After fighting worsened in Rakhine state near the end of 2012, it
was reported that President Thein Sein suggested to the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees that the best solution would be
to remove the estimated 800 thousand Rohingya to another country
(Democratic Voice of Burma 2012). On September 2, 2012, U Wirathu
led a march of thousands of monks in Mandalay, calling for citizens to
support the president’s proposal and casting the Rohingya as a threat
to the Burmese “motherland.” As one of the authors has written elsewhere:
“U Wirathu epitomizes the all too common model of a nationalist
leader who fights for expanded political freedoms for some citizens,
but also uses religious reasoning to justify the exclusion of groups considered
to be outside the national community” (Walton 2013c).