DPA/Yangon

June 28, 2013

Hundreds of Myanmar Buddhist monks yesterday supported a proposed interfaith marriage law that would place restrictions on women seeking to wed a Muslim man.

The draft law, authored by extremist monk Wirathu, was endorsed by some 1,500 monks from throughout the nation who had gathered in Yangon to debate the controversial legislation.

“All the senior monks attending today’s meeting agreed to support the law to protect Myanmar nationals,” said Damapiya, a spokesman for the monks, who included members of the Sangha - the equivalent to the Buddhist clergy.

The draft legislation, to be submitted to parliament eventually, has met with opposition from Myanmar women’s groups, including opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi last week criticized the proposed law for discriminating against women and running counter to human rights.

The law, if enacted, would require a Buddist woman seeking to marry a Muslim to get prior permission from her parents and authorities, and the man to convert to Buddhism.

Buddhism is the dominant religion in Myanmar, where Muslims represent a small minority of less than 5% of the population.

The main proponent of the law, the Mandalay-based Wirathu, has been blamed for fueling anti-Muslim sentiments this year. Sectarian clashes in central and northern Myanmar claimed more than 30 dead.

In February, Wirathu launched the 969 campaign, calling on Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops and businesses.

Wirathu in 2003 was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the previous ruling junta for inciting religious hatred, but released last year under a general amnesty.

The current elected government has been reluctant to crack down on his campaigns.

Myanmar’s President Thein Sein earlier this week criticised Time magazine’s “Buddhist terror” cover story on Wirathu for undermining government efforts to ease sectarian tensions.

On Wednesday the magazine’s July 1 edition was banned from circulation.

Rising sectarian violence is one of the greatest challenges to Thein Sein, who came to power in March 2011, and has since pushed through political and economic reforms.

In June 2012, Buddhist communities in the Rakhine State attacked Rohingya Muslims, leaving 167 people dead and 125,000 people homeless.

There have been at least three anti-Muslim riots this year in central and northern Myanmar, leaving thousands homeless.

Joshua Kurlantzick

In late May, the Myanmar president Thein Sein arrived in Washington, DC for a historic meeting with Barack Obama. The US president praised him lavishly at the press briefing that followed their summit. He lauded his leadership "in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform", before discussing joint projects that US assistance will focus on in Myanmar, such as improving agriculture. Pleased, Thein Sein replied: "I take this opportunity to reiterate that Myanmar and I will continue to … move forward so that we can build a new democratic state, a new Myanmar."

Only three years earlier, nearly every Myanmar leader had been barred from entering the US because of sanctions imposed on the country's military-ruled government. Congress regularly castigated Myanmar as one of the most tyrannical societies on earth, and when former president George W Bush found himself in the mid-2000s in an anteroom with Myanmar's then-leader at an Asian summit, he steadfastly refused to acknowledge the other man's presence.Now, the situation had flipped so rapidly that many longtime Myanmar-watchers cannot keep track of the changes. While once American policymakers blasted Myanmar and its government as a tyranny, now they paint it as a model of emerging democratisation.

By the time Thein Sein arrived in May, Washington had lifted sanctions, corporate leaders were jostling to meet him and the distinguished global organisation International Crisis Group had presented the Myanmar leader with its annual "Pursuit of Peace" prize.

Other democracies around the world had lifted sanctions as well, and so much cash had already begun flowing into Myanmar that Lex Rieffel, an expert on development and Myanmar at the Brookings Institution, warns that donors are already duplicating projects, disregarding the wishes of the Myanmar government and wasting huge sums. Western and Japanese companies, which had been mostly barred for two decades by the sanctions, are arriving in droves, since Myanmar is probably the last large untapped emerging market in the world and also contains large quantities of oil, gas, minerals and other natural resources. Myanmar's latest round of auctions for offshore oil blocks attracted 59 bidders, including many of the largest resources companies in the world. Meanwhile, the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi continued her own global tour. Besides stops in Washington, Tokyo and other world capitals to pick up multiple awards, she travelled to such places as Ulan Bator in Mongolia, for the annual meeting of the Community of Democracies, a global group of democratic nations.

Yet neither the cartoonish portrayals of Myanmar in the past nor today's idyllic pictures of its future are correct. While the country has taken important steps towards democracy, its opening, which began in 2010, has also unleashed dangerous forces that have led to scores of violent attacks against Myanmar's Muslim minority, who make up about four to five per cent of the country's 60 million people.

The attacks, which last year seemed confined to the western Myanmar state called Rakhine (also known as Arakan), have now spread. Nearly every day, the Myanmar press reports burnings, beatings and evictions of Muslims from towns across the country. These attacks have led to angry responses by some groups of armed Muslims and by several of Myanmar's large Muslim-majority neighbours. And though the government denies involvement in the pogroms and its president has issued stern warnings against future violence, a recent comprehensive report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) found "the Burmese [ie Myanmar] government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya [Muslims] that continues today". The Rohingya originally settled in present-day Myanmar from areas west of the country populated by ethnic Bengalis. Some are first or second-generation arrivals, but others have lived in Myanmar for centuries.

At least 100,000 Muslims have been made homeless in the past two years by violent attacks, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed, along with a much smaller number of Buddhists. Left unchecked, rising ethnic hatred and increasing attacks could push the country into a terrible period of ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has had a long history of xenophobia and inter-ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the army's oppressive five-decade rule over the country. Outside North Korea, Myanmar was until 2010 probably the most closed nation in the world. In that year, the army began a transition to a civilian government, holding elections that helped create a civilian parliament and formally renouncing its control of the presidency.

Yet the new "civilian" president was Thein Sein, a supposedly moderate former general. In previous army commands, he had been in charge of an area in northern Myanmar notorious for rights abuses by the army, as well as drug and weapons trafficking; even today, Myanmar remains the dominant producer of methamphetamines in East Asia and one of the world's biggest producers of heroin. As regional commander, it would have been unlikely that Thein Sein did not know about these activities, notes an article in Asia Times Online, a leading regional web publication.

Still, Myanmar has witnessed enormous change in the past three years and, whatever his past, Thein Sein has been genuinely interested in promoting reform. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) swept last year's by-elections, the first truly fair elections in two decades. Parliament has become more than just a rubber stamp for the army and in the 2015 elections the NLD may well win a majority, which could theoretically put them in a position to run the country.

But this rapid shift has, as in other former autocratic and diverse states, also unleashed severe tensions. The inter-religious violence began last year in Rakhine, near the border with Bangladesh. The exact cause of the fighting remains unclear, but after rumours spread that several Muslim men had attacked Buddhist women, crowds of Buddhists began attacking areas of the state populated by Rohingya.

