Myanmar Plans To Eradicate Rohingya Identity

Authorities sealed off villages in Myanmar's only Muslim-majority region and in some cases beat and arrested people who refused to register with immigration officials, in what may be the most aggressive effort yet to force Rohingya to indicate they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Immigration officials, border guards and members of the illegal-alien task force in the northern tip of Rakhine state — home to 90 percent of the country's 1.3 million Rohingya — this year, in addition to questions about marriages, deaths and births, people were classified by ethnicity.

Residents said those who refused to take part suffered the consequences.

"We are trapped," Khin Maung Win said last week. He said authorities started setting up police checkpoints outside his village, Kyee Kan Pyin, in mid-September, preventing people from leaving even to shop for food in local markets, work in surrounding paddies or take children to school.

"If we don't have letters and paperwork showing we took part — that we are Bengali — we can't leave," he said.

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which has been advocating on behalf of the Rohingya for more than a decade, said residents reported incidents of violence and abuse in at least 30 village tracts from June to late September. 

Most worrying to many, the government has largely stood by as Buddhist extremists have targeted Rohingya, sometimes with machetes and bamboo clubs, saying they pose a threat to the country's culture and traditions.

Denied citizenship by national law, members of the religious minority are effectively stateless. They feel they are being systematically erased.

Almost all Rohingya were excluded from a U.N.-funded nationwide census earlier this year, the first in three decades, because they did not want to register as Bengalis. And Thein Sein is considering a "Rakhine Action Plan" that would make people who identify themselves as Rohingya not only ineligible for citizenship but candidates for detainment and possible deportation.

Most Rohingya have lived under apartheid-like conditions in northern Rakhine for decades, with limited access to adequate health care, education and jobs, as well as restrictions on travel and the right to practice their faith.

In 2012, Buddhist extremists killed up to 280 people and displaced tens of thousands of others. About 140,000 people of those forced from their homes continue to languish in crowded displacement camps further south, outside Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital.

Many villages were placed under lockdown, with police checkpoints set up to make sure only those who have cooperated could leave, more than a dozen residents confirmed in telephone interviews with The Associated Press.

In other villages, the names of influential residents were posted on community boards with verbal warnings that they face up to two years in jail if they fail to convince others to take part in the registration process, Lewa said. Other Rohingya say officials forced them to sign the papers at gunpoint, or threatened that they would end up in camps like those outside Sittwe if they didn't comply, she said. In some cases residents say authorities have shown up after midnight and broken down doors to catch residents by surprise and pressure them to hand over family lists.

Villagers also have been kicked and beaten with clubs and arrested for refusing to take part, according to Lewa and residents interviewed by the AP.

Rohingya said they didn't want to register family members because they worry the information might be used to deny them citizenship.

As international pressure mounts to end abuses against Rohingya, the government has agreed to provide citizenship to anyone who qualifies. But many Rohingya say they cannot meet the requirements, which include submitting documents proving that their families have been in Myanmar for at least three generations. And under the plan Thein Sein is considering, even that would not be enough for people who insist on calling themselves Rohingya rather than Bengali.

When Buddhists Go To War

On October 1, Muslims in the coastal village of Thabyuchaing in the northwest of Burma fled into the surrounding forests as their homes were torched and left to burn by a sword-wielding Buddhist mob. Not everyone was lucky enough to escape: five Muslims, including a 94-year-old woman, were killed in the attack. 

The incident was an all too familiar reminder of the ethno-religious tensions and sectarian violence that continue to plague Burma’s nascent democracy. While Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese MP Aung Sung Suu Kyi has become the face of a liberalized Burma in the West, her domestic dominance is being increasingly challenged by Ashin Wirathu, a monk Time magazine described as the “face of Buddhist terror. ” Wirathu and his followers have been at the forefront of a campaign of ethnic and religious violence that has threatened to derail the country’s already fragile democratic transition.

Burma’s progress is vulnerable due to the lingering legacy of decades of military rule. The country’s first foray into democracy began in 1948, when it gained independence, bringing an end to over a century of British imperial rule. However, in 1962 a military led coup succeeded in overthrowing the civilian government, beginning a period of socialist military rule that ended in 1988. That year there was another coup establishing the State Peace and Development Council (or the military junta, as it is more commonly known) as the ruling body of Burma. The Buddhist establishment remained a bastion of Burmese national identity and security throughout this turbulent half-century. During this time, religious leaders were only occasionally critical of these successive regimes. It wasn’t until the last decade that religious leaders within various communities began to take a significant role in the country’s political development.

The 2007 Saffron Revolution demonstrated the capacity for change that these Burmese Buddhists wield. In what began as a student led protest against rising costs of living, monks across Burma began a campaign of civil resistance that brought the government to a standstill. Throughout the summer and early fall, monks marched through the cities and sat en masse in public squares and historic sites in defiance of the junta. In September, monks across the country suspended spiritual services to the military, a powerful symbolic move for a devoutly Buddhist country. When the government responded with force and brought the short-lived revolution to a bloody end, the crackdown was met with both domestic and international outcry as well as an outpouring of support — particularly for the monks who had dared to stand up to the military regime.

Burma’s history of ethnic and religious struggle extends beyond Buddhist political protest. Even before the 1962 coup, the central government had been in a near perpetual state of conflict with a variety of secessionist groups, perhaps most notably the Kachin people of northern Burma, who have been sporadically fighting a war of independence from the country since 1948. Within the last decade in particular, these conflicts have taken on a decidedly more internal character. The state of Rakhine, an epicenter of ethno-religious violence on the Bangladeshi border, has a history of Mujahedeen-inspired Muslim separatist movements. Recently, however, the violence has been predominantly Buddhist-on-Muslim. Oppression of the Rohingya, an ethnically Bangladeshi Muslim group who primarily reside in the state of Rakhine, has reached largely unprecedented levels, as Buddhist extremists have started burning Muslim holdings to the ground and forcing the Rohingya from their land.

The conflict between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Burma appears to be ethnic cleansing in the making. Muslims make up only 4 percent of Burma’s population of approximately 55 million people. However, they are heavily concentrated in the country’s western half — comprising 40.75 percent of the total population of Rakhine  and 96 percent of the population along the border with Bangladesh. As of June this year, an estimated 200 Muslims have been killed and 150,000 have been displaced. Even more worrisome is the fact that Buddhist extremism in Burma is widespread. Other extremist Buddhist movements, such as the GAM in Aceh and the Buddhist radicals in Sri Lanka are relatively minor. In Burma, however, this manifestation of radical prejudice is just the latest chapter in a history of abuses.

Muslims have long been perceived as culturally and socially separate from the rest of Burma. While the country has never been culturally or ethnically homogeneous, the Rohingya have attracted an unusually fierce vitriol due to their practice of Islam, leading to historical and systematic discrimination. The laws in place restrict the number of children they are permitted to two per couple. Even more disheartening, many Burmese see the current anti-Muslim violence as an inevitable and justified backlash against Bengali land-grabbers.  Prominent members of the Buddhist institution, especially Ashin Wirathu, have only encouraged this attitude.

