The backgrounder to Myanmar's on-going anti-Muslim Violent Campaigns in Arakan or Rakhine State ~ Zarni's Blog

2.10.13

The backgrounder to Myanmar's on-going anti-Muslim Violent Campaigns in Arakan or Rakhine State ~ Zarni's Blog: Separate branches of the Myanmar state, including the executive office of President Thein Sein, the parliament, and the judiciary, have all tolerated or tacitly backed the neo-Nazi Buddhist movement known as "969". The Buddhist fundamentalist movement, led by fascist monks such as U Wirathu and RNDP leaders like Aung Maung, himself a Bangladesh-born Rakhine, has been pivotal and yet unpunished in recent violence against Muslims that have killed hundreds and displaced upwards of 120,000.

Underscoring the racist bias, the judiciary recently sentenced a Muslim customer who peeled a 969 sticker off the mirror of a street vendor with his motorcycle key to two years imprisonment for "insulting religion". At the same time, the Thein Sein administration in Naypyidaw has failed to bring anyone to justice for participating in the broad daylight slaughter of 10 Muslim pilgrims in a public space in the southern Rakhine town of Taung-gok in early June 2012. Nor has anyone been prosecuted for this and last year's widely videotaped pogroms against Muslim communities.