“Sittwe” and “The
Venerable W.” present the festering relations between the Rohingya and
Buddhists
EARLIER this month a
man was killed in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, when a mob used bricks
to beat him and six others. He was a Muslim Rohingya, they were Rakhine
Buddhists. The incident was far from unique: clashes between the minority
Muslims and majority Buddhists have become more frequent since October, when an
attack on three border guards by Rohingya insurgents left nine police officers
dead. But it does make “Sittwe” (pictured), Jeanne Hallacy’s latest
documentary, more urgent. She hopes that the film will help people not only to
understand the cycle of violence in the country, but to break it, too.
Animosity between
Muslims and Buddhists in the country dates back to the 1940s, but tensions have
heightened since 2012 when a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered—allegedly by
three Muslim men. “Nobody knows if a Muslim or a Buddhist killed her,” says a
protagonist in “Sittwe”, but communal violence in 2012 claimed at least 80
lives and displaced more than 100,000. Violence has reverberated throughout the
country, but Rakhine remains the epicentre of the strife. Not only is it one of
the poorest parts of Myanmar, it is also the home of more than 1m stateless
Rohingyas, whom the Burmese authorities regard as illegal immigrants and thus
treat with contempt.
Yet “Sittwe” does
not present a one-sided picture. Ms Hallacy has chosen to focus her lens on two
young characters on each side of the divide—a 16-year-old Muslim girl and a
16-year-old Buddhist boy—who live in displacement camps. Both saw their homes
burn. Both take to the camera and tell their side of the story. Both are asked
to envisage their future in Sittwe. The simple juxtaposition of the two
testimonies, with just enough background for the viewer to understand the
conflict, makes for a powerful 20-minute film. Ms Hallacy, who had been
blacklisted from Burma in the late 1990s for smuggling Aung San Suu Kyi’s video
messages out of the country, spent two years “bullshitting [her] way into
camps” to capture footage.
If the two teens are
given the same amount of attention in the film, they offer different
perspectives. The Muslim girl sparkles, delivering messages of tolerance that
could be taken directly from the Buddha’s tenets. The shyer Buddhist boy seems
more receptive to extremist rhetoric. “We used to live together, but then
[Muslims] got the idea of taking over and making this their own country,” he
says. “They destroyed their own houses. Some Muslims even burn their own
mosques.”
If this sentiment
sounds familiar, it is because it is borrowed from Ashin Wirathu, a Burmese
Buddhist monk and the spiritual leader of the country’s anti-Muslim movement.
He is the subject of “The Venerable W.”, the last instalment in Barbet
Schroeder’s “trilogy of evil” (his previous subjects were Amin Dada, a Ugandan
dictator, and Jacques Verges, a lawyer renowned for defending war criminals).
Mr Schroeder shows Wirathu firing out racist monologues and sermons to masses
of devotees. Fragments of Buddhist scripture can be heard in the background,
highlighting the contradictions between the inherently peaceful teachings of
the Buddha and the bilious message of his so-called disciple. The film
culminates with the incendiary monk atop a hill, watching the smoking ashes of
a village where violence between Muslims and Buddhists has erupted. It is a
powerful symbol of cause and effect, rather like the documentaries themselves.
One focuses on the instigator of hatred, the other on its victims.
Though these films
neatly complement each other, they are being received rather differently. “The
Venerable W.” was shown with pomp at Cannes, while “Sittwe” was banned from the
Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival in Yangon. This year’s
edition was dedicated to Miss Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, with censors
deeming the movie “religiously and culturally inappropriate”. Phil Robertson,
the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, brands the decision
as “ludicrous”. The ban, he explains, reveals the government’s authorities
persistent bias against the Rohingya and the reluctance to present them as
victims in any capacity. “The Rohingya
have been put in a separate, untouchable category by the government, and any
real discussion of their situation gets tarred with the same brush.”
“Sittwe” found an
audience in Thailand instead. For Lia Sciortino Sumaryono, the director of
Southeast Asia Junction, a non-profit organisation which hosted the screenings
in Bangkok, the issue is relevant to the whole region. “Extremists movements
are increasingly regionalised,” she says, pointing at the several contacts
between extremist Buddhist networks in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and
those of Islamist groups in the Philippines and Malaysia.
“The Venerable W.”
and “Sittwe” offer some insight into a social and religious quagmire. Were the
country open to talking meaningfully about relations between Buddhists and
Muslims, the films could form part of the discussion. As it is not, acts of
violence are likely to continue.