Always traveling in a motorcade with 60 of his closest followers, Wirathu — the self described “Burmese bin Laden”  — is at the heart of the growing tide of anti-Islamic rhetoric. While his self-assigned title may seem something of a paradox given his mission to drive Muslims out of Burma, the charismatic 45-year-old has proven himself as masterful and adept as his namesake at inciting religious hatred. A fierce polemicist who described coexistence with Muslims as “sleep[ing] next to a mad dog,” he describes the threat posed by Muslim communities in apocalyptic terms. “They will overwhelm [Burma] and take over our country,” said Wirathu, adding that they will “make it into an evil Islamic nation.” And like bin Laden, he has a keen eye for his media presence. DVDs of his speeches are sold on street corners. An enthusiastic user of YouTube, his followers post his fiery, anti-“Islamification” sermons, which Atlantic columnist Alex Bookbinder has noted “would not be out of place at Nuremberg.”

Born in the small town of Kyaukse in central Burma, Wirathu is no stranger to controversy. In 2001, he became involved with the 969 movement, a Buddhist nationalist organization. Two years later, he was found guilty by the military junta government for giving critical speeches that allegedly incited religious conflict. In 2010, he was released from prison as part of a conciliatory gesture by the military junta, and ever since, Wirathu has come to be seen as the 969 movement’s spiritual protector and leader.

The 969 movement purports to be a non-violent organization that stands for the protection of Buddhist values and national identity in Burma. But their actions reveal that their mission is in fact a narrowly defined racial and religious jingoism. The movement has its origins in a book written in the late 1990s by U Kyaw Lwin, a religious official in the military junta. Throughout Southeast Asia, the number 786 has special significance for many Muslims as a numerical representation of the phrase “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful.” In his numerological treatise, Lwin makes the argument that Muslims are in fact conspiring to take over Burma in the 21st century — premised on the absurdly conspiratorial fact that 7 plus 8 plus 6 equals 21. The number 969 has a similar significance. It was chosen as a cosmological defense because of its allusions to the “three jewels” of Buddhism: Buddha’s nine attributes, the six principles of his teachings, and the nine attributes of monastic order. Emblems of the 969 Movement are increasingly popular throughout Burma, with supporters proudly displaying the iconography in their homes, businesses and on their vehicles. Some stores juxtapose their emblems with signs proudly claiming that they do not stock Muslim goods.

As is often the case in states with uncertain futures, minority groups are scapegoats for the nation’s economic woes. Comparisons of modern day Burma to Nazi Germany are not entirely unwarranted. Wirathu has pointed to the affluence of a few Muslims as proof that the Burmese economy is at the whim of Islam, conveniently overlooking the legacy of crony capitalism that has enriched the military administration, none of whom are Muslim.The Burmese population at large, however, has seized upon these claims, and there is swelling support for Wirathu’s call to boycott Muslim businesses. His goal is to cut off the ability of Muslims to engage in commerce. By depriving them of their means of subsistence, Wirathu and other members of the 969 movement ultimately seek to drive Muslims from the country.

As is common among ethno-nationalist movements, Wirathu’s proclaimed goal is simply to protect the purity and integrity of the Burmese state. In a February speech he warned that if Muslims are allowed to become too wealthy their “money will eventually be used against you to destroy your race and religion.”  At the same rally, Wirathu also invoked the need to protect the innocence of Burmese women who would be “coerced or even forced to convert to Islam.”  It hardly needs restating that  the protection of women is compelling rhetoric that has been used by movements from the KKK to the National Socialist party. Its efficacy in Burma, unfortunately, has been readily apparent.

This insular notion of purity is common among many Asian states due to their shared religion. Buddhism has played an influential role in many countries throughout the region, and it has particularly helped unify Burma, a country cut off from much of the world by geography and political circumstance. Despite the fairly diverse ethnic makeup of Burma, Buddhism has proven to be the country’s most significant integrating factor. Its near-complete dominance and perceived cultural integrity explain in large part the hostility displayed toward Muslims who are branded perennial outsiders. The significance of monasticism to Burmese society cannot be overstated. There are over 500,000 monks in Burma  and an additional 75,000 nuns, meaning that roughly one percent of the population is part of the Buddhist institution. Furthermore, since monastic education in Burma is free, many of the poorest families will opt to send their children to study in monasteries. Buddhist religious education is commonplace amongst all strata of society, as almost all Burmese children receive a supplementary Buddhist education akin to Sunday school. This overwhelming preponderance of not merely Buddhist observance, but also Buddhist veneration, helps to explain the religion’s central role in Burmese identity and the enormous impact that it has on average citizens.

In June 2012, Burma experienced a paroxysm of ethnic riots in Rakhine, and it’s not hard to link the corrosive influence of Buddhist institutions to the widespread violence.  While the proximate cause of the 2012 June riots was the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by a group of Rohingya Muslim men, the ensuing attacks and counterattacks by Rakhine and Rohingya communities were the inevitable product of pent-up frustration in an unequal system. Buddhist mobs in Rakhine, whipped into a frenzy by extremists like Wirathu, began indiscriminately attacking Rohingya men in a search for the perpetrators. The Rohingya responded with violence fueled by years of discrimination and neglect of their own.

In October of the same year, riots broke out again, but the cause was unclear. By the end of 2012, an estimated 168 people had been killed in the riots with a further 150,000, mostly Rohingya, displaced. While camps have been set up to aid in the resettlement process, they present only a stopgap solution, a temporary bandage for the scars of ethnic conflict. To many observers, the question is, “Why now?”

Burma stands at a precarious moment in its history. For the first time in over 50 years, democracy seems like a real possibility. However, internal and external forces have proven a stumbling block for suffrage. The discovery of vast natural resources in Burma, ranging from precious stones to fossil fuels, has elevated the democratic movement to one of global concern. Foreign actors have not undervalued Burma’s resource wealth. While the United States has approached Burma with a soft touch, China has taken a far more aggressive track, particularly in regards to securing resource extraction contracts.

Burma’s newfound riches will only stoke the flames. Militant ethno-nationalism often has arisen as a symptom of sudden resource wealth in emerging states around the world. Developing states with plentiful natural resources are often heavily exploited by foreign powers. Coupled with the possibility of enormous wealth, foreign exploitation might only produce an even more aggressive nationalism that endangers Burma’s ethnic and religious minorities.

