Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The first recent outburst against the Rohingyas, in June 2012, was triggered by the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman, allegedly by Rohingya Muslims. The next round, later that year, sprang from extremism and political expediency stoked by the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, who exhorts his followers to “rise up” and “make your blood boil” to quash a supposed international Muslim conspiracy to destroy the “golden Burmese” way of life. In sermons, interviews, and a logorrhea of online postings, he refers to Muslims as kalar (the Burmese equivalent of “niggers”), “troublemakers,” and “mad dogs.” Pamphlets distributed at one sermon warned, “Myanmar is currently facing a most dangerous and fearful poison that is severe enough to eradicate all civilization.” In the Western press, he has been compared to Hitler. Wirathu initiated the 969 movement to mark stores and houses and even taxis where Muslims are unwelcome. The name of the movement played on Muslims’ use of the number 768 to identify stores that sold halal meat—which Wirathu labeled an act of separatism (although halal grocers never excluded non-Muslims). Practically every taxi in Myanmar displays a 969 sticker; one driver ranted to me that the fact that Muslims may take more than one wife proves that Buddhist women were being abducted and forced to bear Muslim children.

While the paranoia is absurd, the basic concern can be tied to historic events. Muslims forced Buddhists out of Afghanistan a thousand years ago; the Taliban more recently destroyed ancient Buddhist holy sites in Pakistan; and radical Islamists have denounced Burma’s “savage Buddhists” to encourage Indonesia’s acceptance of Rohingya refugees. Relaxed censorship means that marginal opinions are more openly circulated, to incite prejudice as much as to promote pluralism. Nay Phone Latt said, “Some think that the lifting of censorship is a mandate to insult one another.”

Wirathu and his camp have waged an aggressive campaign on Facebook. In Myanmar, those who do not have Internet access get their news from those who do. Allegations go viral even among those who have never seen a computer. Wirathu had been sentenced for inciting hatred, but was freed in 2012 under the general amnesty and went straight back to his rabble-rousing, claiming that the new freedom of expression had made his crusade legal. Monks in Rakhine began to distribute pamphlets asking Buddhists not to associate with Rohingyas. Neither the government nor, significantly, Aung San Suu Kyi has denounced the genocidal stirrings in Rakhine. It appears clear that doing so would imperil votes.

As Rohingya neighborhoods in Rakhine towns have been burned and looted, Rohingyas have been moved to refugee camps, where they live in appalling conditions. A sixty-year-old Rohingya teacher described seeing a student she had taught and liked setting fire to her home. Rakhine Buddhists suspected of doing business with Rohingyas have had their houses burned down. The hospital in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine, has only ten beds for Muslims. In the city’s overcrowded camps, medical attention consists of one doctor visiting once a week for an hour. Ambassador Mitchell described seeing children dying from easily curable illnesses.

Internecine violence has also broken out in the Rohingya camps. One UN aid worker said he had observed rape, incest, and alcoholism among these desperate people, though the violence from guards was far worse. Many are starving; some have seen their children killed. The camps are mostly in low-lying areas that flood during the summer monsoon, when it rains more than three feet a month; even in January, when I visited, they were muddy and squalid. Because these camps are adjacent to the Rohingya neighborhoods, many refugees can see their former homes and their mosques from them; the old Muslim ghetto is now cordoned with barbed wire. Many Rohingyas have fled Myanmar, but no neighboring country wants to give them asylum, so a good number are dying on overloaded boats as they seek a safe port. Their desperate wanderings have become an international crisis. Meanwhile, the price of fish in the province has doubled, given that half the fishermen are in detention camps. Likewise, no lower-wage workers are available to harvest the rice paddies.