Kyi May Kaung's Identity: Mostly Burmese Monks - exhibition details from 2009 - Image of Burmese monks has changed.

http://pinklineproject.com/event/169 Wangari Mathai has now passed away. Burmese monks' reputation in the west, so hard won in the 2007 Saffron Revolution, has been tarnished by some of their number, either fake monks or real (in Burmese Buddhism you can freely enter or leave the Order) allowing themselves to be used by the ruling junta in "demonstrations" (one of my colleagues calls them racist Neo-Nazi hate rallies) against the Muslim Rohingya. Even the exile media based in Washington DC, well one of them, keeps inserting the term "Bangali" or "Bengali"which is the junta's preferred term. One says "Bengali Rohingya Muslim" Actually, the descriptor "Bengali" as in "from Bengal" is misleading and evil as it discounts that the Rohingya have been in Burma since the 9th century and the present borders were only drawn in the 20th. "Rohingya Muslim" is also redundant, since Rohingya in Western Burma are part of larger group of Burmese Muslims, who have also been in cities like Mandalay for a very long time. In the ancient world, members of ethnic groups such as Indians, Chinese, Portuguese and so on were constantly moving around over quite large distances. Religions such as Buddhism (Tantric-Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism) - Hinduism, the Muslim religion etc. also moved with the people traveling for trade or religious reasons. It is naive and silly and evil, to say only a certain people have rights to live in peace in a certain geographic region. So far only Aye Chan Naing of the Democratic Voice of Burma, based in Oslo, Norway, (in my opinion the only station not kowtowing to the junta) has said the Rohingya need full citizenship rights in Burma. How else are they going to make their contribution as valuable citizens, not wanton child breeders, as the Burmese junta depicts them? ***