By AFP

September 24, 2017

YANGON -- Cartoons taking aim at Rohingya Muslims are spreading rapidly across social media in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, where public opinion on the crisis stands in stark contrast to the outcry overseas.

Fanned by Myanmar's civilian and military leaders, an information war has taken hold and is being embraced with gusto by a legion of satirists, meme-makers and Internet trolls.

Local cartoonists, many of whom earned their revered status for skewering the former junta, have taken aim at the Rohingya.

One widely-shared sketch called "crocodile tears" shows a group of reptiles swimming away from a bank of mutilated animals towards an eager Western cameraman.

"I had to flee my motherland," a crying crocodile says into the microphone, a swipe at the testimonies of Rohingya refugees who have arrived in Bangladesh with accounts of atrocities by Myanmar's army.

"There is something untrue about what they (the Rohingya) are saying," Win Naing, one of Myanmar's most famous cartoonists, told AFP.

The 58-year-old, whose pen name is Aw Pi Kyeh, said he just wanted to provoke thought in a highly charged situation.

"We draw cartoons with a spirit that loves the country."

For decades the paranoid former junta sequestered its people from technology, global opinion and debate.

But since the country creaked open a few years ago, Myanmar's public has dived head first into Facebook and Twitter.

Now, anti-Rohingya diatribes are being "liked", shared and retweeted - reinforcing long-held religious hatreds against the minority.

Since late August, around 430,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh, escaping an army crackdown in Rakhine state which the UN has called "ethnic cleansing".

The global condemnation has triggered a defensive instinct in Myanmar where the Rohingya are not citizens and are broadly reviled.

KEYBOARD WARRIORS

Armed with crass humour, Internet fame and riding a wave of public opinion, cartoonists have delivered sharp counter-punches.

When Malala Yousafzai condemned fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to speak up for the Rohingya, one cartoonist hit back with a rendering of the Pakistani activist with human excrement instead of brains - a grim reference to her surgery after being shot in the head by the Taliban.

A sketch by cartoonist Okka Kyi Winn, liked nearly 10,000 times on his Facebook page, showed a UN insignia wrapped in a Middle-Eastern keffiyeh, suggesting the body is in cahoots with the Arab world.

While the intention may be pure satire, such images are contributing to a siege mentality in Myanmar, where keyboard warriors are trading blows with vocal pro-Rohingya groups scattered across the Muslim world.

The prevailing view among the Buddhist majority is that foreign media and international NGOs have embellished the plight of the Rohingya and unfairly bashed Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The Lady" has refused to weigh in on the squall of claims and counterclaims, saying only that there is a "huge iceberg of misinformation".

Many outside Myanmar are baffled by the seeming lack of empathy, and the often violent rhetoric from a Buddhist people.

But toxic Islamophobia has been brewing in the country for years, fed in part by official rhetoric that the Muslim Rohingya are foreign invaders intent on taking a Buddhist land.

As his troops blanket Rakhine, Myanmar's commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing has continued with Facebook posts branding the Rohingya as "terrorist extremists" of "Bengali" origin - a state-stamped slur that condemns them to the status of illegal migrants.

'BETTER ANGELS'

Newspapers, TV debates and social media have followed suit, jeering at the Rohingya as they flee, says Sein Win of the Myanmar Journalism Institute.

Some of the loudest noises are coming from people who fought repression under the junta, he told AFP, in a remarkable reshaping of the young democracy's political landscape.

"I am disturbed by the actions of the media, civil society and even former political activists. You need to care about humans across the board, not just when it suits you," he said.

On Friday US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy condemned the hate speech on social media and urged the "better angels" of the Myanmar people to find empathy for the Rohingya.

But cartoonists such as Maung Maung Fountain (pen name) argue their sketches "don't insult any religion or any people".

In one, he draws a camel - a code for Rohingya Muslims - that has edged its way into a tent made from the Myanmar flag then bellows "Human Rights" at the startled Burmese man he has just evicted.

"I meant say that some people want more and more rights and opportunities."

September 21, 2017

By AFP

September 10, 2017

Bangladesh's foreign minister said Sunday that genocide was being waged in Myanmar's violence-racked Rakhine state, triggering an exodus of nearly 300,000 Muslim Rohingya to his country.

"The international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide," A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters after briefing diplomats in Dhaka.