One of the biggest towns, Sittwe, saw its Muslim area burnt to the ground. Tens of thousands of Rohingya fled into the hills, tried to escape into Bangladesh or boarded makeshift boats to flee to Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia. Many drowned or were turned back by the Thai navy, which often picks off refugees' boats and then sends them back to sea to drown if they do not have money to pay the navy. (Thailand's military has historically harboured great animosity towards Myanmar and there are widespread allegations that some Thai navy men killed fleeing refugees or forced them into bonded labour.)

Last year, Thein Sein and Suu Kyi suggested that the violence was confined to Rakhine and centred primarily on local Buddhists' perceptions (right or wrong) that Rohingya were outsiders. In other words, that the violence was sparked by anger over immigration and job losses, not by religious and ethnic differences. This claim seemed dubious at the time, and the spread of violence has since shown it to be untrue.

In a statement earlier this year, Suu Kyi's spokesperson said she has little interest in supporting the Rohingya's claims for rights and citizenship - a surprising response by the Nobel laureate, a woman renowned around the world as a champion of freedom and rights. Yet within Suu Kyi's party, I have found that most activists express disdain for Myanmar's Muslims. Even the famed activist Ko Ko Gyi said that the violence in western Myanmar was the fault of Muslims themselves. Many in Suu Kyi's party even condone a government policy that has, over the past decade, limited Rohingya to two children, a rule no one else in the country has to follow. (Suu Kyi has not endorsed this policy.) Last week, Myanmar's Minister of Immigration and Population Khin Yi publicly backed the two-child policy for Rohingya.

Even more important, neither the government nor Suu Kyi has offered a viable plan for how to create a more federal state, which will be essential in a country with so many ethnic minority and religious groups and so little trust of the central government. In other countries in the region, such as Indonesia, which emerged from its own chaotic transition to democracy in the late 1990s, federal rule and decentralisation have been critical to reducing ethnic tensions and empowering local leaders across the country. Also, in Myanmar no prominent opposition leaders, activists or government officials have concurred with the findings that ethnic cleansing has taken place in Myanmar.

No matter the original source of the violence in Rakhine, government's ineffectiveness - or complicity in the attacks, according to HRW - seems to have encouraged anti-Muslim extremists throughout the country. In its comprehensive report on last year's attacks, HRW found that on numerous occasions of violence against Rohingya, crowds of marauding Buddhists appeared to be organised well in advance and ignored by the police, who often simply vanished once mobs started attacking and burning mosques, Muslim-owned shops and homes.

Since the violence appeared to be targeted, HRW labelled it ethnic cleansing. Its report showed that security forces participated in the attacks, burnt mosques and often prevented anyone from assisting injured and dying Muslims.

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi said little. Thein Sein more recently has deplored the violence, but has taken few concrete steps to stop it. (In one speech in May, Thein Sein said the government would "take all necessary action to ensure the basic human rights of Muslims".) Indeed, on his watch, the police and army this year have conducted several investigations of the Rakhine attacks, but wound up primarily detaining groups of young Muslim men.

Now the Myanmar government faces far broader unrest, killings that threaten to tear the country apart and completely undermine the recent economic and political reforms.

Emboldened by the lack of action taken against marauders last year, Buddhist extremists have launched a national anti-Muslim campaign, led by nationalist monks. The campaign, called the 969 Movement (the name comes from Buddhist numerology), calls on Buddhists to avoid Muslim shops and properties and tacitly encourages evictions and even attacks. The movement's followers encourage Buddhist shop-owners to put 969 stickers on their stores, identifying them as Buddhist-run, and have at times reportedly attacked Buddhist merchants for doing business with Muslims. One 969 leader, nationalist monk U Wirathu, has given numerous interviews calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the country or worse. When he gives sermons, Wirathu now draws thousands of followers, like a nationalist rock star. In a much-covered speech in February, Wirathu told followers: "Once these evil Muslims have control, they will not let us practise our religion … If you buy from Muslim shops, your money doesn't just stop there. It will eventually go towards destroying your race and religion." Some liberal commentators have compared the movement to neo-Nazis, and in March militant monks in the town of Meiktila carried swords and knives, watching over Muslims being force-marched out of the area.

Violence has exploded across the country. Mobs of Buddhists, some with ties to the 969 Movement, have struck in the towns of Meiktila, Nay Pyi Taw, Bago and now in Yangon, the largest city. Earlier this year in Meiktila, groups of men burnt Muslims' homes and then attacked survivors, killing at least 40 people, including schoolchildren. U Wirathu publicly praised these actions. Many of the mobs also appear to have ties to several long-standing paramilitary organisations that previously worked with the army to enforce military rule, according to several Myanmar rights activists. Police provide protection for U Wirathu as he travels, as if he were a state leader.

In Okekan, another town in central Myanmar, gangs of Buddhists attacked Muslims, even though there had been few previous signs of inter-religious tension. The leading Myanmar publication The Irrawaddy reported that the gangs "appeared to be a well-organised mob, complete with scouts and checkpoints" in scenes eerily reminiscent of the organised violence of Rwanda in 1994. At least 10 people were killed in Okekan, though the exact number of deaths remains unclear.

Even in towns where there was no history of inter-religious tensions, attacks on Muslims have erupted. In Lashio, a town in north-eastern Shan State, Buddhist gangs armed with knives and petrol bombs attacked the major mosque and burnt it down in late May. Some locals claimed that the gangs had even burnt down a Muslim orphanage, although it was difficult to confirm these reports.

Thein Sein has declared states of emergency in several parts of the country, deploying the army in an attempt to stop violence, yet the army has little knowledge of how to quell protests peacefully. And though some police officers may have acted bravely, overall the authorities have either been absent during the rioting or too poorly trained to do anything. In Lashio, the government has only arrested one man, a Muslim.

Outside of Indonesia and other South East Asian nations directly affected by Myanmar's tensions, the world seems to have paid little attention to this looming catastrophe. Yet Myanmar's tensions are creating instability in the middle of Asia. Already, militants in Indonesia angry at the attacks on Muslims in Myanmar allegedly tried to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, a plot foiled by Indonesian security forces. And in the past two weeks, at least four people have been killed in Malaysia as Buddhist and Muslims from Myanmar have begun attacking each other in Kuala Lumpur. This comes just after violence between Myanmar Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Indonesia resulted in several deaths. Malaysia has this week detained several groups of refugees for fear of greater violence.

On the day HRW released its damning report, the European Union lifted its remaining trade sanctions on Myanmar. The US, other western nations and Japan see a strategic prize in Myanmar that could potentially offset China's growing power in the region: before the western democracies lifted sanctions, China was by far the largest donor to and investor in Myanmar.

The government, Suu Kyi and foreign donors that have poured into Myanmar must act rapidly and develop a plan for devolution and federal government. Thein Sein should purge senior military leaders shown to be disobeying his commands. Suu Kyi needs to be less reticent in speaking out on the rights of all people in Myanmar and on the need to halt ethnic and religious attacks.

