| By MAUNG MAUNG OO | OCT, 2001 - VOLUME 9 NO.8 |
While Muslims around the world protest against airstrikes in Afghanistan, Burma’s Muslims are keeping silent, as the latest wave of communal violence continues. When afternoon prayer time is over, a group of Muslim men wearing long, white shirts and small hats pours onto the road from a mosque next to the Sule Pagoda, situated in downtown Rangoon, site of many mosques. Although the worship has ended, many who have come out of the mosque continue to hang around just outside for a while, standing and chatting together on a road where vendors sell Islamic religious books, Islamic-style rosaries, and Indian food. It looks like a peaceful scene in any Islamic country. Yet this is in Burma, and though the proximity of pagodas and mosques suggests an easy co-existence of Buddhists and Muslims, this is far from the truth. In reality, serious religious clashes are not uncommon in Burma. This year several religious confrontations have already occurred, and for Muslims in Burma, the idea of peaceful co-existence for all religions has not come true yet. Under these circumstances, the escalation of American’s "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan is making Muslims in Burma feel constrained and uncomfortable among the majority of Burmese people, even though they are not terrorists. Burma is unlike other countries in the region. While Buddhist and Muslim groups in other Asian countries have been holding joint protests against America’s military campaign in Afghanistan, anti-Muslim demonstrations have occurred three times within a month in Burma. These demonstrations, which have resulted in violence, are believed to be spreading to towns all over the country. The military government has already announced an official curfew in towns where major religious clashes have occurred, and unofficial curfews are also being observed in other prominent cities of central Burma. "At least one person was killed and about 40 Muslim shops were destroyed in the clash," said a young Burmese Muslim, speaking on condition of anonymity, about the anti-Muslim demonstration that occurred in the second week of October in Prome, located about 300 kilometers northwest of Rangoon. The clash is thought to have been sparked off when a young Burmese girl who eloped with a Muslim man was forced to convert to Islam and the parents of the girl protested against the Muslim man’s family at their mosque, according to a source in the town. The government cut off all phone lines in town and announced a curfew under Section 144, to prevent the unrest spreading to other towns. But within a week, in Pegu, a one-hour drive from Rangoon, another religious clash broke out similar to that in Prome. A quarrel between some monks and a Muslim drug store owner sparked the clash. The government immediately announced a curfew in town and ordered the Buddhist monasteries to close their Buddhist schools until the situation returned to normal. All student monks were forced to go back their hometowns. "Many Muslim shops were ransacked and destroyed by young Buddhist monks and Burmese people. Burmese onlookers showed them the shops run by Muslims," said a Muslim woman in Pegu. The government later arrested some monks and others involved in the riot. Another anti-Muslim demonstration followed within days. On Oct 21, over 300 young Buddhist monks took to the streets of Hinzada (Hinthada), Irrawaddy Division and stormed the town’s Muslims blocks. The problem leading to the clash was a quarrel between some monks and a Muslim who ran a videotape rental shop. Riot police used teargas bombs and they also fired their guns in the air to disperse the people. Although the authorities later took serious action against the shop owner, most of the monks in town are still dissatisfied with the government’s action, according to reliable sources in town. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been deeply rooted in Burma for hundreds of years. "Kalar" is the word used by Burmese people to describe Burmese of Indian extraction. During the British colonial era, the British designated Burma as a state of India, and hundreds of thousands of Indian people were brought into Burma, where most of them settled down. The majority of migrant Indian Muslims worked in inferior jobs in Burma. Since that time, the famous British "divide and rule" policy produced many religious clashes in the country and planted the seeds of anti-Muslim hatred among the Burmese community. After independence, Ne Win’s government exploited the people’s hatred of Muslims. Whenever the country faced a political or economic crisis, Ne Win’s government created religious clashes between the Burmese and Muslims in an effort to turn the public’s attention away from the crisis. Analysts believe that the current military regime has inherited this tactic from the Ne Win government. In Burma, Muslims constitute just four percent of the population while Buddhists form eighty-nine percent. However, the Sept 11 terror attacks in America have had a strong impact on Muslims in Burma. "In Burmese people’s eyes, every Muslim is assumed to be a terrorist and evil because their original anti-Muslim sentiment has been fueled by these attacks," commented a Muslim man in Rangoon. "According to the Koran, all Muslims around the world are brothers and exist in the same body of Islam. So if anywhere in the world a Muslim is injured, it will hurt us the same as him and we are responsible for protecting him," he added. The hair on his forehead was still wet from washing before afternoon prayers. "I pray to Allah for our brothers in Afghanistan to be free from American bombing. That’s all I can do here because this is Burma, where Muslims live under the critical eyes of not only the government but also the Burmese people," he added. Currently, the military government has banned the holding of mass prayers by Muslim associations for Afghan people on security grounds. Since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Burmese military government has stepped up restrictions on Muslims in a country where they are already not allowed to travel without the authorities’ permission and religious gatherings are temporarily banned. Plainclothes officers and police are also stationed near every mosque in cities. Burmese officials claim that these are precautionary measure resulting from religious clashes. The government has sealed off the road with barbed wire where the American Embassy is located, and two police trucks loaded with police have been on stand-by. The areas around diplomats’ residences are also packed with security police. Despite the fact that the Burmese government denied the recent report by Jane’s Intelligence Review about the existence in Burma of Islamic fundamentalist groups trained in camps in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, they