(This is direct translation of former Burmese Immigration Officer Maung Maung’s article.)
Last of the Buddhist Arakans of Maungdaw. |
If you are one of those activists who are now wildly hollering on the World Wide Web for the human rights of so-called Rohingyas without really knowing the facts I would like to ask you to take your Rohingyas into your homes.
I am neither a racist nor do I wear the cloak of a democracy/human-rights activist. But if any of you do feel pity for those illegal Bengali Muslims being without their own separate territory you should put them up on your own houses and you will eventually learn about them.
From my own experiences as a young Government official in Arakan State in 1999 and beyond I could easily explain what has been actually happening with these so-called Rohingyas in the Maungdaw District the only Muslim District in Burma and also the most westerly region of our Burma.
Located on the mouth of Nat River Maung Daw is the provincial town of Maungdaw District which comprises the townships of Maungdaw, Buutheedaung, and Yathetaung. Maungdaw town itself is the westernmost town of Burma.
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I could have bribed our senior officers to avoid that borderline duty but I refused to. So I ended up taking that long trip from Rangoon to Maungdaw through Sittwe and Buutheedaung in that 1999 July.
To get to Maungdaw from Sittwe the State capital of Arakan State one had to go to Buutheedaung first by a river-ferry. Our boat left Sittwe at 8 in the morning and sailed through the Yathetaung Township and arrived at Buutheedaung around 5 in the evening same day. The boat followed the May-yu River and we saw the construction of unfinished Yarmaung Bridge on the way.
Once our boat reached Buutheedaung at 5 in the evening all the port-porters coming onto the boat were the Bangalis or Khawtaw Kalars as we called them. Even back at the Sittwe Port these Khawtaws basically controlled the porter or Kulee trades. There were some Arakan or Yakhine porters but just insignificant numbers compared to the Khawtaws.
We were met by local Yakhine officials at the port and we started in their Government vehicle on the 16 mile long mountain road from Buutheedaung to Maungdaw. That meandering mountain road crossing the entire width of high May-yu Ranges was at more than 2,000 feet above sea level and it was raining and windy. Also it was really wet and very cold for us in the back of the vehicle. But the whole ranges and the scenery by the road was eyes-pleasing green.
Maungdaw Tunnel Entrance. |
The tunnel floor was basically covered with water seeping out of the tunnel’s rock-walls and as there were no lights inside the tunnel all the cars were to use their headlights to travel through the pitch-black tunnel.
Shortly after the Big Tunnel we had to go through a shorter tunnel simply called Small-Maungdaw Tunnel. After that the road’s sealed surface was really good and we hit the Three-Miles Gate at the entrance of Maungdaw Town in no time.
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The Three-miles Gate was controlled by The Border-Region-Immigration-Control-Office (Na-Sa-Ka) and every traveler had to get off the vehicle and his or her identity (National Registration Card) checked and also his or her luggage inspected as if one is crossing the borderline into Bangladesh.
(Translator’s Notes: Na-Sa-Ka was an inter-departmental task force under the Home & Religious Affairs Ministry. It includes personnel from the General Administration Department, Immigration department, Customs Department, Police, Military Intelligence Services, and the Army.)
Bengali Sidecar-Men at Maungdaw Town Gate. |
Back then the Chairman of the Maungdaw District Council was Lt. Colonel Tin Hla Oo and the Head of Maungdaw Township Council was Captain Hla Po, both were from the MIS. My direct boss was Deputy Director Aung Kyi from the General Administration Department.
(Translator’s Notes: During the SPDC era from 1998 to 2011 every region of Burma, from the villages and wards to the states and divisions, was administered by respective military-appointed councils. And the chairmen of all those councils were appointed military officers and the council secretaries were the heads of the respective General Administration Department offices.)
After meeting other officials next day I had to go to Na-Sa-Ka HQ at Kyi-gan-byin and introduce myself to Colonel Thet Htut the Head of Arakan Na-Sa-Ka as administratively all the government officers in the border regions are under the respective Na-Sa-Ka offices.
