"Burmese Bin Laden" turns himself in to the police

A few days before the parliamentary elections in Myanmar (November 8), the Buddhist hate preacher Ashin Wirathu surrendered to the police in Yangon, who have been searching for him with an arrest warrant since May 2019. "Wirathu's arrest is good news, even though the timing is clearly a tactical maneuver," stated Jasna Causevic, expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP). "By presenting himself as a martyr, he is trying to draw attention to his anti-Muslim agenda again shortly before the elections." In the run-up to the last elections in 2015, the ultra-nationalist monk had supported the extreme right Union Solidarity and Development Party, but the National League for Democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi had won. "With this shady maneuver, he wants to mobilize his supporters and make them vote for parties and members of parliament who are committed to a 'Buddhist Myanmar'," Causevic criticized.

The hardliner Ashin Wirathu, also known as the 'Burmese Bin Laden', had made a name for himself with anti-Muslim extremism in the predominantly Buddhist country of Myanmar. He is considered the ideological mastermind behind the genocide against the Rohinyga. "The country's powerful military allowed Wirathu to act in this manner for years, using the hatred he incited for its own purposes," Causevic recalled. "The arrest warrant was issued only after he dared to criticize the de facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi for not taking tough enough action against Muslims. Suu Kyi herself bears responsibility for the genocide against the Muslim Rohingya as well.