Burmese 969 / Ma Ba Tha movement (U Wirathu)

The 969 Movement (the digits encode the nine attributes of the Buddha, the six attributes of the Dhamma, and the nine attributes of the Sangha) emerged in early-2001 Mon State sermons by the monk U Kyaw Lwin and was popularised through 2010s Mandalay sermons by U Wirathu, who became its most internationally visible figure after Time magazine's July 2013 cover labelled him 'The Face of Buddhist Terror.' Ma Ba Tha (the more formally organised political-Buddhist association founded January 2013 in Yangon) advanced the same anti-Muslim agenda through legislative lobbying — the 2015 'Race and Religion Protection Laws' (interfaith marriage restrictions, religious-conversion controls, polygamy ban, population control) were drafted with Ma Ba Tha input. Wirathu's rhetoric — distributed through DVDs, Facebook (until his 2017 ban), YouTube, and increasingly Telegram after Facebook restrictions — used loaded religious framing (Muslims as 'African catfish', a destructive invasive species; 'they breed like rabbits'; the existence of a 'global Muslim plot' against Buddhism) that the UN Fact-Finding Mission's 2018 report identified as material to the genocide environment. The actual genocide — beginning August 2017, killing 9,000–25,000 Rohingya, displacing ~750,000 to Bangladesh — was conducted by Tatmadaw (Burmese military) units; Wirathu's role was rhetorical preparation rather than direct command. Wirathu was charged with sedition in 2019 (against the elected NLD government), went into hiding 2019–2020, surrendered November 2020, and was released by the post-coup February 2021 military junta; he has continued public preaching since. Mainstream Burmese Theravada institutions including the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee have explicitly distanced themselves from 969/Ma Ba Tha and from Wirathu personally, banned his preaching in 2017, and disowned the name 'Ma Ba Tha' (the organisation rebranded as Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation in 2017 to evade the ban).