- News
Men charged over ‘Rohingya calendar’
A Rangoon court has used a printing and publishing law to fine five men $800 each for their involvement in printing a calendar that stated that Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic-religious minority living in Burma. Pazundaung Township police chief Maj. Khin Maung Lat informed Myanmar Now of the sentence, which was passed on Monday evening, adding that police charged the men on Saturday. A sixth suspect remains at large. The 2016 calendar mentions the word Rohingya and contains a statement that there used to be a “Rohingya radio channel” in the 1950’s under then-Prime Minister U Nu. It said U Nu himself had publicly used the word Rohingya. “This is an activity that threatens the law and order of the country,” Khin Maung Lat said in an interview at his office. He added that an investigation was started after police heard about the calendar “on Facebook.” The men were charged with breaking Article 4 of the 2014 Printing and Publishing Law, which bars individuals from publishing materials that could damage national security and law and order. It stipulates a fine of between $800 and $2,400. Burma’s government vehemently denies the approximately 1 million-strong Muslim minority the right to identify themselves as Rohingya.…
- News
Pro-nationalist sentiment dismissed on election day
In both Burma and abroad, the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) landslide election win is seen as a victory of the people over the military and its ruling political elite. It’s a price the army had to pay after subjecting the population to decades of repression. The public’s message was a clear call for democratic change, a mandate for which was given first and foremost to NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, the crushing defeat of the military-backed governing Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) also signals another message – it was an outright dismissal of the extremist nationalist “Buddhist” movement called Ma-Ba-Tha. It had been whipping up nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment. In the run-up to the elections the group – which enjoyed the support of President Thein Sein’s government – launched relentless campaigns against the NLD and Suu Kyi, while endorsing the USDP. Authorities looked the other way as the monks concocted a toxic mix of religion and politics, acts that directly violate the constitution. The monks pointed out that Suu Kyi had a foreign spouse and that her NLD party objected to Ma-Ba-Tha’s four ‘race and religion’ laws. They spread fear among the public, saying that the Buddhist-majority…
- Myanmar
Myanmar public dismisses Buddhist nationalism with a ballot
In both Myanmar and abroad, the National League for Democracy’s landslide election win is seen as a victory of the people over the military and its ruling political elite.
- News
Incumbent lawmakers to remain in parliament until January
Just days after the National League for Democracy (NLD) clinched a historic election victory, Burmese lawmakers elected in the flawed 2010 polls are due to resume their work on Monday and legislate for another two and a half months. The peculiar arrangement, unique to the country, was dreamt up by the military drafters of the 2008 constitution. It has been criticised by Burma’s new leader-in-waiting Aung San Suu Kyi and raises questions over what decisions the outgoing ruling party will to try push through before they hand over power. [related] “This is the only constitution in the world where there is such a wide gap between an election and the forming of a new administration,” the NLD leader told reporters at a press conference on 5 November. “This is a matter of concern because … the whole picture might have changed completely (after elections), but still the present legislature will go on until the 31st of January at least.” In most countries, parliament is dissolved immediately after the polls and reconvened by the winning parties, said Tin Maung Maung Than, a senior fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “The system in Myanmar [Burma] is pretty unusual.…
- Myanmar
Myanmar’s Kaman Muslims look to elections to restore their rights
In October two years ago, Zaw Lin ran to the top of a forested hill behind his thatch-roof farm house in this tiny hamlet of Pauktaw in Myanmar’s southern Rakhine state. His family is Muslim. He and his relatives were running for their lives as sword-wielding Rakhine Buddhists, angry about reports of a Buddhist woman allegedly raped by Muslim men in nearby Thandwe, were on the rampage, torching down Muslim houses and now about to enter his village. While he was running away with his wife and two children, Zaw Lin said he managed to call a police station, two miles away from his village to ask for help. But none came. Although his family survived, dozens of Muslim houses including his own in Pauktaw were burned to the ground and a 91-year-old Muslim woman was tossed into the fire by a Buddhist mob in the neighbouring village of Thebyu Chai. He says he does not bear grudge against his Buddhist neighbours. “We all were victims. The Rakhine Buddhists were also used by those who wanted to exploit the religion for attacks against Muslims,” he said, while sitting on the bamboo floor of the house he rebuilt after the violence…