Aye Win Myint 

Reuters

March 25, 2013

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar's government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started. 

Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday. 

Communal tension, stifled under half a century of army rule, has resurfaced since President Thein Sein's reformist government took office in 2011. 

It has released dissidents and relaxed media censorship, but was also criticised for failing to quell last year's violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Official figures say 110 people were killed and 120,000 were left homeless, most of them Rohingya Muslims. 

The latest unrest began last Wednesday in Meikhtila, 130 km (80 miles) north of the capital and sparked by an argument between a Buddhist couple and the Muslim owners of a gold shop that escalated into rioting in which 32 people died, official figures show. 

Police were criticised in the media and by local people for making little effort to halt the violence as ethnic Burmese Buddhists including monks stalked the streets armed with swords and knives. 

More than 2,000 people are now living in makeshift camps, but calm has been restored by the military, sent in on Friday when the government declared martial law in the area. 

"I think I am safe now and I can reopen my shop because of soldiers guarding the town," 52-year-old Khin Mya told Reuters. "Soon after soldiers arrived, we got peace. The situation had been very, very dangerous in previous days." 

Vijay Nambiar, U.N. special adviser on Myanmar, told Reuters after visiting the area on Sunday that the government had said to him it would not hesitate to send troops in elsewhere if needed. 

In a statement, the United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger the reforms initiated by Thein Sein. 

"Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace," Nambiar said in the statement. 

State-run MRTV said on Sunday police had arrested 35 people in Meikhtila and two other townships in connection with the violence. 

In one incident late on Saturday, unknown assailants torched more than 40 homes, 38 belonging to Muslims, in Ywadan village in Yamaethin township, said Soe Lwin, a local official. The village is 66 km (41 miles) south of Meikhtila. 

"At about 8 p.m., around 100 people turned up shouting 'Let's burn it down, let's burn it down,' and started destroying our house first," said a 35-year-old shop owner in Ywadan, asking not to be named. 

"It didn't look like they were outsiders. I think it's the people from this area," he said, speaking through the fence of a school where Muslims had taken refuge. "I could feel the way they looked at us had changed since Meikhtila happened." 

Tension was high in certain parts of Yangon, the former capital and Myanmar's biggest city. Police were stationed outside mosques on Sunday evening. 

Myanmar is a predominately Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. 

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon, Soe Zeya Tun in Ywadan and Andrew R.C. Marshall in Bangkok; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Alan Raybould)

The Irrawaddy

March 24, 2013

MEIKHTILA — Dozens of building were destroyed by fire on Saturday in the latest outbreak of violence in central Burma since clashes between Buddhists and Muslims began last Wednesday, leaving at least 32 people dead. 

Local sources said that a brawl broke out at a Muslim-owned teashop in Ywa Tan, a village in Yamethin Town, Mandalay Division, at around 7 pm Saturday night. In the ensuing violence, a mob torched 58 buildings, including the teashop, the sources said. 

It was unclear who the attackers were, but 50 of the destroyed buildings were reportedly Muslim-owned. There were no immediate reports of casualties. 

Yamethin is located about 34 miles (55 km) from Meikhtila, the scene of three days of violence that left at least 32 people dead, according to the latest official figures announced by state-run television on Saturday night. 

When contacted by The Irrawaddy, an official from Yamethin Police Station confirmed that a fire had broken out in Ywa Tin at around 7 pm Saturday, but he declined to say if it was related to the violence in Meikhtila. 

“We are still investigating the cause of this incident and who is involved, so at this moment we can’t disclose any detailed information,” he said. 

In Saturday’s broadcast, state media said that a total of 8,189 people had been displaced by the violence, with most now taking shelter in six camps set up by the government. 

Order was largely restored in the city by Saturday, after a state of emergency was ordered by President Thein Sein on Friday and the army was brought in to patrol the streets. 

On Sunday morning, Vijay Nambiar, the special advisor on Burma to the UN secretary-general, visited relief camps in the city and called on the government to punish those responsible for the riots. 

According to a report by the Associated Press, Nambiar said he was encouraged to learn that some individuals in both the Buddhist and Muslim communities had bravely helped each other, and that local religious leaders were now advocating peace. 

“There is a certain degree of fear and anxiety among the people, but there is no hatred,” he said. 

His remarks came a day after Burma’s Interfaith Friendship Organization issued a statement urging Buddhist monks and followers of different religions in the country to help ease the tension, maintain community harmony and keep themselves away from unnecessary conflict. 

The statement, by Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Hindu leaders, also called on the government to take action as necessary under the law as soon as possible.

It was not too long ago that we witnessed the grisly massacre of minority Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan (Rakhine) state of Myanmar (Burma). Many of the western observers who grew up seeing the smiling face of Dalai Lama were simply shocked to see armed Buddhist monks participating in that ethnic cleansing of the unarmed Rohingya Muslims.

Not only had the monks participated in those violent criminal acts with their fellow Buddhist Rakhine zealots terrorizing the minority Muslims of the western frontier state but they were also guilty of providing the very rationale – a criminal one - for such inhuman crimes against the members of a non-Buddhist faith who were different ethnically, culturally and religiously.

In that pogrom, while we may never know the exact casualty figure because of government complicity in the tragedy – Rohingyas probably died in thousands, and hundreds remain unaccounted for even after nine months. With international pressure, and worldwide condemnation, while that pogrom of last year (May-October, 2012) against the minority Rohingyas has stopped, albeit temporarily, there were many ominous signs for any keen observer to predict of a troubling future awaiting the non-Buddhists living inside Myanmar.

