Why Buddhists massacre Muslims. Buddhists continue to burn Muslims alive and set fire to mosques Rohingya origin dispute

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Crowd in Myanmar

led by Buddhist monks, burned down three mosques and ransacked several Muslim-owned shops. The reason for the riots was a dispute over the price of goods between a Muslim seller and a Buddhist buyer in one of the jewelry stores.

At least 10 dead and 20 injured are reported. Among the victims are both Buddhists and Muslims.

The city of Meikhtila, where the pogrom took place, is located 540 kilometers north of the country's capital, Yangon.

Maung Maung, head of the district administration:
“I am very, very sorry about everything that happened. Because this event will affect not just one person, but all those living here. And as a Buddhist, I would not want to harm anyone.”

Since the civilian government came to power in Myanmar in 2011, conflicts between Muslims and Buddhists have erupted regularly. Last year, dozens of Muslims died in Rakhine State, an area densely populated by the Rohingya people in western Myanmar.

Bodies of Muslims burned alive by Buddhists

The persecution of Muslims in Myanmar has sparked outrage around the world. What happened and why they are sounding the alarm right now

The leading media these days are writing a lot about the tragedy of the Rohingya people and about the protest action, the participants of which demand an end to the persecution of the Muslim minority. The scale of international outrage is impressive.

International information wave

Actions in support of the Rohingyas took place in many Muslim countries. In India and Indonesia, demonstrators burned portraits of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, while Pakistani and Turkish officials expressed outrage at her government's actions.

Protest in Kolkata, India. Photo: Reuters

It became even more interesting when Russia joined the actions. Actions in support of the Rohingyas took place in Grozny and Moscow. The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, according to Russian media, for the first time spoke critically about the policies of the Kremlin. Like, he does nothing to prevent the genocide, which Kadyrov compared with the Holocaust.

Putin quickly corrected himself and on September 4, at the BRICS summit, condemned the violence of Myanmar, which earned Ramzan's public gratitude.

With a request to stop the violence, it was up to the leader of Myanmar, through his Twitter, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai addressed. This event is interesting in that Aung San Suu Kyi is also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, although now it is not uncommon to hear demands to take away her award.

Let's try to figure out who the Rohingyas are, why they are being persecuted by the Myanmar authorities and why right now there is so much information noise around them.

The most persecuted people in the world

The Buddhist-Muslim conflict in Myanmar has dragged on for years. Rohingya Muslims (or Rohingya) are a minority in a country where the majority of the population professes Buddhism. It is now believed that there are 1.1 million of them in Myanmar, and about a million more live as refugees in various neighboring countries. In 2013, the UN named them the most persecuted society in the world.

The events that are taking place now relate to the state of Arakan (aka Rakhine), in the west of Myanmar. The Rohingyas themselves claim that they moved there a long time ago. The official position of the Myanmar authorities is that these people are descendants of illegal migrants from Bengal. During the British rule in India, Muslims from East Bengal (now the country of Bangladesh) were massively resettled to Arakan, as cheap labor was required.

The Myanmar authorities do not even recognize the term "Rohingya" itself and by 2015 called them "Bengalis", and then began to call them "Muslims living in the Arakan territory."

Myanmar does not grant Rohingya citizenship based on a law passed back in 1982. It prohibits the granting of citizenship to migrants - British Indians - who moved into the country after 1873.

Thus, the Rohingyas are restricted in their right to free movement, do not have access to public education and the right to work in public institutions.

This whole story is complicated by the fact that the majority of the population of Arakan are Buddhists, who have a long history of confrontation with the government of Burma in the struggle for their independence. In fact, these are local separatists, with whom, nevertheless, they managed to make peace. However, now many people confuse the struggle of the Arakans for the creation of their own state and the terrorist acts of Rohingya Muslims into a single whole.

The latter have their own organization - the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA. She intercepted the slogans of the struggle for the independence of local Buddhists and began to fight with the government, hiding in the local jungle.

The Myanmar military and Rakhine residents claim that the group appeared in the fall of 2016, and its stated goal is to create a democratic Muslim state for the Rohingyas. There are rumors that China is involved in Myanmar, and therefore it is beneficial for it from time to time to support local terrorists in order to have an instrument of influence on the government. But they have no confirmation.

Buddhist-Muslim conflict

In the 2000s, most cases of violence against Rohingyas were related to religious conflict. The authorities responded to this by introducing troops into the state, and the Rohingyas began to flee en masse - across the land border to Bangladesh, or by sea to neighboring Muslim countries - Malaysia, Indonesia. Some even tried to get to Australia.

The current wave of violence began on August 25, after ARSA attacks on a dozen police stations and a military base. According to the data provided by the Myanmar authorities, 12 law enforcement officers and 77 rebels were killed. ARSA has been declared a terrorist organization.

