Burmese Buddhist nationalists protest over boat people

Some 150 Buddhist nationalists took part in a protest in Rangoon yesterday against international pressure for Burma (Myanmar) to grant citizenship to the stateless Rohingya minority, as well as what they claim is pro-Muslim bias in Western news coverage.

A core group of some 70 protesters carried banners bearing both English- and Burmese-language slogans. They wore T-shirts that read “Boat people are not Myanmar” and bandanas emblazoned with “UN” with a line crossed through it.

The protest was organised by hardline groups who claim the population that identifies as Rohingya, estimated at about a million, do not have any legitimate historical claim to citizenship in Burma. The protesters consider Rohingya Muslims to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Thousands of Rohinya Muslims have fled what they say is persecution in Burma, and many remain cast adrift at sea due to an unwillingness on the part of neighbouring countries to take them in.

While yesterday’s protest was relatively small in size, the groups behind it are not lacking in political clout.

U Parmoukkha, a Buddhist monk and prominent figure in the Ma Ba Tha movement, delivered an address to the crowd. Ma Ba Tha, a Burmese acronym for “Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion”, is an influential group that has risen to prominence in the last two years. It has agitated for a package of legislation including population control, monogamy and religious conversion laws.

While the country’s most prominent controversial monk, U Wirathu, was not able to attend the protest due to preaching commitments, DVDs of his sermons – most of which argue that Burma’s Theravada Buddhism is under threat of being eclipsed by Islam – were distributed at the protest site.

"In 2,200 years of Myanmar history, there is no such thing as the word Rohingya. Rohingyas are a made-up race", said Ko Thar Wa, one of the five spokespeople authorised by organisers to speak to the media at the rally.

The migrant boat crisis playing out off the western coastlines of Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia has thrust the issue to the fore of the regional agenda, with talks set to take place in Bangkok today.

In recent weeks, the discovery of mass graves in the jungles of Thailand and Malaysia has shed light on the scale of the region’s people-smuggling and extortion rackets, while the ensuing crackdown on trafficking rings has seen thousands abandoned at sea.

“As a human and as a Buddhist, I feel sorry for these people. But as a Myanmar citizen I cannot accept that more than 3,000 people could be let into Myanmar – it’s a huge concern. The international community is trying to send a lot of people to Myanmar”, said Ko Thar Wa. “People around the world need to understand these people are not Myanmar citizens. They are Bangladeshi. It would be too controversial to accept the non-citizens, for any country.”

While a vast number of those caught up in the boat crisis are Bangladeshi migrants, those who identify as Rohingya have resided in Myanmar for generations.

The majority of the Rohingya reside in Rakhine State, in the west of Myanmar. In 2012, two waves of violent rioting saw entire villages razed and more than 150 people killed.