The Buddhist monks in Myanmar with very few exceptions have essentially become not only the collaborators of the quasi-military regime that runs the country but also the vanguards of a new Myanmarism in which people who are different are increasingly marginalized and/or dehumanized. Buddhist monks, dependent on begging and handouts, have had always thrived on donations and gifts made by others, esp. the rich patrons and Buddhist kings. That benevolent role is now filled in by the government. (As the Muslim and Hindu lands are confiscated, their homes and shops, religious centers, shrines and mosques burnt down or razed to the ground often times Buddhist pagodas are built on such confiscated or evicted and destroyed places.)

The level of collaboration runs so deep that when last year the so-called reform minded President Thein Sein called for expelling the Rohingyas to a third country and that the UN should take charge of them, it was the Buddhist monks who were at the forefront of the processions demanding such expulsion. They have hitherto called upon the government to creating apartheid zones for the Muslim minorities, away from the Buddhist majority people, let alone demanding the exclusion of Muslims from jobs, and even enacting laws that prohibit selling to and buying from Muslims. It is an all-out apartheid system that they have been promoting against the much-discriminated and despised non-Buddhist minorities in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

As a result, in recent months tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have become the ‘boat people’ of the Southeast Asia braving the scorching sun and tumultuous seas hoping to find a place under the sun in this vast planet of ours to live without being slaughtered like lambs in the slaughterhouse of Myanmar. Hundreds have died and many have ended up in prisons. The Christian-majority Kachin state to the north is also bleeding because of marauding attacks from the Myanmar government forces there. Nearly a quarter million internally displaced persons of the Christian and Muslim faiths now live in sub-human conditions in Kachin and Rakhine states, respectively. Buddhist monks and politicians have also barred necessary relief items from reaching the intended victims.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Rapporteur for human rights in Burma, recently told the U.N. Human Rights Council that rights violations linked to the Kachin conflict—along with ethnic tensions between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in western Burma—remain unresolved in Myanmar. “While the process of reform is continuing in the right direction, there are significant human rights shortcomings that remain unaddressed, such as discrimination against the Rohingya in Rakhine state and the ongoing human rights violations in relation to the conflict in Kachin state,” said Quintana, who visited Burma last month.

Obviously, Buddhism has failed and is failing miserably or so it seems when it comes to enlightening the savage and non-enlightened souls amongst its own people inside Myanmar. The word ‘non-violence’ has lost its meaning in Myanmar. One only has to be different, the ‘other’ people – racially or religiously – to see the ugly side of such pogroms, which have sadly become the norms and not exceptions.

So, it was not a question of why but when we would be revisited by a new violence. As the recent events in Meikhtila, a town roughly 80 miles north of the capital Naypyidaw, showed Myanmar is increasingly becoming difficult and almost impossible for non-Buddhists to live in this once multi-racial and multi-religious country.

Last Wednesday, a heated argument between a Muslim gold shop owner in Meikhtila and his Buddhist customers erupted, which spiraled into a street brawl. Soon thereafter Buddhist mobs roamed the streets with sticks and swords and set Muslim buildings ablaze. Rioting and arson attacks spread on Friday to villages outside Meiktila, as mobs of Buddhists, some led by monks, continued a three-day rampage through Muslim areas. Several mosques were burned down. Hundreds of Muslim homes were ransacked first and then set on fire.

According to the New York Times (NYT), witnesses reached by phone said security forces did little to stop the violence. “Mobs were destroying buildings and killing people in cold blood,” said U Nyan Lynn, a former political prisoner who witnessed what he described as massacres. “Nobody stopped them — I saw hundreds of riot police there.”

“Images from Meiktila showed entire neighborhoods burned to the ground, some with only blackened trees left standing. Lifeless legs poked from beneath rubble. And charred corpses spoke to the use of fire as a main tool of the rioting mobs,” writes Thomas Fuller of the NYT.

“I can’t handle what I saw there,” said Daw Nilar Thein, a human rights activist. She described the violence as anarchic and unspeakable.

One video posted to Facebook by Radio Free Asia on Friday showed Muslim women and men cowering and shielding their heads from flying objects as they fled their attackers. Onlookers are overheard shouting, “Oooh! Look how many of them. Kill them! Kill them!”

On Friday, a group of Buddhist monks threatened news photographers, including one who works for The Associated Press, with a sword and homemade weapons. With a monk holding a blade to his neck, U Khin Maung Win, the A.P. photographer, handed over his camera’s memory card. “We are trying to leave the town,” Mr. Khin Maung Win said by telephone. “They are now after journalists, too.”

Just as in Arakan the past year, those Buddhists behind the violence in Meiktila are trying to stop images of the destruction from getting out.

The exact numbers of those killed and injured since Wednesday in Meikhtila are still unknown, but the numbers may reach more than 100.

Whatever the figure, the culture of impunity surrounding ethnic violence must end in Myanmar. Who would have thought that a failed sales negotiation in a jewelry shop would trigger a religious riot? The whole episode smells of the Hitler-era Nazism in which Jewish homes and businesses were targeted by his dreaded SS. In Myanmar’s context, the Buddhist monks and their inspired zealots within the Buddhist population are increasingly behaving like those criminal SS thugs of the Nazi era. It is, thus, not difficult to understand why in such pre-planned sinister riots the security forces behave more as spectators -- if they, of course, choose not to join the Buddhist mob -- than as law enforcing government agents.