Mongolia today is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, in large part due to its massive copper and coal reserves; it’s also home to a fledgling neo-Nazi movement. As paradoxical as a Mongolian neo-Nazi movement may sound, it is no more contradictory than militant Buddhists. The Tsagaan Khass, or White Swastika, as the group is known, has tried in recent years to rebrand itself as an environmental movement looking to protect Mongolia’s resource sovereignty, and ensure that the nation’s blood is “pure.” The group’s leaders are concerned that if Mongolian society starts “mixing with the Chinese, they will swallow us up.”  The situation in Mongolia bears more than a passing resemblance to that in Burma. While the White Swastika does not have the same widespread appeal as the 969 movement, they are both indicative of how these ethno-nationalist movements develop in response to perceived threats by historical rivals, particularly during periods of uncertain economic growth. While both Mongolia and Burma have vast resource wealth, they lack domestic extractive capabilities, forcing them to rely on foreign investment. This loss of resource sovereignty produces anger and resentment, particularly in economically marginalized groups who are susceptible to the scapegoats proffered by the likes of Ashin Wirathu and the White Swastika.

While transitional instability and resource nationalism may have played a role in Wirathu’s growing support, his success is still contingent on deeply held racial and religious prejudice. The Christian minority in Burma has not been the target of hate crimes, despite being the religion of the Kachin, who have waged a decades-long war of independence. The persecution of Muslims, then, can be seen as the cumulative product of systemic and ingrained bigotry, which has been violently catalyzed by economic and political instability. In other words, there’s a reason that Buddhist attacks have focused on one ethnic minority, rather than all vulnerable groups.

Last July, a bomb exploded a few yards away from Ashin Wirathu as he delivered another sermon on the Muslim threat. Unharmed and undaunted, Wirathu has continued to deliver sermons around the country. In the last year, the 969 movement has gone from fringe extremists to a national movement with growing support. There are even fears that the current administration has intentionally allowed Wirathu’s campaign of violence to proceed unabated in order to justify continued draconian national security measures. As he capitalizes on the underlying racial and religious prejudices that have swirled to the surface of Burmese society, over 150,000 Muslims find themselves without a home. While moderate monks and more liberal citizens have begun to push back against this metastasizing violence, recent events have shown that political circumstances can lead even Buddhists astray from the path to enlightenment, and into the foreboding brambles of racial violence.

(By Edward Clifford)

Anti-Muslim Monk Wirathu Inciting Hatred

"Whatever (the Muslims) do they do it with their 'national' Muslim interests in mind. They have designs against our country, our faith and our society. They now have monopoly over the construction sector in Rangoon. They have come to dominate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. Even she is only riding the niggers' cars. All these national dissidents such as Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Ko Naing dare not speak a word about the Rakhine Crisis (during which our brethen Rakhine are suffering at the hands of the Bangali). Our national political emblem has been replaced by the Islam's symbol of beards! They are the worst violators of human rights and religious freedom. So, you Buddhist lay public must do everything with the (anti-Muslim) nationalist ethos. Only do business and socially interact with those who embrace 969 ethos of economic boycott and societal exclusion and ostracism against the (Muslim) enemy". 

Myanmar’s Buddhist Bigots

There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more appealing than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, and scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and psychology.

Even some of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure. For most of its Western sympathizers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar take a very different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh. Early Muslim settlements there date from the seventh century. Today, in a nation that is 90 percent Buddhist, there are some eight million Muslims, of whom about one in six is Rohingya.

For the Myanmar government, however, the Rohingya simply do not exist. The government is conducting a national census; 135 ethnic categories are listed on the form. One ethnicity is conspicuously absent: the Rohingya, who the government insists must define themselves as “Bengalis” (that is, as foreigners). “If we ask a family about their ethnicity and they say Rohingya, we will not accept it,” a presidential spokesman, Ye Htut, said recently.

The problems faced by the Rohingya are far graver than a refusal by the state to acknowledge their identity. Their very existence is under threat.

Since 2012, there has been a vicious series of pogroms against the Rohingya. Villages, schools and mosques have been attacked and burned by Buddhist mobs, often aided by security forces. Hundreds of Rohingya have been killed, and as many as 140,000 people — more than one in 10 of the Rohingya population— have been made homeless. A report last September from the independent Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention suggested that “recent violence has moved beyond mere pogroms” and toward “the ethnic cleansing of entire regions.”

The anti-Muslim campaign has been led by Buddhist monks, who say their actions are in keeping with the demands of their faith. The principal anti-Rohingya organization, the 969 movement, takes its name from the nine attributes of Buddha, the six qualities of his teachings and the nine attributes of the monks. Its leader, a monk named Wirathu, has reportedly called himself the “Burmese Bin Laden.” Muslims, he told an interviewer, “breed quickly and they are very violent.” Because “the Burmese people and the Buddhists are devoured every day,” he argued, “the national religion needs to be protected.”

The extremist monk has proposed a “national race protection law” under which a non-Buddhist man wishing to marry a Buddhist woman would have to convert to Buddhism and obtain permission from the state. The proposalhas won support from Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, and may become law by the end of June.

How do we reconcile the perception of Buddhism as a philosophy of peace with this ugly reality of Buddhist-led pogroms in Myanmar?

Few would suggest that there is anything inherent in Buddhism that has led to the persecution. Instead, most would recognize that the anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar has its roots in the nation’s political struggles.

The military junta that came to power in 1962 has frequently sought to build popular support by fomenting hatred against minority groups. It has stripped the Rohingya people of citizenship, and placed restrictions on their travel, education and land ownership. It has even imposed a “two-child policy” on Rohingya families, to limit their population.

Paradoxically, the recent successes of Myanmar’s democracy movement have only worsened the problems of the Rohingya. In an effort to bolster its position, the government has sharpened its rhetoric of hate, while opponents of the regime have refused to support the Rohingya for fear of alienating the Buddhist majority.

The leader of the democracy movement, the Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been shamefully silent, willing only to condemn violence in general. Members of her National League for Democracy are openly involved in extremist anti-Rohingya organizations. It is not that tenets of the Buddhist faith are responsible for the pogroms, but that those bent on confrontation have donned the garb of religion as a way of gaining a constituency and justifying their actions. What is true of Myanmar applies to many other conflicts involving religious groups — from Pakistan to Nigeria, from Indonesia to the Central African Republic. The spawning of such violence has led many to see religion itself, and Islam in particular, as the root of conflict.

Religion does, of course, play a role in these confrontations, but it would be wrong to see them as purely religious. When groups vying for political power exploit religion, its role is often to establish the chauvinist identities by which other groups are demonized and the actions of one’s own are justified.

The anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar may make us doubt our preconceptions about Buddhism. It should certainly make us question the stance of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, generally seen in the West as a fearless warrior for liberty.

While many Western observers acknowledge the political roots of Myanmar’s sectarian violence, it is notable that few are willing to be as nuanced about other conflicts involving Islam. Perhaps the plight of the Rohingya will prompt us also to think again about global confrontations where religion plays a role, and will push us to adopt a less black-and-white view.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and the author of “From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Aftermath.”

