AJE: Religious violence erupts in Myanmar

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2013/05/201352952410553862.html?utm_content=automate&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=NewSocialFlow&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

Religious violence erupts in Myanmar

 

Myanmar's government has called for calm after mobs burned down a Muslim orphanage, a mosque and shops during a new eruption of religious violence in the northeastern Shan state.

Authorities imposed a curfew late on Tuesday in Lashio, about 700km northeast of Yangon, after a mob of 200 local residents surrounded the city police station demanding they hand over a Muslim detainee.

Nay Win, 48, a Muslim from a nearby township, was arrested after allegedly setting fire to Aye Aye Win, 24, a Shan Buddhist, earlier in the day after the two had an altercation at a petrol station, Lashio police said.

The Lashio incident was the third outbreak of anti-Muslim violence to flare up in Myanmar this year.

On April 30, in Oakkan, about 100km north of Yangon, Buddhists went on a rampage after a Muslim woman allegedly bumped into a monk, breaking his begging bowl.

One Muslim man was killed, and a mosque and 77 houses were set on fire.

 

I think this deserves it's own thread...at least for now.

This also occurs a few days after the government decided to impose a 2 child limit to Muslim families in some areas of the country.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-child-limit

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-myanmar-violence-idUSBRE94S0JD20130529?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=992637

Buddhist mobs attack Muslim homes for second day in Myanmar; one dead

 

Buddhist mobs armed with sticks and machetes burned Muslim homes on Wednesday for a second day in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio, contradicting claims in state media that soldiers and police had restored calm.

 

A Reuters reporter saw scores of young men and boys on motorbikes and on foot marauding through the city of 130,000 people in a mountainous region about 700 km (430 miles) from the commercial capital Yangon.

 

One person was killed and four were wounded in fighting that began at about 2 p.m., Ye Htut, spokesman for President Thein Sein, said in a Facebook post. Police fired their guns to disperse the crowd, he said.

 

By early evening, Muslims shops and homes were still burning in one quarter, underlining the difficulty the president faces in containing mounting religious violence in an era of historic reforms since military rule ended in March 2011.

 

 

[HOF44]

Buddhists on a rampage just sounds weird....

[Bang]

Buddhists on a rampage just sounds weird....

Guess it truly shows that religion is just a convenience to be used when it suits for people all the world 'round.

 

~Bang

[techboy]

Buddhists on a rampage just sounds weird....

It really just reinforces the point made in many threads, many times, which is that much of the violence blamed on "religion" has at its root far more basic causes, be it greed/land grabbing/tribalism/whatever (and just imagine the number of replies this rather quiet thread would have already gotten had the story been reversed, and it was a Muslim mob killing Buddhists, or a Jewish/Christian/Sikh mob...), and religion is just an excuse that could easily be replaced by any number of labels.

This puts me in mind of the South Park episode where the atheists had stamped out all other religions and were about to engage in full scale war over what to call themselves.

Just look at this link from the BBC on buddhism and war

Non-violence is at the heart of Buddhist thinking and behaviour. The first of the five precepts that all Buddhists should follow is "Avoid killing, or harming any living thing."

Buddhism is essentially a peaceful tradition. Nothing in Buddhist scripture gives any support to the use of violence as a way to resolve conflict.

In times of war

Give rise in yourself to the mind of compassion,

Helping living beings

Abandon the will to fight.

One of Buddha's sermons puts this very clearly with a powerful example that stresses the need to love your enemy no matter how cruelly he treats you:

Even if thieves carve you limb from limb with a double-handed saw, if you make your mind hostile you are not following my teaching.

Kamcupamasutta, Majjhima-Nikkaya I ~ 28-29

It'd be pretty difficult for even the most radical of fundie atheists to blame this one on Buddhism, though of course I stand ready to be surprised on that point.

[GhostofSparta]

Well there goes that line about extremist Buddhists never being violent. Still very bizarre, though. But, people who want to be evil/violent will find any excuse to do so.

 

Here's hoping this doesn't spiral out of control...

[visionary]

It's been going on for a while now, but things seem to have gotten a lot worse lately.

It seems a lot of it comes from this:

 

http://bigstory.ap.org/interactive/myanmar

Wirathu: The “Burmese bin Laden”+

Wrapped in a saffron robe, Buddhist monk Wirathu insists he is a man of peace. Never mind his nine years in prison for inciting deadly violence against Muslims. Never mind the gruesome photos outside his office of Buddhists allegedly massacred by Muslims. Never mind that in the new Myanmar, the man dubbed the “Burmese bin Laden” has emerged as the spiritual leader of a pro-Buddhist fringe movement accused of fueling a bloody campaign of sectarian violence.

 

The movement, says Wirathu, has one aim: “To protect race and religion.”

 

 

The 969 Movement

 

A short man, with a quick smile and evident charisma, Wirathu is the public face of a fast-spreading but still small campaign called “969.” Each digit enumerates virtues of the Lord Buddha, his teachings and the community of monks. The campaign urges Buddhists to shop only at Buddhist stores and avoid marrying, hiring or selling their homes or land to Muslims. Stickers and signs bearing the 969 emblem have been popping up on shops, taxis, and buses, marking them as Buddhist. Local 969 groups have been starting religious education classes for children.

 

By cloaking itself in piety, the 969 campaign and others like it have managed to tap into widespread anti-Muslim feeling and temper critics wary of being seen as anti-Buddhist.

 

“The 969 campaign is more than a boycott. It’s clearly becoming a rationale for violence,” says Jim Della-Giacoma, South East Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group. “It’s creating an existential threat to Buddhism and the country that’s not there and then blaming Muslims for it. Then what we see is this violence.”

[visionary]

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268780/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=yk0P4S28

Buddhist mobs spread fear among Myanmar's Muslims

 

It was a terrifying sight: hundreds of angry, armed men on motorcycles advancing up a dusty street with no one to stop them.

 

Shouting at the top of their lungs, clutching machetes and iron pipes and long bamboo poles, they thrust their fists repeatedly into the air.

 

The object of their rage: Myanmar's embattled minority Muslim community.

 

Residents gaping at the spectacle backed away as the Buddhist mob passed. Worried business owners turned away customers and retreated indoors. And three armed soldiers standing in green fatigues on a corner watched quietly, doing nothing despite an emergency government ordinance banning groups of more than five from gathering.

After a night of heavy rain, downtown Lashio was quiet Thursday morning. Soldiers blocked roads where Muslim shops were burned. At one corner where the charred remains of a building still smoldered, Muslim residents sorted through rubble for anything salvageable. One woman who had fled a mob a day earlier was still in a state of shock.