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convictions in myanmar
oceancaldera207
Veteran
http://phuketwan.com/tourism/burma-court-sentences-zealander-jail-buddha-image-promoting-bar-22065/
Anyone hear about this??
Anyone hear about this??
0
Comments
I will be sending in my cyber drones to once again demonstrate Emptiness by blowing up my garden Buddha . . .
Time to prepare the Popcorn Sadhana . . . and then go and YAB-YUM a Burmese Buddha . . .
[lobster places himself under house arrest and awaits the Dharma Police]
. . . meanwhile the Burmese Buddha plants a magical peach . . .
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2014/11/burmese-scenes-from-the-life-of-the-buddha.html
All will be assimilated.
We heard about it when they were first arrested but I was hoping there was still enough rational people in the government to drop the charges. The so-called defamation laws now in effect in Myanmar are actually designed to make it impossible for Muslims or even liberal Buddhists to criticize the monks and temples that are leading the ethnic cleansing campaign. This idiocy shows the unintended but predictable consequences of such laws. The ultra-nationalists always start looking for imagined slights once given the power to enforce their standards on the public.
What's ironic is that someone in Thailand -- a Westerner? -- is criticizing the Burmese for this kind of action. Thailand's "recent" history in terms of the Buddhist government handling the Muslims of the Deep South is far more egregious. Much of the hate-filled behavior on both sides (Muslim and Buddhist) boiled up after years of relative peace when (as I recall the 2004 news story) 78 Muslim men were locked in a tractor trailer truck in searing heat and all suffocated to death. Thailand's officially Buddhist government isn't quite bright enough to realize that their actions are inviting some Muslim terrorist group (such as some offshoot of Al Queda or ISIS) right in the back door.
When in Rome... When I visited and then lived in Thailand, I made myself aware of the laws I was likely to come up against, and tried to learn about cultural sensitivities of a country and culture different than my own. And if I didn't want to do that, then I wouldn't visit other cultures and countries.
I wholeheartedly agree. I feel it is important we wash out our dirty 'monks', call out our hate filled politico sanghas and ensure that compassion and wisdom and common sense is found.
. . . jailed for what? Ridiculous and quite shameful. Will have to write to the Burmese embassy for an explanation.
Put headphones on your Buddhas now . . .
I would have thought a fine and a stern talking to would have sufficed in this case.
Two years in a Burmese prison sounds a little excessive for being ignorant!
You'd think, wouldn't you?
But they want to make an example of them, and what we consider to be intolerance they consider 'adhering to the letter of the law'.
As a Buddha, I am honoured that someone has depicted me wearing headphones, because I do wear headphones - not so big and bulky, but they are headphones nonetheless - not big ones.
Please free the people you have unjustly placed in prison. There are 3 reasons why you should release them if you are a buddhist state:
1, Buddha doesn't care if a person insults him/her!
2. Even if buddha was offended he would laugh it off! And refer to 1.
3. Buddha gives you complete control to offer a reduced penalty, leniency, or just set them free. YOU as the JAILOR have to live with their incarceration. They are doing it freely; but you need to be paid to do such a thing. - they are paying you to do this...\lol/...
May buddha bless you with the ability to sort this out ...
I'll be interested to see if the NZ government kicks up a stink about this.
@Shoshin - have you heard anything about this over there?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11418740
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/67428584/amnesty-international-condemns-jailing-of-kiwi-in-myanmar
@Bunks I'm not sure what the Kiwi government is doing behind the scenes... I don't have any more info than what I read and hear on the news...
I wonder how many local laws (in NZ) I'm not personally aware of ?
Blasphemy though, is a victimless crime so say the Atheist...
"Form is Emptiness...Emptiness is Form"
What can international Buddhist groups do to help him ?
What freedom we have
Dear Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist Brigade, My fellow criminals,
Thank you for your wonderful teachings on ignorance. Who should we engage in state sanctified terrorism next? Can we imprison ourself in order to increase the dharma?
Looking forward to hearing from you . . .
Myanmar is a very closed country keeping to itself for some time because of the corrupt government's relationship with other countries.
The result of that is very close knit culture which encourages looking closely at its own culture. And any deviation (even slight one) from this is very strange and not accepted easily.