As I have maintained before, these kinds of targeted violence against Muslims and other religious minorities do enjoy wider popular support within this Buddhist-majority apartheid state and are endorsed from the top echelon in politics. Shamelessly, therefore, the lawmakers like opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi have remained silent on how to the end ethnic violence racking the country in recent months.

Like many human rights advocates and activists, Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK has condemned such sinister silence. Recently he said, "Staying silent is clearly not working, because in that vacuum, those who are inciting more violence are free to operate when they need to be challenged and tackled head on." "There needs to be a change of approach not just from Suu Kyi,” he says, “but from all the political and religious leaders in the country to acknowledge that there is this growing anti-Muslim feeling in the country."

The Euro-Burma Office, a respected Brussels-based advocacy group, warned on Friday of a "Rwandan-like genocide" of Myanmar's Muslims.

As we have noticed previously with the Rakhine state, President Thein Sein has issued a state of emergency on Friday. The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper has urged the public to expose those who led and attempted to instigate.

Muslims have been put in Meiktila’s sports stadium, where food and water are scarce. Photographs showed frightened-looking people rushing to the stadium, clutching belongings and carrying their children and the elderly, amid jeering Buddhist crowds.

The state of emergency is a half-hearted reactive measure that will not prevent Muslims and other vulnerable minorities from becoming objects of ethnic cleansing and religious riots in the future.

"Governments are meant to guarantee rights, ensure that people are treated equally before the law, that nondiscrimination is the rule of the land, and that minorities have their rights protected," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "After seeing this [violence in Meikhtila], would anyone be confident in saying that the government is doing a good job?"

Surely not! But with western appetite for Myanmar’s natural resources on the rise, human rights have taken a back seat. And thus, none of the veto-wielding countries are stopping this extermination campaign against the Muslims of Myanmar, and punishing the regime for its monumental failure, or worse yet collusion, to safeguarding their lives and properties. In their failure, the notion of Buddhists, especially monks, rampaging through Muslim neighborhoods with weapons is becoming a recurring phenomenon. And this specter must stop not only for the health of Buddhism but also for greater good of humanity.

Bangkok Post
March 24, 2013

Hin Lat village is at the centre of a controversy involving murdered members of the group. And while locals claim only altruistic motives in helping them, others suspect complicity in trafficking

For thousands of Rohingya fleeing Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state, the sleepy fishing village of Ban Hin Lat is the first port of call on their difficult quest to find better lives.

If they make it to the village in the Khura Buri district of Phangnga they will find a relatively well-off fishing community and locals more than sympathetic to their plight. Most of the locals are Muslims, and some Myanmar nationals work legally on fishing boats. 

In the grounds of the local mosque, out of sight from the main road, is a 10m Rohingya vessel inscribed in Thai with the words "Rohingya people _ the forgotten citizens of the world". 

Ga, a 43-year-old Thai Muslim who heads the unofficial Rohingya Help Centre in Hin Lat, says she had a negative attitude toward the Rohingya before she got to know them. 

"Once I got to talk to them, I realised we are so much alike," said Ga, who requested her full name not be used. 

"First of all, the Rohingya are strict Muslims. They practise their religion _ such as praying five times a day _ just like us.

"Even though we speak a different language, we believe in the same things and we do no harm to other people. They are just seeking a peaceful and better place to live where they can feel safe and be treated as equals ... as human beings." 

Ga, who works on Koh Surin as a cook, played a key role in the drama last month involving 133 Rohingya that led to allegations that the Royal Thai Navy shot at a group of them, resulting in the deaths of two men. 

It was Ga who first noticed the Rohingya vessel on Feb 20 and sent a speedboat to tow it to Koh Surin. The weary passengers, who had set out from Rakhine state on Feb 5 were fed on the island by Ga and her friends, who then contacted the navy. The feeding of the Rohingya was organised and paid for by the help centre. 

Ga believed the Rohingya would be taken out to sea, but alternative plans were made to send them to a temporary shelter at Hin Lat on the mainland. However, the vessel never arrived and two bodies were found in the water off Koh Phra Thong near Hin Lat a week later, while five other Rohingya men were rescued from the sea. 

Ga, who took footage of the rescued Rohingya on her mobile phone, was on hand when the bodies were recovered, saying she later identified them in the hospital from their clothing. She also provided a Bangladeshi-speaking roti seller to act as an interpreter for the five rescued men.

Bang Bao, a senior religious leader in the village, says because of its location, Hin Lat is a natural stopping-off point for Rohingya boatpeople as they inevitably run out of fuel or provisions here, although their intended destination may be Malaysia or Indonesia. 

"Since about November last year until February this year, there have been so many Rohingya arriving illegally by boat," he said. 

"From the conversations I've had with the Rohingya who made it here, they said their boats run out of fuel when they reach Thai waters. 

"They just wait for the tide to take them closer to land. It almost sounds like it is well-planned. Most of the boats usually make landfall near Koh Phra Thong or Koh Surin." 

Surapong Kongchantuk, of the Lawyers' Council of Thailand, is chairman of the Human Rights Subcommittee on Ethnic Minorities, Stateless, Migrant Workers and Displaced Persons. He said he had not heard from his contacts about smuggling through the village. 

However, he said the situation at Hin Lat sounded typical of the smuggling rings involving Rohingya and locals who work in conjunction with the Thai military. 

Often this involves a local "spotter" who notifies the human traffickers of a boat's arrival. 

"On every boat carrying Rohingya people, there are usually one or two traffickers," he said. "They are the ones who have the mobile phones with different SIMs for each country. They call the traffickers on the other side to report their location and when they expect to arrive." 

