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YANGON: A nationalist Buddhist monk in Myanmar known for his inflammatory rhetoric surrendered to police on Monday (November 2), who have been seeking his arrest for over a year for insulting remarks he made about the country’s leader, the councilor. of State Aung San Suu Kyi.
Monk Wirathu’s surrender came just days before Sunday’s general election, which Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy party is expected to win.
“Mainly, I would like to ask my fellow monks across the country to ask their followers to vote for the parties that work to protect the race and religion of the country,” Wirathu told a small crowd of supporters outside the police station. police in Yangon before entering. .
Wirathu and his supporters succeeded in pushing for laws making interreligious marriages difficult, but they unsuccessfully backed the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party in the 2015 general election, which Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly.
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His appeal Monday was seen as yet another endorsement of the USDP, the main opposition party in parliament and the only serious challenger to Suu Kyi’s NLD.
In May last year, a court issued an arrest warrant for Wirathu, charging him with sedition for insulting remarks he made about Suu Kyi at a nationalist rally while comparing military representatives in parliament to Buda.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to three years in life in prison. Under Myanmar law, the Buddhist authorities would have to remove him before he could be arrested.
Wirathu rose to prominence in 2012 after deadly riots broke out between Buddhists and Muslims from the Rohingya ethnic minority in the western state of Rakhine. He founded a nationalist organization, now dissolved, which was accused of inciting violence against Muslims.
Muslims from other ethnic groups and from other areas also faced disrespect and occasional violence after Wirathu and his followers launched their nationalist campaign.
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Time magazine called Wirathu “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in a cover story in 2013.
Wirathu was able to take advantage of the widespread prejudice in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims, who are considered to have illegally immigrated from Bangladesh, despite the fact that many of their families have lived in Myanmar for generations.
In 2017, attacks by Rohingya militants on police posts triggered a brutal army counterinsurgency campaign that caused more than 700,000 Rohingya villagers to flee across the border into Bangladesh in search of safety.
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Wirathu was charged with hate speech and Facebook closed his account in 2018, but he managed to stay on other social media and gave speeches across the country. The National Council of Monks prohibited him from giving public talks for a year, but his action was not strictly enforced.
