This is tragic and disappointing: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/7/16256164/myanmar-rohingya-muslim-flee-bangladesh-genocide-aung-san-suu-kyi
It is really hard to understand why Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has suffered persecution herself, would be silent in the face of the military crackdown targeting the Rohingya minority. The only explanation she has come up with is some "fake news" b.s.
Can't help but be curious as to what is going on in her head. Is Rohingyaphobia nested in her brain? Also disappointed in the Buddhists but there are different types, I guess. They vary from religiosity to mystic, I guess, and nationalistic religion can be nasty.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I hope Tom Blackburn is in a safer place as the monster hurricane approaches. I have relatives in the Miami area. Some evacuated to Orlando, others, the ones whose purpose in life us to frustrate the rest of us, are staying behind. Anybody else have relatives in the path?
What I am reading is that Myanmar has a troubled history of being a former British colony, had a long running civil war, suffered in WWI and WWII, had a military junta in power, and has extremist Buddhist sects (that just seems like an oxymoron). So maybe not that surprising that they are not treating a minority in an enlightened way.
DeleteYes, I hope Tom and his wife are safe. If one had family elsewhere it would be a good time for a visit.
Thanks for the concern, Stan. We are looking at a Cat 4 on top of us midday Sunday. We will be home for it. We are far enough inland to be outside the evacuation zone, which is based mainly on possible storm surge here. (The Keys are entirely evacuated because they are entirely subject to the surge.) The rule is, flee water and hide from wind. Unless the dike at Lake Okeecobee breaks, we should get a lot of water from rain, but I've driven with bow waves in Florida before.
DeleteThe highways and service stations are full of nut cases. I think some get in gas lines at service stations and then get in the next gas line they see on the assumption the tank will be low by the time they get to the pump.
Hiding from wind means ultimately lying under a mattress in an inner closet, if it comes to that. This will be our #4 hurricane in this house, and we haven't even lost roof tiles yet. We probably will be out of power for 7-10 days. If you don't hear from me it's because we are low priority with Florida Power and Light.
Be safe, Mr. and Mrs. Blackburn.
DeleteIs the Secret Service keeping Mara del Lago safe?
DeleteIf I could just muster a little more energy, and risk a quarter gallon of precious gas, I'd drive over and see what kind of hurricane shutters the mansion has. (If they are new, it's 50-50 they aren't paid for.) But it has stood up by itself through the years. It is in the mandatory evacuation zone, as is Rush Limbaugh, who is calling the hurricane a hoax (but hit the road for points North himself).
DeleteHang in there, Tom. One thing you have going for you is that the FL east coast has a strong slope, which reduces the inland reach of the surge. The most amazing thing to me is the low number of fatalities from those islands. That gives me a flicker of hope for my crazy relatives and everyone else caught in this monster.
DeleteI don't know what to say about Myanmar. I saw a state official on TV state flatly that the Rohingya do not exist. I mean, fake news, yeah. But fake people?
ReplyDeleteCan't figure out what Aung Sun is thinking. One factor I wish I knew more about is how the colonial power (Britain) treated the Rohingya. We know from Rwanda that divide and conquer (Hutu and Tuttis) and favoring one over the other was one source of the animosity between them and ultimately the genocide.
ReplyDeleteAnimosity toward Islam: is that one of the factors (e.g., India) or is it more likely ethnic? Without knowing more of this history it is very hard to understand what's going on...not that that would excuse such treatment.
From Wikepedia:
Delete"Early civilisations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma and the Mon kingdoms in Lower Burma. In the 9th century, the Bamar people entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Kingdom in the 1050s, the Burmese language, culture and Theravada Buddhism slowly became dominant in the country. The Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty, the country was for a brief period the largest empire in the history of Mainland Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur and Assam as well. The British took over the administration of Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the country became a British colony. Myanmar was granted independence in 1948, initially as a democratic nation and then, following a coup d'état in 1962, a military dictatorship.
"For most of its independent years, the country has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife and Burma's myriad ethnic groups have been involved in one of the world's longest-running ongoing civil wars."
The people in Myanmar (does one still call them Burmese, I have not seen "Myanmarese" used) have a problem with the name Rohingya. They prefer to call them Bengalese, supposedly they came from India, but it was a long time ago. The implication is that they belong somewhere else. Actually what it reminds me of is the situation of the Gypsies or Romani. Who also originated in India, and who also have suffered persecution.
