protesting Buddhist monks in myanmar

[Ensapa]

Here is a nice letter that poses the question that all of us have been asking all along ever since this issue came to light:Why encourage racism and why create a crisis when it is all unnecessary in the first place? I dont see any reason for the creation of this particular issue: it is a racist issue and Buddhist monks should keep out of it. But sadly, they did not.

Ashin Gambhira: “Why encourage racism, why create a crisis?”
Thebestfriend.org, Aug 29, 2012
Yangon, Myanmar -- Saffron Revolution leader Ashin Gambhira (aka Ko Nyi Nyi Lwin) has been struggling with his health since his release from prison earlier this year. In a new letter, he speaks about the current conflict in Arakan State, and the fighting between Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhines.
“I feel very sorry after reading the latest news. I don’t feel so much surprised as angry because I knew something like this would happen soon. One step leads to another. It is actually not so surprising for our country Myanmar, because neither people nor politicians have good understanding.”

The Military relies on conflict to stay in power

“The violence between Rakhines and Rohingyas in Arakan State is an example of how dictatorships all over the world use and rely on conflicts to stay in power. If all people were united, a military dictatorship could not survive. Division and enmity in the minds of the people only keep the military strong. Because of this, the military systematically uses division-and-rule policies on the grounds of nationality, religion, economic and education status, etc., to divide people, to keep the military ‘necessary’, relevant, and in power. So the Burmese people are kept separated in groups, each group for themselves, without unity or cooperation. Everybody lives in fear and distrust of the other. Everyone sees the other with a suspicious mind. With this pressure, the people are defeated.

Nationalism is used to the keep the military system alive


 “The new freedom fighter groups were organized under a wrong system of a Burma nationalist policy. These national revolution organization systems are a mistake. They produce suspicions and tensions between Burmese and their fellow landsman. Furthermore, it is slowly destroying the meaning of ‘union’ until the ‘union mind’ will disappear. This is the situation that the Burmese military uses to keep the military system necessary and alive.
The thirst for human rights

“We haven’t had human rights or true democracy in our country for over fifty years. For the last fifty years and five months, an old man couldn’t get a taste of democracy, human rights, freedom, justice, or equality. Some people have not known any of these things their entire lives. This means we were so thirsty for human rights that we sometimes demanded them like fools.

“We are living in the 21st century now, in a time of globalization, but in our country the principles of human rights and democracy are terribly broken. So our understandings of Dhamma, Metta, peace, and human rights are very rough, and we are beaten, arrested, killed, and destroyed.

“Mr. Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, has said clearly that during the 2007 Saffron Revolution, crimes against humanity were committed. The illegal government acted against me with unjust laws and rules. I was sentenced by a judge to 68 years in prison. I lost my time, health, education, and freedom for the sake of my motherland. I spent nearly 4 years in prison. Everyone around the world knew that the people and monks were marching non-violently with love, Dhamma, and peace, and we didn’t have as much as a nail with us. But we were broken down very violently, beaten, shot, and killed.

“The same people who were ruling Burma then are now presenting themselves to the world as a legal government. They show themselves to be honest, polite, and clear. But nothing has changed in Myanmar, even in this changing period. The neo-military dictatorship has exploited and fostered a new national crisis, a religious conflict, the Rakhine-Rohingya conflict, for its own purposes.

“This is a very simple and effective strategy. It has happened several times in the past. There have been conflicts between Buddhist monks and Muslims before. They have been fighting each other, and the military dictatorship benefited from it. These clashes were encouraged by the military to keep the people separated.

“We had started a Metta campaign in our country with slogans for peace and democracy. The campaign includes members of all religions. But now, the Rakhine and Rohingya have turned against each other violently in front of the world. Even some members of the democracy movement have followed the threat of politics by the military regime and have changed sides.