Mr Surapong said a call is then made to a contact on the mainland to prepare for the arrival of the boatpeople. 

"Once they arrive, government officials make it appear they are under arrest, but in fact they are sent to a safe house to wait for people to buy them," he said. 

"But that was before the government came up with the idea of pushing the boats back out to sea and not allowing the Rohingya ashore on the mainland," he said referring to the new government policy of returning the boats to sea, rather than having the Rohingya land and be processed by immigration officials. Prior to this policy change, Rohingya who landed or who were intercepted and sent to the mainland were dealt with by the Internal Security Operations Command or the immigration police. 

Mr Surapong said while the modus operandi at Hin Lat closely matched other Rohingya trafficking cases, he was not drawing any conclusions that local villagers were involved in human smuggling. 

"They may simply be helping other Muslims," he said. 

Mr Bao said they allowed the Rohingya Help Centre to use the mosque as a headquarters and gathering point because of a shortage of facilities. 

He said the help centre was set up at the request of the Khura Buri district office. When Rohingya are sent to the mainland the villagers offer them food and temporary accommodation before they are taken to the shelter. 

"We were all quite happy to do it because the Rohingya are Muslims just like us," Mr Bao said of the help centre. 

"We believe that we are all the same _ brothers and sisters. Therefore, we have to offer each other help." 

Regarding the Feb 20 incident, Mr Bao said a worker related to Ga on Surin island had phoned ahead to tell the villagers to prepare for the arrival of the vessel that night.

Mr Bao said that as the boatpeople had landed on Koh Surin, he believed they had effectively reached Thai territory and had to be processed by immigration officials, rather than being pushed back out to sea. 

THE LITTLE FISH ARE SWEETER 

Rohingya women and children who make it to the mainland in the province are sent to the Phangnga Shelter for Children and Families, 100km south of Hin Lat. 

Dararat Suthes, head of the centre, said police transferred the first batch of Rohingya _ eight women, 10 boys and seven girls _ to them on Jan 16. 

''After that, there were a lot more sent to our shelter almost daily for a week, and more once a week after that,'' she said. 

At present, there are 68 Rohingya in the shelter; 35 boys, nine girls and 24 women. 

''We only have nine people, including myself, to take care of the 16 Thai kids we have,'' she said. 

''With the Rohingya, now we have to take care of an extra 68 people. We only have enough money to feed 30 people _ 60 baht per person per day. Without donations of food, clothes and money we wouldn't be able to take care of these people.'' 

Mrs Dararat also said six boys had run away from the shelter after a visit by a group of men in early February who were posing as a Muslim welfare group checking whether they were being fed the right food and allowed to practise their religious beliefs. 

''A group of men who called themselves the Muslim Association came to visit the Rohingya to check on their welfare and how they were getting on,'' she said. 

''After that day, two boys ran away on Feb 11, and another two days later,'' he said ''The Muslim Association came back at the beginning of March and another three boys disappeared on March 4. 

''I believe the people pretending to be from the Muslim Association must be behind all this. There was one time in February when a group of men came to the shelter around 7pm and asked us directly how much one Rohingya would cost? One of my staff was very scared. She told them that people here are not for sale.'' 

Mrs Dararat said the Rohingya seemed to trust only other Muslims, especially those from Malaysia. 

''If you pretend to be a Muslim from Malaysia you will get their full attention,'' she said. 

A member of the Spectrum team posed as a Malaysian Muslim to test the theory. Several of the boys ran to their rooms and returned with telephone numbers written on pieces of paper. Mrs Dararat believed these were contact details of human smugglers. Some of the children said in broken English ''Me go Malaysia, with you OK?'' 

Mrs Dararat said she did not know how much longer the Rohingya would be at the shelter. 

''The Phangnga provincial office promised that they will be at the shelter for only six months and then they will be transferred elsewhere,'' she said. 

''I only hope they can go where they want without being sold as if they are pieces of meat.'' 

Mr Surapong said it was not unusual that staff at the shelter would be asked to sell Rohingya. 

''There are some shelters in the South where Rohingya can easily be bought,'' he said. 

''This is big business. One Rohingya can cost up to 50,000 baht. Sometimes a whole boatload can cost more than 1.5 million baht. That is why people are involved in trafficking.'' 

BEATING THE TRAFFICK 

Through her work at the Rohingya Help Centre, Ga echoes the sentiments of Mrs Dararat on the recent increase in the number of Rohingya coming through Hin Lat. 

''They never came in these numbers before,'' she said. ''I've seen them in the past and I believed they were looking for asylum since there were men and women travelling together and their ages ranged from young to old. 

''Now I feel there are more seeking jobs through human-trafficking agents. There are a lot more Rohingya travelling through Thailand to Malaysia and most of them are adult men.'' 

Despite her growing scepticism about the motives for their journeys, Ga says the local Muslim community has no qualms about feeding the Rohingya halal food and offering them a place at the mosque. 

''They can spend the night before government officials come to take them to Rohingya shelters in Phangnga, Surat Thani, Songkhla and other provinces in the South,'' she said. 

''We spend community funds to pay for food and supplies for the Rohingya who arrive at our village. Sometimes we have to cover some expenses ourselves, but we don't mind helping out.'' 

Ga said when the two bodies were found by fishermen on Feb 28 she covered the expenses to retrieve them. ''I paid for the fuel for another boat to bring the bodies back to our village and I took the bodies to the hospital with my own truck.'' 

Ga also revealed the villagers had played a key role in keeping the five rescued survivors away from the navy. 