So it is very much a cause and effect situation there back home. The similar cases keep happening unless Burmese people open up themselves for differences and look outside of the community they live in.
I don't disagree that the sentence is ridiculously harsh. But, based on this statement from the article cited...
"The authorities should accept the heartfelt public apology of the three men, vacate the conviction, and order them to be released immediately and unconditionally, and the Religion Act should be amended to bring it into compliance with international human rights standards.''
...the action was based on a public law.
The Human Rights Watch, which is mentioned in the article, is run by a board which is almost all Westerners...in fact mostly Americans, albeit with a good intention, who lecture other countries from a mostly Western corporate perspective.
In my view, the New Zealanders should have been deported, at most. It's not their country. The Burmese involved should have received some much lesser consequence than what was doled out.
However, even as a Westerner and an American myself, I get very tired of Westerners and Americans telling other cultures how they are supposed to conduct themselves, which is essentially telling them how to define their culture. And I notice on this forum how often members post anti-American sentiments because Americans (and to a lesser extent most Western countries) want to police the world to one extent or another, and shape the world into their own image. And, from a principled perspective, this situation is no different.
There is no reason why -- and I don't want -- Burma and Thailand and Malaysia and Vietnam and Laos and Indonesia...or anywhere else in the world...to move -- or be pushed -- further into becoming the land of McDonalds and Wall Street and Carnaby Street and Boulevard Haussmann. I want Burma to be Burma. Thailand to be Thailand. Malaysia to be Malaysia. Vietnam to be Vietnam. Laos to be Laos. Indonesia to Indonesia. Denmark to be Denmark. Kenya to be Kenya. Peru to be Peru. Guatemala to be Guatemala. I want all the people of the world to live within the cultural niches they desire...not ours. That doesn't mean I want dictators to torture and pillage and inflict themselves on their people or others, but there has to be some reasonable middle ground where one culture is not constantly attempting to dictate what is "right" to another culture.
I was speaking to a Sri Lankan guy I work with the other day and he was saying how his wife was struggling with her move to Australia. She had only joined him here abouy six months ago.
He said the problem is that people from Sri Lanka and the like have this idea that when they move to a western country all their problems will be solved and life will be rosy!
The truth is very different of course.
Thank you, @Bunks.
Australia may be another good example of my point, actually. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I love to learn but have never visited Australia, but my impression is that Australians value their historical and current connections with Great Britain, but don't want to "be" Great Britain on the other side of the world. Again, my impressions is that Australians value their own separate culture.
I took some linguistics courses a few years ago, and a major topic was the homogenization of the world and how it is leading to whole languages disappearing...not to mention distinct cultures. Homogenization is great with milk, but no so great with people and places.
The younger generations don't associate themselves with Great Britain and there is a debate whether to change the flag.
The culture here again is unique, we often tease the English culture during sports games.
So I would agree with you.
The biggest problem with this or similar "illegal to insult my religion" laws around the world is that exactly what is considered an insult is not defined, and since all it takes is one person, no matter how biased, to complain then the law is always abused.
Why would putting a set of headphones on an image of Buddha be insulting? Whoever printed the sign and all the people who walked past it for many days were not insulted and obviously nobody told the owners "You can't do that or you'll get arrested." The person who filed a complaint might have been more angry that westerners were running a business than insulting a Buddha, and used this as a way to close down the bar. It could even have been a rival bar getting rid of competition. The laws are written so broadly that all an enemy would have to do is swear or find someone to swear the men said something nasty about Buddhism. In fact, many Muslims in that country are being jailed exactly that way. Have a dispute with a Muslim businessman? Complain you heard the man say something bad about Buddhism. In Muslim countries, these laws are used exactly the same way but it's more obvious.
There's some comments about how, as Westerners, we should butt out of native cultural laws and tolerate their particular faults. My opinion is, there's a difference between laws that, for instance, make chewing gum illegal in Singapore, and laws that violate basic human rights. The entire concept of "human rights" or rights you should have no matter what culture you live in or language you speak simply because you are a fellow human being is the crowning achievement of the twentieth century. Yes, that means meddling in other countries at times. You have to draw a line and hold the problem up to public criticism, at least.