict between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists has been going on for decades. The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar. They make up approximately 1 million of Myanmar's more than 52 million people and live in Arakan State, which borders Bangladesh. The Myanmar government denies them citizenship, calling them illegal Bengali immigrants, while the Rohingya claim to be indigenous to Arakan.
One of the bloodiest clashes occurred in 2012. The reason was the death of a 26-year-old Buddhist woman. Then dozens of people died, and tens of thousands of Muslims were forced to leave the country. The international community made no attempt to resolve the conflict.
Another escalation of the conflict occurred on October 9, 2016, when about 200 unidentified militants attacked three Myanmar border posts. And in August 2017, fighters from the local armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked 30 army installations and police stations and killed 15 people. They declared this an act of revenge for the persecution of their compatriots.
The international community calls the retaliatory anti-terrorist operation a genocide of Muslims in the state of Arakan - not only the Rohingya, but also representatives of other ethnic groups. Hundreds of people have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism. According to Myanmar authorities, as of September 1, 400 “rebels” and 17 civilians had been killed. Fleeing refugee camp residents told Reuters the army and Buddhist volunteers were torching Muslim villages, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh. On the morning of September 1, Bangladeshi border guards found on the river bank the bodies of 15 refugees who drowned during the crossing, 11 of them were children. According to the UN, more than 120,000 refugees have crossed into Bangladesh over the past two weeks, creating a migration crisis.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov demanded that the UN intervene and stop the violence. In Moscow, near the Myanmar embassy, Muslims staged a spontaneous rally against genocide.
Why don't Buddhists like the Rohingya?
There are several theories about the origin of the Burmese Rohingya. Some scientists believe that the Rohingya migrated to Myanmar (then called Burma) from Bengal primarily during the period of British rule. The British annexed the aspiring state of Arakan in 1826 and facilitated the migration of Bengalis there as labor. Some of the Rohingya came to Burma after the country declared independence in 1948, as well as after the liberation war in Bangladesh in 1971. Traditionally, this people has a high birth rate, so the Muslim population has grown rapidly. The second theory (followed by the Rohingya themselves) suggests that the Rohingya are descendants of the Arabs who colonized the Indian Ocean coast in the Middle Ages and also lived in the state.
The first serious clash between the Rohingya and Arakanese Buddhists was the Rakhine massacre in 1942. During World War II, Burma, then still a British dependency, was captured by Japan. The Rohingya Muslims remained on the side of the British, while the Buddhists supported the Japanese, who promised independence for the country. The Buddhist troops were led by General Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the current leader of Myanmar's Democratic Party. According to various estimates, tens of thousands of representatives of both sides were killed, but there is still no objective figure. After the Rakhine massacre, separatist sentiments in the region worsened.
The military dictatorship that ruled Burma for half a century relied heavily on a blend of Burmese nationalism and Theravada Buddhism to consolidate its power. Ethnic and religious minorities such as the Rohingya and Chinese were discriminated against. General Nain's government passed the Burmese Citizenship Law in 1982, which declared the Rohingya illegal. With the end of military rule and the rise to power of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's allies at the end of 2015, the Rohingya were expected to receive Myanmar citizenship. However, authorities continue to deny the Rohingya political and civil rights.
How does discrimination manifest itself?
The Rohingya are considered "one of the most persecuted minorities in the world." They cannot move freely throughout Myanmar, receive higher education, or have more than two children. The Rohingya are subjected to forced labor and their arable land is taken away from them. A February 2017 UN report said locals, the army and police beat, killed and raped Rohingya.
To escape violence, Rohingya are trafficked illegally to Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand. In turn, these countries do not want to accept refugees - which is why they are subject to international pressure and condemnation. At the beginning of 2015, according to the UN, about 24 thousand Rohingya tried to leave Myanmar on smugglers' boats. The remains of more than 160 refugees have been discovered in abandoned camps in southern Thailand as smugglers held Rohingya hostage, beating them and demanding ransom for their lives. As Thai authorities tightened controls across the border, smugglers began throwing people into “boat camps” where they died of hunger and thirst.
The refugee problem has not yet been resolved. In particular, the government of Bangladesh in February 2017 announced a plan to resettle all Rohingya refugees on the Tengar Char island, which was formed 10 years ago in the Bay of Bengal - it is prone to floods and there is a complete lack of infrastructure. This caused outrage among human rights organizations.
Aren't Buddhists against violence?
“The world media talks exclusively about Muslims who suffered and says nothing about Buddhists,” says orientalist Pyotr Kozma, who lives in Myanmar. “Such one-sided coverage of the conflict has given Myanmar Buddhists a feeling of being under siege, and this is a direct path to radicalism.”
It is traditionally believed that Buddhism is one of the most peaceful religions. But despite the fact that Buddhists and Muslims are involved in this conflict, it is incorrect to view it as inter-religious. We are talking about the status of a certain ethnic group. Experts say that Buddhists have coexisted with Myanmar's Muslims for centuries: Hindus, Chinese, Malabari, Burmese and Bengalis. The Rohingya, being refugees according to one version of their origin, fall out of this “conglomerate of nationalities.”
In the state of Arakan in Myanmar, over the past three days, about two to three thousand Muslims have been killed as a result of a military attack, and more than 100 thousand Muslims have been evicted from their homes.
How it conveys website, Anita Shug, spokeswoman for the European Rohingya Muslim Council (ERC), told Anadolu Agency.
According to her, in recent days the military has committed more crimes against Muslims in Arakan than in 2012 and October last year. “The situation has never been so dire. A systematic genocide is practically being committed in Arakan. Only in the village of Saugpara in the suburbs of Rathedaunga there was bloodshed the day before, as a result of which up to one thousand Muslims died. Only one boy survived,” Shug said.