Na-Sa-Ka basically was a MIS based interdepartmental border security organization with offices on every border region of Burma.
I then went into Maungdaw Town and its market together with my immediate senior officer. There I hardly saw Burmese or Yakhine faces but all Bengali faces as if I was in the neighboring Bangladesh.
(Translator’s Notes: Burma-Bangladesh border is too porous to stop the massive illegal entries effectively, and the Bengali population in Maungdaw District enormously huge, the only meaningful way to contain Muslim Bengali expansion into Proper Burma was to basically prevent them Bengalis from leaving the Maungdaw District. And the Three-miles Gate on the Buutheedaung-Maungdaw Road was the main barrier in stopping the relentless Bengali tide.)
Regular meeting with other township and district officials and widely reading various historical records of Maungdaw region also gave me a good understanding of that alarming demographic change from Yakhine majority to Bengali majority within a few years.
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Buddhist-styled Clock Tower. |
Out of all twenty odd wards in Maungdaw Town only Wards 1 and 3 and 4 and Shwezar Village were in the native Yakhine hands. Both Ward-2 and most of Bomhu Village were already in the Bengali hands. And even the Ward-1 by then was already half-swallowed by the Bengalis and becoming a Bengali ward quickly.
Soon after my arrival in Maungdaw I had to supervise the repairing of a bridge near Kyi-gan-byin Na-sa-ka HQ and I got a chance to wander round the countryside. Only one village called Aung-ze-ya Model Village was a Yakhine village, but all other villages were Bengali villages.
Just to get a meal I had to use Bengali language so that I could pay 800 kyats for a cooked chicken from a Bengali household in the nearby village. All the sidecar (pedaled-rickshaw) drivers in both Maungdaw and Butheedaung were Bengalis and they knew not a single Burmese or Yakhine word. It was really difficult for us Burmese to live there in our own country as we couldn’t use Burmese there at all.
What I could easily conclude was since almost all Bengalis there couldn’t speak either Burmese or Yakhine they must not be the natives of our Burma. And they all conspicuously look exactly like the Bengalis in Bangladesh across the border.
My conclusion was that our Maungdaw District has been completely taken over by these illegal Bengalis from Bangladesh.
And back then in Maungdaw in 1999 I began to ponder why and how?
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The obvious answer always is these Bengali Muslims have been breeding like rabbits not just back in Bangladesh but also here in our Burma too.
(Translator’s Note: Just look carefully at the following comparative population densities - population per square mile in 2010.
Whole Bangladesh (Muslims) 1,217
Maungdaw Township (Muslims) 870
Taungbyo Township (Muslim/Buddhists) 700
Whole Yakine State (Buddhists) 233
Whole Burma (Buddhists) 191
Like water people must naturally flow down from the higher level of population density to the lower level of population density. Not just natural migrant flow, the Muslim reproduction also is much much higher than the Buddhists for the obvious religious reason.)
While average Yakhine Buddhist couple is having only two children, nearly every Bengali Muslim man has taken four wives (many are young Yakhine Buddhist girls) illegally and produced as many as thirty kids as their Imams or Ayatollahs have decreed. Once the Bengali boys hit 16 or 17 they are sent back to their motherland Bangladesh to get their Bangladeshi passports and then go work in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
Bengali Muslim Militants (Mujahid Rohingyas). |
That is a very big money not just in Maungdaw but also in the rest of Burma. Shouting about Burmese repression? These Bengalis have had some local officials in their pockets by establishing profitable businesses with them. They were even trying hard to keep most town officials in their pockets.
Out of over 340 villages in Maungdaw District only 40 Yakhine villages were left in the year 2000 as only about ten percent of the total 400,000 population were native Yakhines while the rest were illegal Bengalis.
While there were only 30 Buddhist monasteries left in the Maungdaw District in the year 2000 the Bengalis had already built more than 300 mosques and still growing at least one a month.
Arakan State North. |
And they didn’t let their young daughters go to the government schools against the compulsory education law of Burma.