The rule of law

“I want to say one additional thing. We need to count from the beginning. We only needed to judge with the rule of law those three Rohingyas who raped a girl. Rohingyas or Rakhines, Burmans or Shan, everybody must obey the rule of law. Why encourage racism, why create a crisis? Why blame only Rohingyas and put all of the purnishment on all of them?

“In Bangladesh, in a minority village on the border with Myanmar, several people were robbed by Bengali groups. The Bangladeshi government took effective action against the robbers with the rule of law, and a crisis was averted.

“I feel sad to know that some Buddhist monks have joined demonstrations and campaigns against Rohingyas. We already previously kindled a fire of Dhamma for everyone around the world to see in 2007. Do I need to explain in detail the meaning of the Buddha’s words, of Metta, Dhamma, peace, ahitha, thitthar, ageha, for everyone?

“As you know, my health is not so good, so I have been taking a rest lately. Actually, the past revolution experience was a very dark and hopeless situation inside the prison for me. I faced it, and survived this condition after I was released into the present political situation. I really want to write more about it. But I have to take care of my health first. In the future when I am better, I hope I can do it. Even writing this letter hurts my eyes and causes severe headaches. The deep pain inside my body is bad, but I needed to write and send this to you.”

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The original letter was written in Burmese by U Gambhira (aka Ko Nyi Nyi Lwin) on August 27th to Ms. Yu Yu Ko. The letter was given to The Best Friend International e.V. for publishing. Special thanks for the first translation from Burmese to English by Ko Nyi Nyi Lwin, Tokyo.

[Ensapa]

As more things happen, the world becomes more and more aware of the actual situation in myanmar. I do find it sad that a Buddhist country ends up being this way. It is an issue that even Aung San Su Kyi has failed to give an answer to....perhaps if it was a democratic government and this issue is brought to light to the world, there might be an answer...

Burma's Buddhist Chauvinism
Violence against the Rohingya reveals a deep-rooted xenophobia.

By WILLIAM MCGOWAN

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi extols Buddhism as a source of personal strength, allowing her to endure 15 years of house arrest at the hands of Burma's generals. Buddhist precepts such as loving kindness and compassion can also guide Burma's democratic transition, she says, by fostering reconciliation with the military.

Yet Burma's Buddhist tradition also has a nationalistic and at times hateful side, as the violence since June against Rohingya Muslims in the western state of Rakhine demonstrates. A sense of racial and religious superiority among majority Burman Buddhists has poisoned relations with the 40% of the population made up of non-Burman minorities.

This enmity has not only fueled civil war, it could pull the country's political reforms off course. The military is using the Rohingya issue to build its popularity with Burman and Rakhine Buddhists. This puts Ms. Suu Kyi in an increasingly difficult position.

The anti-Rohingya violence, some of it committed by Buddhist mobs and some by the Buddhist-dominated security forces, led to scores of deaths, the burning of settlements and a refugee exodus of 90,000 into neighboring Bangladesh. There, up to 300,000 Rohingya refugees still languish in makeshift camps from the last anti-Rohingya pogrom 20 years ago—part of what the United Nations calls "one of the world's largest and most prominent groups of stateless people."

According to the U.N., the Rohingyas, who number about 800,000, are "virtually friendless," subject to forced labor, extortion, police harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, land confiscation, inequitable marriage regulations, a de facto "one child" family policy, and limited access to jobs, education, and healthcare. A 1982 law denies them citizenship, based on the presumption that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many have lived in Burma for generations.

There's also their darker skin color, which makes them "ugly as ogres" by comparison to the "fair and soft" complexion of Burmans, according to the Burmese consul general in Hong Kong in 2009. Burmese President Thein Sein has said that the "solution" to the Rohingya problem is to put them into U.N.-administered internal camps, or expel them.

Many in Burma's pro-democracy community hold similar views, including leading figures in Ms. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. Ko Ko Gyi, who was imprisoned for his strategic role in the 1988 student uprising and now functions as a mentor to younger democracy activists, called the Rohingya "terrorists" who infringed on the country's sovereignty. Like other opposition figures, Ko Ko Gyi denied that the Rohingya should be counted among the nation's 135 recognized "national groups." NLD spokesman Nyan Win simply said: "The Rohingya are not our citizens."

