A hardline Buddhist monk turned himself in Monday after 18 months on the run -- and less than a week before Myanmar's national elections -- a move analysts described as a bid to "influence" the vote. 

Once dubbed by Time magazine as the "Buddhist Bin Laden" for his role in stirring up religious hatred in the Buddhist-majority nation, Ashin Wirathu has been on the run since police issued an arrest warrant in May last year.

The 52-year-old has long been known for his nationalist anti-Islamic rhetoric -- particularly against the stateless Rohingya Muslim community.

But it was his outbursts against civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government last year that prompted the arrest warrant for sedition.

After a year-and-a-half as a fugitive, a video posted online Monday showed him speaking to supporters in Yangon, wearing a face mask and shield against coronavirus.

The government "forced me into this situation", he said, calling on Myanmar citizens to vote out the "evil" National League of Democracy (NLD) party from power.

"I will go to the police and do whatever they ask of me," he added, before climbing into a taxi.

Sein Maw, director of Yangon Regional Government's Religious Ministry, confirmed the firebrand monk's arrest to AFP.

- 'Craving notoriety' -

Wirathu could face up to three years in jail if found guilty of attempting to bring "hatred or contempt" or of "exciting disaffection" towards the government. 

In 2017, Myanmar's highest Buddhist authority banned the monk from preaching for one year over his tirades.

After the ban expired, however, the pro-military preacher once again became a regular at nationalist rallies, where he accused the government of corruption and fumed against its failed attempts to re-write the junta-scripted constitution.

Yangon-based analyst David Mathieson said although the authorities could have found him if they had really tried, they were probably loath to stage a risky arrest that could have given him a surge of support.

"He wants to be a martyr so why give him the oxygen to achieve that?"

Facebook, which banned him in 2018, told AFP it had taken down a "number of reported videos related to today's events" and was working fast to prevent others from sharing them.

Wirathu's reappearance six days before the election was no coincidence, said Yangon-based International Crisis Group researcher Richard Horsey.

Suu Kyi's NLD party is widely expected to be returned to power in the November 8 polls in spite of widespread discontent in ethnic minority areas.

"By grabbing headlines just before elections (he) will hope to portray the NLD government as the enemy of Buddhist nationalism," Horsey said, adding the monk's message would be unlikely to resonate beyond a small coterie of hardcore nationalists./ AFP

IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH (AP) — In a wooded area of Nagorno-Karabakh, new recruits to the war besieging the region are underwent a ritual Monday they hope will help them endure the fight — baptism into the Armenian Apostolic Church.

One by one, the young men in camouflage fatigues approached a priest, who dipped their clasped hands into a water-filled kettle and then anointed their heads and necks. Afterwards, the young men stood at attention as the priest hung wooden crosses around their necks.

Their faces were impassive, but one betrayed the emotion churning beneath by kissing the cross.

“The baptism cleansed us and helped us forget about the horrors of the war," Tigran Kagramanian, an 18-year-old recruit, told The Associated Press after the Monday ceremony.

The fight between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces that began in late September is the worst eruption of hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh in decades. The region Azerbaijan has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since the 1994 end of a separatist war that killed an estimated 30,000 people.

Several cease-fires have been declared, then ignored within hours. The Nagorno-Karabakh defense ministry said Monday that 1,177 Armenian fighters have died in the war, including the region's deputy defense minister.

Azerbaijani authorities haven’t disclosed their military losses, but say the fighting has killed at least 91 civilians and wounded 400.

In the most recent attempt to defuse tensions, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met Friday in Geneva for a day of talks brokered by Russia, the United States and France, co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which tries to mediate the conflict.

The talks concluded with the two sides agreeing they “will not deliberately target civilian populations or non-military objects in accordance with international humanitarian law,” but the agreement was quickly challenged by reports of shelling of civilian settlements.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that to end hostilities, Armenian forces must withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh. He repeatedly criticized the Minsk Group for not producing progress and insisted that Azerbaijan has the right to reclaim its territory by force since international mediators have failed.

Azerbaijani troops, which have relied on strike drones and long-range rocket systems supplied by Turkey, have reclaimed control of several regions on the fringes of Nagorno-Karabakh and pressed their offensive into the separatist territory from the south.

The newly baptized soldiers and the priests who blessed them are prepared for more suffering to come.

