By Kyaw Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar (AA) – An ultra-nationalist monk-led group in Myanmar has backed down from a demand for an apology from the ruling party, with social media rife with rumor that the anti-Muslim group may soon be disbanded.
During a trip to Singapore two weeks ago, Yangon Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein publicly questioned the need for the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion (better known as Ma Ba Tha), while underlining that the country already had a government-sponsored committee — the State Sangha Mahayanaka Committee — tasked with regulating Buddhist orders.
Senior monks from Ma Ba Tha subsequently threatened a nationwide campaign against the minister July 7 if Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) failed to apologize.
On Tuesday, however, the demand was withdrawn.
“We have found that it is just Phyo Min Thein’s personal comment, and not representative of the government’s policy,” Ma Ba Tha said in a statement.
“Therefore, we don’t need to pay any attention to his personal comment,” it added.
The statement also urged supporters across the country to keep calm, and not to participate or organize protests against the minister.
The backtracking comes as rumors of dissolution of the group spread online
Unidentified documents that appeared on Facebook on Monday claim that all 47 senior members of the State Sangha Mahayanaka — also known as Ma Ha Na — decided Monday that Ma Ba Tha is an unlawful organization under the Sangha (monk) Organization Law
On Tuesday, the Myanmar Times reported that Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein had met with Ma Ha Na monks on July 7 to discuss the dissolving Ma Ba Tha.
“When he appealed to Ma Ha Na, he clarified that he had said in Singapore that Ma Ba Tha should be dissolved because there is already an official Sangha organization, and Ma Ha Na accepts this is the truth,” Tun Nyunt, director of the Yangon Region religious department was quoted as saying.
Tun Nyunt added that a decision on whether to proceed in dissolving Ma Ba Tha will be made at a two-day gathering of senior monks at an artificial cave near Yangon’s Kabar Aye Pagoda on July 13 and 14 .
Anti-Muslim rhetoric from Ma Ba Tha — in particular from firebrand Mandalay monk Wirathu — has been seen as deliberately stoking the flames of religious hatred in the country, with Wirathu blaming Muslims of attempting to Islamize the country of 57 million people which is around 80 percent Buddhist.
The group recently held protests to demand the NLD implement harsh policies toward the country’s minority Rohingya Muslims, and that foreign embassies refrain from using “Rohingya” to refer to the Muslim ethnicity, instead describing them as “Bengali”, which suggests they are interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh.
The government, however, is trying to rebuild relationships, in particular in western Rakhine State, where communal violence between ethnic Buddhists and Muslims since 2012 has left dozens dead, around 100,000 people displaced in camps and more than 2,500 houses burned — most of which belonged to Rohingya.