Local activists and sources say the Myanmar army is behind the bloodshed in Arakan, an ERC spokeswoman said. According to her, at the moment, about two thousand Rohingya Muslims, evicted from their homes in Arakan, are on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, since the official Dhaka decided to close the border.
The spokeswoman also reported that the villages of Anaukpyin and Nyaungpyingi are surrounded by Buddhists.
“Local residents sent a message to the Myanmar authorities, in which they noted that they are not guilty of the events taking place, and asked to lift the blockade and evacuate them from these villages. But there was no answer. There are no exact data, but I can say that there are hundreds of people in the villages, and all of them are in great danger,” Shug added.
Earlier, Arakan activist Dr. Muhammad Eyup Khan said that Arakanese activists living in Turkey called on the UN to facilitate an immediate end to the bloodshed against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state by the Myanmar military and Buddhist clerics.
“There is an unbearable atmosphere of persecution in Arakan: people are killed, raped, burned alive, and this happens almost daily. But the Myanmar government does not allow journalists from other countries, representatives of humanitarian organizations and UN staff into the state, but also the local press,” said Eyup Khan.
According to him, in 2016, several young Muslims, unable to withstand pressure from the authorities, attacked three checkpoints with clubs and swords, after which the Myanmar government, taking advantage of the opportunity, closed all checkpoints, and security forces began attacking towns and villages in the state Arakan, killing local residents, including children.
The activist recalled that on July 25, the UN established a special commission of three people, which was supposed to identify facts of persecution in Arakan, but official Myanmar said that it would not allow UN staff into the state.
“Taking advantage of the inaction of the international community, on August 24, government forces besieged another 25 villages. And when local residents tried to resist, bloodshed began. According to the data we received, about 500 Muslims have died in the last three days alone,” said Eyup Khan.
According to UN norms, sanctions should be imposed on countries where genocide has been committed, but the international community does not accept the fact that genocide is being committed against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the activist said. “The UN prefers to call what is happening here not genocide, but ethnic cleansing,” Eyup Khan emphasized.
According to him, about 140 thousand people in Arakan were expelled from their places of permanent residence. Houses of Muslims are being burnt down in the state and they are being housed in camps.
According to the activist, Islamophobic sentiments that have reigned in Myanmar since the early 1940s are part of a special plan under which the Myanmar government and Buddhists are trying to cleanse Arakan state of Muslims using the most brutal methods.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said Ankara strongly condemns the mass killings of Muslims in Myanmar, which “are in many ways similar to acts of genocide.”
“Türkiye is concerned about the increase in violence and the killing and injury of Myanmar people. The UN and the international community must not remain indifferent to these events, which in many ways resemble genocide,” Bozdag said.
What is Myanmar? At one time, this country in Southeast Asia was known as Burma. But local residents do not like this name, considering it foreign. Therefore, after 1989, the country was renamed Myanmar (translated as “fast”, “strong”). Since the country's independence in 1948, Burma has been in a civil war involving the Burmese authorities, communist guerrillas, and separatist rebels. And if we add to this explosive “cocktail” the drug traffickers of the “Golden Triangle”, which in addition to Myanmar also included Thailand and Laos, then it becomes obvious that the situation on Burmese soil did not symbolize peace and quiet. From 1962 until 2011, the country was ruled by the military, and the head of the opposition Democratic League that won in 1989, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was placed under house arrest for a long time. The country found itself in quite noticeable isolation from the outside world, including due to Western sanctions. But in recent years there have been noticeable changes in Myanmar and elections have been held. And last year, Aung San Suu Kyi became foreign minister and state councilor (de facto prime minister). In a country with a population of 60 million people, there are more than a hundred nationalities: Burmese, Shans, Karens, Arakanese, Chinese, Indians, Mons, Kachins, etc. The vast majority of believers are Buddhists, there are Christians, Muslims, and animists. “Myanmar, as a multinational country, is experiencing the burden of problems of this kind,” comments Viktor Sumsky, director of the ASEAN Center at MGIMO. – The new government of the country is making attempts to resolve conflict situations, but in fact it turns out that it is the Rohingya problem that has come to the fore... So, who are the Rohingya? This is an ethnic group living compactly in the Myanmar state of Rakhine (Arakan). Rohingya profess Islam. Their number in Myanmar is estimated to range from 800,000 to 1.1 million. It is believed that most of them moved to Burma during British colonial rule. Myanmar authorities call the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh - and on this basis denies them citizenship. The law prohibited them from having more than two children. The authorities tried to resettle them in Bangladesh, but no one was really expecting them there either. It is no coincidence that the UN calls them one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Many Rohingya are fleeing to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. But a number of countries in Southeast Asia - including Muslim ones - refuse to accept these refugees, and ships with migrants are turned back to sea. During the Second World War, when Burma was occupied by Japan, in 1942 the so-called. "Arakan massacre" between Rohingya Muslims who received weapons from the British and local Buddhists who supported the Japanese. Tens of thousands of people died, many people became refugees. Of course, these events did not add confidence to relations between communities. From time to time, serious tensions flared up in areas where Rohingya live compactly, often leading to bloodshed. While Buddhist Burmese are carrying out pogroms against Muslims in Rakhine, Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama called on Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to support the Rohingya. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also spoke out in defense of Burmese Muslims. The West, both the European Union and the United States, were not silent on this issue (although, of course, the problem of the Muslim minority did not play the first role in the sanctions imposed against Myanmar at the time). On the other hand, the problem of Muslims in Burma in past decades was actively used by various theorists of “global jihad” - from Abdullah Azzam to his student Osama bin Laden. So it cannot be ruled out that this region could become a new point of conflict, where supporters of the most radical jihadist groups will be drawn - as happened, say, in the Philippines. The situation became especially aggravated after...