Monastic opposition to the government, which boiled over in the 2007 "Saffron Revolution," has posed a significant challenge to the military's popular legitimacy by depicting it as an enemy of Buddha sasana, or righteous moral rule. The regime has tried to deflect that challenge by finding outside enemies, stressing that Buddhism is the religion of "true Burmese" and its purity is under threat. The result is a Buddhist majority that might rally behind Ms. Suu Kyi and the monks for greater democratic rights, but is less keen about extending those same rights to others.

As the violence against the Rohingyas played out, the newly "liberated" Internet was filled with racist invective. Using a pejorative for dark-skinned foreigners, one commenter declared, "We should kill all the Kalars in Burma or banish them, otherwise Buddhism will cease to exist." A nationalist group set up a Facebook page entitled "Kalar Beheading Gang," which attracted 600 "likes" by mid-June.

In Europe to receive her belated Nobel Peace Prize when the Rohingya crisis peaked, Aung San Suu Kyi was like a deer caught in headlights. When asked if the Rohingya should be treated as citizens, she answered. "I do not know," followed by convoluted statements about citizenship laws and the need for border vigilance. Nowhere did she or the NLD denounce either the attacks or the racist vitriol that followed them, or express sympathy for the victims.

According to some analysts, Ms. Suu Kyi's reluctance to speak out reflected concern for her own parliamentary district, where anti-Rohingya feeling runs high. Others note the fierce racism of Buddhists in Rakhine, a state that plays a key role in the NLD's wider electoral strategy.

The pinched response left many observers downcast. Journalist Francis Wade, who has followed the democratic transition in Burma closely, wonders whether Western observers have "overromanticized" the struggle between the NLD and the junta and if the pro-democracy movement ever had the "wholesale commitment to the principle of tolerance" many presumed.

The stakes are high. If ethnic and religious tensions long held in check by military authoritarianism boil over, Burma could easily become another Yugoslavia. The specter of "disorder," which the military has long invoked to justify its heavy hand, could lead it to slow the pace of reform or even roll it back. In 1962, minority unrest, largely provoked by the establishment of Buddhism as the state religion, provided a pretext for the military coup that led to 50 years of isolation.

As Ms. Suu Kyi herself wrote in a 1985 monograph on the Burmese "racial psyche," Buddhism "represents the perfected philosophy. It therefore follows that there [is] no need to either to develop it further or to consider other philosophies." In trying to forge a sense of national identity in a nation that has never known one, that attitude is a huge obstacle.

[Ensapa]

here's another opinion piece against what is happening in Myanmar. It was written by a Thai Buddhist and this is important, for Buddhists to speak up against this to let the world know that this is NOT what Buddhism is about. Although this is the information age, many people tend to jump to conclusions easily as they take information for granted. We, as Buddhists, need to be proactive in reminding people of what Buddhism really is.

This is racism, not Buddhism
by Sanitsuda Ekachai, The Bangkok Post, Sept 5, 2012
Bangkok, Thailand -- How do you feel when you see rows of stern-looking Buddhist monks marching through the streets in full force to call for violent treatment of the downtrodden?

That was what thousands of Myanmar monks did when they took to the streets in temple-studded Mandalay on Sunday to support the government's brutal persecution of stateless Muslim Rohingya.

What were they thinking?

The world is full of injustice. But isn't it the business of monks to advise against it, and not to be supportive of any form of prejudice and human cruelty?

Aren't empathy and non-exploitation the key words in Buddhism? Aren't monks supposed to devote their lives to deepening spiritual practice in order to see through the different layers of we-they prejudice so that compassion prevails in their hearts, words, and actions?