Ali met Western and Arab diplomats and the heads of UN agencies based in Bangladesh to seek support for a political solution and humanitarian aid for the Rohingya.

He told the diplomats that some 300,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh in the past two weeks, taking the total number of such refugees in the country to over 700,000.

"It is now a national problem," Ali said.

At least two diplomats who attended the briefings said the minister told them as many as 3,000 people may have been killed in the latest round of violence.

The United Nations says 294,000 bedraggled and exhausted Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since attacks by Rohingya militants on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major military backlash.

Tens of thousands more are believed to be on the move inside Rakhine.

Mainly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise its stateless Muslim Rohingya community, labelling them "Bengalis" -- illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Ali accused Myanmar of running a "malicious propaganda" campaign to term the Rohingya as "illegal migrants from Bangladesh" and the militants as "Bengali terrorists".

He said the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine are a "mixed group of people" with a history dating back 1,500 years and ancestors included Arab and Indian-origin people.

Ali described actions following the militant attacks on security forces on August 25 as "revenge" by Myanmar troops.

"Should all people be killed? Should all villages be burnt? It is not acceptable," he said, adding Dhaka was seeking a peaceful solution, not a "war" against Myanmar.

"We did not create the problem. Since the problem started in Myanmar, that's why they should resolve. We have said we'll help them," he said, adding that the problem took a "new turn" after the August 25 attacks.

A commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan last month said Myanmar must scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship for its Rohingya minority if it wants to avoid fuelling extremism and bring peace to Rakhine state.

Ali called on the international community to urge the Myanmar government to immediately implement the recommendations of the commission's report "in its entirety".

AFP

August 29, 2017

By AFP

August 20, 2017

Bangladesh coastguards Saturday turned back a boat carrying 31 Rohingya Muslim refugees escaping renewed army activity in their neighbouring Myanmar homeland, an official said.

The push-back came after at least 500 Rohingya fled their villages in Myanmar's Rakhine state, crossing the border to take shelter in refugee camps and hills in Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazar district.

A coastguard patrol boat found the boat on the Naf river, which acts as a border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, as it tried to enter Cox's Bazar early in the morning.

The refugees included women and children who said they were victims of violence, coast guard spokesman Sheikh Fakhr Uddin said quoting the escapees.

"We found two injured among 18 men, along with nine women and four children. But we had to send them back," Uddin told AFP.

The latest influx follows a months-long bloody military crackdown on the mainly Muslim minority in Myanmar that led tens of thousands to flee across the border. The United Nations has said the violence may amount to ethnic cleansing.

"We have beefed up our patrol on the Naf as (Myanmar) army is gathering in the bordering villages, which may prompt them (Rohingya) to try coming to Bangladesh," Uddin said.

Dhaka estimates that nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees are living in squalid refugee camps and makeshift settlements in Cox's Bazar, which borders Rakhine.

Their numbers swelled last October when more than 70,000 Rohingya villagers began arriving, bringing stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of Myanmar soldiers.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee voiced alarm at reports that a Myanmar army battalion had flown into Rakhine to help local authorities boost security in the region.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya who live in Rakhine, who are seen as interlopers from Bangladesh, denied citizenship and access to basic rights.

But they are also increasingly unwelcome in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where police often blame them for crimes such as drug trafficking.

Dhaka has floated the idea of relocating tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote, flood-prone island off its coast, despite opposition from rights groups.

By AFP

August 16, 2017

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims have crossed into Bangladesh in recent days following a fresh military build-up in Myanmar's Rakhine state, community leaders said Wednesday.

They said at least 500 Rohingya had made the difficult journey into Bangladesh, some claiming they had been abused by soldiers in Myanmar.

The latest influx follows a months-long bloody military crackdown on the mainly Muslim minority in Myanmar last year that led tens of thousands to flee across the border. The United Nations has said the violence may amount to ethnic cleansing.

Abu Toyyob said he escaped with his seven-member family as the army vandalised Rohingya houses and detained young men.

"They arrested my younger brother from home and injured my two-year-old son by kicking him with boots," the 25-year-old told AFP.

"I immediately set off with my family and crossed the Naf two nights ago," he added, referring to the river that divides the two countries.

Dhaka estimates that nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees are living in squalid refugee camps and makeshift settlements in the resort district of Cox's Bazar, which borders Rakhine.