The Hidden Genocide Of Rohingya Muslims

Time For Soft Talk With Myanmar Is Over

An OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) delegation, which included foreign ministers and senior officials from its member states Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Djibouti, and Bangladesh recently visited Myanmar. It was led by the OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. The OIC delegation pressed for unhindered access of humanitarian aid to all affected people and communities, including Rakhine (Arakan) State, without any discrimination. They also stressed the need for clarifying misconceptions and misunderstandings on both sides and for building mutual trust and interfaith community harmony.

As has become the norm in this mostly Buddhist country that has come to signify the den of intolerance and hatred of our time, the OIC delegation was, however, met by angry demonstrators, esp. in the Rakhine state, which has seen more than its share of ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minorities. Some 3,000 protesters, led by Buddhist monks, staged their demonstrations in Rakhine's capital Sittwe (formerly called Akyab) as they toured camps housing mostly displaced Rohingya refugees as well as some ethnic Rakhines and met local officials. The delegation's visit to Myanmar's commercial capital Yangon on Friday also saw nearly 1,000 people, carrying "No OIC" placards.

The protests of this kind - organized by the members of the central government and local administration, Buddhist politicians and monks - are nothing new. These are a show of defiance against everything noble and humane. These dark, hideous and savage forces of Theravada Buddhism want to hide their monumental crimes against humanity and want to starve to death the remnants of the Muslim minority who mostly now live in abject poverty as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in squalid camps.

Last year, the Buddhist government similarly did not allow the fact finding missions from international agencies, including the OIC, to tour the ethnically cleansed territories. It also did not allow opening up an OIC office in the Rakhine state. In the midst of government-sponsored protest demonstrations, the OIC had to pack up and leave, which only emboldened the savage regime and its supporters within the apartheid state to repeat their crimes against the Rohingya - who, according to the UN, are the most persecuted people on earth - and other Muslim minorities.

So the plight of the Rohingya and other Muslim minorities continues unabated inside apartheid Myanmar. In ethnic cleansing drives in this country, the victims are usually the Rohingyas and yet they end up in the prisons (and not the Buddhist marauders) overwhelmingly. A peaceful demonstration may cost them their lives in this Mogher Mulluk. The same security forces which did nothing to stop lynching of Muslim victims have no moral qualms in killing them unprovoked for staging a peaceful demonstration. 

As has been noted by the Associated Press on November 24, 600 Rohingya Muslim men were recently thrown in jail in this remote corner of Myanmar during a ruthless security crackdown that followed sectarian violence, and among one in 10 who didn't make it out alive.

An eyewitness described that when she visited the jail, the cells were crammed with men, hands chained behind their backs, several stripped naked. Many showed signs of torture. Her husband, Mohammad Yasim, was doubled over, vomiting blood, his hip bone shattered. "We were all crying so loudly the walls of the prison could have collapsed," the 40-year-old widow said. "They killed him soon after that," she said of her husband. Her account was corroborated by her father, her 10-year-old son and a neighbor. "Other prisoners told us soldiers took his corpse and threw it in the forest." "We didn't even have a chance to see his body," she said.

In early November, three Rohingyas were killed. One Rohingya man was murdered by Rakhine villagers when collecting firewood in the forest. Another two were killed and four wounded after riot police opened fire during clashes. In Pauktaw Township the situation remained tense with many of the remaining Rohingya villagers being forced into an IDP camp allegedly for their own security by army and police. Many are afraid because the camp, funded by an international aid group, is very close to a village with only Buddhist Rakhines.

Buddhist security forces have been allowed to operate with impunity. As a result of such brutality, unfathomed discrimination by state authorities and their obvious collusion with the Rakhine (Magh) extremists towards never-ending pogroms life has only gotten worse for Rohingya. They see no way out but to board rickety boats for Bangladesh, or make the perilous journey to Malaysia. Many have already drowned trying when their boats capsized.

In spite of Myanmar's Government's zealous efforts to hide its complicity and crimes against humanity, truth has been leaking out. Consider, for instance, the testimony of Mr. Thomas H. Andrews, President and CEO of United to End Genocide on September 19, 2013 in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. In that, he provided his first-hand account of visits made in Burma. He travelled to Rakhine State in the west where he visited eight IDP camps and spoke with dozens of desperate IDPs. He also travelled to the central and northern area of Mandalay and the city of Meiktila where he visited neighborhoods and met with many people and families who continue to live in fear and desperation. He also came across Muslims in Rangoon whose fear and intimidation was on the rise in Myanmar.

During his trip, Mr. Andrews was blocked by security forces at roadside checkpoints from visiting IDP camps. The reason was clear. They did not want him to hear what had happened to the Muslim community inside Myanmar. Nevertheless, the signs of destruction were everywhere and he was able to see burnt out buildings and destroyed Mosques, meet with those who had to literally run for their lives after watching their homes and everything that they had worked for destroyed. They were living in abject poverty in makeshift camps wanting desperately to return and rebuild their village but also utterly terrified by the Buddhist mobs, Myanmar security forces and police even more.

Throughout his travels, Mr. Andrews heard stories of systematic discrimination, isolation and blanket oppression where every aspect of life of members of the Muslim minority was controlled. 

People described living in constant fear of violence within their communities and intimidation by authorities. The right to move from one village - or even one street - to another, the right to earn a living, to get married, to have more than two children and even the right to live with one's own family was often dependent on the permission of authorities and most often only after the payment of bribes. 

He found that hate speech - a precursor of genocide - was prevalent in Burma. Fueling it was a systematic, well organized and well funded campaign of hatred and bigotry known as "969". It followed a well established pattern: 

1) Campaign organizers arrive in a village, distributing DVDs, pamphlets and stickers that warn Buddhists that their religion and their country were in peril as Muslims seek to eliminate both and establish a Muslim caliphate; 

2) Villages are invited to a special community event to hear a message from venerable Buddhist monks about how they can protect their families, nation and religion; 

3) Radical nationalist monks arrive at the designated time and deliver fiery hate-filled speeches warning that Muslims are plotting to destroy Buddhism and take control of the nation. Villages are encouraged to support the movement by signing petitions, and displaying "969" stickers on their homes and businesses. They are encouraged to only patronize those who displayed the stickers and boycott any Muslim owned or operated business. 

As I have documented earlier, the hateful rhetoric of these radical Rakhine monks and the "969" campaign is ominously reminiscent of the hateful propaganda directed at the Tutsi population and their sympathizers in the lead up and during the Rwandan genocide, let alone the Nazi-led Holocaust more than half a century earlier. 

Demanding the expulsion of all Rohingya from Burma, these monks urge the local population to sever all relations with not only the Rohingya, but also with what are described as their "sympathizers". Labeled as national traitors, those Buddhists who associate with Rohingya Muslims also face intimidation and the threat of violence. 