 Many people outside Myanmar were asking these questions because the anti-Rohingya monks were the same ones who dared challenge the government in 2007 to champion the people's cause, and who themselves faced a violent crackdown by the military junta.
If the Buddha's words were not important to them when they took to the streets, then what was?

The answer is quite simple - racist nationalism. The monks do want justice for people, but just for their own kind.

As part of the dominant ethnic Bama Buddhists, they believe deeply the dark-skinned Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, aggressive outsiders who will steal land from the Buddhist folk. The monks therefore feel that it is just to support the government to eliminate the perceived threats to their motherland, their ethnicity, and their religion.

Call it patriotism, ultra-nationalism, ethnic prejudice, or racism. Whichever the label, it is mired in the we-they prejudice that divides people, fosters hatred, and triggers violence - everything Buddhism cautions against.

But should people who live in glass houses throw stones?

Our monks may still stop short of marching in the streets to call for the elimination of Malay Muslim separatists, but they have done so several times to call for a law which will help them retain supremacy over other religions.

Every time I cover their Buddhism-for-national-religion campaigns, I never fail to hear their deep suspicions of Islam. Meanwhile, bombs have blasted and killed people for eight years running in the restive South, yet we never hear our monks mentioning any concern about justice for the locals, nor for the need to open political space for Malay Muslims to voice their needs, address inequalities, and to extinguish the root causes of ethnic frustration and violence.

Instead, we see monks taking the defensive and dangerous route of ordaining soldiers to increase their number while allowing temples to be used as barracks.

Like their peers in Myanmar, our monks are in full support of the military to maintain the supremacy of the Buddhist majority. If violence must be used in this suppression, so be it.

But Thailand is also witnessing a rapid growth of lay Buddhism which focuses on meditation retreats and core Buddhist teachings. Can this movement act as a voice of sensibility when the country is mired in political divisiveness? If that's your expectation, be prepared to be disappointed.

For its members, too, generally share the belief that the elimination of perceived threats is necessary, like the need to eliminate germs and diseases to restore one's health. When this is your mindset - left or right, red or yellow, pro-or anti-establishment - you'll believe the use of hate speech, half truths, and violence by your camp is perfectly all right.

No, we are not Buddhists. We may pray to the Buddha and close our eyes to meditate, but what shapes our thoughts, words, and actions is ideological extremism of all different shades.

The Buddha's path leads to peaceful co-existence and sharing. Ideological extremism leads to control, suppression, and winner-takes-all.

If left to fester, ideological extremism and race-based nationalism will breed more violence. The country's goal of regional integration will be sheer nonsense. And for both monks and lay Buddhists, all those longs hours of meditation will be simply wasted.

[DS Star]

How can world peace come about with monks still conducting themselves with acts of violence? Politics are temporary issues of samsara, why put one's spiritual practise aside and bother with politics? Monks definitely should not get involved with politics otherwise, people will have distorted views of monks. In many cases, monks are meant to be holy, meditating all the time, living in the monastery or in some forests, away from the woes of life. Of course there are Boddhisattvas like the great Chogyam Trungpa who totally destroyed the perception of how sangha members are meant to be/act, but they didn't turn people away from Buddhism but brought more into Buddhism.

When we start to go against one another's religion, monks show to lay people that it is okay to do so. Where's the kindness, the tolerance, the patience, the practice of the 8 verses? When we die, everything ends - so does the war, the politics, the violence, the betrayal. WHat remains is the legacy you leave behind, and how you have helped others.

Well-said Manjuhsri, monks should lead by examples... so in this instance, they are telling the lay practitioners that it is alright to discriminate, to be bias and even to act violently.

Whatever happen to their very strict code of conducts, the Vinaya, the Pratimoksha? Lately too many news on the negative conducts and actions of the so-called Buddhist monks really bad for Buddhist community.

Monks or the Sangha Order is supposedly to conduct themselves well morally and ethically so as to inspire people spiritually and bring them into Dharma. This latest negative 'trend' just goes on the opposite direction... seems this is REALLY the DEGENERATE AGE...

