ANALYSIS - Anti-Rohingya monk promotes Myanmar ‘Buddhist’ nationalism

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Maung Zarni

LONDON 

14.12.2020 

Monk’s description of ‘Buddhists truths’ superior to Universal Declaration of Human Rights is far from ground realities.

The writer is a Burmese coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia.

Exuding a palpable sense of spiritual and cultural superiority, a genocide-denying Myanmar Buddhist monk declared Myanmar’s “true nationalism” which is anchored in the “universal declaration of Buddhist truths” to be even superior to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It Isn’t Just the Rohingya. Myanmar Is Now Attacking Buddhists in Rakhine State, Too.

FP   

Jonathan Gorvett 

 October 31, 2019,

This latest battle could be the army’s undoing.

Three people walking along a road are seen during a government-organized visit for journalists in Buthidaung townships close to the surge of fighting between the Arakan Army and government troops in the restive Rakhine state on Jan. 25. Richard Sargent/AFP/Getty Images

 

MRAUK U, Myanmar—Here in the town of Mrauk U, in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, there has been little to celebrate during this October’s Thadingyut, the second-most important annual festival of the Buddhist calendar. Normally, the auspicious full moon would be hailed with a floating armada of delicate candlelit paper lanterns and song, theater, and dance.

Yet this year, there are no celebrations.