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Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of Myanmar’s army and the leader of last year’s coup, has launched a plan to build the largest sculpture of a seated Buddha as part of an attempt to build heritage as a patron of Buddhism.
But in the last year, soldiers under his command have killed nearly 1,500 people in a crackdown on military opponents who violate the first and most important principle of Buddhism: abstaining from death.
“Their Buddhism is a fake show, they don’t deserve to be called Buddhist. We don’t kill other people. What they are doing right now is anti-Buddhism, ”said Agga Wantha, a 30-year-old monk from Mandalay who led protests against the coup.
“They’re saying they’re Buddhists, but they’re just taking over the country.”
Min Aung Hlaing has resorted to the methods used in the past to claim some legitimacy in this 90 percent Buddhist country that has been under military control for most of the last 60 years.
This means an alliance with high-ranking monks and a reminder of the devotion of high-ranking officers to the Buddha, despite the ongoing campaign of violence.
Goodbye, alms and scorched earth
In late October, it was launched by the military burnt land campaign in Thantlang, In northwestern Chin State, destroying hundreds of buildings and forcing thousands to flee their homes.
A few days later, Min Aung Hlaing visited several monasteries in Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar, saying goodbye and giving alms. Among the monks he met was Bhamo Sayadaw, chairman of the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Commission, which oversees the government-appointed body of high-ranking monks, Buddhism and the clergy of Myanmar.
Visits to the military leadership of prominent monks are published almost daily in the state media as part of the public relations effort. A report by the United States Peace Institute last month showed that public demonstrations by pro-Buddhist militants had almost quadrupled since the coup.
“The army has been very clear about using religion as a selling point. If you are a monk in society, you have the full respect of the people. That is why the military wants to use it, because it is a very effective tool for manipulating society, ”said Sai Thet Naing Oo, a representative of Myanmar, at the Pyidaungsu Institute for Peace and Dialogue, which works to gather different political voices. Myanmar.
“So while he can do many other things, Min Aung Hlaing always takes the time to visit well-known monks.”
“Almost everyone hates it”
The army has been heavily opposed by civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party since the removal of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in a coup deemed necessary for fraud. November 2020 elections.
A strong resistance movement arose almost immediately, with demonstrations and a massive civil disobedience movement developing a decentralized network of armed groups, known as the People’s Defense Force (PDF), a country now in regular conflict with military troops.
The international community has also condemned the regime, imposing sanctions on the United States and the European Union against the business of various military and military leaders. At the United Nations, the country continues to be represented by NLD government-appointed ambassadors.
With desperate domestic resistance and a lack of international support, they are desperate for help from the military, according to Richard Horsey, a Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group.
In early September, military authorities announced the release of Ashin Wirathu, a monk known for his Buddhist nationalist views. a stubborn anti-Muslim stance.
Horsey says the military has maintained some distance from Wirathur and has not yet completely “thrown itself behind the 100 percent one-hundred-percent nationalist Buddhist agenda” but wants to hold on to the hard-line factions.
“They don’t have a lot of friends. They want to keep or get as many friends as they can in a context where almost everyone hates them, ”Horsey told Al Jazeera.
“Clearly this is one of the cards that Buddhist nationalism can play, one of the ingredients that can be made available, and it is certainly something that is being sent signals, even if they have not yet fully followed it.”
Military efforts to use Buddhism and Buddhist nationalism as legitimizing tactics have also spread internationally.
Min Aung Hlaing Sitagu is courting Sayadaw, who was spotted on the left at a ceremony in Naypyidaw in 2017, which he had previously defended by the military over repression against the Rohingya. [File: Hein Htet/EPA]Min Aung Hlaing’s second-in-command, General Soe Win, visited Russia in September to oversee the arms deal, aided by Sitagu Sayadaw, another controversial monk known for his harsh opinions. Horsey explained that probably part of that decision was a “credibility issue” and that traveling with a monk “shows that you have religious protection.”
Sitagu, a favorite of the regime, was one of the top thousands of monastic voices in 2017 in the “cleansing operations” of 2017. mostly Rohingya Muslims were killed and hundreds of thousands of people fled to nearby Bangladesh. Sitagu defended military action, saying that “non-Buddhist people are not human beings, so killing them is justified.” It is now the repression of the Rohingya a genocide investigation.
Although the military does not embrace Buddhist nationalism in its entirety, it seems to have resumed. old strategy directing its attacks to places in the country with large non-Buddhist populations.
“You see more armed conflict happening in most non-Buddhist areas these days. They [the military] don’t say they’re attacking a group of people of another religion, but you can see who they’re targeting. They let their actions speak for themselves, ”Sai Ook told Al Jazeera, referring to the recent attacks on Chin, an 85 percent Christian and Kayah, the country’s largest Roman Catholic community.
Religious discrimination
The military has also used Buddhism in its attempts to tarnish the legitimacy of its opposition by launching campaign campaigns against the rapidly growing resistance movement and arrested leaders.
Articles published in the state media accuse PDF fighters of killing monks, saying that “terrorist groups deliberately kill Buddhist monks as a faith recognized by the vast majority of citizens.”
Prior to the coup, the military also portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD as “insufficient in favor of Buddhism” to ban clerical support, raising fears that the civilian government was too liberal and secular, according to Horsey.
This line of attack has continued since the coup. In a speech in August, Min Aung Hlaing said that “devotees of the Buddha were desperate for their faith in Buddhism for the past five years,” referring to the time when the NLD government was in office.
But this propaganda, despite being embraced by some monastic communities, especially its hardest members, presents a very different picture of the experience of religious minorities in Myanmar.
Salai Za Uk Ling, who serves as deputy chief executive of the Chin Human Rights Organization, a rights-based group representing the Christian-majority Christian population, says that even when Aung San Suu Kyi was in office, Buddhism was a dominant force. politics.
“Christianity is considered a foreign religion [Myanmar] and Christians have been treated as second-class citizens. Under the civilian government, we have changed almost nothing in terms of policies: politics has appeared in a more subtle way, but there has been no real serious effort to address the root causes of discrimination against religious minorities, ”Za Uk said.
“And what we’re seeing in today’s military junta is just a continuation of this long policy.”
However, despite the NLD’s similar stance on Buddhism, the army seems to have some influence against Aung San Suu Kyi and now the resistance movement.
Some monks say the military is breaking Buddhist orders with indiscriminate crackdowns and bombings, such as the Thantlang attack in Chin town in October. [File: Chin Human Rights Organization via AP Photo]In times of political unrest, monks used to lead protests. In 2007, “The Saffron Revolution“, named for the color of the monks’ clothing, exploded in response to rising fuel prices, and for more than a month thousands of monks flooded the streets across the country.
But monk and protest leader Agga Wantha says the lack of visibility of the monks in the anti-coup movement is not because the clergy support the military. Rather, he says, many monks have been unable to participate openly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and those involved who have joined the army are being overshadowed by senior monks.
“After the military coup, Min Aung Hlaing has given the monks a bribe to be on his side and won the favor, but we don’t want civilians to think we don’t support it. [protest movement]. We, as monks, also disagree with the military taking over the country, ”said Agga Wantha.
However, to strengthen power as the military relies on religion and its alliances with the clergy, the military is turning to others within the Buddhist community in Myanmar, making it increasingly clear that they will not allow a regime to exploit their religion. which kills his people.
“It simply came to our notice then. If we find them on the street, they shoot us and, if we are unlucky, they arrest us too, ”said Agga Wantha. “This is not what Buddhists are doing, so we will continue to protest.”
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