A military operation was launched, as a result of which, according to the authorities, 400 people were killed, most of them declared terrorists. However, it is impossible to independently confirm this figure, since journalists, human rights organizations and even UN investigators are not allowed into the state of Arakan.

The latter tried to enter the country this year after a preliminary outbreak of violence. It began with the murder of nine border guards by ARSA representatives. After a military operation was launched in response, about 75,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. Now the number of fugitives is already 125 thousand and the figure is growing.

Refugees tell horror stories about how the military rapes and kills women, shoots children and old people, and burns down their houses. The authorities of Myanmar forbid: the militants themselves burn their own houses, accusing the government of violence.

Terrible refugee situation

It is the situation with a huge uncontrolled flow of refugees that, by and large, has led the current wave of information from protests and indignation in the media. Thousands of Rohingya refugees are heading primarily to Bangladesh, arguably the world's poorest country. The one with which their ancestors once moved.

The majority of the population there are Muslims and, it would seem, they should be friendly to their brothers in misfortune. But in practice it doesn't look like that. At least, according to the Al Jazeera TV channel, the authorities are again planning to relocate all the Rohingyas to a camp on the island of Thengar Char, which was formed from sediments of silt and other rocks about 11 years ago and is completely covered with water during the rainy season.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Photo: Reuters

During previous mass resettlements, several thousand Rohingya refugees found refuge in Malaysia and Indonesia. But in the first they are kept imprisoned for months in refugee camps, and in the second they are forbidden to work, providing little social assistance.

But now the refugee flows in Malaysia and Indonesia have all but disappeared. This was largely due to the 2015 incident. The boats, which were stuffed to the brim with refugees by smugglers, were turned away from the event in Thailand and Indonesia. The latter gave them water and food and sent them home. After several days of drifting at sea, 800 refugees were taken in by Malaysia.

So did the attempts of smugglers to drive boats with refugees in Australia. Its government simply towed the boats back from its territorial waters, although it ran into criticism from human rights organizations for violating the refugee convention.

Therefore, it is not surprising that now, when a new wave of refugees has appeared, the authorities of neighboring countries are putting pressure on Myanmar, demanding an end to actions against the Rohingyas.

Controversial leader of Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi, mentioned above, was once a darling of the Western media: she was considered one of the world's leading human rights activists, the epitome of the fight for human rights. They sincerely sympathized with her: the military junta forced her to live 15 years under house arrest and refused even a meeting with her terminally ill husband. Her articles were happily printed by the Democratic press, such as The New York Times.

In 2015, the military junta loosened its grip and democratic elections were held in the country, in which Aung San Suu Kyi's party won. Local law forbade him to become president, so he came up with a new position - government adviser. In fact, it is she who is the leader of Myanmar at the present time.

Aung San Suu Kyi at peace talks. Photo: Reuters

Disappointment in Aung San Suu Kyi began precisely against the background of the conflict with the Rohingyas. The UN mission was about to investigate crimes against humanity, which the Rohingya refugees accused the Myanmar military and the local population, but the Myanmar government denied visas to its members. According to Aung San Suu Kyi, the UN mission is inappropriate, because it will only intensify the ethnic confrontation.

And now she has gone further and accused international humanitarian organizations of helping terrorists. The claim was supported by a photo of a cookie with the logo of the UN World Food Program, which the military allegedly found in one of the terrorists' hiding places.

The situation in Myanmar is further complicated by the fact that a lot of fakes have already appeared on both sides of the conflict. For example, the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey accompanied his tweet with indignation at the "Rohigya massacre" with a photograph of corpses, but later it turned out that the picture was taken in 1994 in Rwanda. But while it was found out, his message was distributed by 1600 users.

There is also little credibility to photographs of alleged terrorist training camps in Bangladesh, which are supposed to support the Myanmar government's position that they are dealing with a terrorist group.

Myanmar was again in the spotlight of the world press: on July 1, a mob of Buddhists burned down a mosque in the village of Hpakant, Kachin State. The attackers were irritated 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). A mosque was also destroyed there, and a local resident, a Muslim, was also beaten.

• Reuters

Such incidents are not uncommon in modern Myanmar. This state of Southeast Asia borders on China, Laos, Thailand, India and Bangladesh. From Bangladesh, with a population of 170 million, Muslims are illegally resettled in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, with a population of 55 million. Those who call themselves Rohingya have traveled this path many years ago. They settled in the state of Rakhine (Arakan), a historical land for the Myanmar people, the cradle of the Burmese nation. Settled but not assimilated.

