Buddhist leader Venerable Wirathu spreads hatred of Muslims in Myanmar
Wirathu at Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay in 2015.
>The Venerable Wirathu hitched up his orange robes, stepped up onto a stage on a recent Sunday and tapped the microphone.
>“What kind of people are these Muslims?” he barked as a crowd of 1000 in this small town east of Yangon cheered him on. “Do they eat rice through their backsides and excrete through their mouths? They are the opposite of everything in nature.”
>Ven. Wirathu, the abbot of the Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay, has taken a leading role in spreading the anti-Muslim sentiment among Myanmar’s Buddhist majority that has underpinned the army’s campaign against the ethnic Rohingya minority.
>Since the military released Ven. Wirathu from prison in 2012 after he had served nine years of a 25-year sentence for inciting religious riots, he has travelled and taken to YouTube and Facebook to whip up resentment against the stateless group, alongside other less prominent Buddhist hardliners.
>In recent weeks, the army and allied militias have attacked Rohingya villages, driving hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh in a campaign that Bangladesh authorities say has left 3,000 people dead.
i like him. I wish the Pope was more like Buddhist leader Venerable Wirathu.
Hunter Green
...
Jason Taylor
Good lad!
Alexander Brooks
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Dominic Myers
>Muslims are not human
Asher Gomez
The Rohingya conflict, which erupted between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar's western Rakhine state in late August, was apparently fanned by external global players, Dmitry Mosyakov, director of the Centre for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RT.
According to the academic, the conflict has at least three dimensions.
"First, this is a game against China, as China has very large investments in Arakan [Rakhine]," Mosyakov told RT. "Second, it is aimed at fuelling Muslim extremism in Southeast Asia…. Third, it's the attempt to sow discord within ASEAN [between Myanmar and Muslim-dominated Indonesia and Malaysia]."
Oliver Morales
According to Mosyakov, the century-long conflict is used by external players to undermine Southeast Asian stability, especially given the fact that what is at stake are vast reserves of hydrocarbons located offshore of the Rakhine state. "There's a huge gas field named Than Shwe after the general who had long ruled Burma," Mosyakov said. "Additionally, the coastal zone of Arakan [Rakhine] almost certainly contains oil hydrocarbons."