Bar manager goes on trial in Burma amid rising Buddhist extremism

New Zealand citizen Philip Blackwood. Pic: AP.

The prosecution of Rangoon bar manager Philip Blackwood for insulting Buddhism will come as no surprise to Burma watchers who have witnessed the steady rise of Buddhist fundamentalism and intolerance in Burma over the last few years.

Mr Blackwood, 32, a New Zealand national who was the general manager of the V Gastro Bar in Rangoon and two Burmese nationals – Tun Thurein the bar owner and Htut Ko Ko Lwin the bar manager – went on trial Friday after being held since December 10. The three men pleaded not guilty.

They are being prosecuted after they used a picture of Buddha in headphones against a psychedelic backdrop on a flyer advertising their bar.

Whilst Buddha images are highly revered in Buddhist countries like Burma and Thailand they are often fashionable icons with little spiritual significance in the West. The Buddha Bar franchise and its series of mix CDs which use Buddha images in their promotion have become very popular in Western countries and have spawned many imitators.

That is very possibly what inspired Mr Blackwood in his flyer design and seems to be confirmed by Lt-Col. Thien Win, the head of Bahan Police Station where the arrested men were taken. He told Irrawaddy: "He said he did it because using the Buddha in ads is in fashion internationally and thought it would attract more attention."

Whilst putting out such a flyer is undeniably culturally insensitive I suspect Mr Blackwood and westerners who hear about the case might deem his potential punishment of four years imprisonment overly harsh.

Irrespective of the sentence, if Mr Blackwood was not aware of the potential ramifications of his flyer design his Burmese partners should have been and should have stopped him.

They would have been aware of the rise of Burmese fundamentalism and sectaria intolerance manifested in the rise to prominence of the radical monk Wirathu, the 969 movement and the formation of Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, better known as Ma Ba Tha, in June 2013.

The offending image posted on Facebook, and later removed, by Philip Blackwood. Image via Facebook.

That Wirathu was put on the front cover of the international Time magazine with the headline 'The Face of Buddhist Terror' might have given a clue that not all Buddhists in Burma are easygoing live-and-let-live types that many uninformed Westerners assume them to be. The fact that the Burmese government banned that issue of Time from Burma would also indicate that it was perfectly happy to accommodate the Buddhist fundamentalists.

Wirathu had been in jail from 2003 until 2012 for inciting anti-Muslim hatred. He continued in the same vein as soon as he was released.

He started the 969 movement that is conducting a campaign of extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric and making wild claims of a Muslim plot to overtake the country. It called for a boycott of Muslim businesses and called for Buddhist businesses to identify themselves as such by displaying the numbers 969 on their businesses. Many did so, whether they agreed with the movement or not, because they feared losing business or retaliation from 969 supporters.

Another reason there was little opposition to the 969 movement was because, though it goes against many of the tenets of Buddhism, it has been promoted as a Buddhist solidarity movement aimed at strengthening religion, rather than an attack on Islam. This makes people who oppose the movement very wary of speaking out because they fear they will be seen as critical of Buddhism itself.

The formation of the Ma Ba Tha Committee was promulgated by 969 monks and driven by the same radical Buddhist views.

They have pressed for laws, which they argue are necessary to protect Buddhism and Burmese ethnicity. The centerpiece law is the Interfaith Marriage Law, which would make it illegal for a Buddhist woman to marry a man of another faith.

Hardline Burmese monk Wirathu. Pic: AP.

The speaker of parliament Shwe Mann pressed for such laws in February 2014. At the end of October 2014 thousands marched in Mandalay to demand the laws be bought in. At the beginning of December versions of the laws demanded by Ma Ba Tha were submitted to parliament for approval.

There have been other well-reported examples of Burmese Buddhist intolerance.

In March 2014 a female NGO worker in the Rakhine capital of Sittwe allegedly removed a Buddhist flag from a building and put it in her pocket. This was deemed as disrespectful by some locals as it put the flag close to her lower body. This resulted in rioting and violence being directed against NGOs in the area.

In October Htin Lin Oo, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) information officer, made a speech in which he criticised the use of Buddhism to promote extreme nationalism and intolerance.

After making the speech he was arrested and held without bail, and the NLD also sacked him from his position. At his bail hearing in court over 50 Ma Ba Tha members intimidated journalists trying to cover the story.

It was members of Ma Ba Tha who originally notified the police about Mr Blackwood's flyer and many turned out to demonstrate against the defendants when they appeared in court earlier this month.

According to Irrawaddy, in August a Canadian tourist was expelled for having a Buddha tattoo and a Spanish tourist was expelled in September for the same reason.

I sympathise with Mr Blackwood and feel sorry that he had to spend his Christmas in the notorious Insein prison, but I do think he should have done a bit more research on the country he was working in. Burma is not Ibiza, it is an incredibly poor country that has still not fully emerged from over 40 years of military dictatorship and civil war. You cannot expect it to be the same as Europe or New Zealand and have to be much more circumspect in your actions.

I also feel that Mr Blackwood's Burmese partners badly let him down by not stopping him from putting out the flyer. As Burmese people they would be far more aware of the offense the flyer would cause and the probable consequences.

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/bar-manager-goes-on-trial-in-burma-amid-rising-buddhist-extremism/