Monks to protest in Yangon against sheltering migrants

Illegal Bangladeshi migrants wait at police headquarters in Langkawi on May 11, 2015. AFP/Manan Vatsyayana

Buddhist nationalists are planning to march from the northern suburbs of Yangon to the Kyaikassan sports ground on Wednesday to oppose taking in any boat people who have left Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Religious activist Ko Min Min told the Myanmar Times that up to 500 members from some 20 groups may attend. Police confirmed that the request to hold the march has indeed been approved.

“Our country is poor and the government can’t take care of its own Myanmar people, so how would it be possible to accept the migrants in our country, and those people are not from our country,” Ko Min Min said, seemingly alluding to both Rohingya from western Myanmar and migrants from Bangladesh.

Similar to the government’s stance, right-leaning Buddhist groups believe the Muslim Rohingya are not a distinct ethnic group with deep roots in Myanmar, but simply “Bengali” immigrants.

International outcry has prompted several governments to take in some of the thousands of migrants currently stranded at sea after traffickers, fearing arrest, abandoned them.

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have agreed to let boat people land but other governments have balked. Myanmar hauled in a boat of migrants last week and is preparing to send those on board to Bangladesh, where the government says they are from. Meanwhile, some 139 graves were found in northern Malaysia, and authorities believe they belong to migrants who died at trafficking camps in the area.

Wednesday’s protest in Yangon, which includes members of better-known Buddhist groups 969 and Ma Ba Tha, will also bring in newer organizations with weird names like Nationalist Blood and Future Light, the Myanmar Times reported.

Ashin Wirathu, the 969 monk leader who recently compared himself to James Bond, said he wouldn’t attend the protest but he supported it in spirit.

“I wish to ask the international organisations why we should accept in our house these murderous people. It is dangerous that they can enter by deception as victims,” he told the Myanmar Times.

Wirathu, however, made a distinction between migrants from Bangladesh and the Rohingya “Bengalis,”  saying Myanmar could shelter the “Bengalis” if they were real victims. “But we will not accept people from other countries,” he said.