In addition, the Myanmar government and donors need to focus incoming aid on areas crucial to restoring peace. These include creating a civilian-controlled police force, to reduce the need for army intervention in conflict areas; training young journalists to understand the need for sourcing stories; and launching mediation efforts to increase dialogue among ethnic groups and religions.

At the same time, regional governments and western donors could plan more effectively for outflows of refugees from Myanmar's conflicts. Relief agencies and wealthier nations could provide funds for temporary camps for refugees in Thailand, as well as help some resettle elsewhere abroad.

Meanwhile, the Association of South East Asian Nations could adopt a common approach to intercepting refugee boats and agree to accept people fleeing Myanmar, assured that the economic burden would not fall on them alone. Otherwise the world could be left watching, as it was in Rwanda two decades ago, as slaughter feeds upon slaughter.

Joshua Kurlantzick is fellow for South East Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Quartz

June 27, 2013

Rohingya Aye Myaing

RB News

June 27, 2013

The devastations caused by the forced Bengalization of Rohingyas in the village of Khawar Bil (Kyi Kan Pyin), Maung Daw, have recently been reported here: http://bit.ly/11BsXUZ.

Below is a list of Rohingyas, mostly women, who were beaten, tortured, humiliated, forced to give bio-metric finger prints and forcefully Bengalized. The women were insulted, tortured and forced to sign in the absences of their men. 

On 20th June, 2013

(1) Yasmin D/o U Marmod (29)

(2) Sarjedar D/o U Seraz (52)

(3) Marjedar D/o U Zafor Ahamed (18)

These three were severely beaten and humiliated.

On 21st June, 2013

(1) Futar Nei D/o Abu Bakkar (52)

(2) Dilkayas D/o Nawzir Ahamed (25)

(3) Sarjedar D/o Nawzir Ahamed (35)

(4) Harsenar D/o Aftar Ahamed (20)

(5) Bellua D/o Fazol Kawrim (42)

(6) Shukkur S/o Salay Ahamed (28)

(7) Duru Nei D/o Salay Ahamed (15)

(8) Shawbikar D/o ? (16)

(9) Mawriyan Kartu D/o Md Khan (14)

(10) Halar Buri D/o Salay Ahamed (18)

(11) Tawyufa D/o Harbi (30)

(12) Enose S/o Karmal (36)

On 22nd June, 2013

(1) Rowshida D/o Auli Ahamed (47)

(2) Madar D/o Kawlimullah (17)

(3) Zaidar D/o Kawlimullah (15)

(4) Jarmalidar D/o Moggul Ahamed (45)

(5) Nur Karyas D/o Nur Md (14)

(6) Lylar D/o ? (46)

(7) Rajumar D/o Sarlay Ahamed (40)

(8) Tawsmin D/o Kawlimullah (16)

(9) Adularzei S/o Kawlimullah (14)

(10) Sawmira D/o Sawtia Akbar (14)

(11) Saytara D/o Unknown (45)

(12) Lylar D/o Harlot (35)

(13) Saytara D/o Md Rawshid (15)

(14) Rowhimar Kartu D/o Md Rawshid (13)

(15) Gulbar D/o Harun (48)

(16) Yasmine Ara D/o ? (30)

(17) Mosanar D/o Faru Ahamed (35)

(18) Mawriyan Kartu D/o Harlu(Harbi) (50)

(19) Dawlu D/o Adumunap (75)

“D/o” stands for “Daughter of” and “S/o” does for “Son of.”

Now, decide yourself how cruel Myanmar authorities have been with Rohingyas, male and female alike, young and old alike! A sample form that has been being used to forcefully Bengalize Rohingyas is also attached below.

Forced Bengalization Form

RB News

June 27, 2013

Pauktaw, Arakan – Two Rohingyas were shot dead and five more were wounded in Pauktaw Township, Arakan State during the military operation asking refugees at gun points to work as forced laborers in the Kyein Ni Pyin Rohingya refugees camp.

“Today morning the army who were in Pauktaw as security forces has entered into the Rohingya refugee camp and beaten the refugees like thugs. Then forced refugees to work as laborers with them.” a local told to RB News.

As the security forces were beating anyone who were in front of them and forced them to work as forced-laborers. When the refugees refused their order to work, the security forces fired into the crowd and two Rohingya refugees were killed on the spot and five more were wounded. 

The two refugees who were shot dead by the security forces are:

(1) Bawdar S/o U Saw Tar (24 –years-old-male) 

(2) Salim S/o U Monu (19 years-old-male)

The security forces and staffs from Pauktaw Township administration took away the corpse of Bawdar and the body of Salim is still in the camp. 

The profiles of five persons who got injured are being collected and will be posted soon.

According to the local, the security forces and Nasaka (Border Security Forces) are still surrounding the camp and are forcing the refugees to work as forced-laborers. Locals are still not sure that there will be an investigation on the killing or it will be covered up by false accusation blaming the innocent refugees the cause of the incident.

Brendan Brady

The Daily Beast

June 27, 2013

Muslims from an obscure ethnic group in western Burma have become targets of vicious Buddhist mob attacks. Brendan Brady reports from Rakhine state on the increasing violence.

As mobs wielding torches and machetes rampaged through his neighborhood, Abdul had a strangely candid encounter with one assailant. Recognizing the man as his long-time neighbor – the same man who had once showed great affection towards Abdul’s children – Abdul yelled to his would-be executioner: "‘Why are you doing this?’ He told me, ‘Sorry, I’m fighting for my people.’” Abdul, whose full name is withheld to protect his identity, is a Muslim from the Rohingya ethnic group and his attacker, a Buddhist. Abdul kept him and other members of the mob at bay by throwing his valuables out of his window onto the street. As they were distracted collecting the cash and jewelry, another group of Buddhists from his street approached his house from the rear. They, too, were armed but they had come to escort Abdul and his family out of the besieged neighborhood. “They saved our lives.”

The conflict in western Burma’s Rakhine State erupted last June, when reports spread that a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered by three Rohingya men. Shortly after, a mob of Buddhists exacted retribution by pulling over a bus carrying Muslims and beating ten passengers to death. The incidents ignited sectarian violence throughout the state. Nearly 200 were killed and many more injured, and some 10,000 homes were destroyed. The vast majority of the estimated 140,000 displaced were Rohingyas, and a year after their violent upheaval they continue to languish in squalid temporary encampments. 

In recent months, the violence spread to include attacks on Muslim communities in other parts of the country. In March, provoked by a small dispute in a Muslim-owned gold shop, a Buddhist mob tore through a town in central Burma, killing over 40 people, burning mosques and Muslim homes, and displacing thousands. In May, 1,200 Muslims in the country’s northeast fled from their homes when throngs of armed Buddhists mobilized after unconfirmed reports that a Muslim man killed a Buddhist woman in the area. 