Migrants with roots

“Traditional Muslims of Myanmar, such as Malabar Indians, Bengalis, Chinese Muslims, Burmese Muslims, live throughout Myanmar,” explains orientalist Pyotr Kozma, who lives in Myanmar and maintains a popular blog about the country, in an interview with RT. “With this traditional Muslim ummah, the Buddhists have had experience of coexistence for many decades, therefore, despite the excesses, it rarely came to large-scale conflicts.”

With the Rohingya Bengalis, it is a completely different story. Officially, it is believed that several generations ago they illegally entered the territory of Myanmar. “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”, they began to say “Muslims living in the Arakan region,” Ksenia Efremova, an associate professor at MGIMO and a specialist in Myanmar, tells RT. “But the problem is that these Muslims themselves consider themselves the people of Myanmar and claim citizenship, which they are not granted.”

• Reuters

According to Piotr 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 prejudice. “Among the Rohingya, there are many who defected from Bangladesh, including due to problems with the law,” says Piotr Kozma. “Just imagine the enclaves where radicals and criminals who escaped from a neighboring state rule the show.”

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. “One day this lid was torn off. And here it doesn’t even matter who started it first, ”concludes the orientalist.

Escalation of the conflict

The process got out of hand in 2012. Then in June and October, more than a hundred people died in armed clashes in Rakhine between Buddhists and Muslims. According to the UN, approximately 5,300 houses and places of worship were destroyed.

A state of emergency was declared in the state, but the tumor of the conflict had already spread throughout Myanmar. By the spring of 2013, the pogroms had moved from the western part of the country to the center. At the end of March, riots began in the city of Meithila. On June 23, 2016, the conflict broke out in the province of Pegu, on July 1 - in Hpakant. What the traditional Myanmar ummah feared most seemed to have happened: Rohingya discontent was being extrapolated to Muslims in general.

• Reuters

Intercommunal controversy

Muslims are one of the parties to the conflict, but it is incorrect to consider the unrest in Myanmar as inter-religious, 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 if they are Muslims or representatives of another religion.” According to Mosyakov, Myanmar is a complex conglomeration of nationalities, but all of them are united by a common Burmese history and statehood. Rohingya fall out of this system of communities, and this is the core of the conflict, as a result of which both Muslims and Buddhists die.

Black and white

“At this time, the world media hears the theme of exclusively affected Muslims and says nothing about Buddhists,” adds Piotr Kozma. “Such one-sided coverage of the conflict has given Myanmar Buddhists a sense of a besieged fortress, 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 the state of Rakhine, Muslims were not killed much more than Buddhists, and in terms of the number of destroyed and burned houses, the sides are approximately equal. 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, the Buddhists do not have their own Al Jazeera and similar world-class rating television stations to report this,” says Piotr 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 - peace agreements have recently been reached with other national minorities. But in the case of the Rohingya, this will not work. “These people get into junks and sail along the Bay of Bengal to the Burmese coast. A new wave of refugees provokes new massacres 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 three days, more than 3,000 Muslims have been brutally murdered by Buddhists in Myanmar. People kill their own kind without sparing women or children.

Anti-Muslim pogroms in Myanmar were repeated again, on an even more horrifying scale.

More than 3,000 people have died as a result of the conflict in Myanmar (the old name is Burma) between government forces and Rohingya Muslims, which broke out a week ago. It is reported by Reuters with reference to the Myanmar army. According to local authorities, it all started with the fact that "Rohingya militants" attacked several police posts and army barracks in Rakhine state (the old name is Arakan - approx.). The Myanmar army said in a statement that since August 25, there have been 90 clashes, during which 370 militants were killed. Losses among government forces amounted to 15 people. In addition, the militants are accused of killing 14 civilians.

As a result of the clashes, some 27,000 Rohingya refugees crossed the border into Bangladesh to escape persecution. At the same time, according to the Xinhua news agency, almost 40 people, including women and children, died in the Naf River when they tried to cross the border by boat.

The Rohingya are ethnic Muslim Bengalis resettled in Arakan in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the British colonial authorities. With a total population of about 1.5 million, they now make up the majority of the population of Rakhine State, but very few of them have Myanmar citizenship. Official authorities and the Buddhist population consider the Rohingya to be illegal migrants from Bangladesh. The conflict between them and the indigenous "Arakanese" - Buddhists - has long roots, but the escalation of this conflict to armed clashes and a humanitarian crisis began only after the transfer of power in Myanmar from the military to civilian governments in 2011-2012.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called the events in Myanmar "Muslim genocide." “Those who turn a blind eye to this genocide under the guise of democracy are its accomplices. The world media, which does not attach any importance to these people in Arakan, are also complicit in this crime. The Muslim population in Arakan, which was four million half a century ago, has been reduced by one third as a result of persecution and bloodshed. The fact that the global community remains silent in response to this is a separate drama, ”Anadolu agency quoted him as saying.

