Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has criticized a proposal by nationalist monks to restrict marriages between Buddhist women and men of other faiths, describing it as a violation of human rights, a report said on Friday.
“This is one-sided. Why only women? You cannot treat the women unfairly,” Radio Free Asia quoted the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate as saying in an interview.
“I also understand that this is not in accordance with the laws of the country and especially that it is not part of Buddhism,” the veteran activist said. “It is a violation of women’s rights and human rights.”
Under the proposal — spearheaded by the controversial Mandalay cleric Wirathu — non-Buddhist men wishing to marry a Buddhist woman would have to convert and gain permission from her parents to wed or risk 10 years in jail.
The idea was raised at a recent meeting of more than 200 monks called to discuss a surge in Buddhist-Muslim violence in the former junta-ruled country.
Wirathu said the law was needed “because Buddhist girls have lost freedom of religion when they married Muslim men.”
Senior clerics have distanced themselves from the proposal, while women’s rights groups have voiced opposition.
Sectarian bloodshed — mostly targeting Muslims — has laid bare deep divides that were largely suppressed under decades of military rule which ended two years ago in the Buddhist-majority country.
Radical monks — once at the forefront of the country’s pro-democracy movement — have led a campaign to shun shops owned by Muslims and only visit stores run by Buddhists. Some were also involved in the religious unrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been accused by some international human rights activists of failing to clearly condemn the anti-Muslim violence.
Dozens of people were killed in clashes in central Myanmar in March, while about 200 people died last year in sectarian unrest in the western state of Rakhine.
Last month, Aung San Suu Kyi criticized a ban that prohibits Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine from having more than two children.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the