cannot deny the existence of Muslim separatist groups in western and southern Burma, such as the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF), based on the western border with Bangladesh. Yet these groups seem to be moderate when compared to other Muslim separatist groups in the region, as there has never been a suicide attack in Burma’s history. Also there is no concrete evidence showing they have any connection with bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. "If they were active like this, all Rohingya groups would have been strong along the western border for a long time," said Thet Lwin Oo, a spokesperson for the Muslim Information Committee of Burma (MICB). In the western region of Burma, most ethnic Arakanese Buddhist associations consistently and intensely oppose the recognition of Rohingya Muslims as one of the national races of Burma. Meanwhile, the allegation that some Rohingyas (Muslims inhabiting the western border of Burma) are serving in the Taliban army has appeared in the country, according to reports in foreign-based radio stations’ Burmese-language programs. "We have to understand that there may be some Rohingyas serving in the Taliban army, but they do not represent all Rohingya," said Thet Lwin Oo. Nevertheless, since the information was released about the possible infiltration of Muslim extremists from neighboring countries to carry out terrorist acts inside the country, the Burmese authorities have conducted late-night searches of homes throughout Muslim areas of Arakan State, the western border state with Bangladesh, and Tenasserim Division, which borders southern Thailand’s predominantly Muslim far south. "Some Burmese assume after seeing the government’s security measure around embassies that the country is now facing a threat by Muslim extremists," said a businessman in Rangoon, who declined to give his name. "We Muslims in Burma support only Afghan civilians, not the Taliban government," Thet Lwin Oo insists. However, for some Burmese Buddhists, Muslims are evil, not just because of the recent demolition of the World Trade Center, but also because of the destruction of Buddha statues and other remnants of Buddhism in Afghanistan by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime. Many Buddhists in Burma believe that the American bombing in Afghanistan is the karmic result of Taliban’s destruction of the precious Buddha statues. But analysts point out that the Burmese military regime is also guilty of destroying mosques and Muslim religious schools and villages throughout Burma. The continuing presence of thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh highlights the Burmese regime’s repression of Muslims. "We are discriminated against by the government. You see, most high-ranking government officers are non-Muslims. Showing that we are Islmaic on our ID is a big deterrent to achieving a higher position in a governing body," expressed a Muslim with a perceivable scar on his forehead, which is the mark of longtime prayer. In Burma, people must state their religion on ID cards. In the midst of these circumstances, many leaflets from both the Muslim and Burmese sides have appeared throughout cities in Burma. Muslim leaflets call Muslims in Burma to participate in anti-American campaigns along with other Muslim communities in the region and to support their brothers in Afghanistan. The leaflets from the Burmese side say the time is right to eliminate the "786" (one of the symbols of Islam), according to sources inside Burma. Many Burmese enthusiastically support the American military campaign against the Taliban. In particular, people who have a lack of education get the wrong idea from this American counterattack on Islamic terrorists. As a consequence, religious clashes between Burmese and Muslims have spread throughout the country. Exiled Muslim groups from Burma have proclaimed that the ruling military government has created this recent religious unrest in the country by propagating negative stereotypes about Muslims over a long period of time. But some analysts say that the military government is also concerned about the current religious unrest, as they have been confronting the challenges of monks in recent anti-Muslim clashes. One instance for the military regime to note is that anti-Muslim clashes took place as a precursor to the famous 1988 democracy uprising 13 years ago. However, while Muslims in neighboring Thailand are free to hold a nationwide boycott on American products without the government’s intervention, as well as hold mass prayers for their brothers in Afghanistan, Muslims in Burma are seeking safe places in advance to escape religious clashes, which could take place anywhere and anytime. The Rohingya: A Muslim Menace? by Maung Maung Oo Much of the concern about possible Islamic radicalism in Burma has centered on Rohingya organizations based along the country’s western border with Bangladesh. When Osama bin Laden spoke of having agents "from Indonesia to Algeria, from Kabul to Chechnya, from Bosnia to Sudan and from Burma to Kashmir" in a recent interview, the governments of both countries immediately directed their attentions to their troubled common border, even as they denied that they were harboring terrorist cells belonging to bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. Rohingya groups have been fighting against Rangoon for years, but this in itself offers little evidence that they are part of a pan-Islamic movement; after all, Burma has been riddled with ethnic and ideological insurgencies of various descriptions since it attained independence in 1948. Two of these groups—the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO)—joined forces in 1988, and later set up the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO). The group is currently believed to have about 200 militant members. According to Thet Lwin Oo, a spokesperson for the Muslim Information Committee of Burma (MICB), it is unlikely that ARNO or any of its associated groups are involved with bin Laden. "If the news that members of ARNO had been trained at bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan were really true, you would have seen major operations by Rohingya militants along the border. But in reality, their activities are very limited. This proves that they don’t have any connection with bin Laden," maintained Thet Lwin Oo. While ARNO faces growing pressure from Burmese and Bangladeshi authorities, other, non-militant Rohingya groups continue to receive discriminatory treatment from within Burma’s pro-democracy movement. Rohingya organizations seeking to join other exiled dissidents in the struggle to restore democracy are routinely barred from umbrella groups, usually at the insistence of ethnic Arakanese, who say that the Rohingya have never been recognized as a Burmese ethnic group.