10 November 2015•Update: 10 November 2015
By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu has warned Myanmar’s National League for Democracy against attacking a controversial set of “race and religion” laws when it takes power following what looks certain to be confirmed as a landslide victory in the country’s historic election.
Wirathu, a notorious anti-Muslim cleric who has publically supported the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), was speaking to local media Tuesday as millions welcomed early results suggesting Aung San Suu Kyi’s party had secured at least 70 percent of seats in parliament.
Wirathu’s Ma Ba Tha group recently celebrated the passing of four laws condemned by rights groups that give authorities the ability to restrict births, interfaith marriages and religious conversions.
The bills are seen as specifically targeting minority Muslims and sped through parliament by the government. It is believed that the NLD's small group of incumbent MPs voted against the bills.
The monk told the Myanmar Times during an interview at a monastery in the central city of Mandalay that he was “worried” by the NLD’s victory in the Nov. 8 poll, which party officials say have handed them at least 380 seats. The final official count will not be known for days.
He has been accused of provoking anti-Muslim violence with fiery sermons warning that members of the religion are poised to overrun Myanmar and are an existential threat to Buddhism, the national religion.
His words will add to uncertainty about the role of a populist Buddhist nationalist movement now that the ruling government that supported it appears to have been crushed in Myanmar’s first credible election for decades.
David Mathieson, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Myanmar, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday: “I doubt an NLD victory is capable of stemming Wirathu's racist vulgarity, but Sunday's polls can be viewed as a tacit repudiation of Ma Ba Tha's agenda.”
He added: “The next government should not just avoid courting the ultra-nationalists, but seek to counter their messaging with a defence of basic rights, religious tolerance and pluralism.”
Wirathu said in the Myanmar Times interview he will “be happy” if the NLD forms the government “and they do good things.”
But added that “if they attack the race and religion laws, I will speak out.”
Since the country began liberalising in 2011, when President Thein Sein released hundreds of political prisoners and relaxed media censorship, Muslims have become the target of communal riots across the country.
Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes by Buddhist mobs, who have burned down entire villages and butchered men, women and children with crude weapons.
The military-backed regime has been accused of tacitly supporting the pogroms and many activists believe that anti-reform elements are have helped orchestrate them in an attempt to discredit Suu Kyi.
One of the former political prisoner’s biggest dilemma’s in recent years has been her inability, or unwillingness, to speak out in defence of minority Muslims for fear that it would damage her party’s chances at the polls.
Ma Ba Tha has branded the NLD the party of “Islamists” and allegedly broke Myanmar’s election laws by using religion to sway voters against the party.
Suu Kyi faced criticism after failing to field a single Muslim candidate for the poll. A senior official in the party admitted that the exclusion was a move to appease Ma Ba Tha.
Dozens of other Muslim candidates were excluded by the election commission on dubious citizenship grounds, and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims were unable to vote Sunday because the government bowed to calls from ultra-nationalists to exclude them.