The turmoil carries worrying implications for national reconciliation and the sustainability of democratic reforms in Burma, also known as Myanmar, which is in the first stages of transitioning from military to civilian rule. Since independence, in 1948, Burma’s government has been in alternately hot and cold conflicts with myriad ethnic minority groups in the country’s border regions. The xenophobic generals who seized power by coup in 1962 justified their iron-fisted rule as necessary to hold together a fractured country. The junta stepped down in 2011 and Burma’s new semi-civilian government has carried out surprisingly comprehensive reforms: loosening controls on political association, civil society and the press, as well as releasing hundreds of political prisoners. But fresh sectarian violence serves as fodder to the army’s insistence on remaining a backstop to the fragile civilian government and maintaining ultimate authority. It also raises questions about how far democratic reforms will extend to minorities. 

Regarded in many quarters as the most persecuted ethnic group in Asia, the Rohingya live in the borderlands between Burma and Bangladesh but are officially a stateless people. There are around a million Rohingyas in Burma today. Their exact roots are debated but many likely settled in Burma in the 19th century, having migrated from modern-day Bangladesh into the newly-acquired lands of the British empire. Today, the Rohingya, along with a few other maligned minorities, are excluded from the 135 ethnic groups Burma’s government recognizes as citizens. Many Burmese say the Rohingya should “go back” to Bangladesh, whose government also disavows the Rohingya. Among other consequences of apartheid policies against them, the Rohingya need special permission to travel and marry and face severe discrimination in access to employment, education and medical care.

Last year’s violence unveiled particularly chilling dimensions of racial and religious hatred towards the Rohingya. When the wife of Mohamed Salam was found dead floating in a river, her body carried a sinister message. She was abducted along with two of her children in June, and Salam was later told by sympathetic Buddhists how they had died. According to them, her captors said her breasts gave milk to Muslim babies and her womb gave birth to future generations of Muslims. Her breasts were then hacked off and her genitalia mutilated with sharpened bamboo. Her teenage son was tethered to a motorbike and dragged across a rocky road. Salam would not elaborate on how his daughter met her end. Today, he cares for his remaining 5-year-old boy in a camp for displaced people outside of Sittwe, the state capital, and the prospect of receiving justice is even more illusory than his chances of returning to his home and job. 

Human Rights Watch alleges last year’s bloodshed amounted to ethnic cleansing. In a detailed report released in April, the international rights monitor said state security forces did more to facilitate than to prevent abuses against Rohingyas, and sometimes even directly participated in atrocities. The group profiled one particularly brutal episode, last October, in which 70 Rohingyas, including 28 children, were left easy prey for a Buddhist mob to butcher after local riot police disarmed the Rohingyas of rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves. The report said local Buddhist politicians and monks publicly demonized the Rohingya – describing them as a threat to Burmese society and encouraging their removal from the state – “in full view” of authorities, “who raised no concerns”. Burmese rights groups have criticized Human Rights Watch’s assessment as one-sided, and instead described the violence as “communal”. 

Such labels aside, what may be most foreboding are the dim prospects for a normalization (in relative terms) of life for Rohingyas in Burma. Time has not softened the vitriol many Buddhists in Rakhine State feel towards the group. “We cannot go back to living together,” says Hla Moe Thu, a 58-year-old Buddhist woman living in a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Sittwe. “They should go to Bangladesh, where they came from, or they should be killed,” she adds, as her grandchild sits beside her. According to Ashin Ariya, the head monk of Shwezedi Monastery in Sittwe, Rohingyas have wicked designs: to rape Buddhist women, colonize Buddhist land, and convert non-Muslims to Islam. “The Muslims like to kill people and rape women, and they want to take over the whole area and make everyone Muslim,” he says matter-of-factly. 

Paradoxically, democratic reforms have fed the jingoistic chorus. Over the past year, Burma’s new government has dialed back the heavy press and Internet censorship of the previous military regime, allowing journalists greater independence and web users nearly limitless access to sites. But freedom of speech has unleashed pent-up prejudices. Online forums contain rafts of posts referring to the Rohingya in expletive-filled terms, and Burmese newspapers have shown the Rohingya no quarter. Eleven, one of Burma’s largest-circulation newspapers, has focused its coverage of Rakhine State on slamming the Rohingya. Ho Than Hlaing, their correspondent in Sittwe, says the “Bengalis” living in relief camps are quarrelsome freeloaders who receive better care than displaced Buddhists – in fact, conditions in camps for the much smaller number of displaced Buddhists are markedly better than those in Rohingya camps, some of which are blocked by authorities from receiving international aid.

The rhetoric has carried over into daily life. A recently launched campaign urges Burmese to only patronize shops that display “969” signs– a code referring to Buddhist teaching – in their storefronts. The group of zealous monks spearheading the movement allege it is intended to promote Buddhist pride, but its true aim seems to be to marginalize Muslims. 

Aung Naing Oo, a member of the Myanmar Peace Center, a governmental group that advises on ethnic disputes, likens the dangerous nationalism in Burma today to the escalation of ethnic tensions in former Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union: no longer fettered by the strictures of a military state, people are freer to act on long-suppressed prejudices. But even within this scheme, animosity towards the Rohingyas is singularly severe. Indeed, they are viewed both as carpet-bagging intruders and low-caste detritus. “Indians” – including various peoples from the subcontinent and those with South Asian features – are resented in Burma because many arrived following the British takeover and soon emerged as a dominant group in urban commerce. Rohingyas are viewed with particular suspicion and scorn for their religion and distinctly dark skin. And, to top it off, they are seen to epitomize the existential threat posed by neighboring Bangladesh, whose large and poor population Burmese feel is perpetually on the cusp of spilling over en masse into Burma. 

The turmoil in Rakhine State is further complicated by hostilities between the local Buddhist population, from the Arakanese ethnic group, and the Burman majority and central government they dominate. The Arakanese were the ancestors of a small kingdom that used to control what is modern-day Rakhine State and, like many ethnic groups in Burma, they desire autonomy. Beyond ethnic pride, the Arakanese resent that Rakhine is Burma’s second-poorest state despite its natural riches – the area’s timber, oil, gas and precious metals have for decades been pillaged by the military and their cronies. “Our people want a real federal state with self-determination and our share of profits from natural resources,” says Than Thun, a community leader in Sittwe. But Arakanese autonomists like Than Thun have, for the time being, found common cause with the central government in directing their ire towards the Rohingya, who are easy scapegoats. 

Few figures inside Burma have spoken out against the anti-Rohingya sloganeering. Most conspicuous has been the near silence of the country’s iconic human rights and democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi. After 15 years under house arrest, Suu Kyi is now a parliamentarian and has political calculations to consider. Observers believe she sees support for the Rohingya as going treacherously against the tide of popular opinion. The new president, Thein Sein, has said he will crackdown on “political opportunists and religious extremists”, but his intentions and ability to control eruptions of violence remain unclear. Thein Sein is a former high-ranking general who has surprised many in and outside the country with his moderation but that may not extend to his feelings towards the Rohingya. And observers note the upper-echelons of his government remain stocked with former military figures who delight in the potential for sectarian violence to steer power back towards the army. 