Their numbers swelled last October when more than 70,000 Rohingya villagers began arriving, bringing stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of Myanmar soldiers.

Bangladesh border guards said they had stepped up patrols after reports of a military build-up on the other side of the river.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee voiced alarm at reports that an army battalion had flown into Rakhine to help local authorities boost security in the region.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya who live in Rakhine, who are seen as interlopers from Bangladesh, denied citizenship and access to basic rights.

But they are also increasingly unwelcome in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where police often blame them for crimes such as drug trafficking.

Dhaka has floated the idea of relocating tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote, flood-prone island off its coast, despite opposition from rights groups.

An official with the UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which looks after settlements for unregistered Rohingya refugees, said the organisation was aware of new arrivals.

The numbers were "not as alarming as the October influx," the official said.

By AFP

August 14, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar has moved hundreds of troops into northern Rakhine state as it ramps up counterinsurgency efforts there, officers told AFP Saturday (Aug 11), after the UN voiced alarm over reports of a military build up in the region.

Rakhine has been gripped by violence since October last year when militants attacked police posts, sparking a bloody military crackdown that the UN believes may amount to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority Rohingya.

More than 70,000 Rohingya villagers fled across the border to Bangladesh, carrying with them stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of soldiers.

The major part of the military campaign ended several months ago, but fear continues to stalk the region amid sporadic bouts of violence.

Officers said Saturday that the government had deployed a fresh batch of troops after a recent spate of murders. They said soldiers have been sent to a mountainous area where a band of militants is actively training.

"Many battalions with hundreds of soldiers from central Myanmar were deployed to the Mayu moutain range," a military officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.

A senior border guard said the deployment was ordered to protect other ethnic groups in the remote area.

The government has accused insurgents of murdering and abducting dozens of villagers and perceived collaborators with the state.

"Muslim militants are training in the forest... They have killed those who are cooperating with authorities," the border guard told AFP.

State media also reported that the government had imposed new curfews, to be set "in necessary areas" as the army beefs up its "clearance operations".

A Rohingya villager told AFP his community feared a repeat of last year's crackdown.

"Some Muslim villages in Rathidaung dare not to go outside," said Hasumyar, who only gave his first name and lives in a township that has been placed under curfew.

The insurgents, known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, were little known until they claimed the October raids on police posts that left nine dead. The group says it is fighting to advance the rights of the Rohingya and has denied killing civilians in statements issued through an unverified Twitter account.

Reports of an army battalion being flown into Rakhine to boost security were met with criticism on Friday by UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee, who warned the development was "a cause for major concern".

The UN has accused the military of committing grave abuses against the Rohingya during its counterinsurgency campaign. But Myanmar has dismissed the allegations and vowed to block a UN probe into the violence.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and struggle to access basic services.

The minority group are widely reviled as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite having lived in the area for generations.

By AFP

August 12, 2017

UN expresses alarm as government imposes curfew and sends more soldiers to violence-hit region of Rakhine. 

Myanmar is imposing new curfews and deploying more troops to Rakhine state, the government confirmed on Saturday, after the United Nations expressed alarm at reports of a military build-up in the region where authorities are accused of widespread rights abuses. 

News that an army battalion was flown into Rakhine this week to boost security met criticism from UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee on Friday, who warned it was "cause for major concern". 

Rakhine has been gripped by violence since October last year when ethnic Rohingya fighters attacked police posts, sparking a months-long bloody military crackdown. 

The army campaign sent more than 70,000 Rohingya villagers fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, carrying with them stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of soldiers. 

The Rohingya are a stateless group, long-maligned by Myanmar's Buddhist majority, and the UN believes the army's crackdown may amount to ethnic cleansing - a charge the government vehemently denies. 

State media said Saturday that "clearance operations are being heightened" in Rakhine's May Yu mountain range, an area where the government says Rohingya fighters remain active. 

The army used the same language to describe counterinsurgency sweeps in October. 

"Plans are under way to reinforce security forces and military forces by deployment of additional troops," the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said, adding curfews would be imposed in "necessary areas". 

The goal was to "prevent extremist terrorists from taking a stronghold in the May Yu mountain range", the state mouthpiece said. 

The military build-up comes after a rise in violence in recent months with dozens of villagers killed and abducted by masked assassins. 

The government blames the killings on the rebel Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed the raids on police posts last October. 