“I also had a telephone conversation with the UN Secretary General. Since September 19, meetings of the UN Security Council on this issue will be held. Turkey will do its best to convey to the world community the facts concerning the situation in Arakan. The issue will also be discussed during bilateral talks. Turkey will speak up even if the rest decide to remain silent,” Erdogan said.

Commented on the events in Myanmar and the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. “I read the comments and statements of politicians on the situation in Myanmar. The conclusion suggests itself that there is no limit to the hypocrisy and inhumanity of those who are obliged to protect HUMAN! The whole world knows that for a number of years events have been taking place in this country that are impossible not only to show, but also to describe. Humanity has not seen such cruelty since the Second World War. If I say this, a person who has gone through two terrible wars, then one can judge the scale of the tragedy of one and a half million Rohingya Muslims. First of all, it should be said about Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who actually leads Myanmar. For many years she was called a fighter for democracy. Six years ago, the military was replaced by a civilian government, Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize, took power, and after that, ethnic and religious cleansing began. Fascist gas chambers are nothing compared to what is happening in Myanmar. Mass murders, rapes, burning of living people on fires, bred under iron sheets, destruction of everything that belongs to Muslims. Last autumn, more than one thousand houses, schools and mosques of the Rohingyas were destroyed and burned. The Myanmar authorities are trying to destroy the people, and neighboring countries do not accept refugees, introducing ridiculous quotas. The whole world sees that a humanitarian catastrophe is taking place, it sees that this is an open crime against humanity, BUT IT IS SILENT! UN Secretary General António Guterres, instead of harshly condemning the Myanmar authorities, asks Bangladesh to accept refugees! Instead of fighting the cause, he talks about the consequences. And UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein urged the Myanmar leadership to "condemn harsh rhetoric and inciting hatred on social media." Isn't it funny? The Buddhist government of Myanmar is trying to explain the massacres and genocide of the Rohingyas by the actions of those who are trying to put up armed resistance. We condemn violence, no matter who it comes from. But the question arises, what other choice is left to the people who have been driven into pitch hell? Why are the politicians of dozens of countries and human rights organizations silent today, who make statements twice a day if someone in Chechnya simply sneezes from a cold?” the Chechen leader wrote on his Instagram.

No matter what religion a person professed, such massive atrocities should not occur. No religion is worth a man's life. Share this information, we will stop the mass destruction of people.

In the state of Arakan in Myanmar, over the past three days, about two to three thousand Muslims have died as a result of military attacks, more than 100 thousand Muslims have been evicted from their homes.

As transmits website Anita Shug, spokeswoman for the European Rohingya Muslim Council (ERC), told Anadolu News 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 Rathedaung the day before there was a bloodshed, as a result of which up to one thousand Muslims died. Only one boy survived,” Shug said.

According to local activists and sources, 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 official Dhaka decided to close the border.

The spokeswoman also said 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 were not to blame for the ongoing events, and asked to lift the blockade and evacuate them from these villages. But there was no answer. There is 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. Mohammed Eyup Khan said that Arakanese activists living in Turkey called on the UN to help immediately end the bloodshed against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state by Myanmar military forces 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 government of Myanmar does not allow into the state not only journalists from other countries, representatives of humanitarian organizations and UN employees, but also the local press,” Eyup Khan said.

According to him, in 2016, several young Muslims, unable to withstand the pressure of the authorities, attacked three checkpoints with clubs and swords, after which the Myanmar government seized the opportunity to close all checkpoints, and security forces began to attack towns and villages in the state. Arakan, killing local people, including children.

The activist recalled that on July 25, the UN established a special commission of three people, which was supposed to identify the facts of persecution in Arakan, but official Myanmar said it would not allow UN employees to the state.

“Taking advantage of the inaction of the international community, on August 24, government forces besieged another 25 villages. And when the locals tried to resist, bloodshed began. According to the data we received, about 500 Muslims were killed in the last three days alone,” Eyup Khan said.

According to UN norms, genocide-affected countries should be sanctioned, but the international community does not accept the fact that Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are being genocided, the activist said. “The UN prefers to call what is happening here not genocide, but ethnic cleansing,” Eyup Khan said.

According to him, about 140 thousand people in Arakan were expelled from their places of permanent residence. Muslim houses are burned in the state and placed in camps.

According to the activist, the Islamophobic sentiments that have prevailed in Myanmar since the early 1940s are part of a special plan, according to which the Myanmar government and Buddhists are trying to purge Muslims from Arakan state using the most brutal methods.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said that Ankara strongly condemns the massacres of Muslims in Myanmar, which are "in many ways similar to acts of genocide."

“Turkey is concerned about the increase in violence, killing and injury of Myanmar residents. The UN and the international community should not remain indifferent to these events, which in many ways resemble genocide,” Bozdag said.