In the meantime, Rohingyas in and outside the camps are in greater numbers turning to the sea to escape their dire prospects. Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, an NGO that tracks rights abuses in Rakhine State, estimates that nearly 28,000 Rohingya attempted to flee through the Bay of Bengal during the recent dry season, three times the normal rate. The journey is perilous: hundreds die every year from starvation, dehydration and drowning aboard barges that are ill-equipped for ocean travel and steered by mercenary crews. 

In Boomay – a Rohingya quarter just outside of Sittwe that is hemmed in by a series of army checkpoints – a group of men in a shanty teashop are watching an ancient television tuned to a news channel with footage of Rohingyas on barges intercepted by the Bangladeshi navy. The program shows Rohingyas kneeling under tarps on the deck of a boat as waves come crashing against the bow. The teashop’s owner pays little attention to scenes of horror – she has already determined her daughter will attempt a similar voyage to join her husband in Malaysia, where he is working illegally but earning steady wages. “If we could stay here in peace and have some freedom, then it would be better to stay here and not take this risk,” says the daughter, who is in her early twenties and plans to take her five-year-old child along. “But we don’t know if that will ever be the case.”

Andrew R.C. Marshall

Reuters

June 27, 2013

YANGON - The Buddhist extremist movement in Myanmar, known as 969, portrays itself as a grassroots creed.

Its chief proponent, a monk named Wirathu, was once jailed by the former military junta for anti-Muslim violence and once called himself the "Burmese bin Laden."

But a Reuters examination traces 969's origins to an official in the dictatorship that once ran Myanmar, and which is the direct predecessor of today's reformist government. The 969 movement now enjoys support from senior government officials, establishment monks and even some members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Wirathu urges Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops and shun interfaith marriages. He calls mosques "enemy bases."

Among his admirers: Myanmar's minister of religious affairs.

"Wirathu's sermons are about promoting love and understanding between religions," Sann Sint, minister of religious affairs, told Reuters in his first interview with the international media. "It is impossible he is inciting religious violence."

Sann Sint, a former lieutenant general in Myanmar's army, also sees nothing wrong with the boycott of Muslim businesses being led by the 969 monks. "We are now practicing market economics," he said. "Nobody can stop that. It is up to the consumers."

President Thein Sein is signaling a benign view of 969, too. His office declined to comment for this story. But in response to growing controversy over the movement, it issued a statement Sunday, saying 969 "is just a symbol of peace" and Wirathu is "a son of Lord Buddha."

Wirathu and other monks have been closely linked to the sectarian violence spreading across Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Anti-Muslim unrest simmered under the junta that ran the country for nearly half a century. But the worst fighting has occurred since the quasi-civilian government took power in March 2011.

Two outbursts in Rakhine State last year killed at least 192 people and left 140,000 homeless, mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims. A Reuters investigation found that organized attacks on Muslims last October were led by Rakhine nationalists incited by Buddhist monks and sometimes abetted by local security forces.

In March this year, at least 44 people died and 13,000 were displaced - again, mostly Muslims - during riots in Meikhtila, a city in central Myanmar. Reuters documented in April that the killings happened after monks led Buddhist mobs on a rampage. In May, Buddhists mobs burned and terrorized Muslim neighborhoods in the northern city of Lashio. Reports of unrest have since spread nationwide.

The numbers 969, innocuous in themselves, refer to attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood. But 969 monks have been providing the moral justification for a wave of anti-Muslim bloodshed that could scuttle Myanmar's nascent reform program. Another prominent 969 monk, Wimala Biwuntha, likens Muslims to a tiger who enters an ill-defended house to snatch away its occupants.

"Without discipline, we'll lose our religion and our race," he said in a recent sermon. "We might even lose our country."

Officially, Myanmar has no state religion, but its rulers have long put Buddhism first. Muslims make up an estimated 4 percent of the populace. Buddhism is followed by 90 percent of the country's 60 million people and is promoted by a special department within the ministry of religion created during the junta.

EASY SCAPEGOATS

Monks play a complex part in Burmese politics. They took a central role in pro-democracy "Saffron Revolution" uprisings against military rule in 2007. The generals - who included current President Thein Sein and most senior members of his government - suppressed them. Now, Thein Sein's ambitious program of reforms has ushered in new freedoms of speech and assembly, liberating the country's roughly 500,000 monks. They can travel at will to spread Buddhist teachings, including 969 doctrine.

In Burma's nascent democracy, the monks have emerged as a political force in the run-up to a general election scheduled for 2015. Their new potency has given rise to a conspiracy theory here: The 969 movement is controlled by disgruntled hardliners from the previous junta, who are fomenting unrest to derail the reforms and foil an election landslide by Suu Kyi's NLD.

No evidence has emerged to support this belief. But some in the government say there is possibly truth to it.

"Some people are very eager to reform, some people don't want to reform," Soe Thein, one of President Thein Sein's two closest advisors, told Reuters. "So, regarding the sectarian violence, some people may be that side - the anti-reform side."

Even if 969 isn't controlled by powerful hardliners, it has broad support, both in high places and at the grass roots, where it is a genuine and growing movement.

Officials offer tacit backing, said Wimala, the 969 monk. "By letting us give speeches to protect our religion and race, I assume they are supporting us," he said.

The Yangon representative of the Burmese Muslim Association agreed. "The anti-Muslim movement is growing and the government isn't stopping it," said Myo Win, a Muslim teacher. Myo Win likened 969 to the Ku Klux Klan.

The religion minister, Sann Sint, said the movement doesn't have official state backing. But he defended Wirathu and other monks espousing the creed.

"I don't think they are preaching to make problems," he said.

Local authorities, too, have lent the movement some backing.

Its logo - now one of Myanmar's most recognizable - bears the Burmese numerals 969, a chakra wheel and four Asiatic lions representing the ancient Buddhist emperor Ashoka. Stickers with the logo are handed out free at speeches. They adorn shops, homes, taxis and souvenir stalls at the nation's most revered Buddhist pagoda, the Shwedagon. They are a common sight in areas plagued by unrest.

Some authorities treat the symbol with reverence. A court in Bago, a region near Yangon hit by anti-Muslim violence this year, jailed a Muslim man for two years in April after he removed a 969 sticker from a betel-nut shop. He was sentenced under a section of Burma's colonial-era Penal Code, which outlaws "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings".

QUASI-OFFICIAL ORIGINS

The 969 movement's ties to the state date back to the creed's origins. Wimala, Wirathu and other 969 preachers credit its creation to the late Kyaw Lwin, an ex-monk, government official and prolific writer, now largely forgotten outside religious circles.

Myanmar's former dictators handpicked Kyaw Lwin to promote Buddhism after the brutal suppression of the 1988 democracy uprising. Thousands were killed or injured after soldiers opened fire on unarmed protesters, including monks. Later, to signal their disgust, monks refused to accept alms from military families for three months, a potent gesture in devoutly Buddhist Myanmar.

