Buddhist violent extremism is one of the least known forms of extremism, especially for media in the West, and yet it poses a threat to religious minorities such as Muslims, Hindus, Christians, in Myanmar and Thailand.
Teresa Barross-Bailey of Moonshot CVE, UK has studied this phenomenon. She described it on the second day of the International Conference on Media and Conflict by the Pakistan Peace Collective and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Islamabad on Wednesday, February 12.
Background
Myanmar first came into being in 1948 and for a majority of its life, the military has been in power. It has for a long time, suppressed any kind of information coming into country and so Myanmar has been socially isolated. The military coups meant that they had had tight control on information.
This changed in 2011 when it opened to the world and the military allowed more democracy. Today the military shares a role with the civilian government. So it has not completely let loose the reins of power. Myanmar is also one of the best examples of a new country whose boundaries were drawn by Colonialism as well. It is a diverse country, with 135 recognised ethno-religious groups although this is an estimate and there may be many more who have not been recognized. Muslims fall in that category.
“Muslims form 5% of the population but they are the most oppressed,” Barross-Bailey said.
Sudden internet
In 2016-2017, the Muslim genocide started. Buddhist monks incited much of the violence against Rohingya Muslims on Facebook. By 2018, Facebook came under scrutiny globally for the material that had been posted. Since then, many Buddhist accounts have been suspended but they have moved to smaller, less policed platforms.
Teresa Barross-Bailey explained why this particular phenomenon exploded. Why Buddhist monks were able to spread hate faster, easier than they ever had before: Myanmar had just gotten the Internet.
“With the sudden advent of the internet people realized what the rest of the world looks like,” she said. “Nobody knew what was happening in the next town [before that].” Only North Korea had fewer phones than Myanmar.
SIM cards went from costing $150 in 2011 to less than $2 in 2019. State-controlled telecom became accessible in 2013. And in three years, 49m people had a phone. By last year, there was 105% penetration.
Nearly 40% of people in Myanmar get their news from Facebook, however. “Facebook has become the internet,” Barross-Bailey explained. “And this becomes dangerous when misinformation spreads in countries that have low digital literacy because of military dictatorships.”
“Many people believe there is no other social media platform,” she said. Just Facebook.
Anti-Muslim hate
Barross-Bailey studied the kind of hate being spread. One of the men who did this the most is called the Buddhist bin Laden, Ashin Wirathu, who has been even jailed for preaching hate against Rohingya Muslims. He ran a group called the 969, which in numerology is the opposite of 786, which Muslims consider the numeric interpretation of Bismillah.
Wirathu posted videos on YouTube saying Buddhists should not marry Muslims. The fear mongering spreads the idea that Muslims are trying to Islamise Myanmar by converting Buddhists.
Barross-Bailey told the story of Harry Myo Lin, a Muslim man in Yangon, who had posted photo with a Buddhist friend. Buddhist violent extremists used it to say, look, Muslim men are trying to convert Buddhist women. Harry was threatened as a result.
Other disinformation being spread is that the Rohingya are not from Myanmar but are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The monks call them Bangladesh terrorists.
Wirathu also spread economic disinformation by telling people to stop giving money or spending at Muslim shops because they were using that money to Islamise the country. Others have pushed the idea that Muslims were inherently violent.
“Facebook was criticized in 2018 for the way it let people spread hate speech and violence and failed to respond,” she said. “It was called the absentee landlord in the region. It ignored warnings for years.”
Facebook did not hire enough content moderators who spoke local languages so they used AI to translate posts but this proved a disaster. Reuters reported how one was translated:
Kill all Colours that you see in Myanmar no one should be left alive
I should not have a rainbow in Myanmar
Facebook reacted by hiring more moderators and taking people off Facebook. Military generals were kicked off. Monks were kicked off.
Barross-Bailey studied six weeks of posts and discovered that they included 11-minute videos by Wirathu urging people to study the Holy Quran, because he thought it encouraged extremism.
This man criticized the Sri Lankan government after the attacks they faced. See, he seemed to say, you humanized Muslims too much, now look what has happened. He even used global warming to spread his hate by arguing that it was a larger conspiracy by the US, UK, OIC to push Muslims into Myanmar as Bangladesh was experiencing rising sea levels.
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