Burmese government denounces Buddhist nationalist Ma Ba Tha group
16th July 2016
FOLLOWING months of pressure, Burma’s new government has denounced the influential Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha.
Earlier this week, Burma’s highest ranking monks severed tieswith the hardline Buddhist movement, which has been accused of using hate speech and inspiring violence against Muslims.
The group’s controversial leader, the monk Wirathu, responded by calling the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a “woman dictator.”
Wirathu appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine in 2013 with the headline ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’, and made international headlines again last year for calling the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Burma (officially known as Myanmar), Yanghee Lee, a ‘bitch’ and a ‘whore’ while addressing a crowd in Yangon.
The Sangha Council, a state institution that oversees Buddhist monastic discipline, declared Tuesday that it did not recognize Ma Ba Tha in the Buddhist order.
“The Ma Ba Tha organisation is not included under the basic rules, procedures… and instructions of the Sangha organisation,” the committee said in a statement.
“Starting from the first Sangha summit in 1980 until the fifth Sangha summit in 2014, no Sangha meeting has acknowledged or formed the Ma Ba Tha – and it has never used the term Ma Ba Tha.”
The government’s minister for Yangon said last week the group shouldn’t exist, responding to Ma Ba Tha’s demands on policy toward the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Suu Kyi, Burma’s de facto leader, has come under pressure in recent months to address anti-Muslim sentiment amid ongoing attacks on Muslim communities.