Afterwards, the military set about co-opting Buddhism in an effort to tame rebellious monks and repair its image. Monks were registered and their movements restricted. State-run media ran almost daily reports of generals overseeing temple renovations or donating alms to abbots.

In 1991, the junta created a Department for the Promotion and Propagation of the Sasana (DPPS), a unit within the Religion Ministry, and appointed Kyaw Lwin as its head. Sasana means "religion" in Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism; in Burma, the word is synonymous with Buddhism itself.

The following year, the DPPS published "How To Live As A Good Buddhist," a distillation of Kyaw Lwin's writings. It was republished in 2000 as "The Best Buddhist," its cover bearing an early version of the 969 logo.

Kyaw Lwin stepped down in 1992. The current head is Khine Aung, a former military officer.

Kyaw Lwin's widow and son still live in his modest home in central Yangon. Its living room walls are lined with shelves of Kyaw Lwin's books and framed photos of him as a monk and meditation master.

Another photo shows Kyaw Lwin sharing a joke with Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, then chief of military intelligence and one of Myanmar's most feared men. Kyaw Lwin enjoyed close relations with other junta leaders, said his son, Aung Lwin Tun, 38, a car importer. He was personally instructed to write "The Best Buddhist" by the late Saw Maung, then Myanmar's senior-most general. He met "often" to discuss religion with ex-dictator Than Shwe, who retired in March 2011 and has been out of the public eye since then.

"The Best Buddhist" is out of print, but Aung Lwin Tun plans to republish it. "Many people are asking for it now," he said. He supports today's 969 movement, including its anti-Muslim boycott. "It's like building a fence to protect our religion," he said.

Also supporting 969 is Kyaw Lwin's widow, 65, whose name was withheld at the family's request. She claimed that Buddhists who marry Muslims are forced at their weddings to tread on an image of Buddha, and that the ritual slaughter of animals by Shi'ite Muslims makes it easier for them to kill humans.

Among the monks Kyaw Lwin met during his time as DPPS chief was Wiseitta Biwuntha, who hailed from the town of Kyaukse, near the northern cultural capital of Mandalay. Better known as Wirathu, he is today one of the 969's most incendiary leaders.

Wirathu and Kyaw Lwin stayed in touch after their 1992 meeting, said Aung Lwin Tun, who believed his father would admire Wirathu's teachings. "He is doing what other people won't - protecting and promoting the religion."

Kyaw Lwin died in 2001, aged 70. That same year, Wirathu began preaching about 969, and the U.S. State Department reported "a sharp increase in anti-Muslim violence" in Myanmar. Anti-Muslim sentiment was stoked in March 2001 by the Taliban's destruction of Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and in September by al Qaeda's attacks in the United States.

Two years later, Wirathu was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in jail for distributing anti-Muslim pamphlets that incited communal riots in his hometown. At least 10 Muslims were killed by a Buddhist mob, according to a State Department report. The 969 movement had spilled its first blood.

969 VERSUS 786

Wirathu was freed in 2011 during an amnesty for political prisoners. While the self-styled "Burmese bin Laden" has become the militant face of 969, the movement derives evangelical energy from monks in Mon, a coastal state where people pride themselves on being Myanmar's first Buddhists. Since last year's violence they have organized a network across the nation. They led a boycott last year of a Muslim-owned bus company in Moulmein, Mon's capital. Extending that boycott nationwide has become a central 969 goal.

Muslims held many senior government positions after Myanmar gained independence from Britain in 1948. That changed in 1962, when the military seized power and stymied the hiring and promoting of Muslim officials. The military drew on popular prejudices that Muslims dominated business and used their profits to build mosques, buy Buddhist wives and spread Islamic teachings.

All this justified the current boycott of Muslim businesses, said Zarni Win Tun, a 31-year-old lawyer and 969 devotee, who said Muslims had long shunned Buddhist businesses. "We didn't start the boycott - they did," she said. "We're just using their methods."

By that she means the number 786, which Muslims of South Asian origin often display on their homes and businesses. It is a numerical representation of the Islamic blessing, "In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful". But Buddhists in Myanmar - a country obsessed by numerology - claim the sum of the three numbers signifies a Muslim plan for world domination in the 21st century.

It is possible to understand why some Buddhists might believe this. Religious and dietary customs prohibit Muslims from frequenting Buddhist restaurants, for example. Muslims also dominate some small- and medium-sized business sectors. The names of Muslim-owned construction companies - Naing Group, Motherland, Fatherland - are winning extra prominence now that Yangon is experiencing a reform-era building boom.

However, the biggest construction firms - those involved in multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects - are run by tycoons linked to members of the former dictatorship. They are Buddhists.

Buddhist clients have canceled contracts with Muslim-owned construction companies in northern Yangon, fearing attacks by 969 followers on the finished buildings, said Shwe Muang, a Muslim MP with the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party. "I worry that if this starts in one township it will infect others," he said.

"OUR LIVES ARE NOT SAFE"

For Zarni Win Tun, the 969 devotee, shunning Muslims is a means of ensuring sectarian peace. She points to the Meikhtila violence, which was sparked by an argument between Buddhist customers and a Muslim gold-shop owner. "If they'd bought from their own people, the problem wouldn't have happened," she said.

Her conviction that segregation is the solution to sectarian strife is echoed in national policy. A total of at least 153,000 Muslims have been displaced in the past year after the violence in Rakhine and in central Myanmar. Most are concentrated in camps guarded by the security forces with little hope of returning to their old lives.

A few prominent monks have publicly criticized the 969 movement, and some Facebook users have launched a campaign to boycott taxis displaying its stickers. Some Yangon street stalls have started selling 969 CDs more discreetly since the Meikhtila bloodbath. The backlash has otherwise been muted.

Wimala, the Mon monk, shrugged off criticism from fellow monks. "They shouldn't try to stop us from doing good things," he said.

In mid-June, he and Wirathu attended a hundreds-strong monastic convention near Yangon, where Wirathu presented a proposal to restrict Buddhist women from marrying Muslim men.

In another sign 969 is going mainstream, Wirathu's bid was supported by Dhammapiya, a U.S.-educated professor at the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University in Yangon, a respected institution with links to other Buddhist universities in Asia.

Dhammapiya described 969 as a peaceful movement that is helping Myanmar through a potentially turbulent transition. "The 969 issue for us is no issue," Dhammapiya told Reuters. "Buddhists always long to live in peace and harmony."

NO MOSQUES HERE

The only mass movement to rival 969 is the National League for Democracy. Their relationship is both antagonistic and complementary.

