[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
Despite Official Silence, Burmese
- Subject: Despite Official Silence, Burmese
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 08 Jun 1997 18:52:00
Subject: Despite Official Silence, Burmese Monks' Riot Is the Talk of Mandalay
Despite Official Silence,
Burmese Monks' Riot Is the
Talk of Mandalay
Military Suspected of Provoking
Disorders
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 8, 1997; Page A26
The Washington Post
MANDALAY, Burma -- This dusty, languorous city was
roiled
last March, when a peaceful gathering of several
thousand monks
airing grievances about botched government repairs
of an
immense golden Buddha turned into a two-evening
spasm of
violence and vandalism directed against local Muslims.
The mayhem was meant partly as revenge for the
reported rape
of a Buddhist girl, and it left in its wake at
least one death, many
injuries and considerable property damage.
Establishing the cause of a disturbance such as the
riots of March
16-17 is a major challenge in Burma, an isolated
nation ruled by
a xenophobic military government that rigidly
controls the news
media, rarely holds open court trials and represses
public dissent.
But one possibly telling detail about the riots
here has seeped into
the accounts of citizens and Western diplomats
stationed in
Burma -- that some of the supposed monks who joined
in the
vandalism at mosques were wearing army boots and
carrying
cellular telephones.
This has helped sustain a common suspicion here
that Burmese
military forces played a role in provoking or
carrying out some of
the anti-Muslim attacks. The further suspicion is
that they did so
partly to preserve the idea that only a strong
authoritarian hand
can keep a lid on the ethnic and religious tensions
supposedly
boiling below the surface of this outwardly placid
society.
Although Burma is overwhelmingly Buddhist -- and
Buddhism is
a central element of the culture -- roughly 4
percent of the 48
million population is Muslim and 4 percent is
Christian. In
addition, the country harbors at least 15 major
ethnic groups,
many of which have long battled the central
government and each
other.
According to several diplomats, military leaders
typically have
dealt with dissent or outbreaks of public violence
with crushing
"scorched earth" techniques. Ne Win, the general
who controlled
Burma officially until 1988 and evidently still
retains influence with
his military successors, began his rule in 1962 by
dynamiting the
student union at the University of Rangoon, a
historic meeting
place for dissidents.
Ne Win also ordered his troops -- who make up a
land army
second in size to Vietnam's in Southeast Asia -- to
fire directly
into crowds protesting economic problems and
military rule in
1988. Some student protest leaders' heads were severed.
Because monks had played a role in those protests,
the military
orchestrated a purge of Buddhist clergy in the
early 1990s and
today has seeded senior Buddhist ranks with spies,
according to
several diplomats.
The military junta, which calls itself the State
Law and Order
Restoration Council, has imprisoned hundreds of
political
dissidents without trial, including some who
allegedly are being
held in a corner of the walled palace compound in
central
Mandalay that was built by King Mindon Min in 1857.
In the last
two weeks alone, the junta detained more than 300
members of
the chief opposition party to block a meeting in
Rangoon.
Disappearances and "extrajudicial killings" of
political dissidents
are also orchestrated periodically by the military,
according to
the most recent State Department report on human
rights here.
When the latest protests erupted in Mandalay, the
nation's
second largest city and its seat of power in
ancient times, the
military responded at first by deploying troops
with automatic
weapons throughout the city and ordering a tight
evening curfew.
On the second evening, some of the troops fired
over the heads
of the rioters and the ricocheting bullets killed
at least one monk,
according to sources here. Annual proficiency tests
for monks
were canceled by the government and many were
ordered home
from local monasteries.
More than a month later, the atmosphere remains
edgy here and
in the capital, Rangoon, where several hundred
monks also
attacked some mosques. The downtown area in Mandalay,
where many mosques are located, is closely watched by
plainclothesmen. It is prohibited to take
photographs of the
damaged buildings and cab drivers express fear of
transporting
passengers to the zone.
That monks participated in such a riot seems
bizarre to a casual
observer. The Buddhist faith here promotes
compassion and
nonviolence and virtually all males spend time in
monasteries as
an adolescent rite of passage, when they supposedly
are imbued
with values that promote peaceful resolution of all
grievances.
But local sources say many of those who wear a
monk's garb are
not serious students of the religion. They add that
in this instance
a long tradition of political activism and even
violence by some
senior monks carried over to some younger monks.
"Anything could happen here, anything at all," said
a Burmese
businessman whose clientele includes some senior
military
leaders. "Things get out of hand quickly here, once
there is a
spark," said a Western diplomat about Burmese politics.
According to several local sources, the spark that
prompted the
March riots was a cry from someone in a crowd of
monks at the
Mahamuni Pagoda at the edge of the city that a
local Muslim
man had raped a Buddhist woman and gone unpunished.
Word
of the crime reportedly came just as senior monks were
discussing how the military may have mishandled
repairs to an
immense, 2,000-year-old bronze image of Buddha at
the site.
The assault actually had occurred several weeks
earlier, may
have fallen short of a rape, and apparently was
resolved
satisfactorily by members of the families involved,
according to
several local sources. But, after hearing about the
crime in a
mob, an angry group of young monks stormed from the
pagoda
to exact revenge on more than a dozen mosques in the
downtown area, where they smashed windows, destroyed
furniture and burned copies of the Koran.
The government blamed the episode on "elements"
that wanted
to embarrass Burma in the neighboring Muslim
capitals of
Indonesia and Malaysia, with the aim of blocking
Burma's
planned admission this year to the Association of
South East
Asian Nations, a regional economic and political
bloc. But few
details about the episode have appeared in the
Burmese media, a
circumstance that has helped spread rumor and focus
suspicion
on the leadership.
"People here are willing to believe anything"
negative about the
military rulers, because they are so widely
despised, said a
resident.
@CAPTION: Buddhist novice stands at door of the
Shwenandaw Monastery. It once was part of the
king's palace,
which was built in 1857 and which now allegedly is
used to
house dissidents -- more than 300 of whom have been
detained
recently.