Traditional Buddhism practice is on the road of destruction... after only 2500 years' history, seems the end of main stream Buddhism could be much faster then the 5000 years that Buddha Shakyamuni had prophesied.

[Ensapa]

Well-said Manjuhsri, monks should lead by examples... so in this instance, they are telling the lay practitioners that it is alright to discriminate, to be bias and even to act violently.

Whatever happen to their very strict code of conducts, the Vinaya, the Pratimoksha? Lately too many news on the negative conducts and actions of the so-called Buddhist monks really bad for Buddhist community.


Monks or the Sangha Order is supposedly to conduct themselves well morally and ethically so as to inspire people spiritually and bring them into Dharma. This latest negative 'trend' just goes on the opposite direction... seems this is REALLY the DEGENERATE AGE...

When Buddhism is too deeply ingrained in their culture, they think that they are doing their country a favor or a duty. Sadly they are still attached to their worldly identity

Traditional Buddhism practice is on the road of destruction... after only 2500 years' history, seems the end of main stream Buddhism could be much faster then the 5000 years that Buddha Shakyamuni had prophesied.
It lies in the mentality of the disciples and how they can change it and separate Buddhist practice from their cultural identity and see them as separate.

I wouldnt see it as the death or anything, there will still be people in this tradition that will hold the lineage although their act is unfortunate but it will not mark the end.

[Amitabha]

 
WHEN the sentiment and wisdom are developing to the highest degree, will be melted together and become the whole (complete combination, the absolute in the relative and vice versa) in Buddhist’s eyes.

FROM the “Chain of cause and effect” point of view, the ideas for all practitioners doing their best to practice the merciful mind in worldly business is automatically to get the wisdom of very truth emptiness eventually. Then the limitless merciful actions will be brought about automatically also after getting the great wisdom. 

[Amitabha]

  IN religious meaning for teachers of all religions, to remove all wishes, desires, unease, fight, and even the impermanence in order to reach the elevation of spirit of “Liberating from worldly cares”. In philosophical meaning, means the principles of “No real substance of all things”, “No self”, “No original nature”, and even “Very truth loving bliss”.

[AnneQ]

This is racism, not Buddhism
by Sanitsuda Ekachai, The Bangkok Post, Sept 5, 2012
Bangkok, Thailand -- How do you feel when you see rows of stern-looking Buddhist monks marching through the streets in full force to call for violent treatment of the downtrodden?

Thank you Ensapa for posting this article written by a Thai Buddhist journalist. It really confirmed my suspicions that the so-called violent Buddhist monks are quite likely hastily ordained racist soldiers with their own anti-muslim agenda, and are certainly not the compassionate and loving monks who hold their vows seriously.

Instead, we see monks taking the defensive and dangerous route of ordaining soldiers to increase their number while allowing temples to be used as barracks.

Like their peers in Myanmar, our monks are in full support of the military to maintain the supremacy of the Buddhist majority. If violence must be used in this suppression, so be it.

This is certainly a very disturbing trend we are seeing in the world today. How is this different from war ravaged African countries which provide machine guns to children to fight a war they have no understanding of, except being told they are given arms to kill the enemy & become a hero. Or brainwashing a young Muslim women to strap on explosives to kill herself and a bunch of people with her in order to attain martyrdom and a place in heaven. Religion is being used to manipulate the masses and propagate the political agenda of certain factions of the community. How very sad.

[ratanasutra]

This is a one of the sad news we heard about violence by Buddhist monks in Buddhist country.
Buddha teachs us to be kind to others, never teachs us to harm others so the violence is opposite from what Buddha teaching.

i do hope that people will not have less faith in Buddhist because of these incidents as in this degenerate time anything can be happened.

And i do hope that the sanghas will not misrepresent the Buddha teaching and the three jewels is always virtuous.