In a speech posted on YouTube in late March, Wirathu said the party and Suu Kyi's inner circle were dominated by Muslims. "If you look at NLD offices in any town, you will see bearded people," he said. Followers of Wimala told Reuters they had removed photos of Suu Kyi - a devout Buddhist - from their homes to protest her apparent reluctance to speak up for Buddhists affected by last year's violence in Rakhine. Suu Kyi's reticence on sectarian violence has also angered Muslims.

The Burmese Muslim Association has accused NLD members of handing out 969 materials in Yangon.

Party spokesman Nyan Win said "some NLD members" were involved in the movement. "But the NLD cannot interfere with the freedoms or rights of members," he said. "They all have the right to do what they want in terms of social affairs."

Min Thet Lin, 36, a taxi driver, is exercising that right. The front and back windows of his car are plastered with 969 stickers. He is also an NLD leader in Thaketa, a working-class Yangon township known for anti-Muslim sentiment.

In February, Buddhist residents of Thaketa descended upon an Islamic school in Min Thet Lin's neighborhood which they claimed was being secretly converted into a mosque. Riot police were deployed while the structure was demolished.

A month later, Wimala and two other Mon monks visited Thaketa to give Buddhists what a promotional leaflet called "dhamma medicine" - that is, three days of 969 sermons. "Don't give up the fight," urged the leaflet.

Today, the property is sealed off and guarded by police. "People don't want a mosque here," said Min Thet Lin.

As he spoke, 969's pop anthem, "Song to Whip Up Religious Blood," rang over the rooftops. A nearby monastic school was playing the song for enrolling pupils. 

(Additional reporting by Min Zayar Oo.; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Michael Williams)

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Read this story in PDF --

* Anti-Muslim riots mark emergence of extreme Buddhism
* Movement has seized on a doctrine called 969
* They preach anti-Muslim sermons, call for Muslim boycotts
* Ministry of religion originally fostered 969 doctrine
* Religion minister supports 969's most incendiary preacher

969 - Special Report by Reuters

A.G. Noorani

Frontline

June 26, 2013

Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence on the Rohingyas problem is guided by realpolitik in her race for presidency. In that she has no moralistic pretensions. 

ON a recent visit to New Delhi, Myanmar’s heroic fighter for freedom, Aung San Suu Kyi, politely but sharply criticised India for its indifference to her plight, personally, as she fought heroically for the restoration of democracy and to the violations of human rights in her country for 15 long years.

Within a short time thereafter, Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state in the west of her country were subjected, once again, to atrocities by Buddhists and security forces. Last year alone, at least 192 people were killed and 1,40,000 rendered homeless. An estimated 8,00,000 Rohingyas live in Rakhine state. Daw Suu, as she is affectionately called, was heavily criticised for not speaking up for their rights. Many of them remain in camps which they are not allowed to leave.

She would do well to note that none in New Delhi lost any sleep over those outrages either. New Delhi has a thick skin and a conscience as sensitive as a stone. This is par for the course. It is, however, the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s silence that is intriguing. It is so completely at variance with her reproach to India for not espousing the cause of freedom in her country.

On June 6, she spoke at a conference organised by the World Economic Forum’s East Asia Summit at Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital. It was chaired by Nik Gowing of the BBC. What Suu Kyi said on the occasion should cause no surprise. It should, indeed, be welcomed. It explains her silence on the Rohingyas. She threw her hat in the ring for the contest for the presidency, a decision warmly to be welcomed. “I want to run for the President and I’m quite frank about it. If I pretended that I didn’t want to be President, I wouldn’t be honest.”

All she could permit herself to say on the Rohingyas on this occasion was that she was for “the rule of law”, that is, she is for virtue and against sin. To be fair, on May 27, Suu Kyi sharply criticised the district government’s policy to limit Rohingya families to two children. “This is against human rights.”

The presidential candidate faces a hard road ahead. The military still controls 25 per cent of the seats in Parliament. Major constitutional amendments required to enable her to contest need at least 76 per cent support. It has then to be followed by a referendum where again at least 50 per cent of the voters would have to support the moves. Nationals with a foreign spouse or children are barred from holding the top job. Later in the evening Suu Kyi told reporters, “I am told it’s the most difficult Constitution to amend… 25 per cent [MPs] are unelected military appointments. What we need is that all the civilian seats are filled and we have an agreement on the amendments. Then, we need at least one brave soldier who must support it. It’s very difficult, but not impossible.”

That depends entirely on her success in forging an understanding with the military rulers which facilitates a smooth transition to a democratic government. Her success hinges on a national consensus. The 67-year-old leader, who entered politics late in life and of sheer necessity, impelled by her deep commitment to freedom, has revealed remarkable maturity and political sophistication. She criticised, but never condemned the military leaders. Aware of the state of public opinion on the Rohingyas problem, she preferred circumspection to public censure. The stakes are enormous and she simply cannot afford to make any mistakes on the way.

In this Suu Kyi provides a glaring contrast to our hypocritical leaders. Jawaharlal Nehru practised realpolitik but covered it with moralistic pretensions. The backlash that followed in the 1990s was triggered by bogus “realists”, led by men ignorant of the very nature of foreign policy and an intelligent informed understanding of the role of morality in the conduct of foreign policy. It was led by an ambitious and none-too-informed Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit, supported by a columnist who shifted his loyalties to a Foreign Minister as ambitious as Dixit, Jaswant Singh. The Bharatiya Janata Party acquired one more stick with which to demolish Nehru’s legacies to which its revivalism and ideology of hate were totally opposed.

Debasement of discourse on foreign affairs was reflected before and after the understanding which defused the Sino-Indian crisis on the Line of Actual Control (LoAC). Some top leaders proclaimed loudly that India had conceded nothing. What impression will China get of India’s readiness to settle the boundary dispute itself? Any settlement will necessarily be based on a compromise.

Nehru assured the Joint Session of the U.S. Congress on October 13, 1949, “Where freedom is menaced or justice threatened, or where aggression takes place, we cannot and shall not be neutral.” Nehru denounced the military coup in Pakistan in 1958 but was circumspect on the overthrow of his friend U Nu in Burma. Indira Gandhi claimed, on July 23, 1983, “I have raised my voice” regarding civil liberties and the rights of minorities in India and elsewhere. She had always spoken up. Her government’s statement in Parliament on August 25, 1983, expressed “uneasiness and distress [at] the recent happenings in Pakistan and the sufferings of people who have been demanding restoration of democracy in the country. As a nation we are committed to democracy.”

The crescendo was reached the next day when she spoke to her party MPs about the imprisonment of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, “the torture of begum Nusrat Bhutto”, and asserted “we have always condemned inhuman treatment meted out to people irrespective of whether such acts take place in our own nation or outside”.

She also declared, “We have to oppose injustice everywhere. We want that there should be democracy everywhere. And, by supporting the cause of democracy and opposing injustice, India is not doing anything improper or bad.”

But when the International League of Human Rights accused the Government of India, in a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General, of violation of human rights during the Emergency, India’s Permanent Mission at the U.N. was instructed to retort, on June 7, 1976, that “the protection of fundamental human rights is the concern of each sovereign state and is a matter which is essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of member-states of the United Nations”.