''Fishermen from our village discovered them and took them back to the village where we kept them hidden,'' she said. ''They were quite scared of the navy and asked to stay. 

''We provided their accommodation, but I can't reveal where. Most have already left and continued on their journey.'' 

Ga also said that sometimes Rohingya in temporary accommodation in Hin Lat fled before they were taken to government shelters. 

''I know that the Rohingya who came here already had the contact details of human traffickers who are able to get them to where they want to go,'' she said. ''I've long suspected that government officials are somehow involved with the trafficking.'' 

Mr Surapong said the ''mass shooting'' near Koh Phra Thong had changed the relationship between the Rohingya and the Thai ''men in uniform'' involved in the human smuggling racket. In the past, corruption and bribes had been an accepted part of the deal to reach their destination, but the Rohingya would not tolerate Thai officials allegedly firing on them. 

''They were happy to see Thai government officials involved in human trafficking activities, until the deaths of the two Rohingya,'' he said. 

The two bodies recovered had autopsies performed on them at the Khura Buri Chaipat Hospital on Feb 28. Neither the hospital nor the local police were willing to reveal the results of the autopsies and the bodies have been buried. 

Pol Col Weerasin Kwancheng, superintendent of Khura Buri Police Station told Spectrum on Thursday the causes of death of the two men were unknown. 

''The Khura Buri Chaipat Hospital performed autopsies on the two unidentified men found floating in the water off Ko Phra Thong on Feb 28, but they couldn't find out the causes of death. The bodies were badly decayed and the hospital didn't have the equipment for more thorough autopsies. Therefore, the hospital couldn't determine the actual causes of death.'' 

Mr Surapong said that at a human trafficking seminar he held in Bangkok on March 14, a group of angry Rohingya claimed 15 Rohingya had been killed in Khura Buri. 

Mr Surapong said the government needed a clearer policy to deal with Rohingya otherwise the same tragedies would be repeated every year. 

''They should now close the border and not allow any more Rohingya to enter the country,'' he said. 

''We should deal with the 1,700 Rohingya that are here by sending them back to their place of origin. 

''The most important step is to find out who is behind this and punish them. Though it's difficult, it can be done.'' 

A COMMUNITY FULL OF COLOUR 

The village of Ban Hin Lat dates back to 1945, when it was settled by Muslims from Krabi and Nakhon Si Thammarat provinces. Today, the thriving community is home to 2,227 people, of which 80% percent are Muslim, including a number of migrant fishermen from Myanmar. 

Fishing is a key driver of the local economy, along with its rubber and palm tree plantations. 

Architecturally, Hin Lat is a blend of ancient and modern. Traditional fishermen's cottages sit comfortably alongside the colourful modern homes of the village's wealthier residents. 

The bright paintwork is typical of Muslim homes in southern Thailand, where vibrant hues are used as a sign of prosperity. 

Most properties in the village are single storey, except for the small number belonging to civic leaders and other prominent figures. 

Unlike many villages in Thailand, Hin Lat has a paved road running through its central area. Though despite the nod to modern infrastructure, much of the activity in the community revolves around the market areas and back streets, where rows of vendors tout their wares and local folk chat among themselves in their distinctive southern dialect. 

At one end of the main street is the harbour. Tourists can catch a boat there to Koh Pra Thong, one of Phangnga's main attractions. 

Close to the entrance to the village is the community mosque at Hin Lat Moo 3. As well as providing a religious focal point for the community, the mosque is home to the Rohingya Help Centre. Suitably, within its grounds is a small fishing boat that was used by a group of Rohingya people to flee Myanmar and later put on display by the local people. 

Villagers told Spectrum that they preserved the boat as a reminder of the 120 Rohingya people who sailed in it from Myanmar to Thailand, and whose lives they helped to save. 

Written in Thai along the side of the vessel are the words, ''Rohingya people _ the forgotten citizens of the world''.

Kosak Tuscangate

Asia Sentinel

Published on March 22, 2013

A troubling new movement spells disaster if left unchecked 

When Dr. Maung Zarni, an outspoken activist academic, labeled the ongoing anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim movement in Burma as neo-Nazi, some Burmese said Zarni was exaggerating. Western commentators have also avoided the term. 

But Zarni has been proven right by emerging photos of an anti-Muslim riot in Meiktila in central Myanmar that broke out on March 20. The riot, which grew from a quarrel between Muslim gold shop owners and Buddhist customers, has taken more than 30 lives, and more than 10 mosques, Islamic schools and houses have been destroyed. Thousands of local residents, both Buddhist and Muslim, have fled the town, leaving Meiktila with ashes, burnt buildings, flames and dead bodies.

On the evening of March 21, the Yangon-based Eleven News published photos of a long queue of Muslims being forced to leave the town. What is significant in the photos is that the refugees, including women, children and elders, were ordered to keep their hands up as they were escorted out of the town by security guards. Nearby were local Buddhists and monks holding weapons and watching as many hundreds of Muslims left. These photos resemble the depressing images of thousands of Jewish refugees being escorted by German soldiers to Nazi concentration camps during the World War II. 

It is not only the photos that make the anti-Muslim movement in Burma a neo-Nazi spectacle. The campaigners' actions and ideologies - especially ethno-religious ideology if not gender and class - resemble what characterized Nazi Germany under Hitler. 

First, there is a series of consistent and observable actions. The most crucial element is the new ?969 campaign' invented early this year. In a country where numerology has a powerful appeal, it is a mass-based Buddhist movement led by extremist monks including a firebrand named Wirathu. The number, 969, was derived from Buddhist tradition in which the Three Jewels or Tiratana is composed of 24 attributes (9 Buddha, 6 Dhamma, 9 Sangha). 

