Burma’s Hardline Buddhists Claim “Victory”

TEHRAN (IQNA) - Excluding Muslims from November’s landmark election, Burma hardline Buddhist monks have claimed “victory” against the country’s religious Muslim community, after passing controversial anti-Muslim laws and stripping voting rights from Rohingya Muslims.

"Many days I don't sleep at all," Burma's most notorious Buddhist monk, Wirathu, told Agence France Press (AFP) on Sunday, September 6.

The firebrand monk boasts his relentless effort to stoke up anti-Muslim sentiment in the Buddhist-majority nation.

Fomenting the idea that Buddhism is under threat, Wirathu endured sleepless nights to post violent images claimed to be linked to Muslims to his 91,000 Facebook followers.

His “969” radical movement has led to widespread hate crimes and genocidal campaigns against the Muslim minority all across the Buddhist-dominated country, and has brutally rendered more than a million Muslim homeless.

In 2003, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was released in 2011 along with other political prisoners under a general amnesty.

The government revoked Rohingya’s temporary identification documents last March, the religious minority was deprived of voting rights after parliament banned people without full citizenship from voting.

"We do not want any foreigner in the parliament," monk Wirathu stressed.

Moreover, the NLD and Burma's ruling party have declined to field Muslim candidates for polls, bowing to hardliners’ threats.