The group has denied killing civilians in statements issued through an unverified Twitter account.

Rohingya communities in the remote area also continue to be raided, with security forces firing "warning shots" during a face-off with a mob of villagers earlier this month. 

UN rights expert Lee urged authorities to carry out their security operations in line with international human rights standards. 

"The government must ensure that security forces exercise restraint in all circumstances and respect human rights in addressing the security situation in Rakhine State," she said in a statement. 

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and struggle to access basic services. 

The minority are widely reviled as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite having lived in the area for generations. 

A government-appointed commission in the country has dismissed allegations of widespread abuses, while Myanmar is refusing to allow a UN fact-finding team to conduct its own probe.

By AFP

July 27, 2017

Rohingya Muslim Ayamar Bagon has lived on handouts since her husband left her after she told him she was gang-raped by Myanmar soldiers in the final month of her pregnancy.

She is among scores of women who accuse security forces of sexual abuses during a months-long military 'clearance operation' so brutal the UN fears it may amount to crimes against humanity.

AFP visited the remote region in the north of Rakhine State on a government-run trip this month, the first time foreign media have been officially allowed into the area since the military began hunting militants in October. 

On the edge of Kyar Gaung Taung village, away from the government minders, a group of Rohingya women described how their lives were shattered the day soldiers came to their homes late last year.

"I was raped close to my due date, in my ninth month of pregnancy. They knew I was pregnant but didn't care," Ayamar Bagon told AFP through a UN translator, clutching her baby daughter to her chest. 

"My husband blamed me for letting it happen. Because of this, he married another woman and now lives in another village," the 20-year-old added, explaining that she survives on food donations from her neighbours.

Mother-of-two Hasinnar Baygon, 20, said her husband has also threatened to leave after she was raped by three troops in December.

They took turns to violate her while two others stood watch outside her hut, she alleges, adding that she knew they were soldiers because of their uniforms and guns.

All the Rohingya men had already fled the village out of fear they would be beaten up by troops, leaving only the women, children and elderly behind.

"My husband told me he is going to leave me. He blamed me for not running away," Baygon said.

The government denies the allegations and AFP has not been able to verify their stories or claims from two other women who said they were raped by soldiers.

But they echo scores of accounts collected by UN investigators and rights groups from some of the 74,000 Rohingya who have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. 

'What can we do?'

The UN believes hundreds may have died in what could be the bloodiest chapter of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's years-long persecution of the 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims who live in Rakhine.

Kyar Gaung Taung village was caught up in one of the most brutal episodes in November, when witnesses and state media said dozens of Rohingya were killed as troops swept through the villages. 

Myanmar's government has denied almost all claims of abuses and barred a UN fact-finding mission from the area.

By AFP

July 20, 2017

SITTWE (Myanmar): Five years have passed since Hla Hla Sein was forced into a displacement camp in western Myanmar for Rohingya Muslims, where disease and deprivation are rife and armed guards patrol a barbed-wire perimeter. 

But after a crackdown on the international smuggling routes that once offered a dangerous – but viable – escape route, she now sees no way out. 

“We have no idea how many years we will have to live like this,” the 40-year-old widow said inside the tiny bamboo hut she shares with her son, tugging nervously at her purple headscarf. 

“Our lives are worse than animals ... we are human only in name.”

Deadly sectarian riots in 2012 drove more than 120,000 Rohingya into the camps in Rakhine State, where they live in ramshackle homes and are deprived of adequate food, schools and doctors.

For years human traffickers cashed in on the group’s desperation, ferrying thousands of Rohingya across the Andaman Sea to countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. 

The journeys were defined by danger: from rickety boats on high seas to abuse and even death at the hands of the gangs, who held many victims for ransom in jungle camps on the Thai-Malaysia border. 

That route was shuttered by Thailand’s junta in 2015 and few boats have left the camps since, according to residents, aid workers and migration experts. 

The move may have spared Hla Hla Sein death at sea or abuse at the hands of smugglers, but it also cut off a way out of a painful limbo.

Hla Hla Sein and her son had tried to escape to Malaysia before the crackdown, but their boat was so overcrowded it started to sink a few hours into the journey, forcing the captain to turn back.

It was only after they returned to shore that she found out the smugglers had planned to sell them as slaves at their destination.

“I was ready to die at sea as we have nothing in this country,” she said. 

“Our children cannot get education, even I cannot work. I thought dying would be better.”

