By SAW YAN NAING

The United Nations has welcomed Burma’s decision to free dozens of child soldiers and called for all remaining children to be released from the country’s armed forces.

The demobilization of 42 child soldiers on Sunday from Burma’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, was “encouraging,” says Unicef’s representative in Rangoon, Bertrand Bainvel, but not the last step.

“We are happy for the children who were released and their families,” he told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday. “We of course would like more and more children to benefit from such action. We want to see more and more children released from the ranks of the Tatmadaw in the future.”

There is a lack of official data on the number of remaining child soldiers in Burma, both in the government’s armed forces and rebel armed groups, but Bainvel estimates that about 520 children have been demobilized so far, as the country transitions from nearly half a century of military rule. Under the former junta, the Tatmadaw recruited children as young as 12 years old.

By MIN NAING THU

The sectarian conflict between Muslims and Buddhists, which started last year in western Burma’s Arakan State, is becoming increasingly complicated. In order to analyze why it is taking place and how it has spread to other cities and areas quickly, I want to go back to the beginning of the problem.

The inter-communal riots broke out following an alleged rape and killing of Thida Htwe, an Arakanese woman from Kyauknimaw Village in Arakan’s Ramree Township in late May 2012, by three Muslim youth. Many people have heard about this case but few know about its details. A closer study reveals however, that there is something unusual about the alleged crime and the way that information about it was spread.

The supposed rape took place in a place on Ramree Island, a very remote area off the Burmese coast, yet it was reported online in Facebook posts the very next day. The news spread rapidly on the social network and quickly inflamed lingering tensions between Muslims and Buddhists in Arakan State.

The victim’s photo and related instigation, as everybody knows, provoked a Buddhist mob attack on a bus of Muslim pilgrims visiting Taunggup a few days later. Then violence rapidly spread through different parts the state and beyond.

Similar incidents occurred in the region in the past, but never before did it spark large-scale inter-communal violence. Unlike in previous cases, an unpleasant photo of the victim was spread through print and online social media, stirring up strong emotions among Buddhist nationalist readers.

By Shenali Waduge

There is a common thread that runs through the histories of Buddhist countries; they have all been the victim at one time or the other of aggressive incursions made by people of Abrahamic faiths i.e. Christians or Muslims. This process has not ended. It still continues unabated and with greater ferocity. When prominence is given to “reconciliation” their incursions have yet to be apologized or compensated.

One thousand years ago Buddhist Asia ranged from Afghanistan to Japan. Today countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and South Korea are no longer identified as Buddhist. Several other traditional Theravada Buddhist countries such as Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka today find themselves besieged by forces more powerful and predatory than their slender resources can match. Their appeal to the call for Buddhist nationalism is a last resort to preserve their heritage, religion and country to ensure history is not repeated.

The situation in Myanmar (Burma) must be understood in such context. The latest issue of ‘Time’ Magazine (July 1, 2013) has got it all wrong when it accused the leading defenders of the Buddhist heritage of Burma as terrorist. Western colonial countries and their Islamic acolytes have never admired Buddhist heroes or those who resisted European or Islamic conquests of Buddhist lands.

By YAN PAI / THE IRRAWADDY

Sources in Rangoon’s business community report that tycoon Tay Za visited Russia in June at the same time as Burma’s Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing. The commander is believed to have gone to Moscow to settle arms deals that were signed with Russia under Burma’s past military regime.

Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing visited Moscow on June 23-29 at the invitation of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

He inspected the JSC RAC MiG plant near the capital Moscow and was provided with a test flight demonstration of Russia’s newly upgraded jet fighter, the MiG-29 M, government newspaper The New Light of Myanmar has reported. He also met Burmese military scholarship trainees who are receiving Russian training.

Tay Za, who is on a US sanctions list for procuring arms for Burma’s former military regime, flew to Moscow shortly after Ming Aung Hlaing arrived, several sources in Rangoon’s business community told The Irrawaddy.

Three prominent Burmese businessmen said during separate conversations that Tay Za met up with Min Aung Hlaing in the Russian capital, adding that the tycoon had also met the Burmese military trainees and provided them with some of money for their overseas stay. They said Tay Za had flown to Russia in the company of several other Burmese tycoons.

Posted by Jamie Pinnock

In recent months, international media has reported on the sporadic violence and ethnic tensions which have gripped the fledgling south-east Asian country of Burma. Reports show how the majority Buddhist population has conducted an almost systematic programme of harassment, persecution and violence against the minority population of Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Muslims displaced to make-shift refugee camps, and dozens killed.

This week, Burma has once again been in full view of international media. In a Time magazine article entitled “The Face of Buddhist Terror”, Hannah Beech delivers a brutally honest account of the violence protracted by Burma’s Buddhists, writing candidly of the radical 969 movement who are held to be largely responsible for the protraction of such violence, and giving an unsympathetic exposé of the leader of this movement, monk Ashin Wirathu. Though his appearance suggests calm and compassion, his message—Beech contends— “crackles with hate”.

The article was particularly contentious because it claimed that Wirathu had been describing himself as the ‘Burmese Bin Laden’. Whilst the actual origin of the name is uncertain, Wirathu has denied using it, and instead accuses Muslims of labelling him as such.

Beech’s article, while alerting the international community to the situation in Burma, has triggered protests from a largely Buddhist population. They question the truth of Beech’s scathing attack on the figure who is, for many, a symbol of a future for the Buddhist population of Burma, as well as Beech’s suggestion that the 969 groups actions amount to acts of terror.

Two Buddhists have been jailed in Myanmar for murders that took place during religious violence in March. They are the first Buddhists to be convicted of any serious offence relating to the rioting, which mainly targeted Muslims and left around 40 people dead. The two...

By TODD PITMAN — Associated Press

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home.

Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive.

The mobs that March morning were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. The victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it – students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Myanmar who were so close to being saved.

In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged cowering, hands atop their heads, they only had to make it to four police trucks waiting on the road above.

It wasn’t far to go – just one hill.