January 3, 2023（AseanAll）Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of Myanmar’s coup regime, bestowed one of the country’s highest honours on the controversial ultranationalist monk U Wirathu at a ceremony in Naypyitaw on Monday（January 2）.
The monk, Wirathu, was awarded the honorific “Thiri Pyanchi” title for his “outstanding work for the good of the Union of Myanmar”, the military’s information team said.
The 2023 Diamond Jubilee Independence Day commemo-rative honorary title presenta-tion ceremony (second day) was held on January 2. Chairman of State Administration Council Prime Minister Senior General Min Aung Hlaing delivered an address and presented honor-ary titles.
The title, which was created after Myanmar achieved independence from British rule in 1948, is granted to distinguished individuals every year ahead of Independence Day on January 4.
It has traditionally been given by the head of state to members of the military, civil servants, artists and others deemed to have made important contributions to the country and the public.
Wirathu is a controversial monk. He has long been known for his ultra-nationalist and anti-Islam rhetoric – particularly against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
He is dubbed the "Buddhist bin Laden" for his role in stirring up religious hatred in Myanmar. In 2013, he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as "The Face of Buddhist Terror".
Ten years before his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Wirathu had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for inciting a deadly anti-Muslim riot in Kyaukse, Mandalay Region. Released in 2012, he soon returned to his inflammatory ways as a founding member of the Patriotic Association of Myanmar, better known by its Burmese acronym Ma Ba Tha.
He had called for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses and restrictions on marriages between Buddhists and Muslims.
Human Rights groups said these helped whip up animosity towards the community, laying the foundations for a military crackdown in 2017 that forced about 740,000 Rohingya to flee over the border to Bangladesh.
In 2019, the monk was charged with sedition for a speech he made attacking Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. After a year in hiding, he turned himself in just before the November 2020 election, which Suu Kyi’s NLD won in a landslide.
In September 2021, the junta announced it had released Wirathu after all charges against him had been dropped.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, has been detained since being ousted by the military coup almost two years ago. Prior to December 30, 2022, a junta court handed down its verdicts in the final charges against the Nobel laureate, who now faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars with a total of 33 years in prison.