Gregory Stenton, President of Genocide Watch, documented eight stages of genocide - Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial. Human rights watchers have long concluded that the Rohingyas are facing genocide in Myanmar, and this crime must be stopped. 

Last week (Tuesday, November 19) the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee passed a resolution urging Myanmar to give the stateless Rohingya minority equal access to citizenship and to crack down on Buddhist violence against them and other Muslims. 

In its response, an official of the Myanmar government said that it will not allow itself to be pressured by a U.N. resolution. Presidential spokesman Ye Htut insisted in a posting on his Facebook page that the government does not recognize that there is a group called Rohingya, referring to them instead as Bengalis.

As I have noted above, such defiance by the rogue Myanmar regime is not new and unless checked vehemently it will continue to defy the world community. 

The elimination of Muslims there has become a national project enjoying widespread support from Nobel disgrace Suu Kyi to president Thein Sein. 

Thus, the UN has to go beyond passing soft resolutions that don't bite the rogue regime. 

A reading of history shows that genocide succeeds when state sovereignty blocks international responsibility to protect its persecuted group. It continues due to lack of authoritative international institutions to predict it and call it as such. It happens due to lack of ready rapid response forces to stop it and lack of political will to peacefully prevent it and to forcefully intervene to stop it.

Since founding of the UN, at least 45 genocides and politicides have taken place in our world resulting in deaths of some 70 million people. It is a shameful record that needs to be improved. 

The time for soft talk with Myanmar is over. It is high time for the UN Security Council to authorize armed intervention in Myanmar by a UN force under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. 

The Mandate must include protection of Rohingya civilians and humanitarian workers and a No Fly Zone over the Rakhine state. The Rules of Engagement must be robust and include aggressive prevention of killing. The major military powers (e.g., the USA, Russia and the UK) must provide leadership, logistics, airlift, communications, and financing. 

If Myanmar will not permit entry, its UN membership should be suspended. Myanmar's leaders should be tried in an international criminal court for committing and aiding crimes against humanity. Nothing short of these will be able to stop these savage criminals. Sooner the better!

*****

Dr Habib Siddiqui has authored 10 books. His latest book - Devotional Stories - is now available from A.S. Noordeen, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

State Complicity In Myanmar Pogroms

By Tom Fawthrop

The government of Myanmar's President Thein Sein, so active in its efforts to assure Western governments and investors that the new Myanmar will never return to the dark days of the previous ruling military junta, has so far wholly failed to prevent the contagious spiral of brutal attacks on Muslim communities carried out in town after town by suspiciously well-organized Buddhist gangs.

Thein Sein's periodic appeals for ''an end to communal violence" are less than convincing given the absence of any government measures or plan to stem the anti-Muslim tide and prevent the next outbreak. Leaflets and magazines denigrating Muslims are being churned out every day across the country.

Extremist Buddhist monks, meanwhile, continue to spread a perniciously xenophobic version of Theravada Buddhism through inflammatory sermons directed against a Muslim minority that comprises only 5% of the population in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million.

Muslim shops and homes in Lashio in Shan state were [the more] recent victims of a Buddhist motorbike gang in June. Shan researcher Sai Latt told Asia Times Online that "the government and the police are not doing anything at all to clamp down on extremist hate propaganda against Muslims."

The killings of Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state in the west of the country that started the violence in 2012 has spread this year to the wider Muslim population. In March, systemic arson razed to the ground 1,300 Muslim houses and shops in the central town of Meikhtila. Armed Buddhist gangs later brought terror to 14 peaceful Muslim communities in towns and villages in central Myanmar. Acting with total impunity, they moved south to Pegu division, unleashing another wave of havoc in Okkan district.

So is the violence the inevitable result of reformist changes and allowances for more freedom in Myanmar with the emergence of a quasi-civilian government after 50 years of brutal military repression?

Certainly this is what presidential spokesman Ye Htut would have us believe. "We cannot avoid this time of chaos," Ye Htut told AFP news agency. He insisted the wave of hate speech and violence targeting Muslims was the "ugly by-product" of new freedoms allowed by the reformist government.

Whereas the former general and current deputy minister of information claims the government "cannot control the chaos", Sai Latt, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada, claims that there is a clearly orchestrated pattern to these anti-Muslim attacks.

"Prior to the riots, anti-Muslim literature arrives in a town, followed by monks preaching '969' sermons in the vicinity. On the day when violence breaks out, truckloads of strangers including monks have appeared on the scene. In each case an incident takes place that triggers the anger of the Buddhists." The numerals "969" symbolize the virtues of the Buddha, Buddhist practices and the Buddhist community.

Shortly after that all hell breaks loose as angry mobs cry "Kill the Muslims", attack mosques and set fire to their homes while carefully avoiding damage to nearby Buddhist-owned shops and houses.

According to Sai Latt, "there is never any preventive action. Whatever happened or however things turned out, the president's spokesman, Ye Htut, will blame Muslims and cover up the incidents on his Facebook page."

The central town of Meikhtila bears the ugly legacy of recent anti-Muslim violence. Large sections of the town have been reduced to rubble and a few broken walls - all that remains of what used to be a thriving Muslim community of almost 1,300 houses shops and mosques. This correspondent found compelling evidence of state complicity among the eye-witness accounts of the actions of residents during the four days of mob attacks on the Muslim community, which resulted in at least 41 deaths.

Bill Davis, former Burma project director for Physicians for Human Rights, and Andrea Gittleman, the group's senior legal advisor, reported that "In Meikhtila, investigators found that police were complicit in the violence against Muslims ... they marched unarmed Muslims toward an armed civilian mob, then refused to protect them from beating, stoning, and murder; they did not help injured Muslims; and they failed to apprehend perpetrators.

"The police force's actions in Meikhtila are in violation of the UN code of conduct for law enforcement officials, and the general lack of an effective response from the central government is a monumental failure to protect its citizens from organized and targeted violence," they said in a report.

Brutal efficiency
The United Nations has sounded similar notes. On March 26, UN Secretary General Special Advisor on Burma Vijay Nambiar said that Muslims were "clearly targeted" during the violence and that the attacks were carried out with "brutal efficiency".

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said he received reports of "state involvement in some of the acts of violence, and of instances where the military, police and other civilian law enforcement forces have been standing by while atrocities have been committed before their very eyes, including by well organized ultra-nationalist Buddhist mobs."

Ashin Issariya, one of the monks who led the 2007 "Saffron revolution" protests against the previous military government, has noted that Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar have lived together harmoniously for decades, a statement repeated many times by both Muslim victims and Buddhist monks in Meikhtila and other places recently engulfed by the flames of hatred and the destruction of Muslim properties.

A recurring theme from locals is that "outsiders" are bussed in by trucks and nearly all of them are armed with sticks, swords and machetes. An incident soon happens between a Muslim and a Buddhist that provides the spark and then the gangs swing into action, agitating and enlisting locals to join the ensuing riot. Muslim homes and shops are demolished and along with them previous inter-communal and religious harmony.