However it is said by the movement to follow the model of the Muslim ?786', which is only used in South Asian Muslim tradition, a representation of a Quranic phrase "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful" 

The Burmese have long misinterpreted 786 as a Muslim conspiracy to take over the world in the 21st century, as they see 786 to represent 21 (7+8+6=21). In opposition to 786, the movement invented 969 as a symbol of a religious movement. Stickers are the flags of the movement and can be seen in many cities and towns across the country, as this is a public campaign. In the past few weeks, more taxis and motorbikes have been seen with the stickers.

To the campaigners, 969 is about protecting race and religion by peaceful means. In practice, it is explicitly an anti-Muslim campaign, not about preaching people the Buddha-nature of all beings, as taught and practiced by Lord Buddha himself. In many townships across Myanmar, including capital regions, there are local 969 committees that organize events and religious summons and distribute anti-Muslim materials such as CDs, books and leaflets. 

The 969 campaign targets economic aspects by alleging that Muslims are dominating the Burmese economy, and that therefore Buddhists must not trade with Muslims. Instead, the campaigners recommend that Buddhists buy and sell at Buddhist shops that display 969 signs and stickers. In Karen state, Buddhists are even forced to trade only with Buddhists. There are local reports about Buddhists being beaten by members of 969 civilians and monks for trading with Muslims. 

As of now, 969 covers a range of shops and stores from medium-size restaurants and teashops to food stalls and street venders. 

The mushrooming summons of Buddhist monks across the country these days are much about 969. Audio and video CDs of the summons as well as anti-Muslim stickers and notes are being sold at grocery stores, phone shops, tea shops and so on. Information about where the stickers and 969 materials can be bought are available online as well. The CDs are played in the streets and even at grocery stores in Yangon. In short, 969 messages are spreading everywhere as the monks and campaigners travel across the country.

Muslims in Myanmar are portrayed as dangerous foreigners who came to the country only to dominate its every aspect. They are accused of dominating the economy, destroying the cultural fabric of society by spreading Islam in every way possible, luring women into Islam, and then monopolizing political power. The prime anxiety is that the Burmese race/nation will become extinct if liars, aliens, ruthless people, and those who bite the hands of their own masters (referring to Muslims as dogs) are not expelled. 

Self-victimization seems to be a key. The consistent theme is that it is Muslims who are doing all the harm to communities and the country. Even supposedly one the most recognized peace advocate monks, Ashin Nyanissara, told the Democratic Voice of Burma on March 21, the second day of the riot, that Muslims as guests should respect and be polite to their hosts as if the ongoing religious tension was the Muslims' fault.

There are other important elements. Different volumes of anti-Muslim books written by Buddhist monks are all similarly titled: "Fearful of losing race/nation". These books, being circulated for the past few years, are the guidebooks of the campaign, featuring stories of dangerous and hateful Muslims unfairly marrying Buddhist women or marrying without consent, attempting to replace Buddhism with Islam, and undertaking universal missions to dominate the world economically, politically and culturally. Muslims allegedly will take over the Buddhist nation unless effective actions are taken to neutralize them and destroy every Muslim establishment. Citizenship is supposed to be defined in term of bloodline, as Immigration minister Khin Yi said recently. 

But a neo-Nazi movement doesn't work without popular support. That hundreds of people listen to the 969 summons attests to its rise. This is not just public acceptance, but follow up to actions such as destroying Muslim shops in Mon state early this month after a 969 summons. 

On social media websites, particularly Facebook, various groups relate to the 969 movement such as private groups with group names spelled in Burmese. Members range from 90 to a few hundred. There are public pages such as the Myanmar National Movement Committee, which has recorded 15,499 likes. Popular support is also reflected in the comments of the Burmese Facebook users. The following English translation of comments made to the Facebook pages of two local Muslim news websites reveals the seriousness: 

"Happy, hey happy. Let's drive out dog-kind, dog-sons, prostitutes."

"Good news, all Muslims must die!"

"It's too few that only 20 people died. They all have to die. Also, all mosques in Myanmar must be destroyed."

In short, the neo-Nazi movement that Dr. Maung Zarni has been crying out against is on the rise. Those behind the movement are freely traveling the country, mobilizing supporters and distributing hate messages at an alarming level. 

Without addressing this movement, perpetual violence and communal tension in such an ethnically diverse country is the future. That a personal quarrel at a shop ended up as large-scale violence in Meiktila is a troubling alert.

ARAKAN ROHINGYA NATIONAL ORGANISATION 

ARAKAN, BURMA 

PRESS RELEASE 

23 March 2013 

STOP SYSTEMATIC KILLING OF MUSLIM IN BURMA 

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) strongly condemns the increasing anti-Muslim propaganda and organized killings of the Muslims in Burma/Myanmar. 

Since Wednesday March 20, many Muslims were killed, at least 14 mosques with hundreds of Muslim homes were destroyed, shops damaged and looted, and more than 20,000 displaced in the central Burma town of Meikhtila and around the airport area of capital Naypyitaw. The violence spread to Yamethin tonight where a mosque was destroyed. A lot of Muslim residents have fled their homes. Extremist Buddhist mobs with Buddhist monks armed with sticks and lethal weapons are prowling the streets and hunting the Muslims. 4 Islamic religious teachers and 28 madrassa students, who included children as young as 12 years old, were among those killed. 