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long been chastised for its treatment of the Rohingya, a group of more than a million Muslims whose rights and freedoms have been successively stripped away since the early 1980s.

By AFP

July 12, 2017

GENEVA: Aung San Suu Kyi's government in Myanmar risks getting bracketed with "pariah states" like North Korea and Syria over its refusal to grant visas to a UN team investigating the plight of Rohingya Muslims, activists said Wednesday (Jul 12).

The civilian government of the Nobel peace laureate said on Jun 30 that the three investigators designated by the UN's Human Rights Council were not welcome, insisting it was conducting its own probe into alleged atrocities against the minority group.

That refusal amounts to "a slap in the face to victims who suffered grave human rights violations by Myanmar's state security forces", John Fisher, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Does Aung San Suu Kyi's government really want to be included in a very small and ignominious club of countries that reject Human Rights Council decisions?" he said.

"North Korea, Eritrea, Syria, and Burundi are human rights pariah states that obstructed the work of independent, international investigations into alleged rights abuses, and it would be a travesty for a democratically elected, National League for Democracy-led government in Myanmar to do the same."

On Monday, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley also called on the Myanmar government to give visas to the UN fact-finding mission, arguing the "international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma".

The north of Myanmar's Rakhine state has been under lockdown since October, when the military launched a campaign to hunt down Rohingya militants who staged deadly attacks on police posts.

More than 90,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes since the crackdown began, according to UN estimates.

A UN report in February said the campaign against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and other rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, "very likely" amounted to war crimes.

In May, the Geneva-based rights council appointed Indira Jaising of India, Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia to serve as the three members of the UN mission.

The mission was ordered to "urgently" investigate abuses reportedly committed by the security forces, particularly in Rakhine state where troops have been accused of raping, torturing and murdering members of the Rohingya community.

By AFP

July 12, 2017

US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Monday ramped up pressure on the Myanmar government to accept a UN fact-finding mission tasked with investigating human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims.

Yangon officials said last week that they would deny visas to the three-person team mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate abuses reportedly committed by security forces in Rakhine state.

"It is important that the Burmese government allow this fact-finding mission to do its job," Haley said in a statement.

"The international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma – we must stand together and call on the government to fully cooperate with this fact-finding mission."

Myanmar's de facto leader and Nobel prize winning democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi has rejected the UN fact-finding mission, arguing that the government is carrying out its own investigation.

The north of Rakhine state has been under lockdown since October, when the military launched a campaign to hunt down Rohingya militants who staged deadly attacks on police posts.

More than 90,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes since last October, according to UN estimates.

A UN report in February said the campaign against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and other rights in Myanmar, "very likely" amounted to war crimes.

Haley said the violence in Rakhine continues to claim lives and that there were continuing allegations of sexual violence targeting women and children.

In May, the Geneva-based rights council appointed Indira Jaising of India, Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka and Christopher Dominic Sidoti of Australia to serve as the three members of the fact-finding mission.

By AFP

June 2, 2017

Police charge three men who prayed in street after school where they used to worship was shut down by nationalists

Authorities in Myanmar have charged three Muslim men for holding Ramadan prayers in the street after the local school where they used to worship was shut down by a nationalist mob.

Police brought the charges after about 50 Muslims gathered to pray on Wednesday on a road in Yangon’s Thaketa township, the site of one of a growing number of raids by Buddhist hardliners on Islamic events.

Two nearby Islamic schools were closed in late April after ultra-nationalists complained that local Muslims were illegally using them to conduct prayers.

Authorities have said the closure is temporary, but have given no timeline for when they may be reopened.

“We feel sorry. This month is important for us,” said the local Muslim leader Zaw Min Latt, referring to the holy month of Ramadan, which began last week.

“We used those schools for prayer for decades. These restrictions have been brought in after more than 60 years.”

Local authorities issued a statement saying the prayer session threatened “stability and the rule of law” in the mainly Muslim neighbourhood in the east of Myanmar’s commercial capital.

A police officer who asked not to be named confirmed the charges.

Two officers tried to stop AFP journalists from filming when they visited one of the madrasas on Friday.

“It’s our mosque as well as our school. We don’t know when it will be reopened,” Khin Soe, a local resident in his 50s, said as he set off to pray in another part of town.