Buddhist monk Ashin Issariya told Asia Times Online: "This is a well-planned campaign by a group of people who use religious bigotry to further their political ambitions. Certain forces yearn for the return of a military government. General Than Shwe [the supreme leader of the former ruling military junta] is more powerful than President Thein Sein."

Thiha Saw, editor-in-chief of the Open News Journal and vice president of the Myanmar Journalists Association, recently said: "Overall we have a history of religious harmony in the country. But the anti-Muslim card is the trump card, used by the military at critical times. It is an old trick. The Buddhist mobs attacking mosques are outsiders. These so-called Buddhists are often hired from the ranks of the unemployed and it is alleged they receive training from former military officers."

Buddhism in Myanmar has been battered and divided by the anti-Muslim campaign. Extremist monks, led by U Wirathu and his now infamous "969" campaign targeting Muslims, have garnered worldwide attention for their racist views. But Buddhist networks who assert the teachings of Buddha and the path of peace, religious tolerance and social justice have largely been ignored, both by international and local media.

At Meikhtila's Zay Yar Bun Buddhist monastery, senior monk Udamme Thara said, "I know more than a 1,000 Muslims fleeing from their attackers received sanctuary inside our monasteries. I am sure almost all temples provided safety and saved their lives."

Ashin Issariya's network of 800 monks, meanwhile, provided humanitarian aid to the victims of Meikhtila while at the same time organized many trucks with rice, clothes and other aid to be sent to internally displaced people (IDP) camps for fleeing Muslims.

Okkan-based Buddhist monk Shwe Nya told a gathering of monks, "We need to work together to stop this violence. This is not only good for Okkan, but good for Myanmar," reported the Irrawaddy, a Burmese newsmagazine and website. "If this conflict spreads to the whole country based on religious issues ... there will be a coup. So if this continues to happen, Myanmar is headed in a dark direction."

If a military faction or hardliners inside the cabinet are playing the anti-Muslim card, the real objective is probably not to stage another coup. The dark direction is more likely to be a process of entrenching the armed forces role in the country's new quasi-civilian configuration, a ploy to convince the grass roots population that a strong army is still needed to protect the nation from falling into further chaos. But in the process irreparable damage has been done to inter-ethnic harmony and the country's international reputation.

Tom Fawthrop is an author, a journalist and a director of the Mekong documentary Where Have All the Fish Gone?, about the danger of damming the mainstream river. He is based in the region.

Massacre Of Muslims In Myanmar Ignored

Todd Pitman:

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar -- Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home.

Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive.

The mobs that March morning were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. The victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it – students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Myanmar who were so close to being saved.

In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged cowering, hands atop their heads, they only had to make it to four police trucks waiting on the road above.

It wasn't far to go – just one hill.

What happened on the way is the story of one of Myanmar's darkest days since this Southeast Asian country's post-junta leaders promised the dawn of a new, democratic era two years ago – a day on which 36 Muslims, most teenagers, were slaughtered before the eyes of police and local officials who did almost nothing to stop it.

And what has happened since shows just how hollow the promise of change has been for a neglected religious minority that has received neither protection nor justice.

The president of this predominantly Buddhist nation never came to Meikhtila to mourn the dead or comfort the living. Police investigators never roped this place off or collected the evidence of carnage left behind on these slopes. And despite video clips online that show mobs clubbing students to death and cheering as flames leap from corpses, not a single suspect has been convicted.

International rights groups say the lack of justice fuels impunity among Buddhist mobs and paves the way for more violence. It also reflects the reality that despite Myanmar's bid to reform, power remains concentrated in the hands of an ethnic Burman, Buddhist elite that dominates all branches of government.

"If the rule of law exists at all in Myanmar, it is something only Buddhists can enjoy," says Thida, whose husband was slain in Meikhtila. Like other survivors, she asked not to be identified by her full name for fear of retribution. "We know there is no such thing as justice for Muslims."

The Associated Press pieced together the story of the March 21 massacre from the accounts of 10 witnesses, including seven survivors who only agreed to meet outside their homes for security reasons. The AP cross-checked their testimony against video clips taken by private citizens, many with the date and time embedded; public media footage; dozens of photos; a site inspection, and information from local officials.

The day before the massacre began like every other at the Mingalar Zayone Islamic Boarding School – with a call to prayer echoing through the darkness before dawn.

It was Wednesday, March 20, and 120 drowsy students blinked their eyes, rising from a sea of mats spread across the floors of a vast two-story dormitory.

Set behind the walls of a modest compound in a Muslim neighborhood of Meikhtila, the all-male madrassa attracted students from across the region whose parents hoped they would one day become Islamic scholars or clerics.

The school had a soccer pitch, a mosque and 10 teachers. It also had a reputation for discipline and insularity – the headmaster, a strict yet kind man with a wispy beard, only allowed students outside once a week. Muslims made up about a third of Meikhtila's 100,000 inhabitants, compared with just 5 percent of Myanmar's population, and they lived peacefully with Buddhists.

The Muslims, though, were nervous after sectarian clashes in western Rakhine state in June and October last year killed hundreds and drove more than 140,000 from their homes. Both times, the madrassa shut down temporarily as a precaution.

The unrest was aimed at ethnic Rohingya Muslims, who have lived in Myanmar for generations but are still viewed by many Buddhists as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh. The hatred has since morphed into a monk-led campaign against all Muslims, seen as "enemies" of Buddhist culture.

When classes began on March 20, student gossip quickly turned to an argument on the other side of town between a Muslim gold merchant and a Buddhist client, which had prompted a crowd of hundreds to overrun the shop and set it ablaze.

That afternoon, several Muslim men yanked a monk off a motorcycle and burned him to death. Buddhist mobs in turn torched Muslim businesses and 12 of the city's 13 mosques.

In Mingalar Zayone, some teachers skipped courses. Then classes were canceled altogether.

Students rushed to the dormitory's second floor and gazed out of the windows, in shock. Black and gray columns of smoke were rising in the air.

At dinner a couple of hours later, the sound of a teacher weeping filled the hall. His family home had been burned with his parents inside it. Some students pushed their food away.

As the sun slunk in a hazy sky, a Buddhist government administrator came to the gate of the madrassa and took the headmaster aside.

"You need to get your students out of here," he warned. "You need to hide. The mobs are coming – tonight."

At sunset prayers, the headmaster told everyone to collect their valuables, their money, their ID cards – and prepare to leave. He asked them to remove their head caps, Islamic dress and anything that might identify them as Muslim.

He never explained why. He didn't have to.

"If they try to destroy this place, we'll do our best to stop them," he said. "But whatever happens, we will not let you die."

