Buddhist fundamentalism, sometimes with deadly results, is on the rise in three Asian countries — Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand — where Theravada Buddhism is the main branch of the religion and monks have been behind growing hard-line pressure.
Hard-line Buddhism has emerged in ethnically and religiously diverse Myanmar. Ironically, this has taken place under newfound freedoms of speech and expression, which have blossomed in the country since its generals swapped their military uniforms for the business attire of white shirts and traditional longyis after a reform process that began in 2010.
Across the Buddhist-majority country, long-standing anti-Muslim sentiment has also triggered conflict, particularly in the western state of Rakhine. Violence in 2012 left more than 200 people dead and forced tens of thousands — mostly Rohingya Muslims — to flee their homes. An estimated 150,000 people in the state have been trapped in temporary camps for displaced people, stripped of their rights to vote or even leave the camps.
Subsequently, anti-Muslim sentiment, mainly fomented by the radical movement known as Ma Ba Tha, which claims half of Myanmar's 400,000 monks as adherents, spread across the country with violence erupting in Meikhtila, in the center, to Lashio in northern Shan State near China, as well as the nation's second-largest city, Mandalay.
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