Plight of Burma's Muslims - read all about it

Plight of Burma's Muslims - read all about it

http://english. aljazeera. net/NR/exeres/ 11CE1487- 02C8-43E9- BC36-89C218B96B4 C.htm

Myanmar's Muslims

Unlikely sanctuary

Jun 28th 2007 | JINGHONG
From The Economist print edition

Huddled masses, yearning to be free and going to China

AT FIRST glance, Yunnan would seem the sort of place a pious Muslim should avoid. AIDS is rampant in this province in south-western China and Beijing's efforts have failed to curb the drugs and prostitution that spread the disease. Moreover China has an appalling record of suppressing religious freedom, including that of Muslims. In its western region of Xinjiang some have taken up arms.

Yet Muslims from neighbouring Myanmar flock to Yunnan. In cities such as Jinghong and Liuku, they sell Burmese gems in shops decorated with Arabic calligraphy and pictures of Mecca. A jeweller in Jinghong, who has lived here for six years, says that in Myanmar “the Buddhists fight us Muslims and don't let us work. The government is very evil. Here in China you can work in peace.”

No one knows how many Burmese live in Yunnan. Many enter illegally. Official statistics suggest that Muslims make up about 4% of Myanmar's population of around 47m, but that is almost certainly an underestimate. The ruling junta has a history of discrimination against Muslims, particularly the Rohingya ethnic group, more than 250,000 of whom fled from Arakan province into neighbouring Bangladesh in the early 1990s.

Mosques and schools in Myanmar are shut down arbitrarily. Many Muslims find their movements restricted unless they pay hefty bribes; others languish in detention after officially instigated clashes with Buddhists. It does not help that their political sympathies often lie with the democratic opposition, whose leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, remains in detention.

In China, in contrast, the Burmese find that, as long as they make no trouble, their faith is immaterial. Compared with other countries of refuge, such as Bangladesh, China offers relative stability. Even America is not as enticing a prospect. The jeweller frets that, as a Muslim, he would risk jail there. Business in China is booming, too; jewellers can make as much as 30,000 yuan ($3,900) per month.

The local population gives them a mixed reception. The Hui—ethnic-Chinese Muslims many of whom have family in Myanmar—are friendly to their co-religionists. Burmese men here boast of taking Hui mistresses and wives. But Yunnan, like much of China, remains plagued by vast income inequality; the wealthy jewellers live beside subsistence farmers. Some resent the better-educated, wealthier Burmese immigrants. Undercurrents of racism do exist, as do reports of Burmese trafficking guns and drugs.

If the resentment flares into violence, many Chinese Hui might side with the Burmese. As heroin and AIDS have already shown, Myanmar's internal affairs are not just internal. Despite this, China helps prop up its repellent regime even as it offers some of its victims sanctuary.