Muslims From Yangon Share Stories of Discrimination
A sampling of responses from Burmese Muslims who were asked if they had faced religious discrimination in Myanmar.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
U.N. Secretary General warns myanmar on religious Violence
U.N. Secretary General Warns Myanmar on Religious Violence
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: July 11, 2013
BANGKOK — The secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, warned the Myanmar government on Wednesday of “dangerous polarization” between Buddhists and Muslims and urged the leaders of the Buddhist-majority country to resolve the question of citizenship for the nearly one million stateless Muslims near the border
In prepared remarks made to diplomats in New York, Mr. Ban issued what appeared to be his strongest criticism to date of Myanmar’s handling of religious violence. Over the past year, Buddhist mobs have killed about 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.
Mr. Ban said the government’s vows to protect lives and punish perpetrators needed to be “translated into concrete action.”
“If it is not addressed urgently and firmly, underlying tensions could provoke more upheaval, undermining the reform process and triggering negative regional repercussions,” Mr. Ban said. The government has won accolades for moving the country toward democracy after decades of military rule, but the growing violence has raised questions about the government’s ability and willingness to promote civic harmony and defend the rights of minorities.
Although the country’s leaders have moved troops into Muslim areas to tamp down violence after attacks, some of the leaders have also expressed support for a growing radical Buddhist movement, known as 969, that has fanned Muslim fears by campaigning for a boycott of Muslim products and businesses and a ban on interfaith marriages. The movement says it has not been involved in the violence, but critics say that, at the least, it is helping inspire killings through hate-filled sermons.
The violence against Muslims started last year with attacks against the stateless Muslim group known as the Rohingya.
Wading into what is a very controversial issue inside Myanmar, Mr. Ban appeared to call for citizenship for the group. He called on the Myanmar government “to take necessary steps to address the legitimate grievances of minority communities, including the citizenship demands of the Muslim/Rohingya.”
In November, President Obama condemned the violence during a visit to Myanmar, but said defining citizenship was up to “the people of this country.”
Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees are living in primitive camps after being chased from their homes last year by Buddhist mobs. Local officials in western Myanmar are seeking to carry out a decade-old rule that bans Rohingya families from having more than two children, and they are restricted from leaving the area.
Myanmar, formerly Burma, is overwhelmingly Buddhist, and only 4 percent to 8 percent of the population is Muslim, but Buddhists say they fear that the Muslim population is growing fast and will threaten Buddhist culture. The root of the violence appears to be partly a legacy of colonial years when Indians, many of them Muslim, arrived in the country as civil servants, soldiers and business people, stirring resentment among Burmese Buddhists.
Myanmar Admits to Political Prisoners, Pledging Their Freedom
Myanmar Admits to Political Prisoners, Pledging Their Freedom
By RICK GLADSTONE
Published: July 15, 2013
Myanmar’s president promised Monday that all remaining political prisoners would be freed by year’s end. It was an unusual guarantee as well as an acknowledgment that the country still incarcerated people based on their beliefs in the two years since his civilian government ended the military’s repressive monopoly on power.
The president, U Thein Sein, also said he would show “zero tolerance” for ethnically driven violence in Myanmar, and he expressed hope that in coming weeks he would complete a cease-fire pact with the last of the major armed groups that have left the country in varying states of internal war for decades.
The president made the assertions in a speech while visiting Britain, Myanmar’s former colonial power, where he met with Prime Minister David Cameron as part of a broader effort to stimulate trade and investment in his country, also known as Burma.
In the speech at Chatham House in London, a prominent international political research institution, Mr. Thein Sein said “thousands of prisoners” already had been freed. He did not specify how many were still imprisoned but said a special committee, which includes former prisoners, was reviewing the remaining cases.
“I guarantee to you that by the end of this year there will be no prisoners of conscience in Myanmar,” he said.
Under Mr. Thein Sein, Myanmar has been slowly emerging from a prolonged era of isolation and repression, with new freedoms of expression, a new Constitution and elections. But there has been little talk of the political dissidents who once populated Myanmar’s prisons or how many remain incarcerated. Nor have there been discussions of retribution or any formalized judicial process that would call to account the former military generals responsible.
The country’s most famous former political prisoner, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, spent a total of 15 years under house arrest before she was released in 2010. She is now a leader of the political opposition in Parliament and recently expressed her desire to run for president.
Myanmar’s evolution toward a more open political system has undergone new convulsions in recent months over violent ethnic rifts, most notably deadly extremist attacks by the Buddhist majority against the Muslim minority, in particular a stateless Muslim group, the Rohingya.
Mr. Cameron discussed Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims with Mr. Thein Sein, joining other international leaders who have criticized the Myanmar authorities for failing to protect the sect from killings and other violence incited by hate. Mr. Cameron said he was “very keen to see greater action in terms of promoting human rights and dealing with regional conflicts,” the BBC quoted him as saying in welcoming Mr. Thein Sein.
Last week the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, warned that Myanmar was confronting a “dangerous polarization” between Buddhists and Muslims.
In his Chatham House speech, Mr. Thein Sein acknowledged Myanmar’s ethnic strife but said overcoming it would require time and patience. “The recent communal violence has rightly concerned the world,” he said. “I promise you that we will take a zero-tolerance approach to any renewed violence and against those who fuel ethnic hatreds.”
Mr. Thein Sein also sought to emphasize in his speech that Myanmar had been riven by fighting since independence from Britain in 1948. “It is the longest-running set of armed conflicts anywhere in the world,” he said.
But over the past two years, Mr. Thein Sein said, his government has negotiated cease-fires with all but one of the major armed groups in Myanmar, an insurgent organization seeking independence for Myanmar’s northernmost state of Kachin in the Himalayan foothills adjoining China.
“I believe we will turn a corner soon,” he said. “Very possibly, over the coming weeks, we will have a nationwide cease-fire and the guns will go silent everywhere in Myanmar for the very first time in over 60 years.”
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