The reply bitterly complained that “this sort of gratuitous interference in India’s internal affairs is certainly not calculated to serve the best interests of the people of India, but rather to encourage the subversive elements to try once again to destroy the framework of constitutional democracy that the Government of India has been sustaining in a country with a formidable diversity of problems of scaring magnitude”.

India’s stand on Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1980), to cite a few, did not earn plaudits from the world. A more guarded approach has been adopted of late; not untinged by cynicism, though.

De Gaulle 

Daw Suu is not the first one to face the dilemmas which she does. Nor will she be the last. It is inherent in the human condition and the nature of the global order. The classic case is that of Charles de Gaulle, so well described by Jonathan Fenby in his superb work The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved (Simon & Schuster).

On June 4, 1958, as Prime Minister, de Gaulle flew to Algiers, his Carevelle airliner accompanied by fighters flying in a Cross of Lorraine pattern. As he stepped from the plane, the waiting spectators cheered and wept with excitement. De Gaulle continued imperturbably on his way. Then the Prime Minister, in plain uniform without medals, raised his arms in his familiar V gesture and shouted, “Je vous ai compris!” The first three words were covered by the noise of the crowd but the fourth sounded loud and clear (I have understood you).

“The words were meaningless in themselves; there was no indication of what de Gaulle had ‘understood’. But the crowd interpreted them to mean that he was on its side; he had understood their cause and would back their struggle to retain control of Algeria. For them, he was truly their saviour on a white horse, and the rebellion of 13 May (1958) had succeeded, symbolised by the Public Safety Committee filing out on to the balcony when de Gaulle finished speaking to sing ‘La Marseillaise’ with him and those below. His words may also have saved his life; a fifty-year-old antiques dealer and former Petainist had positioned himself in a building opposite the balcony from which the General spoke, armed with a rifle with which he intended to kill the Prime Minister. But when he heard ‘I have understood you’, he took his finger off the trigger….

“The gulf between the cold, rational man of the north and the emotional settlers was evident from the start, even if his four key words submerged everything else. When the rebel Public Safety Committee asked to be recognised, he replied that he was in charge of Algerian affairs, and told Salan, as Delegate General to re-establish regular government authority (just as he had done with the Resistance in 1944). There was also a reminder of the FLN’s [National Liberation Front] ability to strike when its men attacked the police station in the city of Bone on 6 June.” On July 3, 1962, France recognised the new independent state of Algeria. Only a de Gaulle can accomplish such feats.

Lincoln and Stevenson 

Hans Morganthau aptly described the difference between Abraham Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson. Both had a sensitive soul; both were avid for power. “Abraham Lincoln revealed his greatness only after he had reached the highest office. He made his way to that office as a politician competing with other politicians, seeking power in the manner of politicians, always tough and sometimes ruthless and devious. Lincoln made no bones about wanting power, and the people gave it to him. It was only after he had reached it that he also achieved an awareness of, and detachment from, it; and it is here that we found the key to his greatness.

“Stevenson showed his awareness of and detachment from power from the very outset. No doubt, he wanted power. When it eluded him in 1952, he said that he envied one man, the Governor of Illinois. When, as Ambassador to the United Nations and nominal member of the Cabinet, he had the trappings of power without its substance, he complained about the ‘disadvantage in being anywhere other than the seat of power’. He never forgave himself for his indecision in 1960. He wanted power, but he wanted it only with intellectual and moral reservations openly revealed. He wanted power, but not with that ‘canine appetite’, with that single-minded animal ferocity, which carried his competitions in the Democratic Party to success….

“What Lincoln and Stevenson have in common is a high degree of freedom from illusion, to which politicians—like all men—are prey, about themselves, about their actions, and about the world. What took the place of these illusions was a lucid awareness, both intellectual and moral, of the nature of the political act, of their involvement in it, and of the consequences of that involvement for themselves and for the world. That awareness gave them the intellectual distinction and moral sensitivity that set them apart from the common run of politicians. It gave their actions the appearance of indecisiveness and the reality of moral force. It accounts for their personal qualities of eloquence, wit, and sadness.

“Lincoln and Stevenson knew both the moral risks and the practical hazards inseparable from the political act. They knew that to act politically was to take a jump into the dark. Innocent people would suffer, and the outcome was uncertain. Moral absolution could not be bought with good intentions, nor could success be vouchsafed through ingenuity. The actor on the political stage takes his fate into his hands. Try as he may, he cannot escape the risks and hazards of his acts. If he is of the run of the mill, he will consult the flight of the birds, the constellation of the stars, or their modern equivalent, the public opinion polls, and receive the illusion of certainty that the facts of experience refuse him. If he is great in the manner of Lincoln and Stevenson, he cannot help but face the risks and hazards of his acts, to weigh them against the risks and hazards of alternative acts, to shudder at what he must do—and do it as though those risks and hazards did not exist. He acts in awareness of, and in spite of, these risks and hazards…. They are the qualities of souls that have been formed by their awareness of what the political act implies and by the burden of having to act nevertheless.”

Practical pitfalls 

In this they differed from men of power like Bismarck and Churchill who were immune to sadness and innocent of moral awareness. Lincoln and Stevenson knew that, when all is said and done, they were still faced, without remedy or escape, with the moral ambiguities and practical pitfalls of the political act. Knowing what they knew about themselves, their actions, and the world, they could not but be sad. “Their sadness denotes the resigned acceptance of the moral and intellectual imperfections of the political world and of their precarious place within it.”

The leader’s vision and times transcend the experience of his people. If he goes too far, he is overthrown; if he follows them he stagnates and betrays his calling. He has to prepare public opinion, while quietly negotiating a settlement. He must be a teacher as well as operator. That is leadership.

Morgenthau’s resolution of the dilemma is bold. “Not only must democratic foreign policy make concessions to public opinion, but it must also present its foreign policy in terms acceptable to public opinion. That is to say, it must make it appear as though it responds to the emotional preferences of public opinion to a greater extent than it actually does. It must cover those of its rational elements that are least likely to find favour with public opinion with a veil of emotional pronouncements which are intended to conceal its true nature from the public eye. It is for the objective observer to distinguish between public pronouncements on foreign policy that reveal and those that conceal the true nature of the foreign policy actually pursued, by correlating pronouncement with action.”

It was, however, left to a theologian and philosopher the Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr to point out that there are no easy solutions. The dilemma is an integral part of the human condition.

“Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.”

This is a far, far cry from the notion of our “realists” about realpolitik. It does not expel morality but applies a realistic morality in an imperfect work.

One must wish Aung San Suu Kyi, a brave and noble fighter for freedom, all success. The dilemmas she has faced until now are nothing compared to the ones that will confront her when she becomes President and is called upon to fulfil her promises and live up to the expectations her heroism has aroused.