DeleteI have two books, The Making of Buddhism Modernism, and Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhism Meditation and American Culture, both of which are only partly read.
ReplyDeleteMy general impression is that there have been both "internal" renewal developments in Buddhism in response to better historical knowledge and access to it roots. Like Christianity some of these renewal movements claim to be going back to the sources.
Also there have been "external" developments, largely through the contact with the West and spreading into the West, e.g. the whole attempt to map Buddhist and other Eastern conceptual frameworks into science, medicine, etc. e.g. mindfulness.
But there remains all the vast undeveloped Buddhism with all its regional variations.
So what we think of as Buddhism in the West, e.g. Thich Nhat Hanh seems to be both a development within Buddhism of its self interpretation but even more a transferred into the categories of the West, e.g. science, Romanticism, Protestantism.
I remember reading that some parts of Buddhism have been very militant in the past. Of course we probably now have not only Buddhist modernism but Buddhist fundamentalism in response to the West, and the fundamentalist tend to be militant.
Buddhism in the U.S., or at least as I have encountered it, seems very much of the Japanese variety (cf. Kyoto), meditative and spiritual..Thich Nat Hanh seems in that mold. The Met had an exhibit of Korean Buddhist artifacts some years ago...inclined to the smoking dragon school of idols, of course, some were many centuries old. It seems to me many Korean are now Presbyterians...
DeleteTom, stay safe! Please report in as you can.
ReplyDeleteNPR had someone talking about Myanmar's government policy. Basically said that it wasn't Aung San's fault, she inherited a problem, going to take time, fed government having difficulty getting localities in line. Sounded like a diplomat trying not to make waves, so frustratingly vague. I was doing a lot of driving around doing errands, so didn't hear the whole program.
Japanese-American friend raised Buddhist in California said the temple priests ran the same "racket" as all organized religions. Preach poverty, but take in a lot of money and make the priests' homes cushy.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it's that simple, but I expect that the Buddhists are as imperfect as Christians.
Here's a piece from Brookings on the Rohingya. It is somewhat unclear but it offers bit of info I had not seen before.
ReplyDeleteIt seems, for example that there are Buddhist in Rakeine (who also have issues with other tribes that are Buddhist). There seem to be several insurrections going in in Myanmar involving mountainous tribal groups. There have been Muslim insurrectionary forces among the Rohingya; the article is unclear about their provenance and whether or how they are linked to the group of Rohingya now under siege.
The author defends Aung San arguing that should she raise the issue, she would be out of power.
He also criticizes the global media for not treating the issue in depth. "I believe that much of the media commentary is misdirected. It fails to describe the complex origins of the problem and explain how intractable it is." True enough. Yet even this look "in depth" is not very substantial. Just thought to pass it on:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/09/13/no-simple-solution-to-the-rohingya-crisis-in-myanmar/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=56298642
Thanks Margaret, that explains some things. Still, one feels sorry for the innocents caught in the middle who just want to live.
DeleteInnocents are often caught up in the plans and plots of others.
DeleteAs the plight of the Rohingya gets more attention, more details come out about Myanmar and its history as well as about the responses in SE Asia. Yesterday I saw a piece tracing the emergence of Islamic organizing in SE Asia around their flight into Bangladesh. We can hope that may help raise voices to alleviate their plight. But would we be surprised that their plight will be used and abused by militants of many stripes, Islamic and Buddhist alike, even anti-refugee, anti-immigrant U.S. politicians.
Here's a link to the essay I saw at LobLog:
Deletehttp://bit.ly/2x7efcI
Lead paragraphs:
"Like the cause of the Palestinians, the Rohingya, albeit with a twist, have also become a battlefield for the Muslim world’s multiple rivalries and power struggles. Calls for military intervention on behalf of the Rohingya reflect efforts by competing Muslim states and non-state forces to be seen as defenders of a community under attack.
They also echo a greater assertiveness of Muslim states amid perceptions of waning US power and global shifts in the balance of power as well as a jihadist effort to reposition themselves in the wake of the demise of the Islamic State’s territorial base in Iraq and Syria.
To be sure, Muslim states are unlikely to marshal an expeditionary force capable of intervening in Myanmar. Nonetheless, calls for action signal thinking especially among bitter Middle Eastern rivals, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, that favours Muslim states projecting independent military force."
http://lobelog.com/rohingya-plight-feeds-muslim-assertiveness/
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