The police and security forces did nothing to control the situation. The government is fully responsible for allowing such a former Yugoslavia-like genocide encouraging anti-Muslim propaganda and Islamophobia in Burma/Myanmar. This is the worst carnage after the genocide carried out in the western state of Rakhine/Arakan last year that left more than 5000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims killed, missing or drowned and about 140,000 displaced, who have been kept in segregation under government’s ‘neo-apartheid policy’. It is apprehensive that the Rakhine academics and monks backed by the local administration are inciting a third massacre of the Muslims in Arakan. 

It has been observed that crimes against humanity against Muslims have escalated when some powerful countries are trying to reward the ruling civil-military hybrid government while lifting or suspending sanctions on Burma under the label of democratic progress. It is worth-mentioning that human rights are universal; racism and human rights violations are foreign to democracy; and most importantly genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are international crimes. We, therefore: 

1. Demand that the government end forthwith all killing, violence and terrorization against the Muslims in Burma/Myanmar and ensure full religious freedom with their security of life, property and dignity; 
2. Further demand that the government stop spreading of such pre-planned violence against Muslims in other places of Burma; 
3. Request the international community, United Nations, OIC, USA, UK and their western allies, EU, ASEAN and neighbouring countries to put pressure on Burma and exert concerted efforts to protect and save the Muslim community in Burma; 
4. Rapid lifting or suspension of sanctions on Burma is premature in this stage; and request to reinstate sanctions in order to protect the Rohingya and other minorities, promote human rights and inclusive democratic and political reforms in Burma; 
5. To scrap Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 and to replace it with a new law that conform to international law standards; 
6. Request to conduct a UN independent inquiry and bring the perpetrators to the book. 

For more information, please contact: 

Nurul Islam: + 44 7947854652 

Aman Ullah: + 880-15584 86910 

Email: info@rohingya.org 

ww.rohingya.org

Alex Caring-Lobel

Tricycle

March 22, 2013

Just hours ago, Burmese President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in central Burma due to killing, destruction of property, and general rioting in the streets of the town of Meikhtila. Violence erupted following a dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and Buddhist customers. After four nearby gold shops were burnt to the ground, a 1,000-strong mob of Buddhists ran riot through the Muslim neighborhood. The death toll is currently being reported at at least 20, but this number will likely rise. TIME reports:

Journalists attempting to report in the area have been threatened. A photographer for the Associated Press reportedly had a foot-long dagger placed against his neck by a monk who had his face covered. The confrontation was defused when the photographer handed over his camera’s memory card. Late on Friday, the Burmese government said that nine reporters trapped amid the unrest had been rescued by local police and evacuated from the area. 

On social media, residents reported seeing bodies scattered by the side of the road and women and children lying helpless, their homes destroyed. U Aung, a Muslim lawyer living in Meikhtila, told TIME that the violence was already spreading to nearby townships. “They are burning mosques and houses and stealing Muslim property,” said Aung.Tricycle readers will be familiar with the Buddhist-led violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in western Burma from the article "Buddhist Nationalism in Burma" in the current issue. In the article, Burmese dissident and democracy activist Maung Zarni makes a convincing argument for the characterization of recent anti-Rohingya violence as genocide. Zarni highlights the harnessing of the same sangha-led forces that occasioned the "Saffron Revolution" (2007) to accomplish these ends.

Recent unrest in Meikhtila suggests two important things. First, anti-Muslim violence and rioting has spread beyond the western Burmese Rakhine state and into the heart of Burma. Second, since the violence appears to be directed at Muslims of Indian origin—not Rohingya Muslims—this would seem to corroborate Zarni's assertion of the anti-Muslim, religious sentiment of these riots, repeatedly dismissed as "sectarian violence" by many mainstream media outlets at the time of the outbreak of violence last year. (TIME quotes Chris Lew, founder of The Arakan Project: "the perception of last year's unrest as sectarian rather than religious was inaccurate.") Zarni makes this contention in his article for Tricycle and reiterated the point when I interviewed him over Skype from Indonesia the day before the last. We also spoke about his objection to the term "communal violence," which TIME has used in the article quoted above, and the reasons why the conflict hasn't been called a genocide. The anti-Muslim racism we're currently witnessing can be tracked back to Burma's colonial past, which Zarni adumbrates in the article and further elaborates in our interview. Zarni's article for Tricycle can be found here and our interview will run on the Tricycle blog on Wednesday.

In other news, Ariana Huffington, chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, has authored an article on corporate mindfulness on her site. Titled "Mindfulness, Meditation, Wellness and Their Connection to Corporate America's Bottom Line," the article peddles the benefits of corporate values and its platitudes regarding "performance and productivity": "I do want to talk about maximizing profits and beating expectations—by emphasizing the notion that what's good for us as individuals is also good for corporate America's bottom line." Most of the piece focuses on cutting healthcare costs to corporations by promoting mindfulness meditation.

Ironically, the research touted here was conducted through a partnership between healthcare behemoth Aetna and Duke University, in which yoga and other mind-body therapies were made available to all Aetna employees nationwide. Apparently, Aetna is not only too cheap to pay their patrons' medical costs, they're also too cheap to pay those of their own employees.

The one company that Ariana Huffington reports "gets it," is Google, whose in-house mindfulness consultant Chade-Meng Tan ensures the happiness of its employees through the stresses and invasiveness of 80-hour workweeks. In such a context, mindfulness reveals itself as the most recent incarnation of industrial psychology, a field of knowledge that has proven effective in pacifying workers and improving their "performance and productivity," regardless of any inhumane workplace conditions and expectations, or the deleterious effects of their work on the world-at-large (such mindfulness practice has most famously been taught to Monsanto workers).

