Buddhist monk says Muslims and Christians are dogs,
interlopers
In a sermon posted on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/1kq2Z-c0j58 earlier
this month, a Buddhist monk delivers a warning to his audience about Muslims
and Christians in Myanmar: “Do not underestimate them.”
Referring to Myanmar as a
‘Buddhist country’, the monk explains his fear of the two religious minorities,
which he admits are small but implies are growing.
“If their groups are stronger,
what will they do to us? They will fight back,” he says, apparently aware that
his chickens will one day come home to roost.
“It has been an unreasonable
claim of [some] Buddhists that the population of Muslims and Christians is
increasing. The monk talked about it in the video and showed his irrational
fear,” said Aung Kaung Myat, who translated the sermon into English.
Research published by Harvard’s
Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation in 2013 concluded that
there is no evidence of a Muslim population boom in Myanmar.
Throughout the sermon, the monk
confuses religion with ethnicity (and fails to recognize ethnicity as a social
construct altogether).
“In Myanmar, how many ethnic
races are there?” he asks.
The audience responds: “Kachin,
Kayah, Kayin, Chin, Mon, Bamar, Rakhine, Shan.”
“Is Kalar in the list?” the
monk asks the audience, using the derogatory term used in Myanmar to refer to
Muslims or to people with darker skin. “Is Christian on the list?”
“No,” the audience replies.
“They are not hosts; they are
guests…. They are interlopers in our house,” the monk says, reviving an idea
popularized by Sitagu Sayadaw, arguably the most prominent monk in Myanmar,
during the inter-communal conflict in Rakhine State in 2012 that left dozens
dead and over 100,000 Rohingyas displaced.
“This concept was started by
Sitagu, a famous monk in Burma, and it spreads like a meme. Basically, people
of religious minorities are seen as second-class citizens because they believe
in different religions,” said Aung Kaung Myat, the translator.
In 2012, Sitagu Sayadaw said:
“Buddhists are hosts and Muslims are guests; the guests must obey the hosts.”
The monk in the video
continues: “When a monkey takes over the throne, it is tolerable for us. A
monkey will leave after it has played around on the throne. But a dog will even
pee on it. That’s why [those with] wrong beliefs are like dogs.”
At the end of the video, the
monk describes Myanmar people as “the most incompetent race in the world” for
not achieving as much development as Muslims and Christians in the country
have. This refrain is often repeated by people seeking to justify Buddhists’
resentment toward religious minorities in Myanmar and toward international
organizations, which many Buddhists believe are disproportionately interested
in the wellbeing of the Rohingya in Rakhine State.
This sort of hate speech has
been going on in Myanmar for years and has been gaining frequency.
“It's not likely the audience
will start a riot after the sermon. But the content of the sermon will be
inside their heads for a long time,” said Aung Kaung Myat.
“What most upsets me is I heard
the voices of children in the video. He's inciting hate and violence into these
children's heads,” he added.
The monk in the video has not
yet been identified.