The case comes as Myanmar’s government has been seeking to clamp down on hate speech after a spike in anti-Muslim actions by hardliners from the country’s Buddhist majority.

Religious tensions have soared since a group of Rohingya Muslims attacked police posts in Rakhine state in October, sparking a bloody military crackdown that has drawn widespread international condemnation. 

Last week Myanmar’s top Buddhist authority officially banned the Ma Ba Tha, an ultra-nationalist movement affiliated with the firebrand cleric Wirathu, which responded by simply changing its name.

The move came after nationalists this month clashed with Muslims in another Muslim neighbourhood in Yangon, after pushing police to raid a house there in search of illegal Rohingya Muslim hideouts.

By AFP

May 29, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar's ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement announced Sunday it was rebranding under a new name, days after Buddhist authorities banned the network which has been accused of stoking Islamophobia.

The monk-led movement grew in strength under the country's previous military-backed government, peddling a form of hardline Buddhist nationalism that intensified sectarian tensions with minority Muslims.

But after months of distancing itself from the radical group, Myanmar's top Buddhist clergy on Tuesday ordered the Ma Ba Tha to cease all activities by mid-July or face prosecution.

The threat did little to deter thousands of maroon-robed monks, nuns and lay followers from attending a weekend summit at a Yangon monastery decorated with Ma Ba Tha banners, with many defiantly declaring their intention to keep the movement going.

On Sunday the group released a statement saying they would use a new name: the Buddha Dhamma Philanthropy Foundation.

"We urge all members in all regions and states around the country to work for the country, people and religion using the name of the Buddha Dhamma Philanthropy Foundation," said the statement, signed by its monk leader Tilawka Biwuntha.

The new name is noticeably less controversial and confrontational than the original.

Ma Ba Tha is the Burmese abbreviation for a phrase that translates as "The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion" - a name the group would also give as its official English title.

With the help of notorious firebrand monk Wirathu, who attended the weekend gathering and has a significant Facebook following, Ma Ba Tha became know for sermons and protests that helped foment the idea that Buddhism in Myanmar is threatened by Islam.

Muslims have lived in Myanmar for centuries but only make up around five per cent of the population.

In recent months Buddhist hardliners have shut down religious events across the country and forced two Yangon schools accused of illegally doubling up as mosques to close their doors.

Police arrested several nationalists this month after a fight broke out in a Muslim neighbourhood of Yangon, when dozens of people raided a house believed to be hiding Rohingyas - a Muslim minority maligned by many Buddhists.

Earlier this year the ruling clergy, a body known as Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, banned Wirathu from preaching for a year, though he still spoke at the gathering on Saturday.

The same day Tilawka Biwuntha signalled the group had no intention of disbanding.

"If you write Ma Ba Tha, you can erase the words. But no one can erase Ma Ba Tha from your heart," he told supporters.

By AFP

May 29, 2017

YANGON: Myanmar netizens were in an uproar on Monday (May 29) after Facebook seemingly banned people from posting the word "kalar" - often used as a slur against Muslims - at a time of rising Islamophobia in the country.

Facebook is under global pressure to clamp down on hate speech, violent threats or deliberately misleading information on their platform - with efforts showing varying degrees of success.

Dozens of users in Myanmar reported being temporarily barred from the site recently after posting the controversial term kalar, which is frequently used as an insult for the country's embattled Muslim minority.

Some users said they were even blocked after writing other words that include the same sound in the Burmese alphabet, highlighting the difficulties Facebook has monitoring millions of posts in multiple languages.

Aung Kaung Myat said he had been prevented from liking, posting and sharing content on the site for 24 hours last week for writing about the apparent ban, as had many of his friends.

"It is ridiculous," he said. "I became a victim of it myself when I wrote: 'Facebook is deleting the posts that include the word kalar'."

Yarzar Soe-Oo said he was barred on Friday after posting a jokey quip about eating Indian bean soup ("kalar pal hin") while sitting in a chair ("kalar htaing").

A spokeswoman for Facebook said the company was working to combat hate speech but as "our teams process millions of pieces of reported content each week... we sometimes make mistakes".

A spokesman for the Myanmar government said it had not pushed for a ban.

"WE OWN KALAR"

Kalar is a deeply controversial term in Myanmar, where it is used to refer to foreigners in general but most commonly to describe people of Indian origin and anything relating to their culture.

Over the years it has also been turned into a derogatory slur by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims.