Huffington ends the article, out of the blue, by quoting Institute for Mindful Leadership founder Janice Marturano: "We have one life. What's most important is that you be awake for it." More honest and in keeping with the rest of the article might be, "We have one life. What's most important is the bottom line." 

Images: 

Meikhtila, Burma, March 21, 2013 - Soe Zeya Tun / REUTERS

Meikhtila, Burma, March 21, 2013 - AP

Ariana Huffington

Kritsada Mueanhawong

Phuket Gazette

March 23, 2013

Al Jazeera 

March 23, 2013

South2North discusses human rights in Zimbabwe and the unfolding human tragedy in Myanmar.

Imagine being declared stateless and not able to return to your country of birth because of your tribe, ethnicity, skin colour or religion.

Myanmar is Asia’s newest democracy after elections last year, which saw the end of a military dictatorship and the return to world favour. But the United Nations says the long-running conflict between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority population is a humanitarian tragedy in the making.

Ethnic Rohingyas are being denied citizenship in their own country and herded into camps where they face a triple threat from violence, starvation and disease. The UN estimates about 13,000 Rohingya fled western Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2012, and an estimated 500 refugees have already died at sea with more deaths expected. 

South2North talks to Maung Tun Khin, a human rights activist from Myanmar: 

"The military government is killing the Rohingyas silently. They are blocking aid. And many Rohingyas cannot go to the hospital. More than 230 Rohingya women are facing serious difficulty in delivering their babies."

Kennedy Gihanna, a Rwandan refugee and now successful human rights lawyer in South Africa, explains that the situation in Myanmar concerns him, knowing the patterns that lead to genocide. 

Fourteen years ago Gihana wrapped his school graduation certificate in a piece of plastic and tied it around his body with a piece of banana rope. Then he walked 3,000 kilometers from Kigali to Johannesburg bypassing roadblocks, soldiers and gangsters. It took him six months.

"I have been watching the issue of Myanmar. I see it on TV; it’s very sad. Nobody wants to listen to these people. Nobody even wants to protect them. Everybody, the UN, the Europena Union, the Asian Pacific, nobody wants to find a solution. And you make these people stateless in their own country. They are unwanted people," Gihanna says.

On Sunday, March 17, in Zimbabwe, three senior officials of the Movement for Democratic Change, together with internationally renowned human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, were arrested by plain-clothes officers at the home of a top adviser to opposition leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. These arrests have followed months of harsh crackdowns. 

Just a few days before she was arrested, Mtetwa was a guest on this week’s South2North. She came on to explain her own work in defending human rights and how she had previously been harassed by the police for her work. 

She said: "Well, I mean if the ground is uneven and you do defend people you know I’m not in the good books with those who are enjoying political power. You do expect to become part of the problem for them. You ought not to defend them and if you are defending them you are saying that what they are doing is correct."

Al Jazeera

March 23, 2013

Army regains control of central city of Meikhtila where clashes between Muslims and Buddhists have left dozens dead.

Myanmar's army has regained control of a central city where several days of clashes between Buddhists and Muslims left dozens of people dead and scores of buildings in flames. 

Truckloads of soldiers could be seen on Saturday patrolling Meikhtila and taking up positions at intersections and banks. 

"Calm has been restored after troops have taken charge of security," said Win Htein, an opposition legislator from Meikhtila. 

"So far, nearly 6,000 Muslim people have been relocated at a stadium and a police station for their safety." 

Some residents, who had cowered in their homes for days since the mayhem began on Wednesday, started venturing out on the streets to take in the destruction. 

The violence is the worst sectarian bloodshed to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year. 

Thein Sein, Myanmar's president, imposed a state of emergency in the region on Friday in a bid to stop the unrest from spreading.

The violence, the first of its kind reported in Myanmar since a wave of bloodshed shook western Rakhine state twice last year, underscored the government's failure to rein in anti-Muslim sentiment in the predominantly Buddhist country. 

It was not immediately clear which side bore the brunt of the latest unrest, but terrified Muslims, who make about 30 percent of Meikhtila's 100,000 inhabitants, stayed off the streets on Friday.

Machetes seized

Many had their shops and homes burned and some angry Buddhist residents and monks tried to stop firefighters from dousing the blazes. 

Riot police crisscrossed town seizing machetes and hammers from enraged Buddhist mobs. 

At least five mosques were torched and thousands of terrified Muslims have fled their homes, escorted to safety by police to two make-shift camps. Some Buddhists, meanwhile, have sought shelter at local monasteries. 

Little appeared to be left of some palm tree-lined neighborhoods, where whole plots were reduced to smouldering masses of twisted debris and ash. 

Broken glass, destroyed motorcycles and overturned tables littered roads beside rows of burnt-out homes and shops, evidence of the widespread chaos of the last two days. 

Residents described gruesome scenes. Local businessman San Hlaing said he counted 28 bodies this week and had seen blackened corpses burning in piles. 

The government's struggle to contain the violence is proving another major challenge to Sein's reformist administration as it attempts to chart a path to democracy after nearly half a century of military rule that once crushed all dissent. 

Thein Sein took office two years ago this month, and despite ushering in an era of reform, he has faced violence in Rakhine state and an upsurge in fighting with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north.

The government has also had to deal with major protests at a northern copper mine where angry residents - emboldened by promises of freedom of expression - have come out to denounce land grabbing.