America Abroad Media:
U Wirathu is the face of the 969 movement, a nationalist Buddhist movement in Myanmar that has been implicated in spreading deadly anti-Muslim sentiment.
America Abroad Media:
A young monk reads a newspaper at U Wirathu’s Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar.
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U Wirathu rifles through a stack of propaganda, including a DVD that tells the story of a Buddhist woman who married a Muslim man who abused her.
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The logo of the 969 movement is plastered on shop windows and cars around Burma, signifying solidarity with the movement. A Muslim man was sentenced to two years imprisonment in 2013 after he peeled a 969 sticker off a betel-nut shop.
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U Wirathu’s face is everywhere in the Masoeyein monastery.
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The wall of U Wirathu’s office is covered with his own image.
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A member of U Wirathu’s press team holds up an image that shows TIME magazine’s Hannah Beech crossed out. Beech wrote the cover story for an issue that was banned in Myanmar after it asked whether the monk was the “face of Buddhist terror.”
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Images of dead Buddhists from the 2012 riots in Rakhine state between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims are prominently displayed at Masoeyein monastery. The final death toll stood at 57 Muslims and 31 Buddhists, with many tens of thousands displaced.
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Bulldozers linger after razing the last ruined structures that remained of Meiktila’s Muslim quarter, which was burned after riots in March of 2013. Several dozen people were killed, including 25 students at an Islamic boarding school.
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The ruins of Meiktila.
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What’s left of Minggalar Zayyone, the Muslim quarter of Meiktila.
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Temporary mosque.
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Men pray in a temporary shelter on the outskirts of Meiktila after their mosque was burned in the riots.
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Children wait for their fathers to finish praying in the temporary mosque.