“We came here to inspire, but it is us who are inspired, looking into the eyes of these young guys, who fully understand the situation and are nonetheless ready to take on this martyrs’ death, knowing that behind them are their shrines, their families and their mothers,” said one of the priests, Aristakes Hovhannisian.

KARACHI (AP) — Hundreds of protesters in Pakistan on Sunday burned effigies of France's leader and chanted anti-French slogans, as President Emmanuel Macron tried to send a message of understanding to Muslims around the world.

Smaller demonstrations in Lebanon, Turkey and India followed on anti-France protests across the Muslim world last week that were mostly led by Islamist groups.

The renewed protests came after President Macron's interview late Saturday in which he said that he understood the shock Muslims felt at caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Macron was speaking with the Qatar-based Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera, where he also defended freedoms of expression and France's secular values.

Macron’s office said the interview was aimed at clarifying misunderstandings around France’s position and the president's words which they say have been taken out of context.

“I have never said that,” Macron told the Al-Jazeera interviewer, explaining that some false translations of his words in the media showed him to support the cartoons mocking Prophet Muhammad. “Those are lies.”

Macron explained that all religions are subject to the freedom of expression and “these drawings.”

“I understand and respect that people can be shocked by these cartoons,” he said. “But I will never accept that someone can justify the use of physical violence because of these cartoons. And I will always defend freedom of speech in my country, of thought, of drawing.”

The interview set off a storm on social media, as many argued the Qatari station erred by giving space to the French President, whom they said failed to apologize for offending Muslims. Some criticized Macron for choosing Al-Jazeera, a station that has been at the center of political disputes between Arab Gulf nations and Turkey and viewed by many as giving airtime to hardliners and Islamist groups, outlawed in many countries in the Middle East.

But for others, Macron's appearance on Al-Jazeera was hailed as a success of the protest and boycott campaigns, which have forced the French president to address Muslims through an Arabic-speaking channel.

The protests in Muslim-majority nations over the last week, and calls for boycotts of French products, began initially after Macron eulogized a French teacher in Paris who was decapitated for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. Two attacks followed on a group of worshippers in a church in Nice, and a Greek priest in Lyon.

Islamist groups and hardliners around the Muslim world have rallied their supporters against the caricatures and the French government’s staunch secularist stance, keeping up protests over the last week targeting Macron.

On Sunday in the Pakistani city of Karachi, hundreds of supporters of the main Islamist party, Jaamat-e-Islami, set an effigy of Macron on fire. The crowd of about 500 chanted against Macron and called for the boycott of French products.

The crowd, which was smaller in number after larger rallies over the past days, marched toward the French Consulate in the city while security cordoned off the area.

Earlier Sunday in Karachi, Shiite students marched for three kilometers (1.8 miles) chanting and pledging to sacrifice their lives for the honor of Islam and its prophet. Some 500 students, including a couple hundred women, dragged French flags on the floor and carried pictures of Macron. One banner depicted Marcon’s face with a big cross.

“We condemn blasphemy of Islam and Prophet Muhammad by French President,” read a slogan scribbled on a French flag.

The well-organized crowd wearing face masks were chanting praise for Prophet Muhammad.

In central Pakistani city of Multan, hundreds of merchants rallied in a demonstration to call for a boycott of French products. The crowd also burned an effigy of Macron and chanted: “Muslims cannot tolerate blasphemy of their prophet” and “the civilized world should give proof of being civilized.”

In Lebanon's capital of Beirut, a dozen protesters marched to the French Embassy in the Lebanese capital, raising banners that read: “Anything but Prophet Muhammad,” and chanted in defense of Islam. Security was tight around the embassy.

In Ahmedabad, a city in India's Gujarat state, protesters pasted photographs of Macron onto streets overnight, leaving them for pedestrians and passing vehicles to go over on Sunday.

Anti-France protests were held by Muslim groups on Friday in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital, and Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state.

Islamist groups on Sunday also held a rally in Istanbul.

There has been tension between France and Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned his French counterpart’s mental condition while criticizing Macron’s attitude toward Islam and Muslims.

President Emmanuel Macron sought to calm flaring tensions with Muslims around the world on Saturday, telling an Arab TV channel he understood that caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed could be shocking while lashing out at "lies" that the French state was behind them.