Two angry Facebook users have responded to the apparent ban by creating an event called "We own Kalar" in protest. By early afternoon about 1,400 people had said they were interested in attending the gathering, scheduled for Wednesday in Yangon.

"Even though no action is taken against fake accounts which share hate speech and spew abuse... action is taken over (words we use every day)," said the organisers. "We own the word as we have been using it for decades and over the centuries."

The push comes as Myanmar's government has been seeking to clamp down on hate speech after a spike in anti-Muslim actions by Buddhist hardliners.

They have shut down religious events, forced two Yangon schools accused of illegally doubling up as mosques to close and this month clashed with Muslims after pushing police to raid a house in their neighbourhood.

Last week Myanmar's top Buddhist authority officially banned ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement, which responded on Sunday by simply changing their name.

"If you write Ma Ba Tha, you can erase the words. But no one can erase Ma Ba Tha from your heart," leader Tilawka Biwuntha told the gathering.

By Fiachra GIBBONS

AFP

May 24, 2017

Cannes (France) -- Barbet Schroeder spent months with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin at the height of his power, when corpses would wash up every morning on the shores of Lake Victoria and Kampala was rife with rumours that he was eating his opponents.

But in his decades of documenting evil, the veteran Swiss filmmaker says he has never been as scared by anyone as he was by a Myanmar Buddhist monk named Wirathu.

"I am afraid to call him Wirathu because even his name scares me," the highly acclaimed director told AFP. "I just call him W."

"The Venerable W", his chilling portrait of the monk who has been accused of preaching hate and inciting attacks on Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority, has been hailed by critics at the Cannes film festival as a "stirring documentary about ethnic cleansing in action".

What dismays Schroeder is that Wirathu, whom Time magazine dubbed "The face of Buddhist terror" in a 2013 cover, is utterly unfazed by the chaos and suffering he has unleashed.

Buddhism is supposed to be the philosophy of peace, enlightenment and understanding, he thought.

It helped centre Schroeder's own life when he made a pilgrimage to India to follow on the path of the Buddha 50 years ago to "cure myself of my jealousy".

But the hate speech and fake news that Wirathu spreads from his Mandalay monastery, accusing Muslims -- barely four percent of the country's population -- of trying to outbreed the majority Burmese, made Schroeder's head spin.

- 'Devilishly clever' -

"He is much more intelligent and in control of himself that I thought, devilishly clever in fact," said Schroeder, who shot his film secretly in Myanmar until he attracted the attention of the secret police.

"It was like being faced by a good Jesuit or some very clever communist leader back in the day," he said.

Rather than "question him like a journalist", Schroeder just let the monk talk as he did with the other subjects of his "Trilogy of Evil", which began with "General Idi Amin Dada" in 1974 and includes his 2007 film "Terror's Advocate" about the French lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

"If you wait long enough, slowly the truth would come out," Schroeder said. "That is what I did with Idi Amin and Jacques Verges."

"When he lied I'd say, 'Tell me more, how interesting... So the Rohingya burn their own houses so they can get money from the United Nations...'"

"For me one of the most shocking moments is when he says they destroy their own houses, and then you see a crowd of maybe 3,000 people fleeing their burning homes. It's nightmarish."

In another telling scene Wirathu, leader of the Buddhist nationalist 969 movement, is shown watching Muslims being beaten to death in Meiktila near Mandalay in 2013, a month after he gave an anti-Muslim speech there.

- Hate speech 'escalating' -

Schroeder said the monk had returned "all peace and love" to the town to call for calm, "but he was at least indirectly responsible for what was happening."

"Wirathu said all this happened because a monk was killed by the Muslims. But I read the pamphlet that sparked the riots and it sounded very much like his speeches and that he could have written it."

This month, Wirathu -- who has been called the Buddhist Bin Laden -- stirred tension by touring Muslim areas in troubled Rakhine State despite Myanmar's top Buddhist body banning him from preaching in March.

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims died in 2012 when sectarian violence ripped the state apart, and tens of thousands still languish in fetid displacement camps.

More than 70,000 have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh since October after the military launched a months-long crackdown that UN investigators say cost the lives of hundreds of the persecuted minority and may amount to crimes against humanity.

Last week a UN envoy criticised the government of Aung San Suu Kyi for not clamping down on "hate speech and incitement to discrimination" which she claimed "appear to be drastically escalating".