After dark, they crept deep into a swampy jungle of tall grass a block away called the Wat Hlan Taw, and the tall reeds swallowed the school's refugees whole.

Most were students and teachers. But at least 10 women and their children were also among them, relatives or residents too terrified to stay in their own homes.

They sat down in the mud. Nobody said a word.

Soon, they heard the mob approaching – dozens, maybe hundreds of voices, a cacophony of menace and anger that grew louder by the second.

The voices were at the gate of their madrassa. And then they were inside, kicking in doors and smashing windows.

In the darkness of the Wat Hlan Taw, a teacher named Shafee with a stomach ailment reached for his wife's palm and squeezed it hard.

"If they find us," he whispered nervously, "you know I won't be able to run."

"Don't worry," his wife, Thida, replied, cradling their 3-year-old son in her arms. "We'll be together, every step. I'll never leave you."

As the long night wore on, the madrassa burned down.

At 4 a.m., Buddhist prayer gongs rang out, and the mobs began shining flashlights into the Wat Hlan Taw. Some Buddhists fired rocks into the bush with homemade slingshots.

"Come out, Kalars!" they shouted, using a derogatory word for Muslims.

The Muslims ran to a neighboring compound, owned by a wealthy Muslim businessman. Some tore down a bamboo fence to get inside.

The mobs were not far behind.

Thida heard a boy screaming behind her, a student who had been trying to call his mother on his cell phone.

He had waited just a few seconds too long to run.

As the first rays of dawn touched Mingalar Zayone, Koko, a quiet, heavy-set 21-year-old student, peered over the compound's thin fence and felt numb. Men clutching machetes and sticks were girding for a fight outside.

Hundreds more were gathering on a road running across a huge embankment that shadowed the neighborhood's western edge. The embankment had always been there, but now it seemed to seal them inside the bottom of a huge, oppressive bowl from which they could not escape.

Koko could almost feel the blood draining from his cheeks. He felt weak, no longer human.

"We're trapped," he thought, "like animals."

Some students were frantically making calls for help – to parents, to police. Some were chanting loudly. Others were scouring the property for anything they could use to defend themselves – wooden boards, rocks the gangs outside had thrown at them.

By the time an opposition lawmaker, Win Htein, arrived around 7:30 a.m., dozens of helmeted riot police were on the scene. The security forces, equipped with rifles and gray shields, had formed lines to keep the Buddhist hordes away from the Muslims.

Win Htein saw the head of police and the district commissioner standing nearby, and the bodies of two dead Muslims on the edge of the Wat Hlan Taw. Over the next 45 minutes, he watched in horror as mobs of men chased five more students out of the bush, one by one, and hacked or bludgeoned them to death in broad daylight.

As stone-faced police officers stood idle just steps away, crowds cheered like spectators in a Roman gladiator show.

"They must be wiped out!" one woman shouted.

"Kill them all!" shouted another. "We must show Burmese courage!"

Win Htein felt nauseous. He wanted to vomit. In two decades of prison and torture under brutal military rule, he had never seen anything like this.

When he tried to convince people in the crowds to spare the Muslims, the mobs began threatening him. One Buddhist man demanded bitterly: "Why are you trying to protect them? Are you a Muslim lover?"

An officer advised Win Htein to leave.

Shortly after, a monk and four policemen offered to escort the trapped Muslims on foot to several police vehicles on top of the embankment.

"We'll protect you," one officer said. "But the students must stop chanting. They must put down their weapons" – their sticks and stones.

As the teachers debated what to do, they realized their time had run out. The crowds were flinging long bamboo staves wrapped with burning fabric over the fence like giant matchsticks. The compound was on fire, belching orange flame and black smoke into the air.

The group emerged slowly with their hands behind their heads, like prisoners of war.

Police led them down a narrow dirt track – a long line of desperate people, crouching in terror. Almost immediately, they were stoned by livid residents of a tiny Buddhist neighborhood who attempted to block their way.

What followed was a gantlet from hell, an obstacle course that came with its own set of macabre rules: Do not run, or they will chase you. Do not fall, or you may never get back up. Do not stop, or you may die.

Police fired several rounds into the air, but the crowds attacked anyway. A teacher was knocked to the ground, and panicked students stepped over his body, sprawled face down in the dirt.

Koko saw a friend hit across the forehead with a hoe. When he tried to stand again, five men with knives dragged him off.

The mobs then attacked Koko with machetes from behind, slicing six palm-sized gashes into the flesh of his back. Blood stained his yellow shirt. He fell and blacked out.

One officer, struck in the face by a rock, apparently by accident, shot a Buddhist man in the leg. The crack of gunfire woke Koko, who realized he had been left for dead and leapt to his feet to catch up with the group.

As they moved inside the Buddhist neighborhood on the path to the trucks, police ordered the Muslims to squat down.

Crowds taunted and slapped them. Several women forced them to bow their heads and press their hands together in prayer like Buddhists. And according to testimony gathered by Physicians for Human Rights, they also shoved pork, which is prohibited in Islam, into the mouths of the Muslims.

One man swung a motorcycle exhaust pipe into a student's head. Another hit him with a motorcycle chain. A third stabbed him in the chest.

"Don't kill them here," yelled one monk. "Their ghosts will haunt this place. Kill them up on the road."

The monks said the police should round up the women and children and let them go first. When Thida refused to let go of her husband, a Buddhist man shoved a palm in his face and forced them apart. Another man she recognized tried to grab her 3-year-old.

"He's still breast-feeding. Leave him alone!" she shouted, pulling away.

The man then grabbed her 9-year-old, but pushed him back in disgust when he wailed.

Amid the confusion, one Buddhist woman hurriedly waved two of Thida's teenage daughters into her home to protect them, in an act of kindness. Both would be reunited with Thida several days later, unharmed.

As Thida and about 10 women and children climbed the hill, several riot police pushed back the stick-wielding crowds around them with open palms. A video reviewed by the AP records a man trying to dissuade the mobs, saying: "Don't do this. There are kids there as well."

But the violence continued.

Buddhists still clearing the Wat Hlan Taw forced a thin 17-year-old student named Ayut Kahn out into an open patch of low grass. In a scene captured on video by at least two different unidentified people, the boy – a Meikhtila native with a stutter who loved soccer – was struck 24 times by nine people with long sticks and bloody machetes. Five blows were from a monk.

"Look! Look!" one Buddhist bystander shouted from the top of the embankment as the student was murdered. "The police are heading down there, but they aren't doing anything."

The last time Thida saw her husband, he was struggling to climb the hilltop road where she waited anxiously beside police. Two teachers were by his side, their arms locked in his. Mobs swarmed the steep embankment between them.

Shafee's face was pale. He had never looked this way – so exhausted, so drained, so helpless.

Across the hillside, Thida could hear the cries of hate.

"Kill the Kalar! Don't leave any of them behind!"

"Clean them up! They are just dirty things!"