It was amazingly unbelievable that a native group of human became absolutely extinct by being violently swallowed up by a totally different group of human within a few years. When it comes to serious confrontation the innately violent Muslims always win over naturally-gentle Buddhists. The recent history of Afghanistan is the proof of that.
Bengali Muslims in Maungdaw, Arakan, Burma. |
(Translator’s Notes: In 1985 Ahmed Shah the Chairman of RLO - Rohingya Liberation Organization – freely distributed many copies of his recorded cassette tape urging the Bengalis in the Maungdaw District to drive all non-Muslims out of the District. He was basically calling for the genocide of Yakhines and every other non-Muslims of Maungdaw District.
His RLO also distributed in Bangladesh thousands and thousands of leaflets with the photos of pretty Yakhine girls to entice the Muslim Bengalis in Bangladesh to come into Burma. The leaflets surfaced widely in Chitagong and the neighboring districts of Bangladesh basically called starving Bengalis to come into Burma as there were plenty of food and pretty Yakhine girls on this side of the border.
All RLO leaflets and Ahmed Shah’s tapes had asked only one thing from the prospective illegal Bengalis. That was for every Muslim Bengali Man to marry four Yakhine Buddhist women and convert them into Islam to propagate their fanatic-fundamentalist version of Islam in Burma.)
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Maungdaw by Bangladesh Border. |
And to make the matter worse our own Prime Minister U Nu, an expert in exploiting the religion and the race issues to extreme for his political advantage, had brought the Rohingya issue to life very first time during the 1960 general elections.
U Nu had offered the Bengali Muslims the ethnic rights as Rohingyas if they voted for him in the general elections since without Muslim votes his party would be wiped out in the Arakan State by the opposition Yakhine parties.
(Translator’s Notes: When he won the 1960 elections in Arakan State simply by massive Muslim votes U Nu even forced our reluctant Voice-of-Burma to broadcast a regular so-called Rohigya Program in Bengali. He also established the Maungdaw Special-Border-District by giving away three townships of Butheedaung and Maungdaw and Yathetaung to his Bengalis. And he also gave all the Bengalis including thousands and thousands of illegal Bengalis in that district Burmese Identity Cards.
Even though Ne Win’s nationalist Army terminated all U Nu’s bastardly acts immediately after the 1962 coup Burma still ended up with thousands and thousands of illegal Bengalis with official ID cards illegally issued by U Nu and now these so-called Rohingyas loudly demanding their birth-rights are mainly the descendants of those U Nu’s dodgy Bengalis who slaughtered the native Yakhines and took their lands and homes in 1942.)
When I was in Maungdaw we were to be very careful whenever we travelled through the Bengali villages during nightimes as these Bengalis would kill any Burmese or Yakhine wandered into their village even in the bright daylight.
Muslim burning of Buddhist houses in Chittagong. |
But their genocidal plan was timely thwarted by the local police force and the Police-Security-Battalion - Lone-Htain-Tat-Yin – stationed on the Maungdaw-Buutheedaung Road. Since then Burmese Army units have been permanently stationed in the Maungdaw district to prevent another genocidal attack by the Bengali Muslims.)
Back in late 1990s and early 2000s our Na-Sa-Ka with the help of army units stationed in Maungdaw District had managed to contain the Bengalis by the borderline, but there had been many violations of border integrity because of corruption in our ranks and various other reasons.
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It could be like in that legendary fable of the Camel and the Arab in a stormy desert. Just by letting the nostrils of camel inside the tent we could eventually lose the whole Arakan State like the poor Arab who was completely pushed out of his tent by the cunningly ambitious Camel.
Bengali women defiling our Burmese Flag in front of London Embassy. |
I strongly believed it is the birth-duty of every Burmese national to defend our land, religion, and race.
If we give in to them now just because of their respectable cloaks of human rights and democracy the problems wouldn’t end there as there would be more and more troubles brewing for the future as long as these Bengalis keep on breeding like rabbits and forcefully converting our women into their tyrannical and barbarous religion.
This is the struggle for the survival of Burma and thus for us Burmese and Yakhines a fight worth dying!
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