In the film Schroeder, 75, seems to trace Wirathu's Islamophobia to the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim in his hometown of Kyaukse.

But in person he is not so sure. "Another theory is that his mother left his father and married a Muslim, or because his monastery was burned when he was 14. But every time I checked I was never sure.

"Why was Hitler like he was? We will never know how this garbage collected in his mind."

By AFP

May 15, 2017

A senior European Union official has urged Myanmar to allow full aid access to the north of Rakhine state, where thousands have fled their homes after a months-long army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.

The area along the country's northwestern border has been under lockdown since October, when the military launched a campaign to hunt down Rohingya militants who staged deadly attacks on police posts.

Some 100,000 people from the Muslim minority were displaced by the violence, most of them fleeing to Bangladesh and bringing with them harrowing stories of rape, torture and mass killings by soldiers.

Myanmar has rebuffed UN claims that its security forces may have committed crimes against humanity and has refused to allow international observers into the area.

De facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi this month publicly rejected a UN mission to probe the violence after meeting the EU's diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini.

European Union commissioner for aid Christos Stylianides said he pushed for unrestricted humanitarian access during a three-day visit to Myanmar, which included a tour of northern Rakhine.

"A lot of problems remain in order to see what we want... about humanitarian access," he told AFP late on Sunday at the end of his trip.

"I raised this issue a lot in my meetings, not only with ministers but also with the district commissioner of Maungdaw," he added, referring to one of the locked-down areas.

The EU has pledged to give Myanmar some 800 million euros ($875 million) of development aid between 2014-20, making it the second-largest recipient in Asia after Afghanistan.

Stylianides is the highest-profile foreign official to visit northern Rakhine since UN rights envoy Yanghee Lee and former UN chief Kofi Annan, who leads a commission tasked with healing deep divisions between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine.

Over a million Rohingya who live in the coastal western state are treated as interlopers from neighbouring Bangladesh and denied citizenship, basic education and healthcare. Their movements are severely restricted.

Stylianides said some foreign aid workers had been granted access to northern Rakhine but more must be done to help 16,000 people who are still displaced before the imminent onset of the monsoon.

The commissioner also raised concerns about a push to forcibly rehouse Rohingya in state-built "model villages" in areas where troops are accused of burning hundreds of houses to the ground.

"It's completely unacceptable to proceed on this project without the (voluntary) decision of the inhabitants," he said.

By AFP

May 13, 2017

Myanmar's army chief defended his military's violent crackdown on Rohingya Muslims by comparing it to Britain's campaign to tackle sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, according to a statement released by his office Friday.

UN investigators believe Myanmar's security forces may have carried out ethnic cleansing of the persecuted minority during a months-long operation in the north of Rakhine State.

The military campaign has left hundreds of Rohingya dead and forced some 75,000 to flee across the border to Bangladesh, bringing harrowing accounts of rape, torture and mass killings by soldiers.

Myanmar has repeatedly rebuffed the allegations, saying troops were carrying out necessary counter-insurgency operations after Rohingya militants attacked police border posts in October.

On Thursday Myanmar's army chief Min Aung Hlaing compared the crackdown to Britain's operations in Northern Ireland in a meeting with Jonathan Powell, a former top British negotiator in the peace process.

Powell, who was chief of staff to former British prime minister Tony Blair, helped broker the Good Friday agreement in 1998 that ended decades of violence between Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestant British unionists in Northern Ireland.

After the "terrorist attack... the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) helped the police take security measures," the army commander said, according to a statement released on Friday.

"Such occurrence was similar to that of Northern Ireland."

He also used the meeting to denounce any claim to citizenship by the more than one million Rohingya Muslims who live in Rakhine.

Stripped of citizenship by Myanmar's former military leaders in 1982, the Rohingya, who have lived in Rakhine for generations, are loathed by many in the Buddhist-majority country who claim they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and refer to them as "Bengalis".

Deadly communal violence in 2012 forced more than 120,000 Rohingya into squalid displacement camps where they live in apartheid-like conditions with little access to food, healthcare or education.

"First, they must accept themselves Bengalis, not Rohingya," Min Aung Hlaing said.

"Then, those who reside in that region need to accept enumeration, registration, and citizenship scrutiny under the law."

Powell was Britain's chief government negotiator on Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007 and now heads conflict resolution NGO Inter Mediate.