France is on edge after the republication in early September of cartoons of the prophet by the Charlie Hebdo weekly, which was followed by an attack outside its former offices, the beheading of a teacher and an attack on a church in Nice Thursday that left three dead.

The country was further shaken by a new incident on Saturday, when an attacker armed with a sawn-off shotgun shot an Orthodox priest as he closed his church in the French city of Lyon before fleeing, a police source said.

The 52-year-old priest, who has Greek nationality, was shot in the liver at point-blank range and taken to hospital in a serious condition, sources said.

A suspect was arrested later Saturday, Lyon's public prosecutor said, with the motive of the attack remaining unclear.

- Softer tone -

Macron sparked protests across the Muslim world after the murder earlier this month of teacher Samuel Paty -- who had shown his class a cartoon of Mohammed -- by saying France would never renounce its laws permitting blasphemous caricatures.

But in an apparent bid to reach out to Muslims, Macron gave a long interview setting out his vision to Qatar-based TV channel Al-Jazeera, seeking to strike a softer tone.

"I can understand that people could be shocked by the caricatures, but I will never accept that violence can be justified," he said.

"I understand the feelings that this arouses, I respect them. But I want you to understand the role that I have. My role is to calm things down, as I am doing here, but at the same time it is to protect these rights."

He added: "I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw."

- 'Relied on lies' -

Macron lashed out at "distortions" from political leaders over the cartoons of the prophet, saying too often people were led to believe that they were a creation of the French state.

He slammed "a confusion that has been fed by many media -- and sometimes political and religious leaders -- which is to say that these caricatures are in a way the project or the creation of the French government or the president".

He also denounced calls for a boycott of French goods, backed in particular by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and taken up by some retailers in Muslim countries, as "unworthy" and "unacceptable".

He said the campaign was created by some private groups "who relied on lies... sometimes from other leaders" about the caricatures.

Even before the attack on Paty, Macron had promised a tough new campaign against Islamist radicalism in France, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of people since 2015.

Protests erupted Friday in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Mauritania and Lebanon, the latest in a string of mass rallies denouncing France.

- 'Too early to say' -

France is still reeling from the latest attack in Nice, which Macron has already described as "Islamist" terror.

French authorities were on Saturday seeking to ascertain if a young Tunisian suspected of killing three people in a knife rampage inside a Nice church had outside help.

Brahim Issaoui, 21, only arrived in Europe from Tunisia last month and, according to prosecutors, killed a church employee, a Brazilian woman and a French woman in the attack in the Notre-Dame Basilica on Thursday morning.

The attacker cut the throat of Nadine Devillers, 60, and the sexton Vincent Loques, 55. A Brazilian mother, Simone Barreto Silva, who was stabbed several times, took refuge in a nearby restaurant but died of her wounds there.

Issaoui was shot by police multiple times and is currently in a grave condition in hospital. Investigators have been unable to question him and his precise motivations remain unclear.

"It is still too early to say if there were others complicit, what his motivations were in coming to France and when this idea took root in him," said a source close to the inquiry who asked not to be named.

Investigators believe Issaoui travelled illegally to Europe via Italy's Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on September 20. 

He arrived at the mainland Italian port of Bari on October 9 before coming to Nice just one or two days before the attack./ AFP

PARIS (AP) — The pressure rises with each gruesome attack. After three in five weeks, France’s Muslims are feeling squeezed.

A spotlight of suspicion was trained on them again even before the latest acts of extremist violence, including two beheadings. President Emmanuel Macron has forged ahead with his effort to rid Islam in France of extremists, part of a project he labels “separatism,” a term that makes Muslims wince.

Amid intensifying rhetoric and fresh attacks by outsiders, including the killings of three people Thursday at a Catholic church in Nice, Muslims in France have kept their heads down and chins up. But deep down, some are squirming, feeling they are being held responsible.

“It’s worrisome for Muslims,” said Hicham Benaissa, a sociologist who specializes in Islam in the workplace. Within his network, he said, some “talk about leaving France. The situation is tense. There is fear.”

Islam is the second religion in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. But the country’s estimated 5 million Muslims have walked a delicate line in search of full acceptance in what for many is their nation of birth. Discrimination casts a shadow over some and is an outright barrier to mainstream life for others.

France's cherished value of secularism, which is meant to ensure religious freedom, has in recent years been used by the state to reign in customs practiced by some Muslims. The president’s proposed law may mean further tinkering with the 1905 secularism law born out of a conflict with the powerful Roman Catholic clergy.

