Dark-skinned and bearded men jumped a young woman after she prayed at a Buddhist shrine. They pushed her to the ground and raped her. Then they cut off her ear and slit her throat.
A lurid video recently posted online by a firebrand monk in Myanmar purports to re-enact the woman’s death at the hands of Muslim assailants. Her killing in 2012 set off widespread violence between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Southeast Asian nation.
Tens of thousands of people viewed the video until Facebook blocked it on Monday, a sign of the continuing reach of Myanmar’s Buddhist extremists even as the nation moves toward civilian rule after five decades of military dominance.
A new report by US researchers found that a divisive religious group, known as Ma Ba Tha, which counts the hardline monk Wirathu among its senior members, is likely to remain a force for some time to come in Myanmar. Ma Ba Tha’s anti-Muslim prejudices resonate in the broader Burmese society, according to the report.
The conflict and security research group C4ADS spent several months studying hate speech in Myanmar. It focused on Ma Ba Tha, or the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, scrutinizing the social media accounts of the group’s leading monks and followers.
“We find a decentralized, but still highly organized, group that operates with unrivaled freedom,” the report said.
It cites the group’s activist rallies, legislative campaigns, powerful media network and pressure directed at judges and police to influence legal cases.
The report concludes that the incoming government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party (NLD) is unlikely to confront Ma Ba Tha, despite the religious group’s support for a rival pro-military party that was trounced in elections in in November last year. The new NLD-led parliament convened this week.
“While the [election] defeat is embarrassing to an organization whose key leaders had openly advocated against the NLD, it may prove to have little material impact over the long run,” the report said.
Experts say the NLD’s victory was driven by support for Aung San Suu Kyi and a desire for civilian rule. However, the party did not field a single Muslim among its 1,151 election candidates — a sign of the political sensitivities surrounding religion.
Also, there is popular support for Ma Ba Tha’s campaign to deny rights to stateless Rohingya Muslims, who have been targeted in the religious violence and live in apartheid-like conditions in western Myanmar, according to the report.
Ma Ba Tha denies spreading hate speech.
“We are not telling anyone to hate Muslims or kill them, or anything like that. We are just trying to protect our own race and religion, and showing love to our country,” Central Committee member Ashin Parmoukkha said.
Yet even the group’s more moderate leaders have espoused an ultra-nationalist outlook in which Muslims, who account for about 5 percent to 10 percent of Myanmar’s 52 million people, pose an existential threat to the Buddhist majority.
Ma Ba Tha’s vice chairman, renowned monk Sitagu Sayadaw, last month organized a peace conference with participants from more than 50 nations.
He told a visiting US delegation in 2014 that Buddhist nations “are living in constant daily fear of falling under the sword of the Islamic extremists.”
The ability of Ma Ba Tha leaders to simplify Buddhist teachings has added to the group’s popular appeal.
It has a nationwide network of offices, oversees newspapers, broadcasts TV sermons and does charitable work.
Wirathu, who posted the video, is Ma Ba Tha’s most provocative voice. He served several years in jail for inciting deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2003.
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