In September 2017, over 400 thousand Rohingya Muslims, an unrecognized ethnic minority in Myanmar, were forced to leave their homeland to Bangladesh. This crisis was ignited by a number of Rohingya militants who murdered two police officers, causing a massive backlash from the Burmese military. Aung San Suu Kyi, now the de facto leader of Myanmar, blatantly denied any evidence of the atrocities caused by the Burmese military, but refused to let UN envoys investigate the crisis.

This mistake of oversimplifying the situation can easily lead to false generalizations not only towards the Burmese Buddhists, but also to the global Buddhist populace, which I am a member of. Personally, I cannot overlook the atrocities committed against Rohingyas, as they go against the five Buddhist precepts that promote a peaceful lifestyle. Although war and violence are not specifically touched upon in Buddhism, peaceful ways of conflict resolution are encouraged. Hence, even if Burmese Buddhists didn’t initiate the conflict, they carried it on, inciting the Buddhist population against Rohingya.

If one only skims through the news without further research, it is impossible to have a positive impression of the Buddhist populace in Myanmar and even the moral value of the religion itself. Amid the current backlash and criticism towards Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s decades-old tension between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority is now regaining public attention. Most news outlets publish interviews of Buddhist extremists accompanied with images of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya, or at least mention that Myanmar is a Buddhist-majority country. However, the root of the crisis is considerably more complicated than a religious conflict, entailing more complex ethnic and political tensions.

One should understand that the current crisis in Myanmar is more than a conflict between Burmese Buddhists and Muslims; it is a conflict between Myanmar’s military and the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnicity. Dating back to 1982, the conflict started when the Citizenship Law refused to recognize Rohingyas as one of the country’s ethnicities, stripping them of their citizen status. Despite the injustice towards the Muslim Rohingya, this law does recognize other Muslim ethnicities such as those that descended Panthay, Bamar and even Myanmar native Kamein. According to the 2014 Myanmar Census, 4.3 percent of Myanmar’s 50 million strong population considered themselves Muslim. Although almost every news outlet cites this law’s failure to recognize the Rohingya as evidence of their persecution, none of them mention the fact that other Muslim groups are recognized. Although I understand that the humanitarian crisis with the Rohingya Muslim is the focus of the news, it is also important to give the audience a general view of the complicated situation, not oversimplifying to a religious tension.

By saying so, I do not deny the fact that there is no discrimination against Muslims in Myanmar. Taking advantage of the rise of Islamic extremism at the beginning of this century, many Burmese Buddhist radical groups boosted this anti-Muslim sentiment to augment their political influence, which was lauded by the country’s previous military government. This sentiment remains incredibly strong in the Burmese non-Muslim population. Slurs and derogatory terms referring to Muslims remain widely used. Such attitude explains why opposition from the general Burmese population against the current atrocities against the Rohingya is nearly non-existent.

In addition, radical Buddhist groups in Myanmar have begun to perceive Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence on the situation as an agreement with their anti-Muslim and anti-minority campaigns. Some of these monks have a widespread influence on Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist population. Hence, if Aung San Suu Kyi’s government continues to take no action to resolve the current issue, more and more Rohingya-like insurgencies will continue to destabilize Myanmar’s national security and economic development. Until Aung San Suu Kyi and her government sincerely examine the situation and prepare a peaceful resolution to the current problem, the prospect for Myanmar’s ethnic and religious harmony remains grim.

The oppression of Muslims in Myanmar is certainly a wake up call for the rest of the world. It is unacceptable that issues that threaten someone's religious freedom are swept under the rug by officials. As for the issue itself, there needs to be much more debate regarding possible ways of integrating the Rohingya as a ethnic and religious minority into Myanmar's society.