Macron has prompted angry protests and calls for boycotts of French products this past week from South Asia to the Mideast. He is accused of spreading anti-Muslim sentiment, notably while eulogizing the teacher who was decapitated near Paris, by defending the French right to caricaturize Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Samuel Paty was attacked outside his school Oct. 16 by a teenage refugee of Chechen origin for showing the caricatures in a civics class. A young Tunisian man killed three people Thursday inside the basilica in the southern city of Nice, beheading one woman, The series of bloodletting began Sept. 25 when a young Pakistani refugee injured two people outside the former Charlie Hebdo newsroom office in Paris. In January 2015, attackers massacred 12 people there after the paper published caricatures of the prophet. That trial is underway.

Words of solidarity from France’s Muslim leaders have been unfailing. The attack “touched brothers and sisters who were praying to their lord. I am deeply Christian today,” said the imam of Nice’s Ar-Rahma Mosque, Otman Aissaoui.

But, “once again we are stigmatized, and people move so fast to lump things together,” Aissaoui also said, reflecting the deepening discomfort of France’s Muslims, most from former French colonies in North Africa.

Muslims “are neither guilty nor responsible ... We shouldn’t have to justify ourselves,” said Abdallah Zekri, an official of the French Council for the Muslim Faith.

The attacks and Macron’s “separatism” plan, which includes a partial overhaul of the way Islam is organized in France, from the training of imams to management of Muslim associations, have drilled home the divide. They also have focused attention on the cherished value of secularism — “laicite” in French — which is enshrined in the French Constitution but is still not clearly defined.

“The presence of Islam was not something foreseen by French society,” said Tareq Oubrou, a leading imam in Bordeaux.

Tensions have run high in the past, notably with changes to the secularism law, with a 2004 law banning headscarves in classrooms and another in 2010 banning face-coverings.

“Secularism has always been a smokescreen ... a hidden way to treat the question of Islam,” Benaissa said.

Rim-Sarah Alouane, a doctoral candidate at Toulouse Capitole University, researching religious freedom and civil liberties, is tougher. “Since the l990s, laïcité has been weaponized and misused as a political tool to limit the visibility of religious signs, especially Muslim ones,” she said.

“The state needs to make sure to respect and fully embrace its diversity and not consider it a threat,” she said.

The rise of Islam into public view was gradual and mostly went unnoticed until the far right seized upon it as a threat to the French identity. Over the years mosques have multiplied, along with Muslim schools.

Muslim men initially came to France to take menial jobs following World War II. In the 1970s, immigrant Muslims working in car factories, construction and other sectors were “absolutely essential to French industry,” Benaissa said. Renault, for instance, installed prayer rooms.

“Today, when a veiled woman arrives in a company, there is ... a revolt. What happened?” he asked.

Many Muslims, unlike their parents or grandparents, are getting educations, better jobs and erasing the “myth of return,” he said.

Olivier Roy, a top expert, told a parliamentary committee that most Muslims have worked to integrate into French culture. They “format themselves to the French Republic and complain they don’t get a payback in return, don’t have the benefit of recognition,” he said.

Macron conceded in a speech that France bears full responsibility for the “ghettoization” of Muslims in housing projects but insists the planned law is not about stigmatizing Muslims.

Yet stigmatism is part of life in France for many, from being singled out by police for ID checks to discrimination in job searches.

“The Muslim is reduced to his religion,” said Oubrou, the Bordeaux imam. “Everything is not Christian in the life of a Christian.”

The religion with no single leader has multiple strains in France, running from moderate to Salafist with a rigorous interpretation of the religion to outright radical upstarts.

In his project, Macron envisions measures like training imams in France instead of bringing them in from Turkey, Morocco or Algeria.

Benaissa doesn't underestimate the “ideological offensive” of political Islam, but says a ferocious public debate is reducing Islam to a single fear.

“Islam is not Islamism, a Muslim is not an Islamist. An Islamist is not necessarily a jihadi,” he said. “What I fear is that identities radicalize, with on one side those claiming the Muslim identity and on the other those claiming the identity of France.”

China’s campaign to suppress Islam is accelerating as authorities remove Arab-style onion domes and decorative elements from mosques across the country.

