BANGKOK - Thai Buddhists have offered to help a
network of hardline anti-Muslim Myanmar monks set up a radio
station to spread their message across a nation where sectarian
hatred is on the rise.
More than a
dozen Thai Buddhists were among hundreds who attended a two-day
conference in Yangon over the weekend organised by the Ma Ba Tha
movement.
During the meeting a Thai group which produces religious radio and
television programmes in the kingdom promised to donate
$44,000-worth of radio equipment to the Myanmar
movement.
The offer was of "support not with money, but with
equipment and the installation of a radio station, worth about 1.5
million baht," Woottisarn Panaree, vice president of the National
Thai Buddhism and Culture Mass Media Association, who attended the
meeting, told AFP on Wednesday.
"Radio and television plays an important role in
preaching Buddhism in Thailand. It will help them preach Buddhism
in Myanmar," he added.
Myanmar is wrestling with growing Buddhist
nationalist sentiment driven by hardline monks, who have urged
boycotts of Muslim shops and proposed a raft of deeply
controversial laws that critics say are discriminatory.
Their rise has accompanied several bouts of
religious violence between Muslims and Buddhists, mainly in Rakhine
State.
In recent weeks nationalist monks have been at the
forefront of protests against the country's Rohingya, a persecuted
Muslim minority from Rakhine who have fled in their tens of
thousands since communal violence broke out there in
2012.
Compared to its western neighbour, Thai Buddhist
nationalism plays a less prominent role in the country's politics
and is not as openly hostile towards Islam.
Pornchai Pinyapong, president of the Bangkok-based
World Fellowship of Buddhist Youth, said he attended the meeting in
a personal capacity.
He said both countries had "difficulties" with Islam
that needed to be addressed to protect Buddhism.
"When we see Rakhine state in Myanmar, it's the same
problem as the southern part of Thailand," he told AFP, referring
to Thailand's long battle against ethnic Malay Muslims in the
country's deep south.
Unlike Thailand's south there is no Muslim
insurgency in Rakhine. Instead more than 100,000 Rohingya live in
fetid camps after dozens were killed by Buddhist mobs in the 2012
bloodletting.
Pornchai rejected suggestions that Myanmar's
hardline Buddhist monks routinely use hate speech against
Muslims.
"They don't encourage anyone to destroy the mosque
or kill Muslim people, they just want to protect Buddhism for the
next generation," he said.
"I think it's good for monks to get together to protect Buddhism,"
he added.