Somewhere below, several students tried to make a run for it. Crowds chased them.

Somebody pummeled 14-year-old Abu Bakar across the cheek with a bamboo stick. Somebody else sliced the back of 20-year-old Naeem's legs with daggers. Yet another clubbed Arif – the teacher who had wept at dinner the night before – to the ground.

Police stood on both sides of the hill watching, unmoved. When a boy sitting with them at the bottom of the slope looked up, an officer slapped his head and shouted: "Keep your eyes down!"

A frantic monk waved a multicolored Buddhist flag screaming for the killing to stop. "This is not the Buddhist way!"

The crowd backed away briefly, but police left the wounded behind.

One video clip of the moments that followed shows seven Muslim men curled on the ground beneath a grove of rain trees. The faces of at least three are heavily covered in blood. A man in a green jacket swings a bamboo stave down on the wounded with all his might.

The camera pans to another group of three other crumpled men. One is Shafee, who is lying face down, pulling his legs in toward his stomach.

"Oh, you want to fight back?" a voice says, laughing.

A grainy video filmed shortly after shows flames leaping from a pile of 12 charred corpses in the same spot, and onlookers backing away from a smoky body rolling down the hill. Another video shows crowds cheering.

Thida could only smell the burning flesh. She hugged the leg of a police officer standing beside her and asked: "Hey, brother. Please. Please. What is happening to us?"

"Shut up, woman," the officer replied. "Keep your head down. Don't you know you can die here, too?"

In all the mayhem, several dozen police reinforcements arrived to escort the remaining Muslims to the hilltop and load them onto trucks.

As they pulled away, Koko knew he would never return to Meikhtila.

"There is nothing left of our lives here," he said to himself. "There is only Allah."

The trucks took the traumatized survivors to a police station, where they were offered water, and, by at least one officer, an apology.

In all, about 120 Muslims survived – among them, 90 students and four teachers. They stayed several days at a police station before being bused to another town to join their families.

The dead totaled 32 students and four teachers, according to the headmaster, who cross-checked their deaths with families and witnesses.

The head of state security in the region, Col. Aung Kyaw Moe, who ordered the rescue operation, said "10 or 15" died on the way. But video obtained by the AP, shot by unidentified witnesses touring the area after the killings, contradicts that claim. Two videos alone indicate at least 28 people died, most of them blackened corpses with fists and arms reaching into the air; one is decapitated.

When the people filming pass one body, a voice can be heard saying: "Hey, is that a child?"

"No, he's just short," another replies, chuckling.

The police present that day were the only ones with rifles and guns, which would have been no match for the crude weapons carried by the mobs. But while they rescued more than 100 Muslims, they did not stop the massacre of dozens of others.

"They were of two minds. We could see that," the headmaster said. "Some of them tried to help us ... but in the end, they all watched us die."

Win Htein, the lawmaker, said there were two explanations: Either the "police didn't get any order from above (to shoot), or they got the order from above not to do anything."

Aung Kyaw Moe, the regional security chief, insisted he had given authorization to fire. But he said police didn't shoot because "doing so could have angered the crowds and made the situation even worse."

He said even though 200 police were deployed to the area, the crowds outnumbered them, and Muslims died because "some of them tried to run."

"They scattered and our forces could not follow every one of them," he said. "They had to take care of the rest of the people they were guarding. ... On the front lines, some things cannot be clearly explained."

During a tense 50-minute interview, Aung Kyaw Moe said he was "satisfied" with the job police had done.

But he grew increasingly agitated, saying five times that it was "inappropriate" to ask for details because "you're not writing a novel, you're not making a movie ... you don't need to know."

The first people prosecuted for the violence in Meikhtila were not the Buddhist mobs. The first were Muslims.

On April 11, a court sentenced the gold shop owner and two employees to 14-year jail terms for theft and causing grievous bodily harm. On May 21, the same court sentenced seven Muslims to terms ranging from two years to life for their roles in the killing of the monk the day the unrest began.

On June 28, a Buddhist man was convicted of the murder of a Muslim elsewhere in Meikhtila and sentenced to seven years in jail, according to state prosecutor Nyan Myint. He said 14 Buddhists have been charged and are on trial for the Mingalar Zayone killings, some for murder, but none has yet been convicted.

Justice "is a matter of time," he said. "The courts are proceeding with the trials and have no prejudice or bias against any group."

Aung Kyaw Moe, the security chief, said all those arrested were residents of Meikhtila, but he gave no other details.

No police have been reprimanded.

Similar patterns of justice have played out in other towns.

After Buddhist mobs burned several villages in the central town of Okkan in April, the first convicted was a Muslim woman accused of starting it by "insulting religion." She had knocked over the bowl of a novice monk. Muslims say it was an accident.

And after more Buddhist mobs rampaged through the eastern city of Lashio in May, setting Muslim shops alight, the first convicted was the Muslim man authorities say triggered the unrest by dousing a Buddhist woman with diesel fuel and severely burning her.

One Muslim man was killed in each incident, but no one has been prosecuted.

After the massacre in Meikhtila, the corpses rotted for at least two and a half days before the government sent workers to haul them away, some on garbage trucks. The remains were taken to Meikhtila's main cemetery, where they were simply burned again in an open patch of red dirt with used car tires and gasoline and left for stray dogs to pick through.

Authorities say they did not hand the bodies back to the relatives of the dead because they were too badly burned to be identified. But families of those slain say they were never even asked, and never given the chance to bury their loved ones according to Islamic rites.

No Muslim families have dared visit the cemetery or return to the massacre site.

The mood in the neighborhood is still hostile to outsiders. When AP journalists visited the area, residents stared silently.

One barefoot woman washing clothes beside a well where a pile of charred corpses were dumped claimed she had no idea what happened that day, because she wasn't there.

Her friend looked up and said: "Tell him what started it. Tell him about the gold shop, the monk who was killed."

Ma Myint shook her head, squinting up briefly in the direction of the hilltop.

Those bones "mean nothing to me," she said.

The school's headmaster pulls out a single sheet of blue-lined paper from his pocket. On it, handwritten, are the names and ages and hometowns of the dead.

What bothers him the most isn't the decision he made to take his students into the Wat Hlan Taw, or the nightmares he has had since. It's that those who were slaughtered could have been saved.

Most of those beaten to the ground did not die immediately, he says.

"Had anybody stepped in to help them even then, to push back the mobs, to pick them up and take them to the hospital – they could have lived," he says.

He has told many of the 90 students who survived to lie low and not testify for fear of reprisal. He dreams of gathering them together again and rebuilding his school elsewhere, but he is too afraid of sectarian violence flaring anew to say where or when.

"Where is safe in this Myanmar?" he says. "Who will protect us?"

On March 21, the headmaster urged his students not to fight back.

"Next time, we will defend ourselves," he says quietly, "because we know that nobody else will."