Stark changes have been observed at the main mosque in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia province, where most of China’s Hui ethnic Muslim minority live.

The bright green onion-shaped domes and golden minarets that used to soar into the sky atop Nanguan Mosque have all been pulled down. Golden Islamic-style filigree, decorative arches, and Arabic script that before adorned the mosque have also been stripped away.

What remains is unrecognisable – a drab, gray, rectangular facility with “Nanguan Mosque” written in Chinese, as shown in photos posted online by Christina Scott, the UK’s deputy head of mission in China, on a recent trip.

“TripAdvisor suggested the Nanguan Mosque in Yinchuan well worth a visit,” Ms Scott wrote on Twitter, along with ‘before and after’ photos. “Only this is what it looks now, after ‘renovations.’ Domes, minarets, all gone. No visitors allowed either, of course. So depressing.”

The UK foreign office said: “We are deeply concerned about restrictions on Islam and other religions in China. We call on China to respect Freedom of Religion or Belief, in line with its Constitution and its international obligations.”

Islamic-style onion domes and decorative elements are also being axed from mosques in neighbouring Gansu province, home to Linxia, a city nicknamed “Little Mecca” for its history as a centre for Islamic faith and culture in China.

Erasing Islamic decorative elements from mosques is yet another step Chinese authorities are taking under Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who has vowed to ‘Sinicise’ religion.

More recently, the coronavirus has given Chinese authorities convenient cover to keep many mosques closed – even as Beijing crows victory over the pandemic and a flurry of activity has picked up again.

China has for years waged a campaign against Islamic influence, removing decorative elements and Arabic script from buildings, signs and arches, and now, targeting mosques in Ningxia and other provinces.

In Xinjiang, things have taken an especially sinister turn with “re-education” camps that subject detainees to horrific physical torture, political indoctrination and forced labour. Growing a beard, fasting and reading the Koran have all been deemed suspicious behaviour by the government and reason enough to be interned in camps.

Former detainees have told the Telegraph of being electrocuted by cattle prods, made to pledge loyalty to the ruling Party, and of being forced to work in factories manufacturing gloves for little pay.

Schools that previously taught Arabic language and trained imams have also been forced to shutter, the Telegraph has reported. Instead, the government has set up special schools to train imams to have the “correct political stance,” according to Chinese state media.

Chinese authorities are “really worried about external religious influence and authority,” said Dru Gladney, an expert in China’s ethnic minority groups and a professor of anthropology at Pomona College.

Being religious “is a threat to the political authority to the state; you’re giving allegiance to a non-Chinese authority,” said Mr Gladney.

“Whether it’s the Dalai Lama or the Pope, or it’s the head of Falun Gong [a spiritual group], the state won’t tolerate it.”

Pictures of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama are banned, though photos of Mr Xi are allowed, and encouraged, as observed by foreign journalists on a recent government-arranged trip to Tibet.

“Xi is centralising authority and centralising power,” said David Stroup, a lecturer at the University of Manchester who has studied ethnic minority groups in China.

There’s an interest “to build a nation-state identity,” he said.

Indeed Mr Xi has talked of the “Chinese dream” – an effort to foster a shared identity, a move the Communist Party is betting will secure greater political stability in the long-run.

Experts, however, argue that the suppression campaign in the long-term will backfire.

“They’re creating more resentment among Muslim communities, and theyr’e going to push more of them into more radical solutions,” said Mr Gladney.

Officially, the ruling Party recognises five major religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicisim and Protestantism. But in practice, the government tightly controls and regulates the practise of these faiths.

China, for instance, has long insisted that it approve bishop appointments, clashing with absolute papal authority to select them. Even mentions of “God” and “Bible” have been censored from children’s classics, like Robinson Crusoe, translated for school curriculums instead as “good heaven” and “several books.”

The suppression is not “just targeted exclusively at Islam, but seems to be prosecuted most vigorously when it comes to Islam,” said Rian Thum, senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham.

That is because of broader Islamophobia in China given a misperception that terrorism is linked to Islam, he said.

Another reason is “the turn toward ethnonationalism as a legitimising narrative for why the Communist Party should be the organisation that runs China".

And that is why religions deemed to be foreign are being targeted, he said.

“This is an ethnonationalist purge of cultural material seen as foreign by virtue of not lining up with the Han ethnic majority.”