Prominent Myanmar nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu on Friday said the media has wrongly labeled him the “Burmese Bin Laden,” rejecting claims that he is responsible for a recent surge of communal violence against Muslims.

Wirathu, 46, from Mandalay’s Masoeyein Monastery, is the leader of the “969” Buddhist movement— the name of which refers to the various virtues of the Buddha and which calls on its followers to boycott Muslim businesses and social circles after deadly violence erupted in the middle of last year.

Wirathu said his group was not responsible for the violence and rejected claims—including one recently made in the July issue of Time Magazine—that he was a self-proclaimed terrorist waging a holy war against Myanmar’s Muslim minority.

“[Time] referred to me as the ‘Burmese Bin Laden’,” Wirathu told RFA’s Myanmar Service, referring to the name several media organizations say the 969 leader has himself used in the past.

Raihan M Chowdhury

Myanmar government has invited a Bangladeshi expert to set up the first commodity exchange in Myanmar.

According to a letter, the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration under the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development of the Government of Myanmar has granted a permit to launch Myanmar International Commodity Exchange Limited, an initiative by Bangladeshi expert on capital market Wali-ul-Maroof Matin.

Mr Matin is currently the Managing Director of Dhaka-based Alliance Capital Asset Management Limited. Mr Matin left Dhaka Friday for Myanmar.

Once operational, this would be the first commodity exchange in Myanmar, a resource-rich Southeast Asian country of about fifty five million people and which is preparing to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014.

The New York Times published a rather one-sided article about the growing anti-Islam movement in Myanmar. Muslims are a minority there and the country’s Buddhists monks are voicing a growing concern about the Muslim residents.

    ‘You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,’ Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims.

    ‘I call them troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,’ Ashin Wirathu told a reporter after his two-hour sermon. ‘I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.”

The Times describes Ashin Wirathu as having a “rock star” following and goes on to describe:

    But over the past year, images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.

102nd International Labour Conference

The restrictions were related to the country’s non compliance of the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No.29).
Press release | 18 June 2013

GENEVA – In a historic move, delegates attending the International Labour Conference (ILC) have voted to lift all remaining ILO restrictions on Myanmar.

The remaining restrictions, imposed by the Conference in 2000, included the need to discuss Myanmar’s application of the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No.29) at special sittings of the ILC, and a recommendation to ILO constituents to review their relations with the country.

The ILC had already suspended some restrictions on Myanmar when it met last June.